Hit and Run or Dump and Chump

Day 14 - Sunday - part 1

I woke up and I didn't even want to get out of bed. What a debacle yesterday had been. I seriously considered just stopping for the next 48 hours - because my red-eye flight out was on Monday night. But what would I do downtown without a car? Of course there were lots of options, but I was seeing none of them.

I felt sad and angry. Furious, actually. Once again I had been the victim of that fiend Negative Variance. All the long shots, all the threes of a kind, all the four-to-a-royals, all the attempts that came to nothing... they pissed me off.

After laying in bed for a while pondering my options I heard a little voice that I could not ignore. It said, "Get up and pee or else!"

In gambling, a savvy attitude is everything. And I needed to change mine right now. Scared money loses. Every day on vacation in Vegas is a gift. In a couple of months I would run over Kenny Blankenships mother just to get a Sunday in Vegas. No, the thing to do was to just accept that when you play many hours your are going to have swings. And yesterday had just been one of them. It can come back just like that.

So, I set myself a goal. Play smart, and win back all of the $1200. Be an emotionless, savvy, gambling machine. My winning technique would be the Hit and Run (as opposed to the Dump and Chump).

I performed my winning ablutions and ceremonies, applied my various anointments, cremes, jels, drops, salves, balms and chicken's blood. (Okay, so I brushed my teeth). And headed into Savvy Hit and Run Battle.

This was it, my friends, I was at the end of everything, I'd been now 21 full days of play without a Royal Flush. There would be no more fancy-ass mammoth bubble parties with strippers, no more oooh my finding soul in the canyon hiking day trips with that golfball-eyed Susan Sarandon egging me on, no more get back to basics at Luxor and how I wish it were twenty years ago, no Mr. Miyagi yelling "Push button up, push button down - NO SIDE SIDE! Push button up, Push button down", no more glitz or glamour or fancy clothes, no ghost of Bugsy Siegel materializing out of no-where to show me where the winning plays are, no cheap (but effective) depth-of-field photography tricks to make my country throw-up gravy look appetizing when it really looked like beige puke on a plate, and for the love of full pay Video Poker, no more goddamn jinxing Veuve Cliquot method champagnoise sparkling fucking ROYAL JINX WINE.

SHIT!

The end of this trip would be flat out get-my-money-back gambling and drinking casino WAR.

First stop on my Savvy Hit and Run Battle was, duh, a video poker machine.

Favorite Server Judy wandered by with her chant of  "Cocktails... Drinks...".

"I don't drink." I said.

"Right now..." she replied, that big smile of hers lighting up her face.

So true. But for now it would be coffee please and thank you, and off she went

I started on quarters in 9/6 Jacks. I managed to parlay to 50 cents. And then to dollars. I had $85 dollars in the machine. Maybe this would be my chance to... to go broke.

Start again. Change machines.

Tried quarter Super Double Double Bonus looking for a bolt of lightning. Nada.

Change machines.

Parlay to 50 cents on Double Double Bonus Poker and got the first quad of the day, a pretty nice symmetrical set of 4s with a Deuce kicker for $400. Now that's more like it!

Using my Savvy Hit and Run Away Battle Strategy, I did just that - cashed my ticket and ran to the coffee shop. I was up $280 on the day and going to enjoy the moment.

I have this ongoing argument at Market Street Cafe, whenever I order jalapenos they say they don't have it but it's on the menu and then when they check, they do have it.

Perhaps my interpersonal skills need a buffing because this omelette was so laden with jalapenos that it was the size of an Australian Rules Football ball, and at least 50% jalafuckingpenos.

So, you wanna play hardball, (or at least, Footy), eh The Cal? Well fair dinkum my friends, I'm going to bring it!

Contest - count the jalapenos for a chance to win a new sphincter - enter now, it never closes.

Doing a little reccy around the place I'd found this kind of unique triple play machine, quarters, with separate Royal progressives for each line.

(It had 8/6 Jacks on it with 130 for a quad instead of 125 (a fact I didn't notice until I looked at the picture). In some cases, this machine could go positive. The way I figure it, if the three Royals averaged out at $1600 each, then the game was about 100%. The one pictured comes in pretty close to 99.49% payback, pretty close to full pay Jacks.)

But never mind that, my recording says that this machine has full-pay Bonus Poker on it, and the bottom progressive was a doozy at over $2K.

So I played it.

Nothing came of it so I moved on. Back to the alcove, $20 in a few different machines, and finally got a nice Flyer quad on Boner Deluxe.

Things were going well, so I decided to try to parlay on, of all things, 10-play quarters. $12.50 a pull. Because I had fucked this play up the day before, I set a strict rule - $20 and that's it. $20 and that's it. I made the slashing motion across my throat. I had to be ready to walk if it didn't work because this machine could eat you alive.

Well, here are the pictures, it actually worked out!

Go Flushie Go!!! (And Have a Lucky day too.)

Then I hit Treasure Chest as the next part of my Savvy Battle Plan (which I was making up as I went).

I kept a good portion of this and I was up on the day $380. The S.B.P. was working!

Time for a break in the room, and when I headed up, I'd done $5K coin in, half my goal, and was up $300 and a  Keno ticket.

Fucking Keno.