A Glorious Rise from the Ashes 7/22 thru 7/25

A Glorious Rise from the Ashes

This was my 3rd trip to Vegas this year. Usually I only go once a year but I have been getting some pretty good offers, work has been quiet and my wife has been cool with me going. This was entirely a gambling trip so the report will only focus on gambling. So, off we go.

Friday, July 22

Depart Manchester, NH at 8:00am on the direct SW flight to Vegas. I love this flight but it is always full. Not a problem as I check in early and was able to get a window seat. Uneventful flight and arrived in Vegas at 10:30am. Rental car from Enterprise was quick and was at the Palms before 11:00am. I am at the Palms on a Wheel of Fortune slot tournament offer. Check in was fine and I got a room on the 10th floor looking South. Played a little and met Tommywishbone and Jerry for a quick lunch at Garduno’s. It was great to meet a few people from the board. Tommy was working the MMA fight and brought us into the arena to look at the set-up and cage. Pretty cool and I don’t follow the sport. Thanks again Tommy for showing us. After the meet, the playing began. Fridays are give away days based on points, so all the 10 play machines were taken. Played around on the 5-play machines and lost everything I touched. By about 4:00pm I was down close to $900. Most trips to Vegas I would have stopped for the day at this point but the degenerate gambler took over and I did something I have never done. Took a cash advance from my credit card. Ended up playing till around 11:30pm and at the end of the night was done close to $1,500. I had managed to earn 39,000 points. In between I did two sessions for the tournament. First score was around 3600 and the second was about 6200. The first score was towards the bottom but my second was second highest in the group. The base entry got you 3 sessions in the tournament. If you earned 60,000 points on VP you got a 4th session and they dropped the lowest score.

Saturday, July 23

Up early and had the breakfast buffet. Not great but it works. Started playing on a 5-play machine on the back wall outside the high limit area. Played for a while and got this nice hand.



Played for another couple hours and got these two hands almost back to back.





Cashed out and in a couple hours was back to positive for the trip.

My luck must have been used up on the VP because by early tournament session score was only 1800. Good thing I played a lot this morning and earned my fourth session. The 4th session was much better with a score of 9,100. I had the highest score in my group so hopefully this will put in for some prize. Played up and down for the rest of the night and was in bed again before midnight.

Sunday, July 24

Up and played for a little while before heading to the tournament brunch at the Garduno’s Vista. The brunch was decent, slightly better than the buffet. The first drawing was for the prizes based upon a random drawing. You earned entries into the drawing based upon points earned. They gave away six prizes ranging from $10,000 to $1,000 in free slot play. I did not win anything in this session. The next drawing was for the tournament prizes. Wendy, one of the ladies I played next to all weekend ended up winning first place for $25,000 in free slot play. A nice couple, Travis and Stephanie won second for $10,000 FSP, someone I don’t know won 3rd for $5,000 FSP. Then the cool part came. I took 4th for $2,5000 in FSP. They read the scores for the prize winners and my score seemed wrong but hell I just won $2,5000 in FSP so I could have cared less. We went through the paperwork and they loaded the FSP on our cards.

Now , while standing in line to get the money loaded I heard Travis and Stephanie asking how to play it through. The slot attendant told them they could play it on anything and Stephanie apparently loves WOF so she was going to play it all through on that. Well, I could not stand it. I explained to them that the best way to get the most value from the FSP was to play VP. They did not know how so I offered to help them. Not stop was the 10 play machines near the Security desk. I had them load $500 onto the machine and taught them how to play. They did quite well and learned quickly. I tried to play mine at the same time but found I could not concentrate on playing my game and helping them make proper decisions so I stopped after $500. They played the full $10k through in about 2 hours and came out with just slightly over $10k in cash. I figured they should get at least 95% back but they did very well. After saying our goodbyes they headed off to celebrate and I played my remaining $2k through. Cashed it out for around $2,350 which is a little below expectations but I was happy. Made my way up to the room to put the money away in the safe and update my notes.

I checked my phone and there was a new voicemail. It was from the Palms tournament folks. Apparently the scores were wrong for the tournament and my actual placing was 2nd not 4th. I could not believe my luck. They loaded the additional $7,500 FSP onto my card and I was ready to play. I called back and left a very nice message thanking them for correcting the scores. Say what you will about casinos and tournaments but I think this speaks volumes about the Palms and their Staff. Based upon this honest correction of an error I will play at their casino for a long time (provided the sale of most of the shares in the company does not change how the casino is operated).

Well, I know have more gambling to do. Played the rest of my FSP through on the 10-play machines. I would load $500 at a time and cash out. Once I had done $2,500 I would cash in the TITOs and go upstairs to update notes and put money in the safe. After playing through the full $10k, I ended up with the following results.

$9,000 through 10-play 9/6 JOB = $8,735 cash
$1,000 through 10-play 9/6 DDB = $854 cash

I probably could have done better playing all JOB but it gets boring some times so I played a little DDB hoping for a good hit.

Ended up playing till 11:30pm again and only had one more good hit.



This makes two for the trip and 7 so far this year.

Monday, 7/25

Up early and played just enough to lose $400. Packed up the car and off to the airport. Plane left on-time at 9:10am but my connection in Midway was delayed a couple times with a couple gate changes. Ended up arriving home about 2 hours later than expected but still very happy.

All in all an excellent trip. The beginning was very depressing as I have never lost so much money so fast and had to pull money from a credit card. For future trips I will not make the same mistake. In the end it worked out because had I not played and earned the points I needed for the tournament it would have been a big loser of a trip. In the end, after all the expenses (airfare, car, food, gambling budget, parking, etc.) I made a profit of over $7,500 for the trip and put through nearly 120k points and got my Hall of Fame card. This big win sets up my gambling bankroll for many more trips plus it should get me some pretty good offers from the Palms.

Good luck on your next trip and hopefully we can all celebrate some big wins.

Excellent, skiteacher! Thanks for the report and congratulations on not only your great tournament win but also for your other excellent VP hits!

I'm very happy to see your grabbing and excellent victory from the jaws of defeat!

As for Palms, I seriously wonder now about the downgrading that I'm reading is going on (although I can't say that I'm surprised that since the new owners are Caesar's Entertainment connected, that they will trash at least many of the pay schedules)!

RecVPPlayer

WOW...what a great trip! I've never done a tournament although I have received offers. Maybe I will sometime! Thanks for a great read!

Excellent report and thank you for sharing.
Congrats on coming in 2nd in the tourney. I'm glad to hear Palms corrected its mistake and you received all the fsp.

Thank all.

RecVP I Have serious doubts that the Palms will do much to downgrade their pay schedules. They live an die by the locals during the week. If they downgrade to CET levels, they will definately go under. The local crowd is too smart to play there when they can do better elsewhere. I think they may modify pay tables for the weekend crowd who are typically much younger and are jus there for the party. I have already noticed that on weekends the 10/6 DDB machines near the Valer are downgraded to 9/5 on weekends. Only time will tell and if they do downgrade I will find another place to play.

Well skiteacher, you bring up a good and interesting point!

If Palms has that newer server-based gaming platform machines (which you are basically saying that they do have if you say that at least some of the pay schedules are getting changed on the weekends), then they could change all of the machines' pay schedules at will (if they all eventually get fitted with that technology) and then the casino could actually "tighten" things up during the weekends and then "loosen" them up again during the week.

I wonder if Palms might have taken some of the better returning machines out temporarily to replace them all (or at least most of them) with the newer server-based machines and then go back and forth between tightening and loosening the pay schedules all at will or if they are removing them permanently!

As for extracting as much Freeplay as possible, even though it may be "boring," I really think that the best way to do that is to play on a good returning and most importantly lower Variance (volatility rate) game and so I'd definitely say that a player would be more likely to end up with more of the Freeplay money playing for example 9/6 Jacks or Better (whose Variance is at about 19.5) as opposed to 9/6 DDB VP (whose Variance is at least 42). The higher that the Variance is, the more likely that it will be prone to wild up and down periods.

Although I also should add in that playing on a single-line game at a lower denomination would spread out the Variance even more than playing multi-handed at the lower denomination. What I mean by this is for example, with the photos that you have with the screenshots, playing on Quarter Five-Play is the equivalent of playing on a $1.25 Single-Line machine and the Ten-Play photo is the equivalent of playing on a Single-Line $2.50 machine.

And so with the multi-handed games, playing all of the lines (unless you were playing that instead of playing at a much higher denomination Single-Line machine) would actually end up making the volatility be even higher. This is because everything is then based on the playing of the first hand. And if that first hand is bad, then it increases the Player's chances of ending up with a lot of bad hands!

RecVPPlayer

Hi S. Great reporting. Love the VP pics. Real nice work with the tournament- that's the way to do Las Vegas.

It was very nice to meet you. Remember, we are at the Palms once a month, every month. If you every want cageside seats for a fight, just let me know.

Wow great wins, congrats. Loved the pics

Wow, what an excellent story!!!!!!

I love flying out of Manchester, but you are right about the planes: always filled to the brim for some reason.

I miss the old days when the middle seat would remain open.

Congrats on your hits and win at the tourney, well done!

Wow, what a great trip...all those hits!
Thanks for the great pics.
And congrats on the tourney win.

I did that credit card advance once long ago...never again.
Same story, thought I wouldn't make it through the trip money wise.
Got the advance, then started winning back.
Paid for that advance for months, even though I immediately paid off the balance.
That cash advance thing is a predatory practice if ever there was one.

Thanks for the report!