The Last Remarkable Unremarkable Day

Monday Dec. 30, 2024 

Today was my last day in Vegas this trip, and it was remarkable - but perhaps not in the way that you think.

And bear with me if this is a short, not very witty blog post.

The morning was fairly typical and after blogging and whatnot I packed up all my stuff and headed to the Plaza.

The Lyft ride was the first crappy one of the trip - I'll save you the whiny details.

After dropping my stuff in the room, I got busy.

I got my $30 Freeplay for the day and played it through on Jacks. Then I tried $10 in Bufffffffallllllo! and cashed out $40. I got two bonus rounds in the first 6 spins, which was remarkable.

My $25 dining credit was used at Hash House a Go Go. I had the Hickory Smoked Bacon, Avocado, Onion, and Swiss Cheese scramble and it was delicious.

After that I hammered the video poker for a solid hour playing Jacks and Bonus. I didn't hit any quads.

The highlight was a dealt straight flush, which was remarkable.

I didn't see the point of throwing this away for a 1 in 47 Royal shot.

But I got no quads.

I also played some video Keno but for once (?) didn't win $800. And I went back to video poker and played about another hour. And still not a quad.

After a long break, my final gasp was a long mission to hit the Deuces on Deuces Wild. As you can see I came close a number of times and got a couple of wild royals.

My coin in for the day was around $3,500, mostly on video poker. I figure I played about 2000 hands.

The remarkable thing was that I did not hit a single four-of-a-kind - no quads whatsoever, even during my hour or so on Deuces. I hit no natural four of a kind.

So on my last day, I was completely shut out - and because of that I shut it down to limit my losses.

It's been such a fantastic trip, and I want to take home some winnings!

As it stands, the final tally is I am up $820 on the trip and paid nothing for rooms.

 

I had a free slice of pizza from Pop Up Pizza - excellent!!! - for dinner, and a banana. I'm up early this morning on Dec. 31 to get myself together for the plane home, which blasts out of here at 7:35.

Sorry I couldn't provide a blockbuster finish to the trip, but that's gambling. I was treated to a Royal Flush, two $800+ Keno wins and a $400+ Keno win over five days. That will have to be enough.

I am going to head down to the casino to see if I might have another $30 Freeplay for today, and then maybe play $20 at the airport on Triple Double Bonus, as is my tradition.

If there's no update below, then you know nothing happened.

Thanks for following along on my Brazilian adventure. I hope you found it smooth and slick.

If you enjoy the blog, consider throwing a buck or two my way to help with expenses.

Super big thank you to my outstanding supporters for this trip. You folks have treated me so well, and I appreciate it.

Till next time,

Truly... Royal Flusher

Gold Coast Gold

Sunday Dec 29, 2024 

I had a big day ahead of me. I had plans. And I had hopes. And I had a free goddamn buffet, baby!

The Plaza sent me another offer and I booked it for two nights, overlapping one night with Rio. I thought I underplayed them last stay and was worried the taps would be shut off - but I guess I dumped enough greasy spondulics into the gaping maws of their cash-hungry gambling machines to keep them - and me - happy.

A couple more Rio notes... on $10,000 coin in, I've earned 10,000 Rio Rewards points that I can use for either $10 in resort credit, or $10 in Freeplay (or Frioplay as they call it).

I had a 4 night mid-week stay offer (pay resort fee) in the hopper before I even arrived here - we'll see what happens to my offers post stay.

The $4.99 bottle of Diet Dr. Pepper was not to be repeated. Walgreen's is an easy walk away (thanks Jennifer). I picked up a six pack for $5.99 there.

The thermostat in the room is wonky. It's very hard to get the temperature to change, and it keeps changing the fan settings I choose. It's always blowing like a typhoon in here.

The TV system sucks. They have a facility to cast to the TV from your devices, except it doesn't work. For me anyway. And the live TV sound is too low. So you turn it way up and when you go back to the menu system, it's blasting. And many of the channels are shown in the wrong aspect ratio, so Marisa Tomei in My Cousin Vinny looked like Ernest Borgnine in heels.

Which I'm sure there is a market for, but still.

It's a nice little trifecta of properties here between Rio, Gold Coast, and Palms. I can see staying here for the room and gambling more at the Gold Coast for VP and blackjack. I have yet to see if the Palms will offer me anything.

It's nice that there is 9/6 Double Double Bonus everywhere here at Rio. I wish there were more video poker offerings. The video Keno is mediocre. Better paybacks are found at Gold Coast.

The pool area looks nice, so that would be a draw in pool season.

Back to the plan for the day - I had a really good feeling from the triple play Bonus Poker machine I hit the Aces on at Gold Coast. I wanted to return to it and play it some more. I need a Royal and multiplay seems a good way to increase my chances, given that I'm running out of time on this trip.

And I had that free buffet at the Palms. I'd get there as close to opening as possible - their 9:00 am, my Eastern time noon - for lunch.

I slept well, got up on time, made in-room coffee, and banged out yet another yet-to-be-award winning post. Showered and had shave number two with the new Bic disposable - definitely the winner. I threw those horrible green Shick face-maulers out, with probably too much glee.

There was already a line for the A.Y.C.E. buffet at 8:50.

The line wasn't too bad and I was seated by 9:15 or so at - you guessed it - the buffet single lonely diner table, placed squarely in the traffic lane leading to the dessert station, where I'd be guaranteed a never-ended supply of chair-bumping kids barely holding on to their dripping ice cream cones, and portly sugar fiends, lumbering blindly over my table to get at the just put out eclairs.

The buffet is priced at $46 or something. It was pretty good, quite enjoyable. Some of the dishes I had were excellent, some were so-so. There was a real problem with food temperatures though, almost nothing was even close to hot. The chicken with which to make tacos was stone cold.

Oh, and there was no cheese, notwithstanding cream cheese. There were no labels on the desserts and there was no pecan pie - a dessert sin if ever there was one.

Let's have a look, shall we?

Biscuit, sausage, hash brown, country throw-up gravy - fail. Bin eggs. Little taters. Smoked salmon - win.

Chicken and waffles. Win, but cold.

Birria ramen. Easily the best dish of the meal. Tamale - meh. Andouille sausage - win.

Mexican chicken - fail. Very, very tasty mini avo toasts.

Dessert. I only trusted these, with butter. Good, but no pecan pie.

After lunch, I walked over to the Gold Coast. It was another nice day out there, sunny and not too cold - except there was an air quality warning, and indeed, the mountains were shrouded in a yellow fog which worsened significantly throughout the day.

The Keno lounge was a pit of filthy, grimy desperation, broken buttons, torn seats, and smashed dreams, and I fit in there perfectly.

I played through $120 or something, maybe $140, and for some reason, did not win over $800 on video Keno. What's up with that? Yeah, I've been spoiled this trip.

No matter, I would go and play 'my' machine, the one I was really here for. Except some mook was on it.

So, I picked a similar nearby one and played it for a while. And was dealt four-to-a-royal on Triple play. Would this be it?

No, it would not.

My money ran out, and so did the mook, right out the door. 'My' machine was waiting for me.

I put in $100 and figured if three play was good, then five play would be better, right? I thought, well, let's see how this goes and as long as I'm doing ok, I'll stick with it, and if not, I'll drop to triple play.

I got a quad, so at least I was on the board for the day. I've had quadless days before, and they suck.

The five-play was doing all right, and then suddenly, it did really do all right.

Four-to-a-royal. Five chances at a Royal Flush. The odds of getting the needed card on single line are 1 in 47. But the odds of getting the needed card on one line playing five play are 5 in 47. A little better than 1 in 10 to get a Royal.

I punched the button and what you see is more the payout label for each hand, rather than the cards themselves, because they come up so fast. And I was able to take in that on the third hand, they payout label was a little bigger than normal and yes it read 4000 and YES YES YES I FINALLY got this Royal monkey off my back and hit a Royal Flush for the first time in two and a half years!

Ohhhhh it felt good.

I had earned back my nickname, Royal Flusher, and I wouldn't have to change my name to Kenoboi FiveOutOfFiver or some stupid thing. Which is good, because I have all these business cards.

This meant so so much to me! I was no longer searching for a Royal. I was now a winner on the trip. I now had a cool blog post to write. I hadn't done an accounting, but I believed I had enough winnings to nurse my way through the rest of today and tomorrow and leave Vegas even or slightly ahead.

I cashed out the ticket - I don't like to leave large balances in the machine. No point in advertising that you've got over a thousand bucks on you.

I put another hundred in, quickly got a quad, and cashed out the $20 extra profit.

Back in the room at Rio, I put most of the money in the safe, and kept $400 or so for gambling at the Plaza.

Cougars frequent the Lapo Lounge

Had a good ride downtown - Lyft has been solid this trip - and got busy at Plaza. I played $100 through on full pay Boner Deluxe with nary a single quad. Which is the whole point of Boner Deluxe, those $100 quads, no kickers needed.

The kiosk at Plaza gave me my $30 Freeplay and I squandered that on video Keno, remembering that I'd hit doing this on the last trip.

I had a bash at White Orchid - KEEPING the profit this time, and got a quad on VP as well.

My internet buddy Kevin N. was in town, over at the Golden Nugget, so I hustled over and we finally - after, like, years! - got to meet. I even let him take my photo.

Back at the Plaza, I checked in, and the boothling there made it a very fun and pleasant experience.

My room is in the south tower this time, facing south. It's just fine. I'll spend tonight at Rio, and have my final night at the Plaza tomorrow.

I poked around a bit, playing this and that, got another $5 Freeplay and a $25 dining credit out of the kiosk, and ended up at the bar to play some more Keno.

Wouldn't you know it, futzing around on dimes, enjoying a couple of shots of unknown well bourbon (I haven't groomed the bartender into pouring me Maker's yet), I hit again on Keno!

I'm not sure how I ended up playing 14 credits - I was aiming for 10. But I'm glad I did!

I cashed that ticket out, and played through another hundred.

Another close call.

Cougars everywhere

It was time to get back to Rio, so I grabbed a Lyft and not feeling adventurous, got a  cheesesteak and took it up to the room. It was delicious.

What a day! What a great day! I did an accounting and I am up $1300 on the day.

That puts me at plus $1018.30.

Approximately.

One day to go!

 

Let's Settle This!

Sunday Dec 28, 2024 

Where is my Royal Flush? Where are my premium quads?

Those are the questions on my mind.

I'm Royal Flusher, right? So... when am I going to live up to my effluential moniker?

My last quarter Royal was on a solo trip in May 2022, just before we lost Chippy, and just before we realized that the Quad Queen had ALS. See Triumphant Return to Triumph.

And I was wearing my Bobby G's Gambling and Good Times socks... Hmmm, where are those?

I'm way, way overdue and I want to get that monkey off my back and into my wallet, and to that end, I've been focusing on playing a lot more video poker this trip.

Now that I've written all that poor me shit, Jimmy Poon has pointed out that I actually had my last Royal on May 11, 2022 playing 2 cent denom on hundred play. It paid $80.00.

Definitely room for improvement. And that was the point of today. To play, and play and play.

My morning was typical - up early, eat coffee, drink punishment nuts, peel a Walgreen's banana, spew out a blog post, go gambling.

I have a coupon for $25 freeplay from the Las Vegas Advisor book, but Rio's slot club wasn't open at 6:00 am. Or at 7:00 am. Or any of the times I checked.

No, they open at 9:00 am.

Down in the Rio casino, I fired up Double Double Bonus and went at it. A hundred or so disappeared with no quads at all. But at least I got a coffee.

After, I ventured into the High Limit room where my nemesis lay in wait for me - triple play Double Super Slutty Times Pay. I decided to go for the really short pay Bonus Poker instead of Double Double because it's so much less volatile and at $5.25 a pull, this game can eat you alive in no time.

I struck paydirt early with four Jacks. No multiplier. But at least I had a quad on the board.

Then the Big Hand came up - four to a Royal.

Denied. And to add insult to asshattery, I was dealt the wrong black Ace on the top line.

And there I was again in no time, most of my day's bankroll gone. Angry. Frustrated.

Video poker continued to vex me, twisting my bankroll into two black tasteless disks like an Oreo cookie, and feasting on the sweet icing inside.

I should just stop writing this blog now, that's a disturbing metaphor.

But I don't quit easily. I did what I do and have done dumbly in a daze - played video Keno.

And for the second day in a row - RESCUED!

I hit 5 out of 5 again!!! WOOHOO!!!

That put me up almost $600 on the day, and things were looking a lot better.

It was time to eat lunch, which for me, meant second breakfast. I checked out Hash House a Go Go and... I couldn't. I just couldn't.

I think it's because the first time I ate at the one in the Plaza, I had this chicken dish that had this pinkish, pukey-sweet gravysauce on and around it, and it made me sick for a day. Ever since then, I have a visceral reaction when I think about it.

I did eat at the Plaza one last trip and enjoyed it, but that lingering body memory remains.

Then I remembered. Just across the street. Just what I needed right now.

The Breakfast of Triumph was delicious and served piping hot in about 92 seconds. I did observer that Denny's has the smallest sausages on the planet. I bet they are embarrassed every time Denny goes swimming.

Outside: "Gold Coast. Made in USA. And the Gold Coast casino weighs 500,000 tons. And the Gold Coast is a Boyd property. $10,000 New Year's Eve Jamboree. And the Gold Coast has New $10 Blackjack - WE'RE GONNA TEST THAT!"

What do you want to bet ($10?) it is not 3:2 blackjack but some carny version, or some short pay version? 

I walked westward on Flamingo and tried to find my way into the Palms. There's no obvious pedestrian access that I could find! I ended up walking too far and cutting through the valet parking lot or something.

For some reason, I thought I'd play some Buffffffffalllllllo!

There's a new signup promotion at the Palms slot club. Get 1000 points, you get some freeplay (spin that wheel!), a gift, and a buffet. At minimum a $50 value, and you could, once in a million spins, get $1000 freeplay (but no one ever will).

I got my card and decided to do it on slots so that it wouldn't take forever. I chose old school Buffffffffallllllo!!!!!!!! at 40 cents a spin. I graduated to 80 cents and then $1.20 a spin as the effects of the drug wore off and I needed to up my dose to get the same high.

It's a buck a point and I knocked off the 1000 points in a little under two hours. Had a few wins along the way, but dropped a little over $100 in the process.

Back at the slot club, I got my goodies.

Ten bucks in slot play. And the gift was a choice of a t-shirt that wouldn't fit me or a necklace that wouldn't suit me. And the buffet.

I didn't quite understand the guy but I think he said I'd earned a buffet from the promo, which I can redeem at the kiosk, and I'd also earned a buffet for two somehow.

In any case, I know what tomorrow's big meal will be!

I sat down at Super Double Double Bonus to play my $10 Freeplay and on the fifth hand, I hit a quad. So unpredictable!

And then I started to thrash around. I played some video poker, some Pick-a-pair for old time's sake, some more video Keno.

Nothing much was happening, and I'd had enough of the Palms. I crossed the street and went into the Gold Coast.

I thought video Keno would likely pay me another $900 like it had two days ago. And I gave it a really solid try. A couple of hundred went away.

Then I played this. Then I played that. There are no photos.

You know the story.

The $10 blackjack? Short pay 6:5. Big whoop.

It had been about five hours since Denny's - that's a lot of play time. I was thinking about dinner and Ping Pang Poon appealed to me but it was lined up again. It's always lined up.

Then I thought of getting take-out. I managed to get my order in (Kung Pao chicken) and was told to come back in 20-25 minutes. I'd blown through the majority of my profits for the day and didn't want to gamble any more.

So, I gambled.

Found a machine that really appeals to me - a trip play full pay quarter bonus machine just like the ones Karen and I used to play all the time downtown.

And it paid for dinner!

I actually got it from three-to-a-quad, something that has been near impossible this trip.

My order was ready and I headed back to Rio.

When I opened up the Kung Pao I was shocked. It was about three pounds of solid meat. There was nary a vegetable in there. Now I've got two pounds of cold Chinese chicken in the fridge for... when? And how would I reheat it? In the Portable Beaker?... I regretted not bringing the portable oven this trip.

It had been a long day of gambling and I took a long break after dinner. Watched some TV, relaxed, had a couple of drinks.

The smart thing would be to keep the $100 or so profit I had on the day and just go to bed, so I went back down to the casino. Video poker! I need a Royal!

Plus I had that coupon...

First off, I went to the slot club. The coupon is play 200 points, get $25 Freeplay. And you're supposed to hand the coupon in before you get the 200 points.

It turns out the coupon had expired yesterday! But the boothling went and talked to the manager and I left there with $25 Freeplay loaded on my account. Well done, Rio.

Well, at least I got some quads but somehow (through about 10 hours of gambling) I lost back all my winnings.

And I'm not unhappy about it. At this point I'm down about $280 on the trip, which is pretty good for the amount of play I've done. And I have a shirt I can't wear, and a $46 buffet to eat tomorrow.

At some point, Double Double Bonus is going to give me some premium quads, because it hasn't given me any so far. And maybe a Royal. Please?

Outside: "Gold Coast. Made in USA. And the Gold Coast casino weighs 500,000 tons. And the Gold Coast is a Boyd property. $10,000 New Year's Eve Jamboree. And the Gold Coast has New $10 Blackjack - WE'RE GONNA TEST THAT!"

If you've ever watched videos from the Project Farm guy, you know what this is about.