Monday Wonday

Boy, having a winning day in Vegas sure improves your mood. I woke up brimming with joy, and cash, ready to take on the casinos.

It always takes a few days to get my Vegas legs on - there is no sense of false confidence here, this time. I know that things can run very badly. I made that mistake the other day with an early win of a couple of hundred, and then a slide into tilt city, with an all you can lose pass.

That said, there is another side to this. Streaks are streaky and they do continue. Flusher's rule. And just like in baseball, you never fuck with a streak.

I did the coffee in the room thing and did some writing for y'all, and then I headed down to the Luxor casino to see what was what, and have breakfast at the Pyramid Cafe.

Will I never learn about Mlife resort credits? My offer came with $100. But it doesn't cover parking fees. It doesn't cover purchases at the little stores. It covers food, and entertainment.

So that's how I found myself with about $70 unused. That's a big stack of hotcakes, I can tell you.

I ordered a veggie omelette with cheese, side of turkey sausage. It was one of those meals that nothing is quite right. The coffee wasn't really hot. The avocado on top of the omelette was iced. And looked like hell. The hash browns were cold. The sausage didn't come until I asked. They were luke warm. Fortunately the eggs were piping hot, but it just wasn't my kind of omelette. It was solid egg all through folded over some veg from a bin. And about 0.204828 oz. of cheese. Toast was dead cold and you had to butter it yourself with ice cold butter. Breakfast: $30.

I didn't complain, I just wanted to be done. Nothing was going to sully my mood today.

The High Limit area beckoned and I sat down to play some quarter short pay Bonus Poker on Spin Poker, one line at a time. The first $20 went fairly well, but did disappear. The second $20 went great! I played for an hour solid rapidly advanced to 3 lines. (I was *not* going to do the stupid tilt 9 lines at a time.) Some nice quads came my way and I cashed out some winnings.

Luxor could not be vacated without a final visit to the Buffalo ATM - and on a whim, I played its neighbor.


I was rewarded with a win. It was great - I got four bonus rounds, and the last one was a keeper.

So that's how I found myself up $100 before leaving Luxor. A great start to the day.

I'm pretty sure that I beat them overall, winning more than enough to cover resort fees and parking fees (sigh).

(One thing nobody knows is that I dumped $30 into a stupid machine. So that left me with $70. Shouldn't have done it. Gambling.)

With about $35 of resort credit left, I headed to Starbucks. I bought a $10 sandwich for the flight home (which I could keep cold in the refrigerator in the room at the Cal, my next destination) and an array of crappy save the whales oatlove power earth bars at almost $5 a pop.

Once I got all packed up, I checked the TV which told me that none of all that crap had been removed from my bill. So I had to start phoning people. I've learned my lesson about this - take care of it BEFORE you leave.

Sorted, I dragged my luggage the 700 yards from my room to the rental Nissan Assassina.

Although I am prone to exaggeration like a million percent of the time, the 700 yards is troof. I paced it out when I arrived back the night before. How's a fella to gain weight in Vegas with this sort of inconvenient forced march exercise going on?

The drive downtown was easy. I took the I-15 to Sahara, where the backup started.

Pro Flushiepants Travel Tip: If you are driving to or from downtown, take the newly reconfigured Main/Commerce streets. It's fantastic!!!

Main street is one way from the Strat almost all the way downtown, and it flows beautifully, with minimal lights. Heading south from downtown, Main splits to the right to Commerce, one way going the other direction. Smooth, fast and simple. And, there's a nice painted green bicycle path, completely unused of course.

At the Cal, they got me set with a room, even though it was 11:00am. This is one thing that so far they do right. With my stuff dumped off, it was time to gamble, eat, and drink!

Actual 18 Fremont construction is going on. It's noisy. They start at 6:30am.

My Cal offer came with $50 freeplay and $75 food. I booked it online without telling my host. And as I stood in line, she walked right by me to get into the booth. I was able to hide behind a big display on the counter. She was right THERE!

Somehow I managed to get the job done without her seeing me. Why don't I want her to see me? Because she is used to the green handshake, which I have no intention of providing under the current bConned circumstances, unless absolutely required. I have no need of a host for the most part, anymore.

The $50 freeplay manifested itself into $45 cash. Well done, Flusher! Next stop, the continued pursuit of the $500 purple chip, starting from $20.

The dealer was sweet, this young completely inexperienced break in dealer on a trial. I helped her out with procedures, how to tuck double cards under the bet face down, and when to give the players extra winnings.

Progress - in for $20, out for $59!

Things were going pretty well! Time for lunch, and I caved and ordered one of my favorites - the Hawaiian Hamburger Steak, smothered in onion gravy.

Among other things, I needed to check into the Golden Nugget for a free slot tournament, and $25 freeplay. (Hopefully the QQ gets $25 as well.)

First stop, the Plaza.

I'm selling numbered prints of this image. They are all numbered "69" though.

The Buffalo machines on the wall have been good to me, and the one I chose delivered Buffalo chips in high, dusty piles.

Another hit and run win- $20 in and $60 out. I was starting to feel invincible. This makes up for the times when machine after machine eats your money.

The Golden Gate had no goodies for me, so I skipped it. Removal of the Bay City Diner is a crime against diners. I hate them for it. Now the Gate is just another marbly shiny casino, bite size.

At the Nugget, the check in Sheila started to talk to me about the great suite upgrade I could get. He showed pictures, blah blah blah, and finally got to the point: $70 a night. Under other circumstance I might have taken it.

Then he tried to upsell me to a Gold Club room for $20 more a night. Give it a rest, Juan Sheila, this isn't happening.

Some say that the Carson Tower rooms are a long way from Fremont. Well, they are. From my room, it is 400 steps to Fremont.

My room sucked. When I walked in, it smelled like one of the 18 Fremont construction guys took a dump in it. It was AWFUL.

The AC was noisy as fuck, and the room overall was ok, but not much better than the Cal room. In fact, I think the Cal room is more comfortable.

The decision was easy - I'd sleep at the Cal. Just to spite the Nugget for all of this annoyance, I played $20 in their shitty 6/5 short pay bonus.

I took out $40. Thank you Nugget!

Next stop, the Mike's bar. At the behest of generous donator Casey, I played $20 on the Double Double. Sadly, I got nowhere. At my own behest, I played another.

This was not good. My streak was ending?

Nope. The full pay Jacks needed servicing with some Strict Rules of Parlay.

I hit a quad and went to parlay - but the machine only had quarters on it. I cashed a $60 ticket, putting me even at the Four Queens.

The next machine over ate $20. Damn.

The next machine over from that coughed up a quad.

I bumped it up to 50 cents. It went really well for a while, topping out at 130 credits. I was hoping to get to 160 and switch to dollars. Didn't happen. All gone. Shit.

Start again and now I was in for $60. My credits at quarters doubled, so I parlayed to 50 cents. And what ensued was a video poker battle royale! Half an hour I played, going up, going down, going almost out.

Finally, finally, I got to $60 on the meter, which would put me even. But I was NOT going to leave without a profit. I kept going.

And the credits dropped... and they came back. I touched $60 a few times and stupidly would not give in. When I made it to $65... I cashed. Five dollars profit at the Four Queens.

Let's recap so far. Luxor VP - win. Luxor Buffalo - win. Cal freeplay - win. Cal blackjack - win. Plaza Buffalo - win. Nugget VP - win. Four Queens - win.

Even I was mesmerized by these results, not trusting them. Surely a streak like this would turn nasty very, very soon?