Thursday, January 13, 2005
Jan 13th - 16th 2005 Trip Report: Part Four
Sunday
Sunday morning we said our goodbyes to Susie and Mike. They had an 11:30am flight back to Boston. We had been able to get a 2pm checkout time which was good because we had another dreaded redeye flight back home at midnight and we wanted as much time as possible to be able to retreat back to our room. After they left went to Molly's Buffet and spent our Fitz card cash back points on a mediocre brunch. There’s another great reason why it's better to go to Vegas during the week. On the weekends you have to pay for "brunch" instead of breakfast, which just means they throw in all the lunch stuff you don’t feel like eating yet with the breakfast stuff and you have to pay extra for it. I had originally wanted to do the Champagne Brunch at the Golden Nugget but the line was out the door and for Downtown it was pretty pricey.
Afterwards, we decided to head back to the El Cortez again to test my Roulette System. But first, I placed my first ever sports bets at the small book inside Fitz. Being the weekend of the NFL Divisional playoffs, I decided I wasn't going to pass up the opportunity to put money on my team, the Patriots. (I was getting tired of the sports media fawning over Payton Manning like they always do; they somehow overlook the fact that the Colts never, ever beat the Pats.) I put $20 on the Pats to win (hey, I'm new at this, taking it slow) and $20 on the Vikings to cover the spread against the Eagles, for the sole reason that I hate the Eagles. We went back over to the El Cortez with my infallible Roulette System in hand and once again enjoyed a long and lucrative run on our $20 buy in. We both cashed out for a healthy profit again and by the time we left the El Cortez the Eagles had pretty much destroyed the Vikings so my first bet was a bust.
We went back to Fitz and I sat down at the Let It Ride table once more since there was a good view of the TV near the bar from there. I bought in with my black chip from the night before and played on it through the entire first half of the Pats - Colts game, I kid you not. At the half, I colored back up with a $10 profit and went upstairs to find Andrea who had been playing the Loose Deuces nickel machine that had treated her so well on our last trip. When we first got to Fitz on Thursday she had made a beeline right to the machine only to find that the bill acceptor wasn’t working properly. During the time we were there, change attendants had to come over almost every time she wanted to play it to get it working again. I know she hopes that machine is well taken care of and is still there on our next visit because she played on her initial $20 throughout the entire football game. I alternated between chatting with her and sitting in the sports lounge watching the Colts fans get more and more depressed. After breaking even on my bets and quickly losing the $38.50 at the Fitz roulette tables (my infallible System only works at the El Cortez apparently) it was time to leave Downtown and begin the final leg of our Las Vegas vacation.
As I mentioned, we were stuck taking the redeye back home again and we did not have happy memories of the experience from the previous trip. We had learned that being Downtown at night time with out a nice quiet hotel room could really suck and made for some bad gambling decisions just to pass the time. When Andrea had played the tournament at the Luxor she also found that the Excalibur runs a poker table with a single $1 blind. We had planned to try and play there with Susie and Mike but had never gotten around to it. We also learned from our previous trip that a cab from the south end of the Strip to the airport only cost ten bucks. So our brilliant idea was, grab all our bags and get on the CAT bus to the Strip. Check our bags at the Tropicana, eat the 2 for 1 burger special at the Trop which we had also enjoyed on our last visit, then play the $1 poker at the Excalibur until it was time to get a cab to the airport. It sounds like a great plan on paper and it might have been perfect if we had left a little earlier. As it was, the evening rush was just beginning so we found ourselves in a standing room only bus clutching our bags like a couple of idiots. The bus crawled through the traffic and we couldn’t get seats until we reached the Sahara. The ride in total took up an hour. So admittedly, it killed some time and stopped us from losing money. After that, things did go smoothly. We checked our bags at the Trop and the bellman went out of his way to help us. We scarfed down our burgers and walked over to Excalibur where I got my first taste of casino poker (sort of anyway, people aren't scared to call a $1 blind no matter what they have). After killing two hours and losing $30 apiece, hey you can lose a lot more in two hours on the Strip, we went back to the Trop and the bellman got us a cab right away.
The rest of the trip I won’t detail here because it involves being really uncomfortable and unable to sleep on the redeye back home, made even worse by the fact that we had to transfer in Pittsburgh at six in the morning, but all that hardly spoiled the trip. To sum it all up, we had a great vacation. It was the perfect amount of time to be in Vegas, we didn’t overextend ourselves or get burnt out. I came back with half my bankroll left and got engaged to the woman I love. What more could you ask for from a vacation?
Sunday morning we said our goodbyes to Susie and Mike. They had an 11:30am flight back to Boston. We had been able to get a 2pm checkout time which was good because we had another dreaded redeye flight back home at midnight and we wanted as much time as possible to be able to retreat back to our room. After they left went to Molly's Buffet and spent our Fitz card cash back points on a mediocre brunch. There’s another great reason why it's better to go to Vegas during the week. On the weekends you have to pay for "brunch" instead of breakfast, which just means they throw in all the lunch stuff you don’t feel like eating yet with the breakfast stuff and you have to pay extra for it. I had originally wanted to do the Champagne Brunch at the Golden Nugget but the line was out the door and for Downtown it was pretty pricey.
Afterwards, we decided to head back to the El Cortez again to test my Roulette System. But first, I placed my first ever sports bets at the small book inside Fitz. Being the weekend of the NFL Divisional playoffs, I decided I wasn't going to pass up the opportunity to put money on my team, the Patriots. (I was getting tired of the sports media fawning over Payton Manning like they always do; they somehow overlook the fact that the Colts never, ever beat the Pats.) I put $20 on the Pats to win (hey, I'm new at this, taking it slow) and $20 on the Vikings to cover the spread against the Eagles, for the sole reason that I hate the Eagles. We went back over to the El Cortez with my infallible Roulette System in hand and once again enjoyed a long and lucrative run on our $20 buy in. We both cashed out for a healthy profit again and by the time we left the El Cortez the Eagles had pretty much destroyed the Vikings so my first bet was a bust.
We went back to Fitz and I sat down at the Let It Ride table once more since there was a good view of the TV near the bar from there. I bought in with my black chip from the night before and played on it through the entire first half of the Pats - Colts game, I kid you not. At the half, I colored back up with a $10 profit and went upstairs to find Andrea who had been playing the Loose Deuces nickel machine that had treated her so well on our last trip. When we first got to Fitz on Thursday she had made a beeline right to the machine only to find that the bill acceptor wasn’t working properly. During the time we were there, change attendants had to come over almost every time she wanted to play it to get it working again. I know she hopes that machine is well taken care of and is still there on our next visit because she played on her initial $20 throughout the entire football game. I alternated between chatting with her and sitting in the sports lounge watching the Colts fans get more and more depressed. After breaking even on my bets and quickly losing the $38.50 at the Fitz roulette tables (my infallible System only works at the El Cortez apparently) it was time to leave Downtown and begin the final leg of our Las Vegas vacation.
As I mentioned, we were stuck taking the redeye back home again and we did not have happy memories of the experience from the previous trip. We had learned that being Downtown at night time with out a nice quiet hotel room could really suck and made for some bad gambling decisions just to pass the time. When Andrea had played the tournament at the Luxor she also found that the Excalibur runs a poker table with a single $1 blind. We had planned to try and play there with Susie and Mike but had never gotten around to it. We also learned from our previous trip that a cab from the south end of the Strip to the airport only cost ten bucks. So our brilliant idea was, grab all our bags and get on the CAT bus to the Strip. Check our bags at the Tropicana, eat the 2 for 1 burger special at the Trop which we had also enjoyed on our last visit, then play the $1 poker at the Excalibur until it was time to get a cab to the airport. It sounds like a great plan on paper and it might have been perfect if we had left a little earlier. As it was, the evening rush was just beginning so we found ourselves in a standing room only bus clutching our bags like a couple of idiots. The bus crawled through the traffic and we couldn’t get seats until we reached the Sahara. The ride in total took up an hour. So admittedly, it killed some time and stopped us from losing money. After that, things did go smoothly. We checked our bags at the Trop and the bellman went out of his way to help us. We scarfed down our burgers and walked over to Excalibur where I got my first taste of casino poker (sort of anyway, people aren't scared to call a $1 blind no matter what they have). After killing two hours and losing $30 apiece, hey you can lose a lot more in two hours on the Strip, we went back to the Trop and the bellman got us a cab right away.
The rest of the trip I won’t detail here because it involves being really uncomfortable and unable to sleep on the redeye back home, made even worse by the fact that we had to transfer in Pittsburgh at six in the morning, but all that hardly spoiled the trip. To sum it all up, we had a great vacation. It was the perfect amount of time to be in Vegas, we didn’t overextend ourselves or get burnt out. I came back with half my bankroll left and got engaged to the woman I love. What more could you ask for from a vacation?// posted by Captain Al Cohol @ 5:15 PM 
