Day 2
Tuesday December 13, 2005
Hotel:
I’m moving today over to the Rio. I don’t usually like to do these 1 night stays like I’ve done at Circus – Circus but the rooms and hotel are way nicer at the Rio. My reason for booking this stay at the Rio was simple. They offered 3 nights and a special Christmas gift of an iPod. I would have stayed here all 3 nights but the offer was only good starting today and since I pretty much stiffed the Rio my last 2 trips and planned on doing so again this trip I didn’t want call a host to get the extra night added. I have a diamond card and headed to the diamond room to check in. I still get a kick out of being allowed to check in with VIP status! They gave me room 1687 in the Ipanema tower. This room was recently renovated and in good condition with a great view of the strip.
Gaming:
Today was jacket give away day at the Cannery so I headed up there to play for a while. The offer was a free jacket for earning 1000 points and you got to keep the points. I played 8/5 bonus like I usually do up here. I wasn’t doing well and hit 2 regular quads in the hour I played. It wasn’t uncommon today to go 10-20 hands without a winner and then when I got a winner I was just jacks or better. I got my 1000 points, dropped $100 and got my free jacket.
I also burned a match play. I threw it on the field and the shooter rolled a 6. This wasn’t a very good stop at the Cannery today, which is usually my personal ATM. All in all I ended up with a $110 jacket. This is NOT how promos are supposed to work!
After my late dinner I headed down to Circus – Circus to get some play in at Slots-a-Fun. Since it was now after midnight it is Wednesday and that’s double points day here. As usual I played the 9/6 jacks or better triple play machines. The machine started out great but then got tight in a hurry. I actually pulled a straight flush that got me back into the game but even that didn’t save me. The lack of dealt winners and not pulling any winners when dealt smaller hands killed me. I dropped $200 on this machine in less than an hour. I moved to the other side of the bank after this expecting tonight to be a total bust. This machine was good to me. It even dealt me quad jacks and it happened to be that jacks were the card of the day so I got an extra $30 for this hit. Shortly after I hit them again. While waiting an eternity to get my bonus money I put $100 in the machine next to me. This machine was pretty good to me too. Since these machines aren’t TITO I didn’t want to cash out and get a bunch of coins so I played 2 machines at the same time. This was fun but I’m not that fast on 2 machines. I don’t know how the so-called pros do it. After a little over 3 hours I quit only down $100 before adding back in the $40 I got for the cards of the day. All in all 3 hours of triple play and I only ended up down 60 bucks. Not too shabby.
Dining:
Lunch was a quick stop at the West Deli at Circus – Circus. I went with a turkey sandwich on white. It comes with lettuce, tomato, a pickle, and a small bag of chips. It was pretty good and did the trick before heading up to the Cannery.
For dinner I went over to Bally’s (my car was still here from the afternoon) and remembered I had a few bucks in my Connection Card account. I had $19 so took a comp and headed over to the Sidewalk Café. The service was pretty slow in here tonight but the food was good. I tried the Oriental Noodle Soup. It was a large bowl of noodles with pork, chicken, carrots, pea pods, bok choy, and mushrooms (which were flicked to the side). It was pretty good and not too bad in price at $9.50. I also got a slice of cheesecake to go that would become my snack when I got back to the Rio later.
Entertainment:
Tonight I went to see KA at the MGM Grand with my friend Anne. I was lucky enough to score some seats from my pal Panto that works as a gatekeeper (read: usher!) for the show. These aren’t regular seats but they are seats up in the control room for the show. OK, I admit they aren’t exactly the greatest seats but for free, I’ll take ‘em especially since I probably would never pay to see this show. The show was good and some of the stuff these performers did was amazing. My only problem with the show was that I just didn’t get it. What I mean is there IS a story being told in all these acts, but I’ll be dammed if I could tell you what was actually happening.
Meets:
Today there was a meet at Paris at 3:30pm. It was organized on the Las Vegas Talk Discussion Board and was held at the Le Central Bar. I hung out here for quite a while hanging out with some old friends and some that I never met but have been talking to for years online. Also a big thanks to Davey for once again picking up what must have been a huge bar tab considering there were about 23 of us.
Total win/loss for the day: -$150
Total comps for the day: $237