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Vegas Trip Report, Labor Day Weekend--Day 4 of 4, The Return of the King--Last post, I promise

Got
up about 6:00 a.m. without an alarm or wake-up call. Kind of amazing
actually because that’s when I normally wake up three time zones east.
Has my internal clock adjusted to the local time after three nights?

Anyway, I got a text from the s-i-l at
6:15 a.m. letting me know that he was ready to roll. I told him to meet
me down in the Bellagio Casino in the nickel video poker area.

We played some terrible video poker for
a while, waiting for a cocktail waitress–to no avail. Apparently I
hadn’t learned my lesson earlier in the trip. We finally gave up and headed
down to the Avis Focus. (Still 0 of 5 Royal Flushers for the Bellagio
cocktail waitressess in the cheap seats).

Off we headed out of the self-parking
garage onto something–The Strip, Flamingo?–I’m not very good with street
names, but I’m great on landmarks (4.5 out of 5 Donner Party Guides).
Anyway, as we waited at the stoplight to get onto whatever street it was,
we got to watch a boffo slugfest on the sidewalk in front of Caesars. I
thought the two young men were messing around until I realized that they were
swinging pretty hard for just messing around.

(I
think my Yahoo email has a little touch of the Ebola. My continuations of Day 4 keep
disappearing. If they don’t show up, you
didn’t miss much. I’ll try and finish
this with a big “copy and paste”).

Anyway,
the s-i-l and I were at the Gold Coast.
It was 7:30 a.m. and I was to return my car to Avis by 9:30 a.m. We
weren’t scheduled to leave for the airport until 3:30 p.m., so I called Avis,
whining about keeping the car past 9:30 a.m.
The Avis person very graciously agreed to let me return the mighty Focus
at 11:30 a.m. First hurdle crossed.

The
s-i-l and I then headed out to Red Rock Casino.
We settled in at the “Up to 99.8%” machines. I was playing dollar SL NSUD and temporarily
turned my $200 into $490. Of course I
managed to cash out $0 by the time we left.
And leave we did.

Hurdle
#2 involved checking out of MGM by 11:00 a.m., Bellagio by noon, and Caesars by
3:30 p.m. (5 out of 5 Roman Emperors).
The Honeymooners who were staying in our room at MGM had departed early,
so we were going to check the room and check out of the room. So the s-i-l and I picked up The Little Woman
and the Spendthrift Princess at Bellagio and headed up (or down) the street to
MGM. It was a wasted trip as
housekeeping had already declared the room vacant and our key no longer
worked. We went to the front desk to
check out along with the other several thousand people who were leaving at the
same time. We ended up just throwing our
key in some check out kiosk that didn’t seem to work anyway and drove back to
Bellagio.

The
four of us got the Focus into an Avis parking slot before 11:30 a.m. and I slid
the keys into the drop box. The
Spendthrift Princess and the s-i-l headed off to Caesars to use the last of our
resort credit for lunch. TLW and I
headed up to our room, gathered up our belongings, cried about leaving the
world’s greatest selection of complimentary toiletries (6.5 out of 5 Avon
Calling) in the room as we checked out.
Boy they have nice toiletries.

I’d
like to point out here that on our last morning, I asked the Bellagio VIP
Service Beautiful Young Woman if I could get a late check out. She said she could only give me until noon
because the Salon Suites were all rented that day and they had to be cleaned (0
out of 5 Front Desk Pinocchios), but that was okay because we were just lugging
our luggage to the Spendthrift Princess’ room at Caesars. And so we did.

The
great desk person at Caesars had basically forced me to take a 3:30 p.m. check
out so we could relax in the room until we were to leave for the airport. TLW and I dropped our luggage in the Caesars
room and headed down to the casino. We found two side-by-side Lord of the Rings
slots and we slapped in $20 each. Then
another $20. I smashed a troll or something
with a catapult, so I won most of our deposit back. I think we ended up losing about $13.

Back
up to the Caesars room to watch more TV.
I think Caesars has better TV programming than Bellagio. The Spendthrift Princess and s-i-l enjoyed
the free movies, by the by.

So
the four of us went down to the valet area a few minutes early. Our limo zipped up with a young woman driver
who would be called gorgeous if you considered a beautiful, shapely, blonde
woman with a delightful eastern European accent gorgeous (8 out of 5 “Mr.
Gorbachev, tear down this wall”). Not
that I really noticed. She got us to the
McCarran without incident and home we headed a couple of hours later.

So
that’s about it. Here’s the wrap-up, all
on my and The Little Woman’s prior play:

Comps:

3
nights Bellagio Salon Suite,

3
nights Caesars Palace Augustus Tower,

3
nights MGM Grand.

$600
food and beverage at Bellagio,

$250
food and beverage at Caesars.

$700
free play,

4
GREAT seats at Zarkana,

Bellagio
limo for six from McCarran,

Caesars
limo for four to McCarran.

Expenses:

Airfare
for me and TLW–$518 after partial reimbursement,

About
$190 in tips (mostly for limos and a couple of bigger meals),

$62.81
in miscellaneous food/drink expenses and Red Rock Canyon,

$197
for Focus,

$16
gasoline.

I
ended up about $340 ahead on video poker (which means I went home with about
half of my free play).

The
Spendthrift Princess and s-i-l and the young Honeymooner couple covered their
own airfare, taxis, and some of their food and drink.

I
wrote this report as a thank you to all the vpFREEers who take the time to
share information with the rest of us. I
want to salute the Royal Flusher, whose ribald tales I enjoy, and especially
the king of trip reports, Westie, to whom this report is an humble homage (Come
on. Let’s all use our Cockney accents—“’umble
‘omage”).

The
end.

Max

what city in ohio

···

To: vpF…@…com
From: vpF…@…com
Date: Thu, 4 Sep 2014 19:01:15 -0700
Subject: [vpFREE] Vegas Trip Report, Labor Day Weekend–Day 4 of 4, The Return of the King–Last post, I promise

Got
up about 6:00 a.m. without an alarm or wake-up call. Kind of amazing
actually because that’s when I normally wake up three time zones east.
Has my internal clock adjusted to the local time after three nights?

I’ve gotten a couple of emails about the comps I received relative to being a nickel video poker player. Let me clarify things a bit:

Most of the comps and benefits we used on our Labor Day trip were earned in 2013 and early 2014. At that time, I was playing primarily $5 SL NSUD, $1 Five/Ten-Play NSUD, and $1 Ten-Play 9/6 JOB STP. This was all done in non-Vegas properties and most of those games are no longer available, at least not in our “local” casinos.

It seemed that in late 2013 and early 2014, a cold, cold wind swept through the hearts of our “local” casino General Managers, turning their hearts and the hearts of their running dog lackey Slot Managers to stone–games removed, pay tables cut, benefits reduced.

Now, one of the better games (for me anyway) that I play “back home” is a nickel Hundred-Play with a sub-99% return. As Bob Dancer and Jean Scott have taught us, there is more to this business than just the return on the game.

Because of my point totals/tier standing when many of the cuts happened, I decided to follow through with my play “back home” this year and I will probably have the same or similar benefits available for 2015 (earned in 2014). However, it appears that I will need to find another avocation after this year unless the vp situation improves.

As for playing in Vegas: We just go to Las Vegas for entertainment and recreation. I played $5 SL 9/6 JOB with my free play. I also played some $1 SL games at Red Rock. Most of my vp time in Vegas was spent playing quarter games next to my son-in-law or sitting with my wife as she/we played nickel carnival games.

If there are good games available, I will certainly play them, but if my wife wants to play a horrible MS game at eight cents per deal, I’ll sit there and drink a beer, cheering her on.

I suppose that’s heresy to some, but I’m happy that we had a wonderful time without costing us any limbs.

Max

ah thanks Max that explains it all !!!

···

On Friday, September 5, 2014 12:21 PM, “maximumb…@…com [vpFREE]” <vpF…@…com> wrote:

I’ve gotten a couple of emails about the comps I received relative to being a nickel video poker player. Let me clarify things a bit:

Most of the comps and benefits we used on our Labor Day trip were earned in 2013 and early 2014. At that time, I was playing primarily $5 SL NSUD, $1 Five/Ten-Play NSUD, and $1 Ten-Play 9/6 JOB STP. This was all done in non-Vegas properties and most of those games are no longer available, at least not in our “local” casinos.

It seemed that in late 2013 and early 2014, a cold, cold wind swept through the hearts of our “local” casino General Managers, turning their hearts and the hearts of their running dog lackey Slot Managers to stone–games removed, pay tables cut, benefits reduced.

Now, one of the better games (for me anyway) that I play “back home” is a nickel Hundred-Play with a
sub-99% return. As Bob Dancer and Jean Scott have taught us, there is more to this business than just the return on the game.

Because of my point totals/tier standing when many of the cuts happened, I decided to follow through with my play “back home” this year and I will probably have the same or similar benefits available for 2015 (earned in 2014). However, it appears that I will need to find another avocation after this year unless the vp situation improves.

As for playing in Vegas: We just go to Las Vegas for entertainment and recreation. I played $5 SL 9/6 JOB with my free play. I also played some $1 SL games at Red Rock. Most of my vp time in Vegas was spent playing quarter games next to my son-in-law or sitting with my wife as she/we played nickel carnival games.

If there are good games available, I
will certainly play them, but if my wife wants to play a horrible MS game at eight cents per deal, I’ll sit there and drink a beer, cheering her on.

I suppose that’s heresy to some, but I’m happy that we had a wonderful time without costing us any limbs.

Max

Max wrote: “If there are good games available, I will certainly play them, but if my wife wants to play a horrible MS game at eight cents per deal, I’ll sit there and drink a beer, cheering her on. I suppose that’s heresy to some, but I’m happy that we had a wonderful time without costing us any limbs.”

If I remember correctly, in Nevada all slots must return at least 75%. So any game that you can get any significant comp while playing 8 cents a spin is likely a huge overlay. Your biggest outlay was probably the tip for the free beer, assuming you tipped. I’m not criticizing you, in fact if you can pull this off, kudos to you. There do seem to be a lot of low roller specials these days in casinos however. And there are plenty of promotions with no coin in requirement at all.

Thanks for taking the time to write this trip report series…I really enjoyed each episode. Royal Flusher may have some competition!

—In vpF…@…com, <maximumbett@…> wrote :

Got
up about 6:00 a.m. witho