December 30: We had to check out today. We were spending one night at the Suncoast. This is another place where I’ve never stayed at. My wife had an offer for one free night, I couldn’t believe that she got a free night this close to New Year’s Eve. We stopped by the Palms on the way out to play a couple of match play coupons. I hit a black jack on mine for a $25 win. Kim lost her $10 match play. We went out to Boulder Hwy and hit the Longhorn for two $5 match plays. This time Kim won $10 and I lost $5. We headed across the street to Sam’s Town to play a little on 10x points and also to use our one last ACG coupon of the year for 250 points and a “free” buffet.
We both went back to the triple play pennies at 60 cents a pull. Kim was doing good and hit four aces early on to get her $20 buy-in up to the upper 50’s. I was still waiting for my first four of a kind. Kim’s machine started going south and she cashed out and headed to some nickel single line machines. I moved to another triple play machine after losing my first $20. I put another $20 in still looking for that first quad. I blew through another $20 without a single four of a kind. I decided I had enough of this and moved to try me luck on the 10 coin nickel Emerald Ducks that pays $300 or 3000 coins for quad deuces. Oh yes, buy the way I hit deuces twice during the summer on these machines. Well it only took about four minutes for me to be dealt quad 8’s. What in the world? I’ve sit at triple plays for an hour and ½ not getting one set of quads much less being dealt quads? Instead of getting dealt quads for 750 credits, I get dealt quads for 20 credits. Go figure. Well it wasn’t about 5 minutes later when I hit a natural set of quad aces. Other than missing out on great hands for non deuces games, I was able to play on this machine about an hour before my 3rd $20 of the day was gone.
I decided to try my luck at the Emerald Deuces machine by the pit. This $20 only lasted about 15 minutes. I then went upstairs to see if a seat was open for the quarter progressive jacks or better. I told myself this would be the last $20 of the day. I decided on 8-5 bonus instead of 9-6 jacks for some reason. About 5 minutes in, I hit quad 2’s. No way! You have to be kidding me, I’ve been playing Emerald Deuces for the last two hours, leave and go to another machine and hit would have won me $300 on nickels and instead I win $50 on quarters. At this point, I was at least excited that I had one something. My meter was now around $68. I told myself I wouldn’t go below $60 and call it a day with only a $40 lost. When I got close to $60 I hit quad jacks which put me a little over $90. I made my quite line $80 in credits. Shortly after that I hit quad kings. Right after that, Kim came through and said she had hit quad aces and was $10 up and wanted to quit. I was actually $20 up at that point and hit the cash out button myself. We were able to put around 1500 point on her sapphire card which meant 30,000 in comp points after the multiple points. And it was a rare winning session!
We also had two ACG coupons for free buffets with 250 points on our cards. We turned those in and went to the buffet. It was the usual Sam’s Town fare. Nothing awesome, but it was filling and free! We decided that we wanted to go down town to Fremont Street to listen to some of the tribute bands that were playing over the next four nights. We parked at the El Cortez and walked down. The first band was the Pat Benatar tribute band playing by the D. They were pretty good, we did get some guitar picks that she threw off the stage during one of her songs. Once they finished their set we made our way to the Main Street Stage by the Plaza.
The band at the Main Street Stage was the Duran, Duran tribute band. It was unique how these bands not only sounded like the real bands, but looked like them at the time. Rio (The name of the Duran, Duran band.) played a set of all of their hit songs. I was really jamming with them. I was amazed at how sparse the crowd was, but this is Vegas with tons of other things to do. They finished their set and we made our way back towards the stage by Binions. Our next band was “Jumping Jack Flash”, a tribute band to the Rolling Stones. They started up and I was a little disappointed. They played a bunch of their older stuff that I had never heard. After about 25 minutes we decided to dip into Binions to get warm and play a little and get some hot chocolate. One note about the Rolling Stones band. The dude that was Keith Richards looked amazing like death warmed over…(The Real Deal). The dude playing Mick looked like Ben Stiller.
We sit down at some hundred play pennies. We both played 9-6 double bonus. We both played 5 hands each and just waited for a waitress. I hit quad queens early and Kim hit quad 2’s. We were doing good when we finally got our hot chocolate. At that point, we both had close to 3 points so we decided to go for 5 points so we could go the kiosk for a chance to win some valuable prizes. What a mistake for me. The machine went ice cold. I ended up $10 down before I got to 5 points. Kim was $4 down. We went to the kiosk and she won $5 free play and I won the mystery gift. I saw some guy walking around with an indoor-outdoor digital thermometer earlier and was excited about that probably being the mystery gift. I waited in line and the lady asked me if I actually wanted to fill out the paper work for the mystery gift. I asked her what it way. She said a bungie cord for my player’s card. What the heck? No she could keep her cord. Kim played her $5 off and ended up a $1 up for the session after taking back the $4 loss before.
We ventured down to the stage by D’s to listen to our last band which was “Don’t Look Back” a tribute to the band Boston. This ended up being my favorite band of the night. They played all the greats from band. It brought back the memory about the original Boston album being the first album I ever bought. I bought the album while in 8th grade from money I earned on my paper route. The band could really rock. When they finished their set, we went into D’s to warm up. It was around 30 with the wind blowing that night to put the wind chill down really low. Kim took a bee line to her nickel Looses Deuces machine and I went to Sigma Racing. We both played long enough to get another hot chocolate and to warm up. Both of us broke even.
Boston was playing their final set when we came out. We listened to a couple of songs, then Kim wanted to hear “Blonde Day”, a tribute to Blonde. I really wasn’t interested, but had to admit I know more of songs than I remembered. She was really good. We headed back to our car when her set was complete. We made our way back to the Suncoast and we were both hungry so we stopped at the snack bar and got two grilled cheese sandwiches with fries and took them to the room. We ate than called it a night.
We both went back to the triple play pennies at 60 cents a pull. Kim was doing good and hit four aces early on to get her $20 buy-in up to the upper 50’s. I was still waiting for my first four of a kind. Kim’s machine started going south and she cashed out and headed to some nickel single line machines. I moved to another triple play machine after losing my first $20. I put another $20 in still looking for that first quad. I blew through another $20 without a single four of a kind. I decided I had enough of this and moved to try me luck on the 10 coin nickel Emerald Ducks that pays $300 or 3000 coins for quad deuces. Oh yes, buy the way I hit deuces twice during the summer on these machines. Well it only took about four minutes for me to be dealt quad 8’s. What in the world? I’ve sit at triple plays for an hour and ½ not getting one set of quads much less being dealt quads? Instead of getting dealt quads for 750 credits, I get dealt quads for 20 credits. Go figure. Well it wasn’t about 5 minutes later when I hit a natural set of quad aces. Other than missing out on great hands for non deuces games, I was able to play on this machine about an hour before my 3rd $20 of the day was gone.
I decided to try my luck at the Emerald Deuces machine by the pit. This $20 only lasted about 15 minutes. I then went upstairs to see if a seat was open for the quarter progressive jacks or better. I told myself this would be the last $20 of the day. I decided on 8-5 bonus instead of 9-6 jacks for some reason. About 5 minutes in, I hit quad 2’s. No way! You have to be kidding me, I’ve been playing Emerald Deuces for the last two hours, leave and go to another machine and hit would have won me $300 on nickels and instead I win $50 on quarters. At this point, I was at least excited that I had one something. My meter was now around $68. I told myself I wouldn’t go below $60 and call it a day with only a $40 lost. When I got close to $60 I hit quad jacks which put me a little over $90. I made my quite line $80 in credits. Shortly after that I hit quad kings. Right after that, Kim came through and said she had hit quad aces and was $10 up and wanted to quit. I was actually $20 up at that point and hit the cash out button myself. We were able to put around 1500 point on her sapphire card which meant 30,000 in comp points after the multiple points. And it was a rare winning session!
We also had two ACG coupons for free buffets with 250 points on our cards. We turned those in and went to the buffet. It was the usual Sam’s Town fare. Nothing awesome, but it was filling and free! We decided that we wanted to go down town to Fremont Street to listen to some of the tribute bands that were playing over the next four nights. We parked at the El Cortez and walked down. The first band was the Pat Benatar tribute band playing by the D. They were pretty good, we did get some guitar picks that she threw off the stage during one of her songs. Once they finished their set we made our way to the Main Street Stage by the Plaza.
The band at the Main Street Stage was the Duran, Duran tribute band. It was unique how these bands not only sounded like the real bands, but looked like them at the time. Rio (The name of the Duran, Duran band.) played a set of all of their hit songs. I was really jamming with them. I was amazed at how sparse the crowd was, but this is Vegas with tons of other things to do. They finished their set and we made our way back towards the stage by Binions. Our next band was “Jumping Jack Flash”, a tribute band to the Rolling Stones. They started up and I was a little disappointed. They played a bunch of their older stuff that I had never heard. After about 25 minutes we decided to dip into Binions to get warm and play a little and get some hot chocolate. One note about the Rolling Stones band. The dude that was Keith Richards looked amazing like death warmed over…(The Real Deal). The dude playing Mick looked like Ben Stiller.
We sit down at some hundred play pennies. We both played 9-6 double bonus. We both played 5 hands each and just waited for a waitress. I hit quad queens early and Kim hit quad 2’s. We were doing good when we finally got our hot chocolate. At that point, we both had close to 3 points so we decided to go for 5 points so we could go the kiosk for a chance to win some valuable prizes. What a mistake for me. The machine went ice cold. I ended up $10 down before I got to 5 points. Kim was $4 down. We went to the kiosk and she won $5 free play and I won the mystery gift. I saw some guy walking around with an indoor-outdoor digital thermometer earlier and was excited about that probably being the mystery gift. I waited in line and the lady asked me if I actually wanted to fill out the paper work for the mystery gift. I asked her what it way. She said a bungie cord for my player’s card. What the heck? No she could keep her cord. Kim played her $5 off and ended up a $1 up for the session after taking back the $4 loss before.
We ventured down to the stage by D’s to listen to our last band which was “Don’t Look Back” a tribute to the band Boston. This ended up being my favorite band of the night. They played all the greats from band. It brought back the memory about the original Boston album being the first album I ever bought. I bought the album while in 8th grade from money I earned on my paper route. The band could really rock. When they finished their set, we went into D’s to warm up. It was around 30 with the wind blowing that night to put the wind chill down really low. Kim took a bee line to her nickel Looses Deuces machine and I went to Sigma Racing. We both played long enough to get another hot chocolate and to warm up. Both of us broke even.
Boston was playing their final set when we came out. We listened to a couple of songs, then Kim wanted to hear “Blonde Day”, a tribute to Blonde. I really wasn’t interested, but had to admit I know more of songs than I remembered. She was really good. We headed back to our car when her set was complete. We made our way back to the Suncoast and we were both hungry so we stopped at the snack bar and got two grilled cheese sandwiches with fries and took them to the room. We ate than called it a night.
