Hi Gang:
Our first post-op road trip turned out to be an interesting, if not
profitable, one as Hedy and I ventured to New Orleans last weekend for a
three-night stay at Harrah's.
Being in town during a football playoff weekend certainly was a blast as
the city was totally awash with Saints' fever as the local heroes took on
the Arizona Cardinals at the Superdome on Saturday. It seemed as if everyone
in sight was wearing some sort of Saints apparel and the casino had music
blaring 24-7 imploring the Saints to get the job done vs. the Cards. And, of
course, they did with a dominating 45-14 win.
On the video poker front, this trip was very different from our last when
we were blessed to stumble upon that infamous "machine on drugs." We found
no such machine this time and found ourselves buried in a deep hole after
some very heavy play on Thursday and Friday. The second day, in fact, saw us
set a personal record for one-day coin-in as we pushed through over 80K on
Friday thanks to some multi-line dollar action. We played mostly 9/6 DDB
and had a number of $800 hits along the way but the brutal volatility of that
sinister game had us still floating in a sea of red ink as we went into
our final day of play on Saturday.
Hedy pretty much stuck to the 9/6 DDB $1 progressive machine furthest from
the Besh Steakhouse (the other two were tied up 24/7 by a husband-wife
team) and she started off Saturday morning on the right foot by hitting aces
with a kicker for $2,000. I hit aces for $800 early on and added fours with
a kicker for another $800 after lunch, but the profits were slowly whittled
away as the day went on and we found ourselves on the negative side as it
got into the late afternoon.
Hedy decided to play another machine nearby on which we had seen a pair of
4K royals hit the previous two days.
It took a good 10 minutes to even get going on that machine because it
wouldn't accept the bill we tried to put in and the machine froze up, but a
tech resolved both issues and Hedy began to play while I watched. The $100
was down to 30 bucks when she was dealt the Q-J-A-10 of spades and a
throwaway card.
"Can this machine have yet another royal in it?" we both wondered. She
held the four royal cards and, sure enough, up popped the king of spades in
the first window for a 4K hit and TeamVee had made another miraculous
comeback!
Flushed with excitement, we moved to a triple-line machine, put in $300
and a few minutes later Hedy held two aces and drew the other two on the
middle line for another $800 score. We cashed out close to 1K and headed over to
Gordon Biersch to celebrate our 11th-hour bailout and the Saints' victory
along with a raucous band of Nawlins' football fans.
It wasn't a winning trip but the final tally was a lot more palatable
than it had been prior to those two late hits.
BTW, I'm about 90% recovered from my hip surgery and moving pretty well
but it was a bit disconcerting to be wanded and patted down in the airports
when my new titanium hip set off the security buzzers. It's just something
I'll have to live with, I guess.
We make our return to Harrah's AC this weekend and hope to keep the
positive vibes rolling.
Regards,
CoachVee & Hedy
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