Gold Coast Gold

Sunday Dec 29, 2024 

I had a big day ahead of me. I had plans. And I had hopes. And I had a free goddamn buffet, baby!

The Plaza sent me another offer and I booked it for two nights, overlapping one night with Rio. I thought I underplayed them last stay and was worried the taps would be shut off - but I guess I dumped enough greasy spondulics into the gaping maws of their cash-hungry gambling machines to keep them - and me - happy.

A couple more Rio notes... on $10,000 coin in, I've earned 10,000 Rio Rewards points that I can use for either $10 in resort credit, or $10 in Freeplay (or Frioplay as they call it).

I had a 4 night mid-week stay offer (pay resort fee) in the hopper before I even arrived here - we'll see what happens to my offers post stay.

The $4.99 bottle of Diet Dr. Pepper was not to be repeated. Walgreen's is an easy walk away (thanks Jennifer). I picked up a six pack for $5.99 there.

The thermostat in the room is wonky. It's very hard to get the temperature to change, and it keeps changing the fan settings I choose. It's always blowing like a typhoon in here.

The TV system sucks. They have a facility to cast to the TV from your devices, except it doesn't work. For me anyway. And the live TV sound is too low. So you turn it way up and when you go back to the menu system, it's blasting. And many of the channels are shown in the wrong aspect ratio, so Marisa Tomei in My Cousin Vinny looked like Ernest Borgnine in heels.

Which I'm sure there is a market for, but still.

It's a nice little trifecta of properties here between Rio, Gold Coast, and Palms. I can see staying here for the room and gambling more at the Gold Coast for VP and blackjack. I have yet to see if the Palms will offer me anything.

It's nice that there is 9/6 Double Double Bonus everywhere here at Rio. I wish there were more video poker offerings. The video Keno is mediocre. Better paybacks are found at Gold Coast.

The pool area looks nice, so that would be a draw in pool season.

Back to the plan for the day - I had a really good feeling from the triple play Bonus Poker machine I hit the Aces on at Gold Coast. I wanted to return to it and play it some more. I need a Royal and multiplay seems a good way to increase my chances, given that I'm running out of time on this trip.

And I had that free buffet at the Palms. I'd get there as close to opening as possible - their 9:00 am, my Eastern time noon - for lunch.

I slept well, got up on time, made in-room coffee, and banged out yet another yet-to-be-award winning post. Showered and had shave number two with the new Bic disposable - definitely the winner. I threw those horrible green Shick face-maulers out, with probably too much glee.

There was already a line for the A.Y.C.E. buffet at 8:50.

The line wasn't too bad and I was seated by 9:15 or so at - you guessed it - the buffet single lonely diner table, placed squarely in the traffic lane leading to the dessert station, where I'd be guaranteed a never-ended supply of chair-bumping kids barely holding on to their dripping ice cream cones, and portly sugar fiends, lumbering blindly over my table to get at the just put out eclairs.

The buffet is priced at $46 or something. It was pretty good, quite enjoyable. Some of the dishes I had were excellent, some were so-so. There was a real problem with food temperatures though, almost nothing was even close to hot. The chicken with which to make tacos was stone cold.

Oh, and there was no cheese, notwithstanding cream cheese. There were no labels on the desserts and there was no pecan pie - a dessert sin if ever there was one.

Let's have a look, shall we?

Biscuit, sausage, hash brown, country throw-up gravy - fail. Bin eggs. Little taters. Smoked salmon - win.

Chicken and waffles. Win, but cold.

Birria ramen. Easily the best dish of the meal. Tamale - meh. Andouille sausage - win.

Mexican chicken - fail. Very, very tasty mini avo toasts.

Dessert. I only trusted these, with butter. Good, but no pecan pie.

After lunch, I walked over to the Gold Coast. It was another nice day out there, sunny and not too cold - except there was an air quality warning, and indeed, the mountains were shrouded in a yellow fog which worsened significantly throughout the day.

The Keno lounge was a pit of filthy, grimy desperation, broken buttons, torn seats, and smashed dreams, and I fit in there perfectly.

I played through $120 or something, maybe $140, and for some reason, did not win over $800 on video Keno. What's up with that? Yeah, I've been spoiled this trip.

No matter, I would go and play 'my' machine, the one I was really here for. Except some mook was on it.

So, I picked a similar nearby one and played it for a while. And was dealt four-to-a-royal on Triple play. Would this be it?

No, it would not.

My money ran out, and so did the mook, right out the door. 'My' machine was waiting for me.

I put in $100 and figured if three play was good, then five play would be better, right? I thought, well, let's see how this goes and as long as I'm doing ok, I'll stick with it, and if not, I'll drop to triple play.

I got a quad, so at least I was on the board for the day. I've had quadless days before, and they suck.

The five-play was doing all right, and then suddenly, it did really do all right.

Four-to-a-royal. Five chances at a Royal Flush. The odds of getting the needed card on single line are 1 in 47. But the odds of getting the needed card on one line playing five play are 5 in 47. A little better than 1 in 10 to get a Royal.

I punched the button and what you see is more the payout label for each hand, rather than the cards themselves, because they come up so fast. And I was able to take in that on the third hand, they payout label was a little bigger than normal and yes it read 4000 and YES YES YES I FINALLY got this Royal monkey off my back and hit a Royal Flush for the first time in two and a half years!

Ohhhhh it felt good.

I had earned back my nickname, Royal Flusher, and I wouldn't have to change my name to Kenoboi FiveOutOfFiver or some stupid thing. Which is good, because I have all these business cards.

This meant so so much to me! I was no longer searching for a Royal. I was now a winner on the trip. I now had a cool blog post to write. I hadn't done an accounting, but I believed I had enough winnings to nurse my way through the rest of today and tomorrow and leave Vegas even or slightly ahead.

I cashed out the ticket - I don't like to leave large balances in the machine. No point in advertising that you've got over a thousand bucks on you.

I put another hundred in, quickly got a quad, and cashed out the $20 extra profit.

Back in the room at Rio, I put most of the money in the safe, and kept $400 or so for gambling at the Plaza.

Cougars frequent the Lapo Lounge

Had a good ride downtown - Lyft has been solid this trip - and got busy at Plaza. I played $100 through on full pay Boner Deluxe with nary a single quad. Which is the whole point of Boner Deluxe, those $100 quads, no kickers needed.

The kiosk at Plaza gave me my $30 Freeplay and I squandered that on video Keno, remembering that I'd hit doing this on the last trip.

I had a bash at White Orchid - KEEPING the profit this time, and got a quad on VP as well.

My internet buddy Kevin N. was in town, over at the Golden Nugget, so I hustled over and we finally - after, like, years! - got to meet. I even let him take my photo.

Back at the Plaza, I checked in, and the boothling there made it a very fun and pleasant experience.

My room is in the south tower this time, facing south. It's just fine. I'll spend tonight at Rio, and have my final night at the Plaza tomorrow.

I poked around a bit, playing this and that, got another $5 Freeplay and a $25 dining credit out of the kiosk, and ended up at the bar to play some more Keno.

Wouldn't you know it, futzing around on dimes, enjoying a couple of shots of unknown well bourbon (I haven't groomed the bartender into pouring me Maker's yet), I hit again on Keno!

I'm not sure how I ended up playing 14 credits - I was aiming for 10. But I'm glad I did!

I cashed that ticket out, and played through another hundred.

Another close call.

Cougars everywhere

It was time to get back to Rio, so I grabbed a Lyft and not feeling adventurous, got a  cheesesteak and took it up to the room. It was delicious.

What a day! What a great day! I did an accounting and I am up $1300 on the day.

That puts me at plus $1018.30.

Approximately.

One day to go!