Day 3
Friday July 14, 2000
I woke up at about 9am and was a little confused as to where I was. Once I woke up though I was like YES! I’m in Vegas.

I got myself motivated and went down to the pool area. They have a pretty basic pool area here but I like it. I usually have it all to myself if I go early enough. I read the Las Vegas Review Journal and listened to some CD’s. The water seemed a bit cool considering how hot it was. That may have been because I was sitting in the hot sun for a while though. The water wasn’t too cool though except for when it hit my nuts. Why is it when cool water hits you there you just want to yell??!! I stayed at the pool for about an hour and a half. I figured that would be long enough since I was white as a ghost and it was hotter than hell already at 10am.

I went back up to the room and unpacked and then got ready. There was a meet at the Venetian food court today that was organized on the Las Vegas Talk discussion board. I got there early so I wanted to play some $1 video poker. I went into the high limit room to play and put $100 bill into a machine. I started off by pushing the bet one coin button 5 times and playing a hand. I lost them I simply hit the max coin button. Something seemed wrong when the machine kept ringing though. I thought it was a 10 coin machine but it kept going. Holy shit! It's one of those 1-100 coin machines and I just did a max bet. I had $95 in credits on this machine and now had a $95 hand of video poker being played. I was really just hoping to land a pair of jacks or better so I could get my money back. But wait what’s this. This looks like a straight. Just as I noticed the bell went off and I was dealt a straight. YES! A mistake just gave me a 380 coin hit. After my credits racked up I cashed out for a $280 win. Of course the machine emptied out and while an attendant was messing around with the machine I moved to a seat at the bank next to me. This was a $5 bank and the machine was out of order on the end. While I was sitting there I noticed something. This was a slant top machine and there were a bunch of tokens in the tray. $5 tokens. Now I didn’t want security to see me start scooping these out so since I had already racked up a few of my $1 tokens before the machine emptied out I let them fall into the tray and scooped everything out. When I was all done I had scooped out 7 $5 tokens for an additional $35 win! After I cashed in I it was just about time for the meet.

VG from the message board was the first one there and soon after Frank, the webmaster of the Las Vegas Talk discussion board and Las Vegas On-Line (as well as a number of other sites) arrived. The other members that came to the meet were Happy Jo Lucky (formerly Joyce from Chicago), Dusty from Las Vegas, Laurie and Shirley from MA, Laura in TN, and Karebear.

After the meet I went back to the Reserve. On Fridays they run a special where if you earn 1,000 points on your slot card ($1,000 coin-in) they’ll give you a comp (up to $20) to their steakhouse Tusks with no point reduction making this a great play. This is a really nice place and there’s no need to dress up to go here since it’s a casual restaurant, but yet a bit classier than the coffee shop. I ordered the 10oz. Filet mignon. It comes with a salad, baked potato and dinner rolls. These rolls are shaped like muffins but are flaky and are baked with butter. Some of them are actually soaked with butter and they still bring you more butter to put on them if you want. That’s just too much butter for me though. They were also filling the water glasses with bottled water tonight. This was a first for me. I never saw this in a place before but then again I’m usually in the coffee shop or the buffet! The quality of the food here was really good and the meat was cooked perfectly to order as I like it medium rare which is pretty close to raw! Service here was excellent and the entire meal was great. Well worth the price! (Complimentary!) The regular price of the 10oz. Filet is $18.75. I passed on dessert and went back out to the casino.

Once here I tried some 5-cent Spin Poker. These are kind of fun. It’s a game like a slot machine but it’s played like video poker. You spin the reels and get 5 cards. Then you choose to hold the cards you like and then re-spin the reels. Any winning hands are paid accordingly. This is like a 9 line 45 coin slot machine combined with video poker. I played for a while here but lost $40. Then I headed downtown to play some Blackjack at Binion’s Horseshoe.

I parked at the Golden Nugget garage and it was packed but I eventually found a spot and walked over to Binion’s. Things were up and down here then just fell apart. I moved over to another table and things were the same as at the first table. I changed up from betting $25 on 2 hands to betting $50 on one hand and this worked for a while but then things got bad. The dealer had 3 blackjacks, 2 21’s and a 20 in as many hands. I left Binion’s down $1,000 and decided to try my luck over at the Golden Nugget.

I sat at a double deck game. They don’t have very good penetration here. Now when they shuffle they place the cards in the discard rack and there is a slit on the edge of it. They slide the cut card through there and that’s where the deck is cut off every time. They’re dealing just over 1 deck on this game. I started off betting 1 hand at $50 and things were pretty good here. The dealer was breaking a lot and I getting good hands. About 2 hours later I cashed out $1600 for an $1100 win. I was tired and hungry now so I went back up to the Reserve and got a comp for Congo Jacks Café for a late night snack. I got a bowl of chicken noodle soup. This soup was packed with meat and was a meal in itself. I also ordered some mozzarella sticks. The service sucked in here again tonight. There was a guy sitting a few seats down from me at the counter and was getting pissed. The cooks in the back heard him bitching and actually took his order from back there before the waitress ever got there. That way his order was almost finished before she even took the order. After eating I went up to bed and watched TV for a while before going to sleep.

Total win/loss for the day $350
Total comps for the day $85