I used my Aloha meal coupon book to grab breakfast at the Cal coffee shop.
I love eating at the counter when I'm travelling alone. It is kitschy and homey and you can skip the lineup.
Counter Service! |
Would it hurt them to make a little jam package that either covers exactly one half a piece of toast, or exactly one full piece of toast, instead of 2/3 of a full piece of toast???
My tournament times were 9:30am Friday and Saturday and it was getting on a bit past nine. I headed upstairs, did some Flusher Finger Flinger Flexercises to warm up, and picked my ball out of the ball box.
My ball said 55 which Glory Be, was a slant top. Much better to play on.
I did more pre-game prep, placing Gordie Howe strategically so as to intimidate my nearby opponents, who would similarly crush me into the boards given half a chance, the wily senior citizen gambling bastards!
I'd have 20 minutes to play out 1500 credits worth of Double Double Bonus Video Poker. I wrote out some calculations as to where I'd have to be at 15, 10 and 5 minutes. I tend to play too fast and make mistakes. I wanted to play just right and be more accurate.
After a few obligatory forced-excitement bad sound system addresses and announcements to the contestants, we were off and pressing button!
Within the first five minutes I was dealt 3 Aces and nailed the fourth for an Aces quad, but alas, no kicker. This would definitely cost me money. You need a Royal or Aces with kicker a couple of times to get into the good bucks.
I played on and got no other hands of note, pacing myself perfectly.
Until I noticed that with a little over a minute to go I had a significant number of credits. Holy shit! I played as fast as I could, churning through the hands.
I'm embarrassed to say that I wasted 35 credits - seven hands unused. NOT the R.F. Way and pretty goddamned degenerate, and not savvy.
There's always a new way to learn to do something stupid, I have found.
Trotted over to Main St. to get some scratchcards and in fact, I did! The quads were comin'!
The Royal progressive on a bank of Double Double Bonus machines was way up there and I spent quite a bit of dough chasing it, to no avail.
Not having played craps for a while, I decided I would risk one hundred American dollars and put my new Flusher Craps Adapted Super Savvy Strategy to work.
All I needed was to find a shooter that made a number of successful passes of the dice, and the F.C.A.S.S.S would do the rest!
I bought in and the first couple of rolls were inconsequential. I think I lost $20 or something.
The third guy takes the dice and gets on a roll (as it were). I go from 5 to 10 to 15 on the passline with single odds behind. And I start to make some money.
Before long, I've doubled my buy-in - about as good as I've ever done on craps. But I wasn't done yet, not by a long shot.
$25 on the line and the guy rolls a seven. The F.C.A.S.S. calls for me to press it. So now I've got $50 on the line, and I'm gulping a bit. Point is 9 and I put $25 down in odds. And sure enough...
...he makes the point. Now I'm racking some green $25 chips. I don't know where to look or what to do, I don't want to make a move to jinx anything, I just tap my feet and try to stay cool while I'm flip flopping inside.
The last thing I want to have happen is to drop my chin too much so my head drops to the carpet and my hind legs go windmilling in the air.
I have $35 on the passline and I throw out $5 in singles.
"All the hardways, two-way hard eight." (For you non-craps folks the two-way is a bet for me and a bet for the dealers. Its a savvy move to tip the dealers.)
As mentioned, I deftly toss my chips to the stick man and... one of them stands on its edge.
Just stands there.
One of the dealers says its only the fourth time she has ever seen that happen. Something must be going on at this table...
Next roll... 12. My $35 goes away and I start again with $5 on the line and the shooter promptly sets a point and sevens out.
I've got quite a stash in my rack. I count it up by 25s and have a few extras.
Okay, I'll just play those, I think, and see what I can do, otherwise, I'll book the win.
Well a couple more non-eventful shooters go by and then this other guy down the table gets the bones and... goes on a total fucking heater.
I'm pressing and pressing, and he is making point after point. I can hardly believe it. My rack is filling and I am living something that I've dreamed about literally for years.
Much as I hate the 'that guy' expression, I look down the table and I'm the only one with a mile high stack of reds down on the pass line. I'm that guy. I'm out betting, outsmarting, and outwinning everyone at the table. Even the shooter isn't taking advantage of his good fortune.
We go from 5 to 10 to 15 to 25 to 30 to 35 on the passline.
Chips come in and come in.
I've got $75 on the table when he sevens out and my rack looks like this:
You can probably count it... I color up $575 off of a $100 buy-in. And I've achieved one of the major goals of this trip, which is to make a major score on a table game.
I get back to the room and play with the five black $100 chips I've got. Man what a turnaround I've had.
And... it ain't over.
Hey Buddy - "Work the system and the system will work for you". See, the average guy after a severe ass kicking puts his tail between his legs and scurries home. They give up and bitch about how they got killed in vegas. Gambling is about swings - UP and Down. You have to ride out the down swings, and press your bets when winning!
ReplyDeleteGreat job (and thanks for the awesome reporting)!