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Tuesday, March 12, 2019

I'm an Ace Man



Day 3 We are starting to slide into our Vegas groove. And for me, that means coffee in the room. The Little Giant foils the $12 hotel kit once again!

Yeah, $12 for a two cup setup in the Mandalay Bay room.

Much of the pricing on things here is electronic or not stated. Like in the store downstairs. Nothing has a price on it. (Sandwich, $9 - I asked.)

The minibar list is found on the TV info system. There is a printed room service menu though.

I guess I'm in a weird cohort for luxury resort consumption. I really appreciate the physical amenities in a room, and if I can pay just resort fees, I'm pretty ecstatic about that. But when it comes to food and drink and other purchases, I can't stand the feeling that I'm getting screwed.

Even more, I can't stand the feeling that I'm getting screwed even harder because the hotel has realized 'hey, we're full', or 'hey, 90% of our guests are at a convention' so we can jack up the price even higher, betting that there is no alternative and taking my business for granted.

Guess again. That's where I get cheap. Thus the Little Giant, which makes better coffee then their $6 a k-cup junk anyway.

And, I'm still sore and wistful about the fact that when we started coming here to Las Vegas, everything was a bargain. The town was known for having good, cheap food. Celebrity chefs and high end shopping changed all that on the strip.


The plan today was to spend our bucks downtown, where they go a lot further. (Johnny Rockets burger, $14, Binion's burger, $6).

We spent a relaxed morning (me doing blogging of course), and I reveled in another amazing super shower. Second most fun you can have naked. Maybe third most if you include 'streaking'. (Is that still a thing? It ought to be.)

When it was time to roll, I checked this app I got last time for the next WAX bus and it looked perfect - 18 minutes away. It's called, cryptically, 'transit' and it shows you where the bus you want is in real time.

So down we went, and hopped on the tram to Excalibur - which pulled in one minute after we got to the platform. An easy walk across the bridge (which was made a little stressful by some drunk woman screaming at the top of her lungs, repeatedly, "PUBLIC HOUSE!!!!!!! WHERE PUBLIC HOUSE?????!!!!!!!!"), and then a brief wait at the stop outside NYNY and 22 minutes after the WAX arrived we were downtown.

Two bucks each for the ride. If you ain't proud (and I'm not) ride the long limousine to breakfast!

We headed for the Four Queens, where I intend to do a lot of quarter jacks parlay playing. We bought a $5 keno ticket each and headed up to Magnolia's, where I first encountered country throw-up gravy.


Damn it was good. The Quad Queen opted for their best rib eye steak and eggs.


She reported it was tenderized to within an inch of it's life and pretty damn tasty.

We used a 2-for-1 coupon from the Las Vegas Advisor booklet and used comp dollars to pay what was left. So a pretty nice meal for the cost of the tip.

And then it was time to settle in to the 9/6 Jacks!

Well. What can I tell you? We pounded those machines and they ate twenties like M&Ms. The quads weren't coming. At all! I managed to parlay to 50 cents once for about 4 minutes, and one other time I made it to dollars but had to de-parlay back down to 50 cents, then quarters, then out.

After around two hours of this I finally got my first quad of the session after parlaying up to 50 cents again. Naturally, it was Aces. I knew this would happen. I know this will happen. It's part of dealing with Jacks.


That was my lone quad, and the Quad Queen (!) got only one as well. We also had three Royal attempts - all unsuccessful.


Fuckers.

Fuckers.

Fucking fuckers.
While playing, I noticed something interesting - a sign touting 3:2 blackjack. I didn't remember to scope it out though. I'll be interested to see if there is a hitch. The Four Queens has mostly bad blackjack, all 6:5, so maybe they are smartening up?

That blue blur says (I'm guessing) Blackjack Pays 3:2.
One other thing I noticed that is kind of concerning, was that only 1 machine in the bank of 4 we played on had denominations higher than quarters. I'll have to check out if they are cutting back by disallowing higher denom play. That would be disastrous.


I played over 1600 hands and got one quad. Same for the Quad Queen. With nominal average typical performance.... we should have had a total of eight. Such is gambling.

Time for a visit to the Mike's Bar where both Mikes were in attendance. I had a couple of nice draught beers of some sort and half an hour in was dealt a beauty.


Now that's more like it! I drew for the kicker and failed miserably, which is a shame, because the meter for Aces kicker was almost $600. I won $220 instead. No complaints, really.

The Quad Queen hit one as well.


Next stop - Downtown Grand, where we played some more Double Double but got nothing. We gave one of the huge two-fer Buffalo Stampede machines a try and got a bonus round - which provided $1.30 in winnings. What the fuck?

$5 chips - $5. Bargain!


At the Fremont, the Bonus Poker Super Times Slutty Pay machines kicked our asses, and then because I was silly, I played some nickel ten play Super Double Double Bonus thingy and in about one minute hit one of the weird premium hands.


Oh relax, it's nickels!
You know what? We played for about half an hour (yes the QQ joined me) on $20 each and had an absolute blast. So that was good.

And oddly, all three quads I'd gotten on the day were sets of Aces.

I'd found a couple of keno tickets in my wallet from last December, so we headed toward Main Street Station, stopping in at the Cal to check them. $0 and $0. (Same result as the breakfast keno at Four Queens...)

I couldn't believe it when I saw the escalators that they'd taken six months to put in - were down. As in not escalating. Either up or down.

Somebody... is getting yelled at.

At Main Street, we had dinner buffet - we're on the two meals a day plan today. It was great as usual. They even had oxtail. Nom nom.

The Quad Queen was kind of bummed out about her stake - it was down to $20 left. I was doing a bit better, with half of mine left.

We gave Treasure Chest a slot and her last $20 disappeared rather quickly.

So I reached in my wallet and fished out a bill and offered it.

"Here, I don't want you to have to sit and do nothing. Go ahead and try another machine."

"Oh! I'll have to go break this," she said. It was a hundy.

"Its too much? I have a twenty."

In a flash, she snatched the hundred dollar bill out of my hand.

"No! It's fine!"

We had a blast playing for an hour on $20. Good clean Treasure Chesty fun.

The machine next to me went down and I chatted with the service guy, who could not resurrect it. He told me something disturbing.

The source of replacement parts for the Treasure Chest machine has been gouging Boyd - and they've had enough of it.

When the logic boards go on the fritz, they likely won't be replaced.

Play 'em while you can.



We'd had a long full day of it downtown and headed back to Mandalay Bay. The timing worked out perfectly again for both the WAX and the tram.

The only downside was that I got accosted by a nutter trying to give me 'a gift for me and my family' at the bus stop. I told him twice, politely, "no thanks".

The third time I told him to leave me alone. The fourth time I yelled at him to GO AWAY.

Then I just turned my back, risking a shivving, and he gave up after a couple of minutes of harassing me further.

Next time I see that guy, I'll give him a gift for his family - in the form of a knee to the nuts. Because he's nuts.

I should have just told him to shut up and deal.

It's pretty typical for Fremont Street these days and you have to roll with it.

I dropped off some Official Flusher Business Cards v 2.0 for GB and SB - unfortunately they weren't findable in the high limit room where they hang out apparently - so I left an envelope at the desk there for them.

Big thanks to PB for the generous paypal donation to keep the lights on. I'll let you know how it goes when I degenerately gamble it away per instructions.

And that's another Vegas day in the bag. Lots lots more to come!




 
Question... will we take our luggage all the way to the WAX stop and then haul it from the downtown drop off stop to the El Cortez... or will we pay for a Lyft?

Show your work.





    1 comment:

    1. Love the new report. You are such a good story teller. Thanks for sharing!

      ReplyDelete

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