Day 7
Monday April 2, 2001
Video poker and the buffet at Suncoast and a trip to the bank!

More play at the Suncoast to start the day off and then I have plans to meet VG from VG Enterprises and his wife CC from the Continental Airlines City Ticket Office at the Riviera. We are planning on meeting to have lunch at the buffet at 1pm so that leaves me plenty of time to go hit some VP machines. Well just as I was leaving the room the phone rang. It was VG calling to say they wouldn’t be able to make it and we would try another day. I went to the casino and played some Deuces Wild. I’m still not having much luck on the machines and lost $50 in about an hour.

I was hungry and even though VG and CC weren’t going to make it, I thought I’d try the buffet anyway. The lunch buffet here is $6.95 and is what they call an action buffet. There are 6 stations featuring Italian, Mexican, Chinese, American, and Mongolian. They also have a salad bar and a dessert section in the center. The foods here were pretty good. I took a little bit of food from each station, except for Mexican which, I don’t like. My only complaint here was the same complaint I have at most buffets. That is foods are either not hot enough or dried out from being on the steam table or under the French fry lights too long. I was stuffed after lunch and went to play some more Deuces Wild. I started with $100 and quickly got that up to $150 making me even for the day. I played with that $150 for about 45 minutes then the machine turned into an ugly piece of crap. I was going 10-15 hands in a row with no hits, followed by just a 3 of a kind, straight or flush. I think I must have gone 40-50 hands without hitting a four of a kind. So for 45 minutes I played even for the most part and in less than 15 more minutes it was all gone. I can’t remember a worse session at Deuces Wild in a long time.

Aggravated I decided it was break time and I would come up to the room to relax for a while before playing more. Unfortunately house keeping was in my room so I went back downstairs. The craps table looked like a good place to kill some time. Kill time is what I did along with lose more money. The dice were like ice and $100 disappeared in less than an hour. That doesn’t sound too bad but I was only laying $3 on the pass line with odds and occasionally placing the 6 and/or 8. One thing I do like about craps is the option to bet the don’t. However just as I was going to switch to the don’t a shooter would get hot and stop me from doing it. After that loss I came upstairs and here I am now writing about it. Time to relax for a while and then head back down to the casino a little later on.

After a short break I went back down to the casino. Video poker still wasn’t being very good to me. I played more Deuces Wild and Bonus poker in quarters and even tried dollars. Nothing seemed to work. This was pretty much the scene for about 4 hours. Giving up on the machines for a while I decided to try some blackjack. This turned out to be a major waste of time and money. I lost $200 here in about 15 minutes only winning about 3 hands. You know things aren’t going to be good when you are losing with 21.

I got downtown just before 11pm. Binion’s was pretty busy but I found a table and sat down. I was playing 2 hands at a time. Things were starting off great. I was getting blackjacks, and winning my double downs. The dealer was breaking and I was making money. Very quickly I was up over $500 and the run continued. About 2 hours later I was up over $1,000. The run looked to be over soon after this and I cashed out up $800. I was glad to see that the bank was open and I was able to make a withdrawal.

After cashing out I got a comp to the coffee shop. I ordered the steak special. It’s the same special they had for years in the downstairs coffee shop but now it’s $4.99. I also ordered a bowl of soup. The steak dinner was as good as it ever was and includes a 10oz. steak, baked potato, small salad and rolls. The service kind of sucked but at least the food was acceptable tonight.

After eating I headed back here to the Suncoast. It’s now after 2am and I am shot. I’m heading to bed.

Total win/loss for the day -$150
Total comps for the day $57