Day 20
Saturday July 2, 2016
We got up early this morning and hit the pool for a while with the cousins. After we baked for a while we came up here to get ready and then hit the casino for a while before it was time for our tournament session. This was a short and good session and we actually won $20 when we cashed out to go to the tournament.

This is a low end tournament with 3 minutes sessions on a bank of machines they convert into tournament mode. Your name goes up on the screen and you take your seat. The tournament started and as always I was doing poorly. I've never done well in these over the years. Dee on the other hand was doing well scoring lots of points. I looked at the score board and saw she had jumped to number 1 and was flirting with 1, 2, & 3 spots. When the screens went dark for the last 10 seconds of the round she was in the top spot. After it was over she was the session winner. Whoo hoo. Too bad there was no prize for this.

After the session we all met in the hotel lobby and headed back to the strip to go to the show which has an early 4pm start time. When we got to the Linq we had lunch at Guy Fieri's. I had the Motley Cue again and Dee had the original ringer burger. The sandwich was great with lots of pulled pork in it. I'm guessing I caught a bad day last year when I had it and there was hardly any meat on it. The only thing I can say is they had way too much seasoning on the fry mix today and they were not as good as they usually are.

After a great meal we walked over to Harrah's. Yesterday we both got our monthly show tickets for being diamond and 7* for Menopause, the Musical. All I can say about this show is it wasn't bad, it wasn't good, but it was silly. It's certainly not a show I'd go see again and it's very over priced at $61 and change per ticket. If you plan on going be sure to get a 2 for 1 coupon or use one of the discounters.

After the show we came back up here to Rampart for our second session in the tournament. Once again I was getting no hits and was in 8th place the whole 3 minutes. Dee was in 6th but each time I looked over she'd creep up bit bit more. Then she was neck and neck with the guy next to her fighting for 1st and 2nd place. Every other spin the score would flip. Then Dee got a bonus balloon for 5000 points and took off like a rocket. When the screens went dark she had a pretty big lead on him. After the session was over the total board lit up and Dee was once again session winner. We had a good feeling she'd be in the money but I know for sure there were higher scores in some of the sessions so the question is going to be WHERE in the money will she be.

This tournament is very top heavy with first prize being $10,000, second being $5,000 but third only being $1750. They said results would be posted at 9pm and it was about 6:45 now. Damn it's going to be a long 2 hours.

For dinner we went to the Promenade Cafe which was really dessert. We were still full from the late lunch we had so just got dessert. I had ice cream and Dee had chocolate cake.

I had some coupons for the cousins to get $10 in free play for being new sign ups and they also got to spin a fake wheel for earning 20 points. We watched them run off their free play and do their free spins. All they got was bonus points worth about $7 between them. They did manage to turn a nice profit though.

It was time to go see if the tournament results were posted and they were. I went over and looked at the list. Fuck, A. Lopes was the champion and the winner of the $10,000 top prize with a score of 287,685. Second place was just about 4,000 points less at 283,514 and the winner of $5,000 is DEE! Fuck yeah! FIVE FUCKING GRAND!

We filled out some paperwork and headed to the cage for Dee to collect her money. That was some pretty exciting shit right there.

Now it was time to play and we hit the machines. We started off with some Spin Poker. I hit a few quads but nothing great. I dropped $100 and Dee dropped $200. Next we played some new Carnival video poker games they just installed. I have no idea of strategy or returns but they looked fun and they were. Dee was doing really well and hit a bunch of mini jackpot type hands. One was a 3 card royal with a multiplier for 2500 coins. She continued to hit lots of smaller wins that really added up. Was getting good play in but not really winning or losing. We cashed out with around $700 in winnings between us.

Next up we ran my free play through single line video poker. I hit a few full houses but that was about all and turned the $175 free play into $165. In total tonight we had a pretty good video poker day and a really good tournament day. It was now after midnight and it was time to wind down after an exciting evening.

Total Coin In for the day $15010
Total win/loss for the day $5600
Total Comps for the day $947
Rooms $398
Cash/Free Play $175
Food $130
Shows $244 $