Great report, and I've read a lot! Nice to see other young people heading out to Vegas with a brain in their head. My new wife and I just got back (both 23). Sounds like you had a blast
JTW
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----- Original Message -----
From: djpeterson11
To: vpFREE@yahoogroups.com
Sent: Wednesday, October 02, 2002 5:04 AM
Subject: [vpFREE] My First trip to Vegas Report
I posted this on vegasplayer.com but was told I should post it here
too so here it is:
<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
I just got back from my first trip to Vegas. I went into this with a
decent knowledge of the comp game and video poker but without any
real experience to back it up. It turned out very well. This is my
first trip report and I hope it is not too long, please bare with me.
Executive summary: Played about 20,000 hands overall. Hit a royal, 2
5-kinds, and 2 SF's on the Jokers at the Hard Rock. Hit 2 quad aces
on the DB progressive at the 4 queens. Stayed at the Plaza and had
all rooms taken care of and most food. Went through about 7000 hands
of FPDW at the Plaza without a single quad deuces and lost $500-
$600. Played several thousand hands of 10/6 JOB at the stratosphere
without a single quad. Did great with coupons. Ended up the trip
with $700-$800 more than I came with.
<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Day 1 (Friday):
I left Thursday night on a Greyhound deal which was $50 roundtrip
from San Diego. It arrived at the Plaza which is where I planned on
trying for rooms due to the good video poker and supposed ease of
comps. I tried for rooms downtown friday and saturday because I knew
it'd be especially hard to get rooms these nights at other places. I
arrived about 4am but had to wait until 8am for the slot club to
open so I could get a card and start accumulating points for a room.
So I used my various lva and cp coupons around downtown. I made a
quick $100 or so at the Plaza and then a quick $70 or so at
Binion's --I saw one of the pitbosses talking pretty passionately to
another worker and I am somewhat suspicious that he was complaining
about giving money away with the matchplays. I got a free breakfast
buffet with a Plaza funbook coupon. The Plaza slot club finally
opened and they informed me that I could get a room for 2000 points
($2000 coin out). I went over to the bar and started playing the
4700 deuces. I had nothing to compare it with at the time, but the
machine was a little on the slow side. After a few hours of plays
and dropping one or two hundred, I finally had my 2000 points. By
now I had been up basically all night long travelling so I
desperately needed to crash. I went over to the slot club and they
said I needed a room first, then they could comp it. Further, they
said the hotel was probably sold out of rooms. This sucked. But I
tried anyways and luckily the hotel did have a room for $69 which I
was assured would be comped. I quickly went up to my room and
crashed. I couldn't sleep all that well though and awoke after about
4 hours and took off again.
I put 250 through on the 4 queens DB progressive and broke about
even. I got my 50 points and used my lva coupon for magnolias and
got some good food.
Went over to the lady luck to use a greyhound coupon but was
informed they hadn't taken those for years.
Went to the California to put about $1000 through on deuces to get
future room offers. I made $20 and this was the first time I had
been up after a session of video poker. Played some more 4700 dueces
at the plaza (which, by the way, gets REALLY frustrating since it is
kind of slow and has no bill reader), lost at least another $100,
and went to bed.
Day 2 (Saturday):
I woke up feeling very refreshed. I got my room for another night
and received a meal comp to the diner from the host. Played more
4700 dueces and lost more money. I then went over to the 4 queens to
get my 500 points so I could use my lva coupon to double them which
amounts to 1% cashback. The DB progressive was pretty good at $1300
and I started playing it. After being a couple hundred down pretty
quickly I was kicking myself for playing DB since I knew how
dangerously streaky it could be based on tons of winpoker
simulations and I didn't even know the game's strategy perfectly,
though I knew it reasonably well. This was my low point of the trip
and I was down about $500 overall of the $800 I brought with me. But
things soon turned around. On dealt 3 aces I drew a fourth for 800
quarters. About half an hour later, on 2 aces I drew 2 more for
another 800 quarters. After getting my 500 points in the machine I
cashed out and ended up with 3 heavy buckets containing $500 worth
of quarters. I was a bit nervous carrying these to the cashier since
they were awkward to carry and the casino was very crowded. If I'd
dropped them I don't think I'd even recover half of what I dropped.
I got my $25 cash back and then tried for a meal comp since
vphomepage reports .5 cash AND 1% comps. If this were true I'd have
$25 in food comps coming. The slot host made me wait 10 minutes for
him to arrive and then said that my daily average was too low (since
I put a little through the day before), that I was playing the wrong
games, and, I suspect, that I had won too much for him to give me a
measly food comp. Oh well, I was happy because I was now only $100
down for the trip.
I was off to the El Cortez because the word is that they have
excellent video poker and easy rooms if you're willing to put up
with the seedy nature of the place. I wasn't exactly sure where it
was and found myself at the Lady Luck where a sign said free
funbooks for signing up, so I did. The funbook ended up being very
lame with no worthy gambling coupons. Though it did have a hotdog
and beer for 99 cents coupon. There was one that said "$50 in slot
play for $10". This sounded interesting so I tried it out. Turns out
it's a sucker bet. They put you on these special machines where you
can only get any money if you win one of the prescribed jackpots,
but "everyone's a winner" because they give you a souvenir gift for
playing. You could tell it was a sucker gimmick because they didn't
even take my coupon when I did the deal and seemed to have no qualms
if I wanted to do it over and over again. I did get a decent hand
held fan out of the deal but I felt a little dumb for being duped
into it.
I finally went to the El Cortez and was very disappointed. THEY HAVE
TERRIBLE VIDEO POKER. VPHomepage says they have tons of 4700 full
pay everything, but none of it was jokers or fpdw. I may have missed
something, but I did a pretty thorough search of the whole casino.
There were plenty of 4000 jokers but they didn't hold coins, were
extremely slow, and only accrued points at 1/3rd the normal rate. I
had planned to put $1000 through for room offers but that would have
taken hours so I said good riddance to the Cortez. I did activate my
card and play about $15 through the machines, maybe that'll get me
something. The highlight of my time at the El Cortez was when a
crackhead started following me around and talking to me about
advantage play and how he too lives off of casinos. It seems that
for him advantage play consists of dropping in the random nickel in
a slot while taking ADVANTAGE of free drinks and trying to find
loose change on the floor in the casino. He did make some
interesting points about certain slots with bonuses (e.g. this game
where a cherry pie gets filled up) that build up but he could not
convince me that they actually became positive games at the higher
levels.
I went back to the Plaza and made sure I had earned 2000 points for
the next day (it was now the early morning of Sunday) in case I was
gonna stay at the Plaza for a third day. I lost one or two hundred
at the 4700 dw. I got so fed up playing the coin fed machine at the
bar that I started playing the 4000 fpdw in a bank which was
actually very fast and bill fed. It was SOOO much nicer playing this
machine and I got at least 35% more hands in so I figured it was
worth the drop in game return to just play on this machine from then
on. After getting my 2000 points I went to bed.
Day 3 (Sunday):
The next day I got my room covered, got a food comp, checked out,
and took off on the city bus to the stratosphere. I made $125 on the
cp coupons. I then did the 30 minute 15% cashback deal by playing
about 15 hands at a time on the 5 cent 9/5 job 50 play. I lost about
$80 but got a lot of points and managed to put through the required
$800 for the $100 rebate. I then put through about $4000 on the 10/6
job to get room offers and HOPEFULLY to get a room comp. The decent
speed of the games, the non downtown casino, and the interesting job
game made it a pleasant experience playing here. I lost one or two
hundred and managed to get zero quads whatsoever. I did, however,
get a straight flush so it wasn't a complete wash. But they would
not budge on the room and the best they could do was casino rate. No
worries though, the Plaza was happy to take me back and I already
had my 2000 points to cover the room at the Plaza. I got my free
buffet for signing up at the stratosphere slot club and tried raw
oysters and baked muscles for the first time in my life. Raw oysters
are nothing special it seems to me and just taste like how the beach
smells; the muscle was ok but then I inspected it a little closer
and was turned off by all of the distinguishable and
indistinguishable body parts together in that little clump. I went
back to the Plaza, played some deuces, lost, of course, and hit the
sack.
Day 4 (Monday):
I got my room covered again, checked out, and got a food comp. I
said goodbye to a slot club girl and one of the servers in the diner
who had gotten to know me a bit. I really stand out because I am
just about the youngest person at most of these places (I'm 22).
Annoyingly I get carded pretty frequently, though the Plaza was
pretty good about not bothering me.
I headed off to the Hard Rock because they had some good promotional
stuff (50% more points, 6-pack coupons), good vp, and I wanted to
get room offers from them. When signing up I confirmed that we get
50% more points. I found the joker poker and was impressed with the
comfortable fast machines. About an hour into it I was dealt 4 to a
spade royal and managed to pull off the 5th card for my first royal
flush. This was pretty cool and put me way back in the black again.
I liked how it just added $1000 to my account and didn't require a
hand pay (and a tip!). After enjoying the sight of the royal on my
screen and talking about it with the people next to me for about 30
seconds, I got back playing. About half an hour later I got 5 of a
kind for $250.
But it was now about 4pm and I had to get to Casino Royale to get my
1000 points during their triple points for room offers and their
good coupon book. The Hard Rock had a nice free shuttle which took
me to Caesars right by Casino Royale. To my disappointment, the
coupons were not was I was looking forward to. There was no $25 quad
bonus, no full house with aces bonus, no double pay royal bonus.
Instead, the best coupon was a $10 bonus on a quad. Oh well, I still
wanted my room offers and maybe the coupons would pick up in the
future. I wasn't expecting it but all of the multiplays with the
good games were excluded from multipoint promotions. Oh well, I
wasn't going to play these anyways. I was looking around for how
best to collect my points and do my $10 quad coupon and I settled
upon 50 cent 9/6 jacks. After seeing $250 sucked away in the machine
I was annoyed at myself for playing at this level and then wondered
why in the heck I wasn't just playing the 8/5 full pay bonus at the
quarter level - I switched to the bonus poker. I hit quad 2's
quickly and got my $10 bonus and decided to finish up the rest of my
point play on the video blackjack (I didn't realize it only payed 1
to 1 on blackjacks til later but I still figured it was my best play
for getting points quickly without a whole lot of risk). I managed
to win some while getting my points and ended up leaving casino
royale only about $120 down from my $250 initial loss. Casino Royale
was the most paranoid about my age and I was asked for my id way too
many times.
I found the Hard Rock shuttle again and got off in front of Key
Largo's to see what was the deal with the 7 times points and to use
my coupons. It turns out that it really is an incredible 1.75%
during Monday night football. I found the full pays and of course
they were being pounded on by the pros. I almost sat down to the
shorted deuces because I saw it paid 5 times for 4 of a kind until
the pro informed me that it's not really full pay and I noticed the
reduced payouts on higher hands. I sat down to some video blackjack
to put through points in hopes of some mailings and also because I
figured that, even with the reduced blackjack payoffs, I had to be
over 100% playing basic strategy with 1.75% cashback. After one hour
on the machine I was up $70 and got $35 CASHBACK. I didn't have time
to do Terrible's on this trip since I still had to put through
enough for $4000 through at the Hard Rock and it was getting late.
I walked to the Hard Rock and finished off my play on the jokers. I
dropped about $250 but got a last minute 5 of a kind to put me back
to just about even. When I went to get my $30 free play instead of
$20 cashback the lady claimed that only those who got the mailing
could do this deal. I explained how I just asked the very guy who
she claims told her the strict policy and she basically implied that
she didn't believe me. Oh well, $20 cashback on top of huge winnings
is ok with me.
It was now 11pm and I had to get back to the Plaza to catch the
greyhound back to San Diego. Unfortunately, the hard rock shuttle I
was counting on bringing me back to the strip wasn't running anymore
and I didn't want to spend $20 on a cab so I walked all the way to
the strip and took the bus back downtown. It turns out the greyhound
bus wasn't leaving for a couple more hours so I decided to goof off
around the Plaza for a while. I had more than a little to drink and
sat down at a blackjack table and watched and had fun with the
players without actually gambling. It was a lot of fun and I became
pretty popular. Again, I think it had a lot to do with the novelty
of me being the young guy. It was the same dealer who I did the
matchplay coupons with when I first arrived and in the excitement I
asked her if I could use the coupons from my second cp booklet. She
said sure and I proceeded to eek out a final $50 from Vegas before
going back to my Greyhound bus.
Overall it was a very successful trip. I did better than I had
expected and left Vegas stuffed with hundred dollar bills. Don't
worry, I know that I cannot expect results this good on the average
trip. I have a spread sheet where I have recorded the results of
dozens of trip simulations using winpoker and I know I could lose a
significant amount in this sort of endeavor. My next trip will be
less hectic as I will have places to stay up front and I won't be
quite as green. I'll try to cut back on the alcohol consumption
which is so tempting since the waitresses constantly bombard you
with cheap alcohol; I also think I'll bring my own water in a bottle
to save on having to get free drinks for 25 cents a pop (I'm a very
frugal guy). My taste of the ups and downs of video poker has made
the idea of doing this full time a little less appealing than it had
been. However, I could see myself semi-retiring into this lifestyle
with maybe 4 hrs/day for a while after I develop a sizeable nest egg
and am no longer in such an active accumulation stage in my life
(laugh if you will, but I foresee this as only being 2-4 years down
the road). I also think this activity would be greatly improved if I
had a good video poker buddy to keep me company and, very
importantly, to split the big hands between us to greatly reduce the
risk.
And let me just thank everyone on this board who I have learned a
lot from.
Cheers!
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