December 31: It’s New Year’s Eve and one of the craziest days in this crazy town. I woke up fairly early and decided to head down to the casino at Suncoast after a quick shower. I was going to put 300 points on Kim’s and my card before she woke and was ready to go. The reason is that they were running a promotion for a free lunch buffet with that many points earned. I sit down at some nickel triple plays that had 9-6-5 double bonus. This time I was running good, I hit bonus cards on all three low cards but never the aces. I finally had 300 points on both cards and was up $17 when I headed back up to the room.
I actually woke Kim up when I entered the room. She said she was going to take her time and I was welcome to go back down and play a little more, or I could just wait in the room. Well that’s a no brainer so I headed back down to that same lucky triple machine. What happen to my wonderful quad filling machine that I left just moments before. Needless to say, I played another hour and instead of ending $17 up, I was now $17 down. I guess I should have stayed in the room and watched Jerry Springer instead of playing some more.
I came back up to the room and we packed our stuff for the final two nights of the trip. We would be staying at Arizona Charlies on Boulder for the next two nights. I didn’t have a promotion, but was able to book a suite for $60 a night. I figured this was about as cheap as a low roller like me was going to be able to find on New Year’s Eve. We got our stuff to the car then headed back to eat the buffet. It was average to say best. I guess if I had to rank the Boyd Buffets it would go like this: 1. MSS, 2. Orleans, 3. Gold Coast, 4. Sam’s Town, 5. SunCoast.
We waddled out of the buffet and headed over to the Texas Station. We wanted to buy some tickets for the musical “Grease” that was going to be performed on New Year’s Eve at 7:30. Tickets were $30 in their website. I went to the player’s club to buy the tickets and gave the boothling my Visa. She said what do you want me to do with this? I said whatever you do, don’t do what my wife does with it which is spend, spend, spend. She laughed and tossed it back to me. She said she could give us some tickets. I said great and we were on our way.
Our next destination was Sam’s Town. They were giving away $500 every 15 minutes to two slot players and one table player. We figured that if both of us play the tables our chances of being drawn is 2 out of around 150, verses 2 chances of 2 out of 2000 on the machines. Our strategy was to play for about 4 hours at the $5 Pia Gow table in hopes of one of names being drawn. I virtually never play table games any more, but this seemed to be our best chance to win the drawing without a higher variance from any other game.
Pia Gow is mainly a game of pushing with the dealer. Somehow I managed to lose the first 7 hands I played without even a push. At one time I had 4 wins vs. 16 loses before I quit counting. I did manage a little bit of recovery. After about 4 hours of play I cashed in $55 down and Kim was $43 down. We never did have our names called. One side note however, there was a guy at our table and his wife won one of the $500 drawings. She was at the Let it Ride table. I don’t play the Dragon Progressive due to the huge house advantage. He was playing it for $1 along with the regular bonus for $1 a hand. He got a royal flush that paid $150 on the regular bonus and another $500 on the Dragon Progressive. Him and his wife had a great day needless to say.
We went by Arizona Charlie’s to check into our room. It was a big suite with two separate rooms which was nice. The bad part that is was decorated in early 1970. No time to waste, it was on to the Texas Station for the Grease musical. We got there around 6:30 and found out the show didn’t start until 8:00. So why not play a little video poker? We both played on Kim’s card to help get her to the next level. We played some ten coin single line machines that had 7-5 bonus. Well an hour later and $52 for me and $4 for Kim it was time for the show.
The show was a nice production in their Dallas Room. It all the songs from Grease that Kim knew every word to. A nice touch to the show was that they took a break at 9:00 to count down the dropping of the ball in New York City. The show had a live band supporting them and the singers had a great range of voices. The show ended around 9:30 and we were hungry so we went to the café at Texas Station. Kim ordered steak and I ordered chicken parmesan. Both meals were great. I paid with points and we headed out.
We still had almost two hours until midnight. We decided to head back to Sam’s Town and play a little more until midnight. We could have a shot at about 6 to 7 more drawings for $500 and the big one for $5000 at midnight. I sat down at the only open $5 seat I could find and that was the Let it Ride table. Kim went for the machines. I started out hot. I was dealt a pair at 10 or above three times early on. After that, things went cold. I cashed out $15 down and midnight and Kim had lost $24 between video poker and slots. We headed on back to Arizona Charlie’s and crashed for the night.
I actually woke Kim up when I entered the room. She said she was going to take her time and I was welcome to go back down and play a little more, or I could just wait in the room. Well that’s a no brainer so I headed back down to that same lucky triple machine. What happen to my wonderful quad filling machine that I left just moments before. Needless to say, I played another hour and instead of ending $17 up, I was now $17 down. I guess I should have stayed in the room and watched Jerry Springer instead of playing some more.
I came back up to the room and we packed our stuff for the final two nights of the trip. We would be staying at Arizona Charlies on Boulder for the next two nights. I didn’t have a promotion, but was able to book a suite for $60 a night. I figured this was about as cheap as a low roller like me was going to be able to find on New Year’s Eve. We got our stuff to the car then headed back to eat the buffet. It was average to say best. I guess if I had to rank the Boyd Buffets it would go like this: 1. MSS, 2. Orleans, 3. Gold Coast, 4. Sam’s Town, 5. SunCoast.
We waddled out of the buffet and headed over to the Texas Station. We wanted to buy some tickets for the musical “Grease” that was going to be performed on New Year’s Eve at 7:30. Tickets were $30 in their website. I went to the player’s club to buy the tickets and gave the boothling my Visa. She said what do you want me to do with this? I said whatever you do, don’t do what my wife does with it which is spend, spend, spend. She laughed and tossed it back to me. She said she could give us some tickets. I said great and we were on our way.
Our next destination was Sam’s Town. They were giving away $500 every 15 minutes to two slot players and one table player. We figured that if both of us play the tables our chances of being drawn is 2 out of around 150, verses 2 chances of 2 out of 2000 on the machines. Our strategy was to play for about 4 hours at the $5 Pia Gow table in hopes of one of names being drawn. I virtually never play table games any more, but this seemed to be our best chance to win the drawing without a higher variance from any other game.
Pia Gow is mainly a game of pushing with the dealer. Somehow I managed to lose the first 7 hands I played without even a push. At one time I had 4 wins vs. 16 loses before I quit counting. I did manage a little bit of recovery. After about 4 hours of play I cashed in $55 down and Kim was $43 down. We never did have our names called. One side note however, there was a guy at our table and his wife won one of the $500 drawings. She was at the Let it Ride table. I don’t play the Dragon Progressive due to the huge house advantage. He was playing it for $1 along with the regular bonus for $1 a hand. He got a royal flush that paid $150 on the regular bonus and another $500 on the Dragon Progressive. Him and his wife had a great day needless to say.
We went by Arizona Charlie’s to check into our room. It was a big suite with two separate rooms which was nice. The bad part that is was decorated in early 1970. No time to waste, it was on to the Texas Station for the Grease musical. We got there around 6:30 and found out the show didn’t start until 8:00. So why not play a little video poker? We both played on Kim’s card to help get her to the next level. We played some ten coin single line machines that had 7-5 bonus. Well an hour later and $52 for me and $4 for Kim it was time for the show.
The show was a nice production in their Dallas Room. It all the songs from Grease that Kim knew every word to. A nice touch to the show was that they took a break at 9:00 to count down the dropping of the ball in New York City. The show had a live band supporting them and the singers had a great range of voices. The show ended around 9:30 and we were hungry so we went to the café at Texas Station. Kim ordered steak and I ordered chicken parmesan. Both meals were great. I paid with points and we headed out.
We still had almost two hours until midnight. We decided to head back to Sam’s Town and play a little more until midnight. We could have a shot at about 6 to 7 more drawings for $500 and the big one for $5000 at midnight. I sat down at the only open $5 seat I could find and that was the Let it Ride table. Kim went for the machines. I started out hot. I was dealt a pair at 10 or above three times early on. After that, things went cold. I cashed out $15 down and midnight and Kim had lost $24 between video poker and slots. We headed on back to Arizona Charlie’s and crashed for the night.
