LV Report 4/2/06 (1 of 12)
For many of you that have been on this LVA trip report board
for a long time, you know these reports well. For those of you that
are new, I do my reports at the end of each day while I'm here in
Las Vegas. I find a Starbucks the next day and send them in.
They're not particularly clever, and some have complained of the
details. But it's another trip, so here we go.
I left San Diego at 2:00 AM and arrived at the Silverton
just before 7:00. My first hotel I'm staying at is the Vegas Club
(downtown), but it's far too early to check in, so I thought I'd
stop at the Silverton to pick up my new member slot card, which has
been upgraded to Silver, and I wanted to get it. I, of course,
decided it's a good time start playing. The Silverton has a few
good video poker machines with full pay schedules in Jokers and some
ugly and NSU deucesmy two favorite machines.
I'm a low roller and pretty much stick to nickel and dime
machines. I first played some ugly deuces on a Multi-Strike machine
and it wasn't long before I hit my first set of deuces.
Unfortunately, it was on the bottom line, so there was no
multiplier. But hitting deuces is always a good thing. I then went
over to one of my favorite machines, the Spin Poker machine (playing
nines games at a time comes to $2.25 a spin. After about thirty
minutes, the deuces came up again, this time on two lines for a
sweet $100 win. I played some more, and yes, then I hit them again
on one lineand then again on one line. Wow! I've had two and
three week trips in the past and never hit deuces at all, and I've
only been in town for two hours and I've hit FIVE sets of deuces.
A couple of notes for those who frequent the Silverton.
This place continues to impress. The one area where the Silverton
got bad marks from most of us is the buffet, which was by most
opinions, substandard at best. However, today the new buffet area
(located next to the poker room and where the old slot club was at)
is being tried out by employees and others. It's not scheduled to
be open to the public until April 7. This place looks fantastic.
It follows the theme of the newer gourmet buffets around town with
individual cooking stations with the food being prepared in view of
the public. From what I observed, and assuming the food is as good
as it looks, this is going to be a buffet that rivals the big boys.
I played a little longer, but I could see that the luck was
beginning to turn and I left for Vegas Club around 11:30. When I
arrived, I was checked into a room on the 17th floor overlooking
Main St. with the Rio and the Stratosphere in the distance. I have
learned to ask for the North Tower because when I stayed here last
November, I stayed in the South Tower and the sun rises shining
right into your room. Also, the rooms in the North Tower are much
larger and nicer. There's the bed, a couch, two easy chairs, and a
desk. For an old hotelvery, very nice.
I'm staying here because they sent me a slot tournament
invitation, which included three free nights. The top 50 finishers
win at least $50, with the top score getting $3000.00. Not bad for
free. It's odd to me to get this because I never play slots. I'm
strictly a video poker player with a few bucks in the penny video
slots, that's it. When I got here, I checked my slot card's point
total and it's only a little over 2200 points. Many people on this
board gather that many points in a couple hours. But how can I
complain? It's all comped.
After checking in I went down to play a bank of Joker's
progressive. It's a short pay scheduled, but the progressive royal
is over $800.00, and on this ten-coin, nickel machine, that's more
than double the usual royal payoff. I played a little less than a
thousand hands (500 points), but couldn't hit a five-of-a-kind or
the royal and end up losing $80 in the pursuit.
It's almost 3:00 PM and I've yet to eat, so I walked over to
the Golden Gate and bought a bowl of soup and one of their famous 99-
cent shrimp cocktails. The soup was delicious. What a great place
to have a small lunch, this little deli tucked away in back of the
Golden Gate, which is the oldest standing hotel/casino downtown.
The food is always good, and there's live piano playing while you
enjoy your meal. I really love these old places. They have
character, and they're full of characters, if you know what I mean.
I headed over to the Plaza just to see if it's been fixed up
yet or not. The answer is noit's still kind of a dump. Well, that
might be a bit harsh. There seems to be neither rhyme nor reason to
the gaming floor with some table games here and some slots there.
The poker room is not a room at all, just an area in the corner by
the theater. Of course, the Plaza is home to the Center Stage
restaurant on the second floor. So, there's at least that saving
grace. If you haven't been there, it's one of the best value meals
in downtown. I highly recommend it.
I walked down Freemont (though I've done this hundreds of
times), and I still enjoy looking at things and all the tourists.
BTW if you happen to ever see me walking down Freemont Street
holding one of the football shaped beers, slap me! The middle of
Freemont Street is closed off because Spike TV is going to be
filming some kind of auto show, so everyone had to make some
detours.
Bad news for the low roller video poker players: The Four
Queens, which had two or three full pay machines have downgraded
them. There's now no reason at all to play there. When I ventured
into the Golden Nugget, I once again found it JAMMED with people.
For the life of me, I don't know why this place is so successful.
Their table limits are Strip-size high, and their slots are nothing
special. They don't really give great deals for either rooms or
food, but they sure are popularmore power to them.
I needed to get back to the Vegas Club to sign in for the
slot tournament, which begins tomorrow. I was surprised when I
walked into the room, thinking it would just be a couple of clerks
at a table with the name tags. There was a full spread of food
along with an open bar. There weren't any announcements or
speeches, it was just there for people to sit around and meet each
other. I grabbed some veggies on a plate and headed up to my room.
I'm not sure, but even at 55; I might very well be the youngest
person in the tournament.
I plan this to be a very short day. I'm going to be here
for two weeks, and there will be plenty of time to do whatever I
want to do. I'm really tired after getting up so early and the
drive was long. I'm making an early night of it, so it's to bed
with a book and start afresh tomorrow. I'm not expecting anything
special during the two-day tournament, which is in four sessions.
All you do is start pounding the deal button when they so go, and
stop when they say stop. It's all about lucknothing else.
So, every visitor's to Las Vegas wish is true for me (at
least for tonight), I'm going to bed with a little more money than I
had when I got up this morning.
More tomorrow