RSS findIndex trimsentences createcard

gridCSS

AdCode

createItems and other JavaScript code

Item Render Code


Thursday, November 26, 2009

Restatement of revenue -or- Lift the Curse of Ron Lancaster pt3


Like the big financial institutions, car companies, and higher-end ponzi schemes, Royal Flusher reserves the right to restate earnings for certain financial periods.

Like our last trip... I finished down about $220 - but!!! I have a couple of outstanding sports bets.

One of these is a $10 bet on the Saskatchewan Roughriders (the best-known team of Hall of Fame quarterback, #23 Ron Lancaster) to win the Grey Cup.

Well, the 'Riders finished first in the West division and beat the Calgary Stampeders to play spoiler and play in the Grey Cup in Calgary next Sunday.

I have a shot at winning $60 on this bet which would go a long way to eradicating my loss for the trip.

The final longshot is a $10 bet on the Vancouver Canucks to win the Stanley Cup, which would pay $100 if it comes in.

Will the #23 curse of Ron Lancaster remain lifted for the Grey Cup?

So, GO RIDERS!!!!




Sunday, November 15, 2009

You gotta play it by the gut

As an aloof, edgy, 'by the gut' player, I like to spend very little time or effort looking at what happened last year, last month, last week, yesterday, last night, a couple of hours ago, a couple of minutes ago when I mistakenly put salt in my coffee instead of sugar - DUMBASS! - or even a couple of seconds ago when I started to type up this blog entry.

But when I do look backwards, I do it with the kind of edgy, aloof, 'by the gut' approach you would expect of a degenerate connoisseur gambler such as myself.

This edgy 'throw caution to the wind' stance is a key component of The Royal Flusher Way.

So, I entered some of the rough notes I took on our recent jaunt to Las Vegas into a very edgy, 'by the gut' spreadsheet program on the WinSimulator 3000 Featuring WinPoker. You may have heard of it - its called 'Excel'.

I ran some of the notes into the number grinder feature and came up with a couple of aloof, edgy observations that I will share below.

On this two week trip, The Quad Queen nailed a total of 74 Quads on Video Poker (plus six wild royals and two Straights Flush). Even though it seemed like I was having a better trip due to her poor initial results, she came on strong later on.

I managed a total of 60 Quads (plus 9 wild royals and five Straights Flush). Oh yeah. One of those happened to be a Royal Straight Flush. So I out-gambled the QQ once again in monetary terms.

Have you ever thought that you seem to get more quads holding 2 cards than holding three? I myself had a streak of over 115 consecutive failed attempts to get a quad from 3-of-a-kind on this trip.

I had Jimmy Poon's Excel program massage the data for a couple of days and it came up with these edgy stats.

Quads on the redeal - 0
Quads holding 1 card: 3 - not very many of those. I once got four Aces holding a 10. That's another story.
Quads holding 2 cards: 65
Quads holding 3 cards: 59
Quads holding 4 cards: 16 - dealt quads. I had a couple of dealt Straights Flush too. Very edgy!!!

So in this case, my theory held - more quads came from 2 cards held than any other combination.

I was interested in the distribution of hands so I did a seat-of-the-pants fly-by-night rough estimate:

2222: 6
3333: 8
4444: 15
5555: 12
6666: 8
7777: 10
8888: 6
9999: 9
10s: 12
JJJJ: 12
QQQQ: 11
KKKK: 14
AAAA: 11

Interesting that of 2s, 3s, and 4s, the 4s were much more prevalent, even though 2s had a premium when we were playing Deuces Wild.

We certainly got our fair share of Aces this trip, it looks like.


Finally, I did an aloof assessment of our Main Street Station Scratch cards.

We got 26 scratch cards worth $2.
Only 4 were worth $3.
And one (mine, RFW) was worth a whopping $5.

Edgy!




Wednesday, November 11, 2009

Las Vegas Random Notes

Exclusive Sapphire (slightly less loser) Status!!!

During the last trip, you may recall that apparently I am not a good enough gambler to be invited to Main Street Station's Video Poker Tournament and Free Money Extravaganzas.

(But Mrs. Flusher is.)

Well, we hopefully remedied that situation by having me (just me, no one else, in particular, not Mrs. Flusher) play heavily on my Boyd B-Connected Ruby players card. (aka Loser Card).

And, I did make it through the 30,000 pernt barrier to become the proud owner of a Boyd B-Connected Sapphire players card (aka Slightly Less of a Loser Card).

But so far, my offers haven't improved at all, while the VP tourney and Slot tourney offers continue to pour in for Mrs. Flusher.

Surely I have proven my worth to the bookkeepers of Main Street Station!!!

Binion's Ranch Butterknife Steakhouse Lurch

I have been left in the lurch in the Butterknife Steakhouse Affair. As written earlier, El Presidente of Binion's wrote me that the Butterknife Steakhouse Manager would contact me.

That was about a month ago.

I've given up.

The email also said to ask for him when I check in next time - I wonder what that would be like???

Four Queens

I've stayed at the Four Queens about ten times. There's a lot of good things about this downtown property - pretty good drink service, the always exuberant Jay at the Player's Club Booth, some playable VP, good food at Magnolia's, clean rooms, great downtown location.

Just about every time we're there though, we almost cry with frustration at the suck-hole crappy music they play in the casino.


I usually express this sentiment in a more formal way in one of their "Tell Us How We're Doing" comment cards, addressed directly to the Hotel Manager.

Last trip was no exception. I believe I expressed it this way - YOUR MUZIK IS STOOOOOOOOOOPID - NO ONE ALIVE COULD STAND THE CRAPPPPPY MUZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZIK YOU PLAY - PLEASE - PLAY SOME ROCK AND ROLL!!!!

There is another bad problem in the Four Queen's Casino.

The casino now smells like fart spray.

You know that icky floral spray you can get that you put in the bathroom so that when one of your dinner guests has to retire temporarily to entertain a visit from the Major (you know... Major Dumperooski) and when they are done, they can fill the bathroom with the sickly sweet cloying musky putrid heavy nose-crushing odor of fake cheesy perfumy strawberries in a futile attempt to mask the green cloud they've let erupt into the confines of the tiny bathroom?

That's the exact scent they have chosen to pump into the casino.

There is approximately 1093 times too much of this scent. It is like shoving one of those urinal pucks up your nose. And some of the staff there report having allergy problems and headaches from this stupid chemical onslaught.

I reflected this in my usual calm, objective manner in my feedback card: YOUR CASINO REEEEEEEEEEKS!!!!! GET RID OF THE HORRID FAKE STRAWBERRY URINAL FART SPRAY SMELL!!!!!!!! PLEEEEEEEEEZ I AM DYING!!!!!! MY NOSE BURRRRRRRRNNNZ!!!!

Well, the wonderful management at the Four Queen's has replied and I can tell that they are really taking my complaints seriously!!!!!

I received a letter the other day from the Senior Executive Director of Operations and in part it reads:

"In your case, the high standards we set for our staff and property were compromised." (No, you play sucky music and you stink.)

"For that, we apologize for not providing the outstanding guest experience you deserve." (Does this include... umm... AIR??? for BREATHING???)

"We would appreciate another opportunity blah blah blah... Please be our guest any time through December 2009 and stay at the special rate of $25 per night Sunday through Thursday and $49 per night Friday and Saturday."

Uh, I think I'll use the free nights you send me each month instead, thank you very much.

It's obvious that this is a computer generated letter. It's identical to the four others I've gotten in the past, none of which have mentioned the specific concerns I outlined.

It's hard to find a perfect casino, but it's worse when they do stupid things that turn off their regular customers.





Monday, November 9, 2009

Rub me the wrong way

No this is not a post about table showers gone bad.

One evening in the Fremont, Mrs. Flusher and I sat down to play Treasure Chest Poker. If you hit a four of a kind, you then pick one of five 'treasure chests' to see what amount you've won. The prizes range from 140 quarters to (supposedly) $1199 in quarters. Supposedly. Pretty much all the time you get 140, and rarely anything more.


It was a rip-roaring Friday night on Fremont Street. The din of the casino was as thick as the smoke in the air - a wall of excitement. The tinge of a thousand on-edge gamblers was electricity you could feel.

We plunked down in the only two seats left on the bank Treasure Chest machines, edgy gamblers that we are.

After a few hands I realized the woman to my left was in constant motion. She was 'encouraging the machine' with touches, gestures, and in some cases, some exaggerated rubbing on the side of the thing that looked bizarrely sexual.

Occasionally, if dealt a crap hand with nothing much going for it, she'd slightly scold the machine and then 'encourage' it, tickling it here, stroking it there.

In the face of such obviously deranged behavior, its best to simply cash out, and leave without making eye contact, as quietly as possible. Sort of as if you'd stumbled across a casino bear.

So, naturally, Mrs. Flusher and I started to mimic Ms. Rub 'n Tug, caressing our machines and whispering sweet nothings.

We became more and more brazen in our actions. At one point I was standing, both hands jacking the sides of the machine for all I was worth.

And then, wouldn't you know it, Mrs. Flusher hit a four of a kind.

She picked a treasure chest - and hit 250 quarters.

And then she started to curse the machine for not giving more, shaking her fist at it and swearing.

The poor woman to my left cashed out, spooked beyond belief.

Sometimes I wonder just what kind of shit I'm going to land in, in some future life, for this kind of karma trampling.