This trip took place Nov. 4-8. We booked it from monthly Station mail offers for 3 free nights at Red Rock and 1 free night at Green Valley Ranch. We flew nonstop from Tulsa on Friday afternoon on Southwest using 2 one-way Rapid Rewards tickets and arrived in Las Vegas around 5 P.M. We took the car rental shuttle and picked up a Hyundai Sonata at Alamo at a cost of $97 for the four day stay. Almost the entire floor of the car rental facility is still torn up as it has been for the last year or two. I’m not sure what the problem is but it’s taking an awful long time to fix it.
We arrived at RR sometime after 6 P.M. and checked in. We then went down to the casino and I checked the Boarding Pass machine and saw that my wife and I each had 3 multiple point offers. One was for 3x points which was a carry-over from before the recent Boarding Pass point change. The 3x point offer actually translates to 6x points under the new scheme. The 2 others were 6x point offers. There were also signs around that the next day (Saturday) there would be a casino wide offer of 6x points for VP and 10x points for slots. As a result of these offers we would accrue multiple points during our entire stay.
Wes
I activated the 3x points offer for both of us and we both played some VP for about a half hour. We both play $.25 VP. My wife prefers DDB but will occasionally dabble with DW. I prefer DW and when playing DW we play mostly on machines with progressives for the royal and/or 4 deuces with an A. I also usually spend about half my time in the sports book usually betting on the horses. We then decided to try dinner in the Grand Café. On our last several trips we made use of the free buffet coupons that came with the mail offers and we had thus built up a considerable amount of comp points. On this trip we decided to start using the comp points at some of the other restaurants. Coincidentally all the free buffet offers we had gotten had already expired. In any case we had a nice dinner at the Grand Café. We played VP for an hour or two before heading up to the room. We had no significant wins or losses thus far and were both just about even.
On Saturday morning I got up a little early in order to get a good seat in the sports book because this was Breeder’s Cup Saturday. The Breeder’s Cup races started around 10:30 A.M. and by that time the sports book was pretty well packed between the Breeder’s Cup and all of the college football being played. Shortly before noon my wife finds me and shakes me on the shoulder and says to come see. I figure she’s hit something pretty big. If it was just a royal she would just save the ticket and show me later.
For the last two years or so her favorite bank of machines has been a DDB bank with a reversible royal progressive. It’s located on the north side of the casino between the High limit slots and the rest rooms. She has done pretty well on these machines although never coming near the reversible royal. Anyway she drags me to this bank of machines without explaining anything and I do notice as we approach that reversible royal progressive has reset to $12,500.
As we approach her machine I see that in fact she has hit the reversible royal. She was dealt Ah, Kh, 6s, Jh, 10h. She threw away the 6s and drew the Qh. The progressive stood at $24,355.71. After she hit it the machine naturally locked up and they had gone to prepare the W2G. I told her that we ought to ask for $20,000 of it in a check. She agreed. I headed quickly back to the sports book to see the current race I had bet on and then just as quickly returned back to her machine. At that point there were 5 or 6 suits there, more suits together at one place than I had ever seen outside of a shift change. They had returned with the W2G and the money in cash. When we asked about a check they said they couldn’t do it. They said that if we had initially asked for a check they could have done it but once they had brought over the cash there was no turning back. They had never asked initially how we wanted the money. This whole thing made no sense to us but cash it was. They did allow us to deposit $20,000 in the cashier’s cage. They also rounded the prize up. They apparent don’t deal in pennies anymore and thus rounded the prize up to $24,355.75.
A short while later I got curious about what the odds are for hitting a reversible royal. I think I recall that the generally accepted odds for hitting any royal are around 47,000 to 1. To figure the reversible occurrence I calculated that there 120 sequences of a royal (5 factorial) and 2 of those 120 would result in a reversible. Thus the odds of a royal being reversible in sequence are 2 out of 120, or 59 to 1. I then took the 59 to 1 and multiplied it by the 47,000 to 1 and came up with the odds of a reversible royal being just under 2,800,000 to 1. I’m not sure how accurate that is but it seemed like a pretty logical way to calculate it. I then calculated the payout by dividing $24,355.71 by the $1.25 bet and the bet paid off at about 19,500 to 1, a nice payout but it pales by comparison to the odds of getting the hand but that’s just the nature of the beast.
Although the rest of the trip was obviously anti-climactic to my wife’s hitting the reversible royal I will attempt to continue on. I returned to the sports book for the rest of the Breeder’s Cup races and my wife took off on her quest for another reversible royal although she was somewhat deterred by the relative chintzy payout which was now just over $12,500 which of course was her own fault. She did venture over to a $1 machine with a reversible jackpot of around $85,000 but found herself running through $100 bills too quickly and reverted back to her $.25 machines.
I did ok on a couple of early races and then started going downhill. A race or two towards the end had a field that appeared as though the Europeans could dominate. There was no big favorite and the prices were pretty good. There were 5 European horses and all the exacta combos were in the $70 to $90 range. I decided to box 4 of the Europeans in a $5 exacta and lo and behold the Europeans came in first and second and the exacta paid $71. Alas the horse that came in first was the 5th European horse that I hadn’t included in the bet.
Around 4 in the afternoon we decided to try the LBS hamburger place. The hamburgers were pretty good although a little pricey but we were using comp points so it wasn’t as painful. One wrinkle with LBS is that they don’t have a comp machine yet so you have to go just outside the restaurant to a comp machine. Also you’ve got to round up to the nearest dollar and the tax is included. In those restaurants that have a comp machine you aren’t charged the tax and you pay the exact points with no rounding up.
About 6:30 we headed over to Sunset Station where we had tickets to see Judy Collins. We hadn’t been to Sunset Station for several years. It still looks pretty nice outside and in but it was pretty smoky and a lot of the VP machines were pretty old and not a lot of good pay scales although we didn’t look around that much. The show was in the Club Madrid which is a cozy little venue with good sightlines and good acoustics. The seats/seating arrangement left a little bit to be desired. The venue holds about 500 and the middle section had small straight-back cushioned seats. The problem was that they set the rows up with little or no legroom. To get to the middle of an occupied row required the dexterity of a Cirque performer. The side sections had simple somewhat flexible plastic seats which weren’t too bad. We had the cheap seats ($29) about half way back on the right side. We had plenty of legroom as the walkway the cocktail waitresses used was right in front of us. That may sound like it could have been a problem but it was not.
Judy Collins gave an excellent performance. Despite being 72 years old her voice has lost very little if anything from her prime years. She was on stage for a full hour and a half with no breaks other than leaving for a minute to return for an encore. Her arranger accompanied her on the piano and was excellent. He did leave the stage for about 15 minutes in the middle and Judy Collins took to the piano and accompanied herself for two songs. Judy Collins song selection ranged from folk to country to pop and a little gospel with her iconic version of “Amazing Grace”. It was a very enjoyable evening more than worth the price of admission.
We returned to Red Rock and played a little more VP before retiring after what can certainly be termed an eventful day.
On Sunday I went down to the sports book to read the Sunday paper. By 10:00 A.M. the sports book was rocking. It was standing room only. The reason – pro football rules in Vegas. The sports book remained packed all day and early into the evening through the end of the Sunday night game. As one of the betting clerks explained the next day, everyone’s in the yearly football contest, you get to watch every game, and drinks are free.
As the day wore on my wife re-attacked the vp machines and I split time betting between a horse race or two, getting a glimpse of a football game or two, and some vp play. My wife was experiencing a couple of nice 4oak’s with some slow steady losses. I was just having very slow steady losses. Later in the afternoon we succumbed to the buffet. We used points but for the first time in I don’t know how many years we didn’t get the 25% discount for our gold status. That now requires platinum status which my wife would attain the next day. More about the new points system later.
After the buffet it was back to the machines. After some more methodical losses I decided to make my one slot play that I do every trip. My machine of choice is Invaders from the Planet Moolah. This is one of Noahcat’s favorites that I tried once and did well on and so try a time or two on each of our trips. I dropped in $40 and after about half a dozen plays the cows started mooing, the space ship landed, and the James Earl Jones type voice announced that the aliens had landed. This resulted in 7 free plays. During the 7 free plays all hell broke loose and I got 15 more free plays. During those free plays I got an additional 7 free plays. When the dust finally settled and I played out to get to an even number I cashed out at $120 for a nice $80 win.
We retired for the night both of us having accumulated modest losses for the entire trip excluding the 24K win.
On Monday we packed up and headed to GVR for a one night stay. We did remember to retrieve the $20k they we had left at the cashier. We haven’t been doing real well in recent stays at GVR and that pattern continued with slow steady losses with occasional small wins to partially offset them. We decided to have dinner at Terre Verde the Italian restaurant at GVR. We again used comp points for this meal. If anyone’s a fan of shellfish you’ve got to try the Shellfish Diavolo at Terre Verde, it’s outstanding.
After we returned to the room for the night I tried tallying up our play and results. Tallying up our play was a little difficult because of various point bonuses. All of our VP play was at 6x points but the small amount of slot play was at 10x points and the race and sports book has a variety of point bonuses. Points earned in the race and sports book are only good for comps and do not qualify for cash back or free slot play. When you redeem points for comps they take them first from the race and sports book points, if you have any, which are kept separate on your account.
I was able to accurately track our comp usage and accumulation. We had decided to start using comp points for a variety of food choices and accomplished that by using $171 worth of food comps. However our comp totals actually increased as we earned $196 worth of comps during the trip. The best I could guess was that we put around $31k to $32k through the machines and race and sports book and when all was said and done we each lost about $1k not counting the $24k win. Even without the $24k win it wasn’t a particularly bad trip, however the $24k win does put things in a somewhat different light.
On Tuesday morning we checked out and headed for the airport. At one point we considered trying to get a cashier’s check for the $20k but never followed up on it. My wife stashed one wrap of $10k in her purse and we put the other wrap in our carry on. Despite some nervousness carrying all the cash the trip home was uneventful. The day after we got home I went to deposit the $20k in the credit union. The clerk was actually a little rattled at the size of the deposit. When she first input the deposit and checked it she said ‘oops’. She had keyed in an extra zero and the deposit was $200,000. She had to reverse it and put in the proper amount. Then we had to fill in some federal form dealing with large cash deposits. My wife has already started to put a dent into the $20k with a little house remodeling but she’s retaining the bulk of it as her future gambling stash which I must say was well earned.
We arrived at RR sometime after 6 P.M. and checked in. We then went down to the casino and I checked the Boarding Pass machine and saw that my wife and I each had 3 multiple point offers. One was for 3x points which was a carry-over from before the recent Boarding Pass point change. The 3x point offer actually translates to 6x points under the new scheme. The 2 others were 6x point offers. There were also signs around that the next day (Saturday) there would be a casino wide offer of 6x points for VP and 10x points for slots. As a result of these offers we would accrue multiple points during our entire stay.
Wes
I activated the 3x points offer for both of us and we both played some VP for about a half hour. We both play $.25 VP. My wife prefers DDB but will occasionally dabble with DW. I prefer DW and when playing DW we play mostly on machines with progressives for the royal and/or 4 deuces with an A. I also usually spend about half my time in the sports book usually betting on the horses. We then decided to try dinner in the Grand Café. On our last several trips we made use of the free buffet coupons that came with the mail offers and we had thus built up a considerable amount of comp points. On this trip we decided to start using the comp points at some of the other restaurants. Coincidentally all the free buffet offers we had gotten had already expired. In any case we had a nice dinner at the Grand Café. We played VP for an hour or two before heading up to the room. We had no significant wins or losses thus far and were both just about even.
On Saturday morning I got up a little early in order to get a good seat in the sports book because this was Breeder’s Cup Saturday. The Breeder’s Cup races started around 10:30 A.M. and by that time the sports book was pretty well packed between the Breeder’s Cup and all of the college football being played. Shortly before noon my wife finds me and shakes me on the shoulder and says to come see. I figure she’s hit something pretty big. If it was just a royal she would just save the ticket and show me later.
For the last two years or so her favorite bank of machines has been a DDB bank with a reversible royal progressive. It’s located on the north side of the casino between the High limit slots and the rest rooms. She has done pretty well on these machines although never coming near the reversible royal. Anyway she drags me to this bank of machines without explaining anything and I do notice as we approach that reversible royal progressive has reset to $12,500.
As we approach her machine I see that in fact she has hit the reversible royal. She was dealt Ah, Kh, 6s, Jh, 10h. She threw away the 6s and drew the Qh. The progressive stood at $24,355.71. After she hit it the machine naturally locked up and they had gone to prepare the W2G. I told her that we ought to ask for $20,000 of it in a check. She agreed. I headed quickly back to the sports book to see the current race I had bet on and then just as quickly returned back to her machine. At that point there were 5 or 6 suits there, more suits together at one place than I had ever seen outside of a shift change. They had returned with the W2G and the money in cash. When we asked about a check they said they couldn’t do it. They said that if we had initially asked for a check they could have done it but once they had brought over the cash there was no turning back. They had never asked initially how we wanted the money. This whole thing made no sense to us but cash it was. They did allow us to deposit $20,000 in the cashier’s cage. They also rounded the prize up. They apparent don’t deal in pennies anymore and thus rounded the prize up to $24,355.75.
A short while later I got curious about what the odds are for hitting a reversible royal. I think I recall that the generally accepted odds for hitting any royal are around 47,000 to 1. To figure the reversible occurrence I calculated that there 120 sequences of a royal (5 factorial) and 2 of those 120 would result in a reversible. Thus the odds of a royal being reversible in sequence are 2 out of 120, or 59 to 1. I then took the 59 to 1 and multiplied it by the 47,000 to 1 and came up with the odds of a reversible royal being just under 2,800,000 to 1. I’m not sure how accurate that is but it seemed like a pretty logical way to calculate it. I then calculated the payout by dividing $24,355.71 by the $1.25 bet and the bet paid off at about 19,500 to 1, a nice payout but it pales by comparison to the odds of getting the hand but that’s just the nature of the beast.
Although the rest of the trip was obviously anti-climactic to my wife’s hitting the reversible royal I will attempt to continue on. I returned to the sports book for the rest of the Breeder’s Cup races and my wife took off on her quest for another reversible royal although she was somewhat deterred by the relative chintzy payout which was now just over $12,500 which of course was her own fault. She did venture over to a $1 machine with a reversible jackpot of around $85,000 but found herself running through $100 bills too quickly and reverted back to her $.25 machines.
I did ok on a couple of early races and then started going downhill. A race or two towards the end had a field that appeared as though the Europeans could dominate. There was no big favorite and the prices were pretty good. There were 5 European horses and all the exacta combos were in the $70 to $90 range. I decided to box 4 of the Europeans in a $5 exacta and lo and behold the Europeans came in first and second and the exacta paid $71. Alas the horse that came in first was the 5th European horse that I hadn’t included in the bet.
Around 4 in the afternoon we decided to try the LBS hamburger place. The hamburgers were pretty good although a little pricey but we were using comp points so it wasn’t as painful. One wrinkle with LBS is that they don’t have a comp machine yet so you have to go just outside the restaurant to a comp machine. Also you’ve got to round up to the nearest dollar and the tax is included. In those restaurants that have a comp machine you aren’t charged the tax and you pay the exact points with no rounding up.
About 6:30 we headed over to Sunset Station where we had tickets to see Judy Collins. We hadn’t been to Sunset Station for several years. It still looks pretty nice outside and in but it was pretty smoky and a lot of the VP machines were pretty old and not a lot of good pay scales although we didn’t look around that much. The show was in the Club Madrid which is a cozy little venue with good sightlines and good acoustics. The seats/seating arrangement left a little bit to be desired. The venue holds about 500 and the middle section had small straight-back cushioned seats. The problem was that they set the rows up with little or no legroom. To get to the middle of an occupied row required the dexterity of a Cirque performer. The side sections had simple somewhat flexible plastic seats which weren’t too bad. We had the cheap seats ($29) about half way back on the right side. We had plenty of legroom as the walkway the cocktail waitresses used was right in front of us. That may sound like it could have been a problem but it was not.
Judy Collins gave an excellent performance. Despite being 72 years old her voice has lost very little if anything from her prime years. She was on stage for a full hour and a half with no breaks other than leaving for a minute to return for an encore. Her arranger accompanied her on the piano and was excellent. He did leave the stage for about 15 minutes in the middle and Judy Collins took to the piano and accompanied herself for two songs. Judy Collins song selection ranged from folk to country to pop and a little gospel with her iconic version of “Amazing Grace”. It was a very enjoyable evening more than worth the price of admission.
We returned to Red Rock and played a little more VP before retiring after what can certainly be termed an eventful day.
On Sunday I went down to the sports book to read the Sunday paper. By 10:00 A.M. the sports book was rocking. It was standing room only. The reason – pro football rules in Vegas. The sports book remained packed all day and early into the evening through the end of the Sunday night game. As one of the betting clerks explained the next day, everyone’s in the yearly football contest, you get to watch every game, and drinks are free.
As the day wore on my wife re-attacked the vp machines and I split time betting between a horse race or two, getting a glimpse of a football game or two, and some vp play. My wife was experiencing a couple of nice 4oak’s with some slow steady losses. I was just having very slow steady losses. Later in the afternoon we succumbed to the buffet. We used points but for the first time in I don’t know how many years we didn’t get the 25% discount for our gold status. That now requires platinum status which my wife would attain the next day. More about the new points system later.
After the buffet it was back to the machines. After some more methodical losses I decided to make my one slot play that I do every trip. My machine of choice is Invaders from the Planet Moolah. This is one of Noahcat’s favorites that I tried once and did well on and so try a time or two on each of our trips. I dropped in $40 and after about half a dozen plays the cows started mooing, the space ship landed, and the James Earl Jones type voice announced that the aliens had landed. This resulted in 7 free plays. During the 7 free plays all hell broke loose and I got 15 more free plays. During those free plays I got an additional 7 free plays. When the dust finally settled and I played out to get to an even number I cashed out at $120 for a nice $80 win.
We retired for the night both of us having accumulated modest losses for the entire trip excluding the 24K win.
On Monday we packed up and headed to GVR for a one night stay. We did remember to retrieve the $20k they we had left at the cashier. We haven’t been doing real well in recent stays at GVR and that pattern continued with slow steady losses with occasional small wins to partially offset them. We decided to have dinner at Terre Verde the Italian restaurant at GVR. We again used comp points for this meal. If anyone’s a fan of shellfish you’ve got to try the Shellfish Diavolo at Terre Verde, it’s outstanding.
After we returned to the room for the night I tried tallying up our play and results. Tallying up our play was a little difficult because of various point bonuses. All of our VP play was at 6x points but the small amount of slot play was at 10x points and the race and sports book has a variety of point bonuses. Points earned in the race and sports book are only good for comps and do not qualify for cash back or free slot play. When you redeem points for comps they take them first from the race and sports book points, if you have any, which are kept separate on your account.
I was able to accurately track our comp usage and accumulation. We had decided to start using comp points for a variety of food choices and accomplished that by using $171 worth of food comps. However our comp totals actually increased as we earned $196 worth of comps during the trip. The best I could guess was that we put around $31k to $32k through the machines and race and sports book and when all was said and done we each lost about $1k not counting the $24k win. Even without the $24k win it wasn’t a particularly bad trip, however the $24k win does put things in a somewhat different light.
On Tuesday morning we checked out and headed for the airport. At one point we considered trying to get a cashier’s check for the $20k but never followed up on it. My wife stashed one wrap of $10k in her purse and we put the other wrap in our carry on. Despite some nervousness carrying all the cash the trip home was uneventful. The day after we got home I went to deposit the $20k in the credit union. The clerk was actually a little rattled at the size of the deposit. When she first input the deposit and checked it she said ‘oops’. She had keyed in an extra zero and the deposit was $200,000. She had to reverse it and put in the proper amount. Then we had to fill in some federal form dealing with large cash deposits. My wife has already started to put a dent into the $20k with a little house remodeling but she’s retaining the bulk of it as her future gambling stash which I must say was well earned.
