Vegas Baby: Part 4 - Let it Ride

We’ve talked travel. We’ve talked lodging. We’ve talked eating. NOW, comes the biggie. This is what Vegas is all about. Gambling.

OK, I am no big gambler by any means. I rarely stop by anything more than a $5.00 Black Jack table and the penny slots are where you will find me on a casino floor. That being said, there is something alluring about the idea of hitting it big in Vegas.

You hear the sounds, you see the lights. Is it any wonder that the digital sounds of someone cashing out or winning is slightly louder than anything else. You usually do not hear a sound when you do not hit any lines on a slot machine.

Working for four years in Amusement Park environments teaches you a lot about the art of the sell. You want to draw in people so you emphasize a big win, no matter how mundane or impossible it be to actually win.

I have been to six casinos in my life. Two in Niagara Falls, The Rivers in Pittsburgh and now The Mirage, The Bellagio, and The Venetian. Out of all of them, I actually prefer Pittsburgh. That sounds biased being in my area but if your sole purpose for going to Las Vegas, beyond shows, food, experience, or sightseeing, is to gamble then don’t go. Go to a place more local to you. When I went to The Rivers after it first opened all they had was slot machines and it was still fun. When they introduced table games in the last year or so, I was excited because I like a good game of Black Jack.

Still, I was a just a bit disappointed at the lack of actual tables on the casino floor and the fact that the casino only covered one level. The ones in Niagara Falls had a couple. This was in 2004. They had one level that was smoking and one, non smoking.

But, going to Vegas, my expectations were high in the amount of actual tables and variety of machines and the number of available floors to gamble on and after visiting all three of those afore mentioned casinos, I saw no distinct difference in actual gambling experience.

In fact, I found the offerings of slot machines to be very repetitive. I saw the same machines over and over again, throughout the Mirage floor. It makes it easy for someone to find the machine they like, but I spent a lot of time going over the floor looking to find ones that I enjoyed and kept seeing the same stupid ones. In the end, I kept coming back to the same one, which was a plus to the casino for dragging me into that world of fail since I spent close to $50 on it. 

It was right next to the restrooms and the Cirque du Soleil ‘Beatles’ Love show. There were times that you could really go up a lot if you could get the ‘Battle for Gotham’ bonus which is a four part race that is AI Controlled that racks up bonus credits for you. I think the most I ever got was around $30 and I ended up putting that back into the machine anyway. I found a video of it from a different casino on YouTube. It’s very fun.

The Dark Knight Slot Machine

Granted, in that video, the player bet probably the max bet which would have been like $0.80 and multiplied 12 times which is $9.60. But the payout was 213.36 so, that was good. I usually did the $0.80 single multiplier and on very rare occasions did I splurge and do 2x multipliers. I’m such a cheap ass.

Yep, I only ended up gambling $120 and I lost all of that. I gained a little back playing an Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade slot machine in the airport before our flight home. Then I lost it again.

Now, once again, I should stress that I only went to three casinos, on the strip and didn’t venture downtown, but you’d think that it would be a better experience in the newer area.

So, in all, if you have a casino near where you live and have some grand scheme of going to Vegas to hit it big… stay home. Save the money you would have blown on travel and do something else with it. Go to the local joint and spend the original gambling fund there. Might as well help your area over someone else’s, right?

Also, decide how much you actually want to spend on gambling and don’t go beyond that. If you go up, fine. If you can remove your original amount and just gamble on the house money, do so. That way, when you eventually lose it all, you end up even. This is not the economy to be losing your shirt in.

Next up is my monthly WUMF post and then some final thoughts on Vegas.

WUMF: September Edition

Ugh, it’s Fall. It’s also the end of September and that means it’s time for another WUMF.

Oktoberfest
It’s that time of year, if you don’t have enough excuses to drink beer, whether it be New Year’s, St. Patrick’s Day,… Tuesday. In any case, I’m having another beer swap at work and wanted to tell you about it.

Now we had one a couple of months ago which was geared more towards wheats and whites. I brought Penn Brewery’s Summer Berry Wheat. Others included Leinenkugel’s Sunset Wheat, Ithaca Apricot Wheat and Victory’s Moonglow Weizenbock. Overall, I wasn’t as impressed as the first round of our swap, which promoted Craft Beer Week.

For this one, I’m bringing Victory’s Festbier and hopefully, I’ll be introduced to some more great beers. Also, in Denver, the Great American Beer Festival is taking place.  This all got me to thinking.

Craft beers are nothing new. They’ve been around for a long time. And maybe it’s just because I’ve been recently exposed to the culture and didn’t notice it. Maybe I’m like someone who discovers that the little arrow next to the gas pump icon on your dashboard indicates which side the cap is on and thinks that I’ve discovered the cure for cancer and must share my wisdom with everyone. My point is that it seems like the craft beer industry is hitting a upward trend and I wonder why that is. After all, we are not exactly in the best economy and here we are spending a little more on beers than say Miller Lite and Budweiser.

Perhaps it’s a solidarity thing. After Anheuser-Busch was acquired by Belgium’s InBev it seemed like one of the last great American products was gone. They (InBev) laid off over 1000 workers and gave executives stock options that were potentially worth millions. It was a slap in the face to the American way of life… outside of Wall Street, that is. Maybe the craft beer industry is a way to get back at that offense. We’ll spend more money on locally brewed beers than throw money at companies who don’t stay inside the US. Or… it could be that craft beers, on the whole, are better than Budweiser.

Gambling in Pittsburgh
Last weekend, one of my friends from back in the day came to visit and stay with me and the misses and the monster. He and his girlfriend camped out in my recently emptied, but not renovated Red Room and we took in some gaming. On Saturday, we went to Dave and Buster’s for lunch and then in the evening we hit the Rivers Casino. Now, my buddy is a gamer in the sense that he loves poker and shoots a lot of pool for tournaments. He had been down from Williamsport area before to see the newly opened Pittsburgh casino and only had the option of playing video poker. Table games hadn’t come about, yet. This time around he headed for the Poker Room and we didn’t see him for about an hour. Meanwhile, I needed a dry run for next month when I go to Vegas… long story, there.

Anyway, since the regular table games were packed, at least there were no seats at the $10 table, which is almost too rich for my blood, I opted for playing slots with my wife and my buddy’s girlfriend. We hit the ATM before playing and took out $100. That was our limit. I gave my wife $50 and I took $50. She dropped $12 into the slot machines and came up with nothing. I dropped $20 into some of the more traditional slots and saw it dwindle to about $7.00. I took that over to another slot machine called Jungle Wild, I think, and coupled it with a $0.35 credit slip I found laying around and decided to just blow the rest of the $20 I started with on slots.

The Jungle Wild machine had a feature where you could get five free spins and that paid off in spades. My wife usually plays the minimum bet because she likes it simple. Me, I take the maximum number of combinations for a single cost per line. I managed to get the five free spins and turned my $7.35 into $38.26. Not bad. I then spent about twenty minutes watching people at the $10 Black Jack table, waiting for an opening. Finally, I got to sit down next to this little old Asian lady who didn’t speak English that much. I bought in for $40 and figured I’d be done in about 20 minutes. I say that because on my first hand, I had double aces. I split that and ended up with an A3 and another double ace. Now, I made a huge mistake because I meant to say, no more splitting… which I think you can’t do anyway. However, I made the sign for ‘Stay’ and was left with 14 and 12 against a dealer showing a King. DOH! I could potentially had another $20 added to my stack. For all us amateurs, it pays to learn a bit about gambling. Don’t be a Yinzer who wanders into the casino after a Pitt/Notre Dame game and has no clue how to play the tables. Know what the signs are and know what the rules are. It will help you. Like I said, this was a dry run for Vegas.

Anyway, after about a half hour they announced that they were raising the table to $15 which was more than I was willing to spend on a hand. So, I figured I’d play out the table minimum and leave once it changed. My little old lady friend even threw me a dollar chip to put on the Natural 20 spot which I told her not to do because it seems like a sucker bet. My buddy and the girls showed up and I handed my wife $40 in chips. I said, don’t lose those. Meanwhile, I had $40 on the table, still. I was doing pretty well and I should have left at that point. My buddy was not so lucky. He sank $100 at the Poker Room and his girlfriend sunk $100 in slots.

Once I lost the chips I had on the table, I walked away even. My buddy had a couple of dollars left and I told him to hit the slot machine I had done earlier. He put in a dollar and in one $0.80 spin, he got the five free ones which turned his dollar into $90. Not bad for dropping $100 on poker.

In all, we ended up spending $2 of our money and that’s just fine by me. I have no delusions about making a fortune at the casino. I just like to have fun.



The Pirates
Speaking of losing your shirt. Boy, what happened there? 72-90 record. Better luck next year and thanks for raising prices.  Maybe, one day, you could lose on purpose, likeYankees do.

The Steelers
I don’t know what to think here. I’m a diehard fan but I’m beginning to believe there is something to be said for the Super Bowl hangover theory. Maybe the lack of an offseason has lead to a gelling problem for the team but the offensive line is in shambles, there are far more injuries this year, across the league even, and it’s not even October. Someone put Troy Polumalu in bubble wrap until January. Once again, the fines or lack thereof in some cases are ridiculous. Haynesworth has yet to receive a suspension for violating the conduct policy… something that Roethlisberger got six games for allegedly doing, yet he was never charged. Hmm, could it be that Haynesworth plays for New England. Couldn’t be, right? Goodell has probably burned all the security footage of the incident with the same match as the Spygate tapes.

The Penguins
We got Malkin back on the ice and it’s nice to know he’s back to producing. Let’s hope Sid gets back soon and in the best shape he can be in for the season. I know he’s been subjected to a lot of criticism of the years and it just screams justification over this concussion thing. But you know what? The people who criticize Crosby are the same ones who’ve never dealt with that kind of thing before. There are people who have come forward and said that their quality of life was reduced dramatically after a concussion and not even one obtained in the manner that Crosby got his. You don’t mess with that kind of thing and let’s hope there is no long term damage. The kid’s not even 30 yet.



Take care and we’ll see you next month.