The Lost, the Misfits, the Beaters, the Last Chancers

Day 10 Part 2

Awkward image placement #928

This was one time in my life I was glad that Air FU Canada has unforgiving ticket change policies. If you bought in the wrong tier, you are SOL. In any case, there wasn’t much availability anyway, and it was going to cost more than Mrs. Flushed Out could lose in three days. (Or was it?)

“I know what you need.”

“What?” she sniffed.

 “You need to go on an old school walkabout hit and run gambling mission - with drinking.”

“What would we do?”

“We go from place to place, playing a $20 bill, double or nothing. We play high volatility - the most ridiculous long shots we can find, we play old school beat up machines with burned in CRTs, quadruple imaged out of focus displays. We machines that are the lost, the misfits, the beaters, the last chance machines in the dark corner - the ones just like us.”

She smiled.

“I’m in.”

"Let's pregame a bit, make some travellers, and check out the pool and chill a bit, and then attack."

So we did. The California pool is... spartan. It was also deserted. And very dirty. But this could indeed be a great place to hang out when its nice but isn't really swimming weather, or hours. There were lots of tables where an intrepid blogger could pound out a few keystrokes while enjoying some fresh air and a cocktail!

We started our tour in the alcoves at the California. The alcoves, which overlook the lower casino, the craps pit, and the Shaka 5-way progressive, have the crappiest, oldest machines you’ve ever seen, with games you’ve never heard of like Ultra Bonus, Super Triple Bonus, and Super Mega Ultra Mondo Hyper Jack Off Quintuple Quadruple Double Triple Suited Royal Bonus Poker - which has only one hand that pays anything, the Royal Flush, at fives time normal. It is fairly high variance.

Fortunately - it was fun. And we were doing okay. I picked Super Triple Bonus because of all the crazy kickers involved and by God I hit Queens with a Jack kicker completely out of the blue. $200 for the Flusher!

We decided to try $20 on the 50 cent Bonus Poker progressive bank near the alcoves, and the Quad Queen got on the board with Deuces for $100.

Maybe this was the start of a comeback?!

Next stop was Binions - they have some very comfortable slant-top Double Double Bonus machines in an out of the way area. $20 each and guess who it again? Quad Queen for a quick $62.50 hit.

Now we KNEW we were doing the right thing.

I lost my $20 but that was okay, I had a good buffer from the crazy queens hit.

Fremont street was coming alive with the evening crowd of tourists wanting to take pictures of people making spectacles of themselves through the wearing of costumes good and bad or performances of some sort good and bad, and those wanting tourists to take pictures of them making spectacles of themselves through the wearing of costumes good and bad or performances of some sort good and bad, for money.

We ‘got to’ see the new outfit that the near-naked “feed me a cheeseburger” woman was wearing - flesh colored tape over her nipples. Apparently this is an upgrade from the coconut halves she was wearing a few days ago. For some reason - and bear in mind, I am a lech - but for some reason, this woman depresses me. The whole thing reeks of cheap desperation, tawdry selling of the flesh (very similar to this blog, actually), as opposed to high-end renting out of the better looking flesh. I took three or four hundred pictures of this heartbreaking scene and moved on after an hour or so.

We moved on to our bar at the Four Queens to see what damage we could do to Double Double Bonus. My notes indicate that there was consumption of Lucky Heineken beers, and Jameson’s Irish Whiskey.

Not only was the Quad Queen clawing her way back, she was galloping her way back, because she hit quad threes, with the kicker, for over $200.

Lady Las Vegas definitely was in her submissive pose tonight and had changed her sweaty vinyl thigh-high boots for geniune leather ones, which smelled rich like money and were supple like bar-stool upholstery.

(For those of you who have found the mixing of sexual metaphors with the characterization of luck itself, and the city of Las Vegas, just be glad you aren’t around when those same metaphors get mixed the other way and I scream “JACKPOT - CALL ATTENDANT!!!” at particular personal intimate moments.)

We drank up and moved on to one of our favorite spots - upstairs at The D Las Vegas, where the classic coin-dropper slots and video poker of our Vegas indoctrination live on, surrounded by the happy sound of galloping plastic Sigma Derby steeds, every 90 seconds.

I’d even stopped at the cage to purchase rolls of quarters. My God, how long has it been since I bought an actual roll of quarters? We used to stock up on rolls of quarters and nickels and shove them in our pockets until they weighed so much, we tripped on our sagging pants.

We thought we’d give the bank of video poker machines with the royal progressive a try, and like an old pro, I cracked my $10 roll of quarters open by rapping it on the corner of the coin bin, just like an egg. The old habits die hard.

I could still do my rapid-fire machine-gun quarter dropping technique. I can put five quarters into a machine in less than a second using this technique. It’s a shame that it is outdated now.

I loved it all. The old sounds of the machines, the tick tick tick tick tick as the cards are dealt. The fingers turned black with grease and grime from handling the coins. The convex shaky out of focus CRTs that belched static when you banged the buttons. Wonderful. For a while, I was back at Luxor in 1993 where it all started and bill acceptors were just starting to be trusted.

And bully for me, I hit an old school quad and got to cash the coins into a bucket, scooping them up, doing the four corner check for strays, and then carting them off to the cage to be dumped in the huge plastic hopper of the counting machine with a crash and roar that simultaneously deafened you and made you pee your pants, a little.

Old school coin-dropper quad at The D.

Our hit and run strategy was working wonderfully. Between us, we were up about $600 on this walkabout hit and run so far.

Emboldened, we strolled across the street to the Fremont, to hit the triple play Bonus Poker Super Times Pay uprights by the food court.

This next session would be the decider for the day.