The reason for this trip was a blackjack tournament. There wasn't a lot of
detail beforehand so I assumed that it was run like a standard BJ
tournament. There was a blurb about playing on teams with some beautiful girls as
your team-mate. I'm not immune to that stuff but I entered because I think
I'm good at tournaments & it was a free weekend. Long story short: I was
partnered with a 10 who was also a BJ dealer for the Hard Rock. Most girls knew
the basics but this one knew quite a bit more. After starting with 4,000
luck, we parlayed it to 35,000 in 24 rds which I thought was good enough to
place high. The trouble was we were in the first rd & you only play one rd.
The winning score was 89,000 & there were several good scores in between
that & ours. We still placed but not high. I cashed for $250. A nice point
was that an additional 20% was paid to the girls who were our partners. I
tipped my partner anyway as well as the dealer (both of whom were young
enough to be my daughter &, dare I say it, maybe even grand-daughter--yeah I
qualify for some discounts). A nice surprise was when I was asked to be one of
the judges for the swimsuit competition & asked to pose with them. While
talking to one of my fellow judges (accent sounded Russian), found out that
he buys foreclosures for foreign clients & picked up a few tidbits from
what he shared with me. Sparks & all of LV are his targets & in both places he
doesn't pay more than 35 cents on the dollar (compared to peak I assume).
The fact that he mentioned only Sparks leads me to believe that the other
parts of Reno might be stabilizing. As for LV, he said it will probably take
at least 5, more likely 10 yrs for the market to recover. Oh yeah, we had
17 girls to judge. I'm not a good judge because I couldn't be very
critical. Lowest score was a 9.
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