This is my first time posting on this forum, but I have been a
member for a few months. I live in Massachusetts, and usualy go to
Foxwoods and Mohegan Sun for craps and video poker (mostly
quarters). My husband and I haven't been to Vegas for a few years,
but decided to go this summer because we got a really great deal
through Travelocity for airfair and room at the South Coast. We are
in our 30's and have out grown going to clubs, and we don't really
enjoy shows, so we mostly gamble, eat, and hag out at the pool. We
would have worked out, but the spa at our hotel wasn't open yet.
We arrived around 9 pm on Wed. 8/9 (right before all the security
changed) and waited for the South Coast free shuttle to pick us up
at 10pm (they only run them a few times a day). It has big rooms and
bathrooms, nice beds, and plasma TV's. The pool area was nice and
clean, but there were lots of children. They also have Bingo, a
bowling alley, a movie theater, and some kind of kids arcade.
We play mostly video poker and a little craps. I used the vpfree
database to find where the video poker machines with the best pay
tables are. I also practiced a lot with Bob Dancers's Win Poker
Software, my favorite games are Dueces Wild and Double Double Bonus,
and sometimes Double Bonus.
Some casinos we visited because of the info in the data base, and
because we have never been to them before, were The Palms
(Thursday), Wynn (Friday), Golden Nugget (Saturday). We didn't hit
anything big though at those playing video poker. My husband likes
50 play, so we played a little of that at the Golden Nugget and came
out ahead. We also visited a bunch of other casinos downtown and
joined their slot clubs, since we had never made the trip downtown
before. I forget which casino we were in, it may have been Binion's,
or the Golden Nugget where my husband saw a progressive bank of
slots with a jackpot over $250,000 for only 2 quarters, so he played
a little, and the first sybmol for the jackpot came up, then the
second, and then....a triple bar. It was a triple diamond machine,
so he got 9x the triple bar payout and won $180.
Just for joining the slot club at The Palms, they let each of us
play in their video poker tournament. We were there around 7pm, and
I expected it to be crowded because it was a triple point day, and I
had read in this forum that a lot of people were playing in that
tournament. We got into the tournament easily, but did not get
scores high enough for a prize.
After going to the Wynn on Friday, we went to the mall across the
street to get something quick to eat. We didn't want to go home yet,
so after that we saw the Frontier nearby, and decided to go in,
because I had heard it was going to be torn down, and we had never
seen it. My husband sat down at a 10 or 50 play, don't remember
which, but I had already gone through most of my gambling budget for
the day, and didn't really want to play much more. I sat down at a
triple play multidenom. machine on the other side of the same bank
of machines he was using. I just played nickels, Dueces Wild at
first, but it wasn't going well, so I switched to Double Double
Bonus, and on the first hand I was dealt a Royal. (First time I was
ever dealt a royal). So I won 12,000 nickels, $600. The machine
didn't lock up or make any noise, but people nearby noticed. They
thought I had won much more because there was a sign on the machine
that said 25 cents, and a sign above the bank of machines that said
$1, I wish I was playing quarters or dollars! I usually don't play
nickels, they don't even have nickel video poker at home, but it was
still nice to win something.
We spent lots of time at South Coast too. They had a lot of NSUD.
They had a bartop quarter video poker quarter progressive. I heard
the bartender say it gets hit about once a day, which was probably
true because when I would come down in the morning it was usually
not much higher than $1000. But one day it didn't get hit, and the
next night it was up over $2000. So my husband and I, and many other
people were playing it. It got up over $2700 when someone hit. It
wasn't us, but we were playing it at the same time.
I hit 4 Dueces once at South Coast (only held one deuce) for $250,
and 4 Aces no kicker once on Double Double Bonus for $200 (even
though it wasn't the best pay table I played it a little), and a few
other quads. I tried the Bonus Dueces Wild progressive that got up
over $2000, but didn't win. Someone did though because the next day
it was down to $1000ish. We weren't big winners, but we won enough
to keep us going the whole time, and we didn't use up our whole
gambling budget.
So overall it was a good trip. We didn't feel like paying for cabs,
so we used the South Coast free shuttle or the Deuce. It was a pain
sometimes, but we got where we wanted to eventually.
We left on Tues 8/15, our flight was at noonish, but with all the
terrorist stuff we were hearing on the news, we though we should get
there early. We called the airport, and they suggested 3 hours
before the flight. That was much to early. Security didn't take very
long, so we spend a lot of time just sitting around waiting for our
flight. We saw Carrot Top at the Airport, he was leaving on a flight
an hour before ours. I didn't go talk to him though.
Kerri