Two Times is a Royal Charm

Thursday October 29, 2015 - Day 8

The Golden Nugget has been throwing very consistent offers our way. Generally 3 or 4 nights and $75 or $100 free play each. I haven't maxed out my play here to $10K a day because the machines are lower paying than most of the rest of downtown. I think I am hitting more like $5K to $7K a day. But it seems to be enough and the extra percent or two of house edge is a cost that, to me, is worth it for staying at the best property downtown. The price of fancy light fixtures, a real pool, and plumbing that works...

We packed up the house in Laughlin - we managed to eat most of the fine Hole Foods food we brought, which I am proud of. I hate wasting food. It was about a three hour trip back to Vegas, very interesting drive, with some long stretches where you could see for miles.

I had to laugh - it was raining on the solar farm. Ha Ha Ha, I went. Ha Ha Ha.

At least 24 miles, actually, by my calculations. We'd pick out a mountain in the distance and time how long it would take to get there. And it would be like 19, 20 minutes of driving.

I took a minor wrong turn just outside of Vegas and ended up at someone's private driveway which led to, I surmise, a house named Cascata. I wonder whose it is.

The Golden Nugget was right where I left it, and we pulled up, valeted, handing the Chrysler 300 Grandpa de Ville and three bucks to the guy, and hauling all our crap in, which consisted of two full suitcases, CPAP case, carry-on, bag of half-finished liquor, and 5 partially consumed bags of potato chips of various flavors and colors. Basically, yer life-sustaining room camping supplies.

We got settled in to the Nugget and poured a couple of travellers - we'd earned it after such a hot dusty cross-desert trek - and headed down to (where else) the casino.

The triple play machines by the Grotto beckoned, so we engaged them in an act of war, using our free play reserves as cannon fodder.

THARTED FROM FREEPLAY

For some reason, we both had to reset our numerical PIN numeros de PIN Numbers. (Or 'PINs'. Savvy peeps get this.) I suspect that the Nugget had a major security breach in which offshore terrorists 'harvested' thousands upon thousands of Nugget PINs, all of which ended up being "1 2 3 4". The Quad Queen burned through hers, and I played $50 through on Boner Pokus.

With the last portion, I switched to what is extremely sickening short-pay Double Double Bonus - 7/5 (ESSDDB). This is a full 3% costly than 9/6 and 5% than the 10/7 which hardly exists anywhere anymore.

First of all, don't judge me.

No don't. Don't message me or email me and say 'oh don't you know there are better games 12 minutes walk away at the El Cortez'.

And I agree with you, I should always play the best paytables available. And so should you.

I know this, but its the heat of battle. I have just arrived, or I am doing whatever I'm doing, I have a nice drink beside me, and I decide I want to play DDB and so the choice is ESSDDB.

The mitigating factor in all of this is a) it is extremely short term play, and b) I have gotten on some crazy quad runs on these various machines, more than once. And when that is happening on ESSDDB, it doesn't matter that the full house doesn't pay right. Because quads.

And that's what I was hoping for, lots and lots of 'em.

Who doesn't love a bride in Vegas?

I got things off to a great start nailing quad Aces for $200 from three.

 Played on for a while and then a weird thing happened. I held a King and got four Queens. Which means that you shouldn't waste your time holding a King's thing when Queens abound around.

Quad Queen does the Jacks her way.

I was very happy with the result of my freeplay and cashed out $202.50. WOOHOO! But I wasn't done yet. I decided to go for it and shoved $100 of my very own dollars into the machine's hungry maw.

First hand on my $100 I was dealt three Kings outta the gate, and nailed one.

Now we were cooking!

I wasn't done.

 In a very, very weird stroke of luck, I again held a lone King and ended up with a quad of a different card - this time Four Aces for $200. Oh yeah, baby.

 What was with the Kings? I don't know. But I got some more of them to top things off.

I played a bit more and then cashed out and went up the room to take care of some things while the Quad Queen tried her hand on dollar Jacks or Better in the hallway by the Hand of God gold nugget.

What a great start to the afternoon I'd had!!!

But, as the great Irish writer Forescin O'Shadow would have said, the best o' the day was yet unseen and yet undone, and you should expect soon that some stuff would happen that I not be telling just here, but will tell soon enough, in the next installment, and that you should be interested but kind of go along with the idea that you don't really know what's going to happen next - but believe me, its fucking o'great.

And I'm pretty sure he said it just the way I typed it, with an Irish lilt and little green suspenders.