Trip Notes July, 2005 trip July 10 to July 23rd
Our flight left Houston late, as in not on time, as we spent forever
taxiing, but, surprise! arrived in Reno on time on the last cool day
before the heat wave was supposed to hit. High 86, that's a cool day
when coming from Texas. Stopped at the Silver Peaks Brewery for
lunch, great salads, skip the barbeque and Mexican food, but that may
just be Texas bias. Arrived at the Pepp around 1, room not ready, so
played some VP, of course, until 3. Played a little $ NSUD since I
felt lucky after being up $50 at Video Blackjack of all things.
Quickly lost that plus another $100. We pretty much crashed that
evening. My husband arrived with $75 free play and won another $4 and
played on that all day Sunday, Monday and up to now on Tuesday, as I
am writing. He is actually up about $300 and is dreaming of that
ideal trip when you never pull out your own wallet. He also had a 100
coin coupon for hitting a four of a kind that brought in $25. Our
room was an Imperial Suite as this is a business trip. It was a
little disappointing as it was one of the older ones. The table was
not even glass!!! Very subdued for the Peppermill. View was of the
air conditioning, no double sink, no broken bathroom TV and no steam
shower. I would avoid #534 if you have a chance. Still it was not bad
enough to ask for a change and the refrigerator kept stuff icy cold.
Monday, lost some more money at VP as my husband discovered 100 play
9/6 jacks or better. It also has a bad deuces wild on it at
4000,1000, 125,75,45,20,15,10,5, BP at
4000,250,400,200,125,35,25,20,15,10,5, DDB at
4000,250,2000,800,800,400,250,45,25,20,15,5,5 and JP at
500,4000,500,80,40,25,20,10,10,5 which I think is 97.19. He may
never play anything else; by Tuesday he has worked up to 100 play at
the 1c level and is very pleased. He hit a dealt four of a kind. I
lost my second hundred of the trip at Blackjack in about an hour and
switched to craps where I at least broke even after a couple of hours
play. That evening I went on my quest for the Double Bonus with my e-
mails from you'all and printouts from the database. It took a while
but eventually I learned something I had never realized before, not
all progressives are marked and have the little tote board on top of
the bank. Once I cleared that hurdle I found the ones by the Fish Bar
and the Rainbow Bar. There was also a progressive Deuces Wild next to
the DB which was at $598.40, $171.80, $17.30, 160 coins,
130,40,30,20,20,10 which by my Winpoker calculations was at 102.2753
with a 63.78271 variance. Tonight, emboldened by my success I will
search for the elusive full pay DW.
After being down only about $10 Tuesday morning, I used by free Ace
with $25 bet coupon and got blackjack, so that put me up for the day.
After 2 and one half days, I am down about $250. I also used another
coupon for a $50 match play at the sports book on a field bet on the
British Open at 5 to 2, which if I won, the tickets states I will be
paid my $250 winnings plus my $100!! original bet. Would be nice and
make up for my losses so far. Note after the fact. This was not to be
as Tiger continued the Jack Nicholas retirement win streak. If
only
..
On Wednesday my losses continued at everything I turned by hands to.
Blackjack, Craps, Video Poker etc. Luckily I played golf that morning
and that cut my losses. My daughter was coming in late that night as
an early birthday celebration since we had gotten a 2 free nights and
a casino discount for Friday for her plain vanilla room. So I had
hopes that as a first time gambler she would turn my trip around. We
arranged for the limo to pick her up as her flight from Dallas meant
a flight change in LV so her arrival time was 1:18 am. This was a
good thing as it was late and landed after 2 Reno time, which was 4,
am her time. We met around 10:30 Thursday morning. She was going to
gamble on my money, hopefully she would have the luck and I would get
the winnings. Her first plan was to try all of the types of games in
the casino. After a few spins on traditional slots and video slots
she, thank goodness, decided they were dull. To my great relief she
did not hit any jackpots or bonus rounds and did not become a slot
addict. As a conservative accountant it had not been very likely
anyway. Once I explained house edge to her she was very willing to
just play the best games. We then joined her father at Video Poker
and explained the basics. You will be glad to hear that in spite of
going down to only double his initial free play on Wednesday by
Thursday he was back up to four times. After the dealt 4 of a kind he
had ventured to the nickel denomination at 40 hands but he liked the
lower variance of the hundred play. The only problem is that by
smoothing out the variance you rarely get a big high, although of
course he is dreaming of that dealt royal.
Since my bad video poker luck was continuing that also did not
attract my daughter and I dragged her over to the craps table, all
the way explaining the odds on the various table games and their
minimum bet limits. She quickly lost her enthusiasm for playing
everything, even on my money. Bad luck continued at craps but she did
learn the basics. We had lunch at Oceano, which she later said was
the best food of the trip. We went downtown Thursday night. I was
surprised when she said that if she came with friends she would stay
downtown. We had fun that night at the Blackjack tables, as she was
quickly catching on and winning. We had dinner at the Seafood
Bar/Restaurant at the Atlantis. Someone had recommended the seafood
feast for two. It was very disappointing. The crab legs dripped tons
of water. We returned to the Peppermill and more BJ. When it came
time to leave the table, I convinced her to bet one last time and if
she won keep pressing up one unit. She went from a $5 dollar bet up
to finally losing at $35. So that put us ahead for the day. You can
tell that we are big time gamblers.
Friday my daughter and I went downtown again. We had lunch at the
Beaujolais Restaurant. Very French with a limited menu. We did not
have any wine but it looked like a good selection. My only other
advice is do not go to the Dueling Piano's at the Silver Legacy if
your eardrums are over 25. Never felt my age so quickly.
Saturday played again at the Peppermill with my daughter and then we
finally made the trek to Louis Basque restaurant downtown. My
daughter had the lamb, I had the pork chops and my husband had a beef
skewer type thing. Maybe Basque is an acquired taste but I would not
recommend. It was very home style and we definitely did not care for
the lamb. We then did the Wine Walk downtown. This is the 3rd
Saturday of each month and you visit merchants by the Truckee and at
each stop you are given a 1/8 or so of a glass of wine to drink as
you browse the store. You buy the glasses for $10 at the first store
you go to and take them from store to store. Dress shop, linens shop,
antique shop, bookstore, coffee bar, restaurant, quite a variety and
we did not visit them all. There is a drawing for prizes at the end
of the day but we did not make it. We took a taxi back to the
Peppermill and we told the driver that it had been a pleasant walk
and he said are you crazy, they just announced it was 104 degrees. We
said we were from Texas and found it not bad at all. It was even
true. My daughter flew out Saturday night and then it was just my
husband and myself and video poker.
Sunday, the day began badly with losing accidentally a $20 bet at
video bj when I hit max bet instead of bet 1 credit. VP quick loss,
craps quick loss, blackjack quick loss. I decided to go back to VP
where my husband was plugging away at the 100 play. We had been
playing at the hundred play by the Qube bar but found another set by
the fish bar entrance on the Oceano side. I learned a valuable lesson
about the Royal Flush Fairy, like Oracles and wishes; it is necessary
to be very specific. When she was sent to me with instructions for a
Royal, nothing was said about denomonations so when I began to play
the 100 play at 1C, I got my only royal of the trip for $40 when I
held 4 to the Royal and got the 5th. At least it was on the big hand
so it felt like a Royal.
We registered for the Video Poker tournament and at first thought
that we had hit the big time when I gave my name (first and last) and
the checker in said that we were comped, however on further review
the comp was for someone with the same name who was directly behind
us in line. Do the odds calculation on that. It was nice to finally
meet the person whose name was always being called on the Sunday
drawings that I thought was me and it wasn't. She also showed us
pictures of the Corvette she had won in one of those drawings. At
least someone with my name is lucky. Turns out there are at least 3
of us in the Peppermill database with the same name and two of us
share the same month and day birthday. Very confusing. The VP
tournament was 3 rounds 1 Sunday and 2 Monday. Fifteen minutes to
play 1000 credits at DB with RF's counting 1000 points instead of
4000. Absolutely noting interesting happened on our hands in any
three rounds, we each had a 4 to the Royal and did not convert. I did
see one of those unschooled plays by my neighbor that again points
out the importance of not interfering. I had finished my credits and
was just watching and she held 2 tens and an ace. I was thinking that
was crazy, of course what happened to pop up but a ten and an ace for
a full house. What I found even stranger was the table next to mine
at the awards banquet on Monday night. There was a guy talking about
all the video poker he played and the royal flushes he hit. His big
complaint about the VP tournament was that they did not replace the
chips in the machine with ones that would give out more high paying
hands. He also had the theory that on January 1 all of the VP
machines had had their chips replaced with ones that would make the
machines pay out less. Of course, he also probably finished 100
places higher than I did. Good news was that the tournament was over
subscribed and we got $40 of our $99 entry fee back. Felt like a win
to me.
I then tried the 10-coin nickel double bonus, and did okay as the
theme for this trip seemed to be 40k's for both my husband and me. He
also had a 4 to the Royal hold on the 100 play where he got 5 royals
in the 100 hands, which was somewhat above average.
The rest of the week was pretty dull. My husband continued to play on
house money and I stayed even. On Thursday my luck finally changed. I
gave up on the hundred play next to my husband and started playing
bad pay schedule deuces wild at nickels just to keep him company. I
was doing rather well so moved up to dimes. Started hitting 4 of K's
and wild royals, then the machine did this weird thing in the middle
of playing and took me back to the games choices screen and
highlighted 25 cents. I ignored what clearly was a sign and continued
playing at the 10-cent level and of course about 4 hands later hit
the 4 deuces. I realized what the machine was trying to tell me and
switched to quarters, which were the NSUD and continued to have
really good hands until by husband dragged me off to bed since his
100 play was not being the consistent winner that it had been for the
whole trip up to now. My 4 card royals did not convert though, but I
was in a much better mood after cashing out up about $150 for the
evening.
Friday morning found the full pay DW again which had been very
friendly the day before with two wild royals and other good stuff.
Everything hit, even natural 4 of k's (2 in 3 hands), finally had a
dealt 4 deuces and then continued with nice hits, the 4 card royals
did not pay off though. We had lunch at a Bavarian Restaurant on the
edge of downtown. Don't have the pork roast, wiener schnitzel looked
good, skip the bread dumpling. Salad was great, sort of a sampler
plate of german salads, green beans, cabbage, cole slaw, carrots,
etc. Attached was a German delicatessen and grocery store complete
with German magazines, I really wanted to know the translation of the
one with the story about Prince Albert of Monaco.
The slow erosion of my husband's winnings continued at the 100 play.
We got up very early Saturday morning (3:00 am) to force our bodies
back on central time and after breakfast he finished for the trip
still with over 6 times his initial free play without ever playing
any of his own money. I was still down for the trip so on my way to
the coffee shop to get some banana macadamia nut bread for home, I
stopped to see if I could hit the DB 10 play nickels upstairs, the
royal was up to over $500. I did not hit the royal but cashed out
with my initial deposit intact after about 15 minutes. Then on for a
last whirl at the FPDW in the alcove. I sat down fed in my two
twenties and 5 hands later I routinely held 2 deuces and as nice as
anything up popped the other 2. I cashed out my $286 and change and
went on to the coffee shop. So as a family we broke even for the
trip. I was very surprised that most of the time the DB and the FPDW
were not busy and if they were people were playing other games,
including Keno on them and if they were playing they were not playing
optimum coins and/or strategy. I guess reading all the postings on
the VP free site has given me a warped perspective as to the
knowledgibility of those playing Video Poker. We had an uneventful
flight back to Houston and spent the next day recovering before
returning to work on Monday. Next trip will be November, so I have
lots of time to practice and read about everyone's VP successes.
This is a little late posting because I was trying to cover 2 weeks
worth of trip. Really did not get bored and would have been quite
willing to stay longer.
Good luck to everyone.
Trish