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Saturday, November 29, 2014

That's the way the Turkey Trots

Day 11 Tuesday Nov 4, 2014 - part 1

A check of the Sportbook bar at the Smug Golden Nugget showed that the change Johnny Blueshirt and his Gang of Screws had made to the bartop machines was that they'd all been upped in denomination to a minimum of 50 cents.

Shitty paytables and now a 50 cent minimum? There's a good business decision that will keep us away from that bar forever more. Slick move, guys.

When Mrs. Flusher registered for her Turkey Trot Slot Tournament, it reminded me of something the Nugget had said about being in some sort of wine promotion. And they'd given us a letter which indicated we could pick up a bottle of wine at the slot club.

We'd forgotten to do this for about five days running, so I made a mental note to do it today, and promptly forgot all about it. Like I'd done every day.

We were done with the Four Queens for this trip (or rather, they were done with us, having kicked our asses nine ways from broke).

I was going to grab a room at the Downtown Grand for a couple of nights and we'd both play on my card there to see what offers we might get in future.

I had short-played them the last couple of stays because they'd raped all the paytables. But now that they'd seen the light and restored some full pay video poker, I thought they deserved another chance.

Besides, I liked their coffee.

Our morning started at the triple play machines just outside the Spa tower elevators in the Smug Nugget.

Actually, our morning started just before that with our pillaging of the little brown envelope in the safe, to give me a stake for the day. Fortunately, the Quad Queen still had her second stake from the day before intact.

With trepidation, I sat down and we commenced to playing the machine de la video poker.

"I have trepidation..." I whined.

"Shut up and deal," came the reply.

A minute or two in I got a quad on Bonus Poker. Whoopee. I didn't even bother to take a picture. But there was something about the way the machine was playing, or my luck, or the part of the set of possible experiences that I was now randomly encountering... 

"This machine is HOT HOT HOT!!!" I screeched.

And it was. Because I'd been winning a lot of hands and the credit meter was growing.

So I did a side-loaded volatility parlay power shift and switched to Double Double Bonus.

Meanwhile, Mrs. Flusher was disgusted with her machine, and went to one on the other side of the bank. No matter. I'd just focus and play.

And man, oh, man did I get on a streak. I was flying. Every three or four minutes I'd pop my head up over top of the machines and yell at the Quad Queen what I'd hit.

"Four Deuces! ...no kicker, though."
8:06 am
This was the change I needed to help get over the previous day. What a frickin' relief!!!!

"Got Four Aces!!! ....no kicker, though." It was too bad, one kicker would have added $300 to the win.
8:08am
 "Four Threes!!!!! ...no kicker though."
8:10am
I played a while longer and cashed out my profit. Four quads total, including three decent Double Double Bonus quads (no kickers though) in four minutes, had put me up around $400 on the day by the time I cashed out. Holy fuck, what a relief, and a great way to start the day.

(If I'd gotten those kickers, it would have added $500 to the winnings. Stupid video poker!)

They were doing some construction around the Nugget, with the center part of the casino walled off. A talk with one of the long-serving cocktail waitresses revealed that after putting in the fancy ceiling decorations with all the cloth and big round light fixtures that looked like oversized lamps, they'd realized that it made the ceiling look pretty much like a coffin - not the image a palace of fun and chance wants to project.

So they wiped out those lights and replaced them with these custom designed and very expensive fixtures.

I quite like these. The picture doesn't do them justice but they have nice warm woody and amber tones to them. I should have used the Cameron G16.

Enjoy while you can, these are going too. At the back of the pic you can see the walled off area.

Maybe third time was a charm for wasting lighting fixture budget money.

We played at the bar for a while.

"We have to remember to get that bottle of wine..." I said.

"Shut up and deal."

A great place for breakfast in Vegas.
This is about how it looks after a while at the bar. That looks to be quad fours on Double Double... no kicker though.
It was time to Turkey Trot, so we headed over to the coop to get signed in. They event was jammed with people, loud, and obnoxious.

I pitied the people that had to work there, particularly the facilitator on the floor. Next time you are unhappy with your job, think of this guy, who handled it all with aplomb (or is that with plumage?...)
She did her first session and did not do well. But she had fun (I suppose) mashing the buttons like crazy.
Some of Mrs. Flusher's savvy competitors, looking focused and having, as you can see, a blast.
 She finished up and I said, "We have to remember to get the wine..."

"After we eat."
Window seats at the buffet afforded views of the beautiful day unfolding and the goings on at the pool.
We decided on buffet for breakfast and it was, again, good! I quite like the Nugget buffet for breakfast now, having enjoyed it a few times this year.
From salmon, to corned beef hash, to pizza to half an Arturo Fuente - delicious!
For some stupid reason I broke my rule never to eat scrambled eggs from the bin at a buffet. And again I was reminded of why I have this rule. Doesn't matter what buffet you are at, this is always a disgusting option. Aside from that, for which I don't blame the Nugget - there are rules of physics that make bin eggs awful, that can't be overcome, I really enjoyed my breakfast.

"We have to go get the wine..." I said, on our way out.

And guess what??? We did! The slot club was right there at the bottom of the esc-u-lator, and we presented the Letters of Wine Transit and in return, they gave us a bottle of wine.

We had no idea what this was all about - our host John Submarine had just booked us in under this particular offer for part of our stay.

Anyway, we were the proud owners of a bottle of Silver something or other wine. I took a quick look and, yeah it had a cork. So I'd have to find a corkscrew somewhere in Vegas.

It was time to do some Admin. I had to get checked out of the Four Queens, we had to get our cashback, and also make a reservation for dinner number two at Hugo's. I had to check in at the Downtown Grand - and see what kind of hell I could raise around the fact that I didn't get my matchplay coupons last stay.

I got $188 cashback, and she got $187. There was still some things on our bill from Hugo's dinner number one, so we went to see the hosts.

The host looked at our play and made like it was a big deal to comp off the remaining hundred or so dollars - it seems the Hugo's meal has a limit of $150 and the champagne I'd ordered put it over.

Well guess what, my coin in was shown as $58,825 and coin out $57,846. Mrs. Flusher's coin in was $59,947 and coin out was $57,155. Not sure why were short of $60K each, but those are the numbers we got.

We'd lost about $3000 there. Goddamn rights that wine was going to get comped off.

Bottom line, I got what I wanted.

Combined coin in $118,772. Combined coin out $115,001. That's a return of 96.82%. We had no Royals. The Royal represents almost 2% of the return of 9/6 Jacks. So without Royals, the theoretical return of Jacks is 97.54% We were about 0.7% off of that. So, I think our results were actually pretty close to what the math says we should have gotten.

We had a quick session at the Mike's Bar to have a drink and toast our cashback, which provided a nice little boost to our stakes.


We played without our cards in, not wanting to mess up our daily averages. And guess what? I got another nice little addition to my stake - four Aces on Double Double for $200. If I'd gotten the kicker, it would have been $500.
Four Aces. No kicker though.
And with that, it was on to the next part of our Vegas Adventure.






    1 comment:

    1. I just want to say, from chilly Dublin, that my jealousy knows no bounds.

      ReplyDelete

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