Hi Gang:
Hedy and I recently completed a seven-night trip to Las Vegas and, despite a
minor setback to our bank account, we had a great time as we played lots of
VP, renewed some long-time friendships, enjoyed some wonderful meals and saw
a number of excellent shows.
We spent the first three nights at South Point and the final four at Caesars
Palace as part of our annual Seven Stars trip, which comes with free
airfare, hotel accommodations and $500 which can be used for meals, shows or in a
hotel logo gift shop. We also redeemed our Great Gift Wrapup points at Harrah's.
The bulk of our play came at South Point, where we earned $323 in cashback,
which translates to just over 100K coin-in. Although we didn't hit any royals
or get any hand-pays, we did have a number of memorable hits while playing a
variety of games. The highlights were Hedy hitting aces with a kicker on
50-cent DDB for $1,000, my getting deuces dealt on triple-play 9/7 DB for $600
as well as a number of $400 quads on $1 9/6 Bonus Poker Deluxe.
During our stay there, we also got together with Bob Dancer and three of his
associates for a late lunch in the coffee shop after Bob's class at SP that
day on DB. It was nice seeing Bob again after a number of years and we
enjoyed chatting with him and his friends. We also had an interesting discussion on
Quick Quads and had some fun playing it after our meal. Hedy was especially
thrilled to find out that the DDB paytable was the best choice to play on the
four machines available. Getting the hang of holding hands such as 6-6-4-2
was interesting and I even got dealt a QQ (9-9-9-6-3) on DDB triple play.
While at South Point, we also ate two wonderful meals at the Silverado
Steakhouse, one with good friends Joan Schneider and Tom Levinson, and even tried
the bank of full-pay machines that the casino put in near the slot club. We
only played this bank for 20 minutes or so (FPDW, DDB and the 9/6 JOB with
the 450 SF payoff), losing about $20 for our effort, but we found that there
always was a seat available. We also thought that the machines were not really
THAT slow and, all in all, they were a very nice addition for quarter
players, especially with the .3 cashback the casino offers. When we left for the
second part of our stay at CP we were down $1,700 for the trip, including
cashback.
We also earned enough for two frozen turkeys, but the airlines have not
increased the weight restriction to cover the additional 50 pounds, so we had to
leave the frozen birds with a local friend!
At CP, we saw shows featuring Ellen Degeneres and Jerry Seinfeld at the
Comedy Festival and loved Seinfeld (almost an hour and a half of hilarious
standup) but thought Ellen was a major disappointment. She did a funny 15-minute
monologue at the beginning but after that the show was a series of acts
featuring acrobats, jugglers, magicians etc., and most were mediocre at best. The
show also was being taped for a later showing on TBS and the whole thing was
very disorganized with segments being repeated, if not completely bungled.
We also took advantage of an offer at Gold Coast during our stay at CP, so
we wound up having two meals there and playing some limited VP. We had a nice
meal with friends at the Cortez Steakhouse one night then really enjoyed
dinner the next night at Ping Pang Pong, their Chinese restaurant. Our play there
resulted in a $500 profit as Hedy hit deuces on 50-cent NSU for $500 and I
hit some small quads on 50-cent 9/7 DB.
We also got together with Linda (Misscraps) and Ron at the Augustus Cafe for
dinner the first night we stayed at CP and enjoyed seeing them again.
Ironically, they were leaving the next morning on their Seven Stars trip to
Atlantic City!
We also got a chance to see the Legends in Concert Show at Imperial Palace
(free tickets for Seven Stars card holders) and loved it. The impersonators
for Elvis, Ann Margret and Donna Summer were particularly good and we highly
recommend this show if you have an opportunity to see it.
The final day of our stay at CP, we played some 50-cent 9/6 DB on the
uprights near the garage entrance area and I was lucky enough to hit aces for $400
and 3's for $200. Hedy added ducks for $200 and we wound up shaving another
$300 off our deficit from South Point. So, the gambling bottom line for the
trip, with cashback, was a $900 loss. I guess when you consider our
accommodations (three-room suite at SP, huge Augustus Tower room at CP), meals, shows,
airfare, limo rides to airport and between hotels, GG Wrapup gift etc. we got
a pretty hefty bang for our buck!
And things got even better this past weekend in our return to Harrah's
Atlantic City!
I'll detail things in a follow-up trip report tomorrow.
Regards,
CoachVee (Tom V) & Hedy
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