So I Guess I'm a Slot Player Now? - Part 2

On Monday we woke up around 8:30 AM Vegas time. I have to be at work by about 6:00 AM Central Time for my job, so it usually takes me a day or two to force myself to sleep in a little more when I get to Pacific Time.  We wanted to get some breakfast, but weren't sure where we wanted to go. We wandered over to Paris and decided to try Le Cafe Ile St. Louis. I thought it was great. I got some cheesy grits with sausage. As somebody whose family is from the south I'm very particular about my grits and these were the perfect consistency. My wife was very pleased with the choice because they served Pepsi and her drink was never empty the entire meal. That's usually her number one factor in whether or not our server deserves a big tip or not; was her drink kept filled throughout the meal.  I'll definitely go there again on future Vegas trips.

We lost $40 on a couple of slot machines in the Paris casino, but I can't remember which ones.  We then headed south to the Tix 4 Tonight stand outside Planet Hollywood to see about show tickets for that night.  We had been considering either a comedy show or something like the Prince tribute show "Purple Reign" at Tropicana. I had been checking prices on Vegas.com so I had a pretty good feel for the prices on that site. Everything at Tix 4 Tonight was slightly more expensive so we decided to just go purchase something on Vegas.com instead. 

We ducked into Planet Hollywood and I lost $20 in a 25 cent Double Top Dollar machine. The wife put $20 of her own money in the same machine and on the very last spin of  75 cents per spin she hit the top dollar bonus and won back her $20 plus $5 more.  She cashed out winner and we headed back to Bally's.with a pit stop in the CVS to grab some beverages for the room. (Bally's is one of the few hotels that provides a mini fridge for your own stuff which is great because I love having cold water, pop, and Gatorade in my room in the desert.)

Back at the room we booked tickets for the late show that night at the Comedy Cellar at Rio and my wife cashed in a 2 for 1 ticket offer for tickets to Cirque du Soleil's Love at Mirage for Wednesday night.  We killed some time in the room and then grabbed a couple of 24 hour Deuce passes and headed up to Fremont Street. I've seen several people post lately about how great Pizza Rock is so I was very keen to try it out.  We ordered a meatball appetizer and a large pie that was half New Yorker (pepperoni, fennel sausage, and ricotta) and half pepperoni. 

Just as they delivered our pizza there was a power surge and all of the electricity in the restaurant went off.  It was mid-afternoon so we could still see just fine, but it went from loud rock music to dead silence....but not for long.  The power came back on a few minutes later and for some reason the fire alarm started blaring.  We stayed put and finished our delicious lunch, but according to our waitress three of her other tables used the fire alarm as an excuse to dine and dash. 

After lunch we headed over to the D so I could play some blackjack with more favorable rules (I refuse to play on the strip with the terrible 6 to 5 blackjack payouts).I dropped a $100 in like 30-40 minutes.  It was very windy and a little bit cold so we didn't just hang out at the Fremont Street Experience.  We caught the bus back south on the strip and I took a nap in the room before dinner.

We decided to keep it simple and  grabbed something from the Bally's food court. The wife got Johnny Rockets and I had Pan Asian Express. We Lyfted over to the Rio for the show at Comedy Cellar. At Rio we played some video roulette and and video poker.  I think we broke even on the games we played in the casino.  We stopped at the Masquerade Bar to get the wife the one alcoholic beverage she likes, a pina colada.  I drank a couple of $9 Coronas and decided to put $20 in the video poker game even though the pay table was pretty crappy.  I quickly hit a four of a kind and cashed out $50 which was just about exactly enough profit to cover our drinks.

The comedy show was pretty entertaining, but the crowd was small.  The room was only about half full and they moved us from the cheap seats we paid for to better ones much closer to the stage so the areas closest to the comics would be more full. It wasn't the most raucous crowd, but I thought we were laughing loudly enough at the times when something was funny.  For some reason the comics were all kind of complaining about how shitty the crowd was. I really feel like their negative attitude towards the crowd just made things worse. I started to feel like, "Look I came here to laugh and have a good time. All of us bought tickets to a comedy show because we wanted to laugh."  I honestly was a little pissed that they were being such pricks about it.

We got back to Bally's just before midnight. I changed into more casual clothes and went down to the poker room to play in the $75 no limit hold em tournament with a $2,000 guarantee.  It was pretty uneventful and I made it to the final table.  With nine players remaining and blinds at I think 2,000-4,000 the UTG player shoved all in for about 28,000.  I looked down at AK off and shoved my last 20,000 in from the small blind.  The big blind tanked for a minute or so and asked the dealer for confirmation on the amounts and then called for about 2 thirds of his stack.   UTG turned over AJ off and the big blind turned over AQ of spades.  I don't remember the exact board runout, but I remember the flop had two spades and the river was a third spade.

I licked my wounds by putting  $100 in Buffalo Gold and hit another bonus for around $300. So for the second day in a row slots had covered losses at poker and/or table games.

I'll continue the story tomorrow with our move over to Aria for the night in a comped king room and the high limit group slot pull at Cosmopolitan with Matt Bridger.