rdw4potus's Blog

I received an offer letter for a new job today. I've been wanting to move from a purchasing role to a sales role for a while, and an opportunity has presented itself. I treated myself to Chinese for dinner after I received the letter. Here are the fortunes that I received:

I've determined that it's too hard to write the transitions in and out of the WOVcon related items in my narrative. So I'm just going to put everything here. This might get long...

I left Minneapolis at about 5pm local time on Friday. I flew United, and didn't check a bag. Usually I like United. They're not the nicest people, but they're consistent about their assishness. I can handle a jerk or two, so to me that's preferable to the passive-aggressive experience that I've had with Delta and American. I really should have checked a bag. I always forget how much I hate lugging it around, and the baggage from my flight had reached the conveyors at LAS before I made it to the baggage claim area. Plus, I always sit in the first row of economy, which means that all of my bags needed to go in the overhead. I feel like a jerk when I take up a whole bin by myself. I probably am a jerk for that, although it's not my fault that the airline places their own equipment under the seats in the last row of first class. Anyway...

I arrived in Vegas at about 8:30 on Friday night, snagged my car from Hertz ($74 for 3 days, prepaid), and headed out to Sunset Station. This was the first time I'd used the text alert service from Hertz. That was super sweet! When I landed, an email was waiting on my phone telling me what stall my car was in, and I got to bypass everything at Hertz - including the group of people trying to read the Gold Plus board.

I got to Sunset Station around 9:10, checked in and dropped my bags in the room. I'd requested an upgrade to a suite, which was granted. The kid at the desk said "OK, so your room is comped, and you're upgraded to the suite." I think that the kid at the hotel front desk out semantic-ed me, which was unfortunate but I didn't find out until it was too late. When I checked out, I realized that he meant that I'd pay $0for the room, plus the upgrade fees. That's what I'd expected to happen before I talked to him, but it's not what I thought he'd told me. All trip long, I thought I had avoided the suite upgrade charge on the room. Oh well.

Later friday night, I headed down to Main Street Station to find the folks at the craps table. On previous trips to MSS, I've found no room in their ramp and parked in the surface lot across Main instead. On friday, I tried the ramp and easily found a spot near the stairs. Off to a good start.

When I arrived in the casino, Tiltpoul, Doc and Nareed were playing on a $10 table (they were grandfathered at $5). I am a craps novice, and that was more than I was comfortable spending to learn the game so I watched for a few minutes. It looked to me like everyone was doing relatively well. Some nice easy wins on the pass, some numbers hit, but very few closed out numbers. At least that was my impression. After a few minutes, TIMSPEED and his mother arrived and we decided to go somewhere where we'd all fit at a $5 table. People pleaded with the boxwoman to let us stay at that table for $5, but she was unswayed. Doc, Nareed, and Tiltpoul colored up and went to the cashier. As soon as they walked away, TIMSPEED and I realized that there was a half-empty $5 table right next to the one we were standing at. So we ended up playing at that second table for a while. People were hitting lots of numbers, but never the point. That really kind of sucked when my frightened ass was betting the pass line only with odds. I lost $100 pretty quickly betting $5, usually with double odds. I think most other folks more or less broke even. The crew at MSS, inflexible boxwoman not withstanding, was wonderful. Very lively, good interaction with the players, and no delays or miscues. At about 1am, I called it a loss, said my farewells, and headed to Sunset Station to sleep...Only I didn't go to sleep.

At about 1:30am after arriving at Sunset Station, I decided to play some Pai Gow Poker. I think mostly, I wanted to win back the $100 that I'd lost at MSS, and I wanted to do it on a game I knew. So I played PGP for a couple hours, banking in turn. At 3:00, I called it a night and cashed out with $320 (+120. Succeess!). I like the PGP game at Sunset Station. The dealer button just passes in a circle, the dealers can handle a player bank correctly, and the other players didn't mind too much either (at least not this night.) As an added bonus, around 2am, there was a girl fight at one of the blackjack tables. Sunset is a nice place, so that was a little surreal. The floor supervisor told me that it doesn't happen often, but the last time there was a fight (many months ago, apparently), a guy jumped off the craps table WWE-style onto his opponent on the ground.

On Saturday morning, I stopped by Arizona Charlie's Boulder (f/k/a Arizona Charlie's East), Fremont, and Ditzgeralds on my way to the 4 Queens for WOVcon ][. I'd been hoping to score a new chip from each venue for my collection. I struck out 3 times. All I could find were Arizona Charlie's East chips (Doc had better luck later - Thanks again, Doc!), Fremont only had the same chip that I already had, and the D chips weren't in yet at Ditz's. I lost about $80 total playing at Arizona Charlie's and Fremont while I was looking for chips. Ouch!

WOVcon ][ itself was lots of fun. It's too bad that we couldn't all fit at the same table, but at the same time that's a testament to how good the turn out was. The meal & company were great, and the trivia was fun. I didn't do as well with this year's trivia as I did last year, but I did do well enough to score a new copy of Mike's book (thanks, Mike!). After the lunch and trivia, we headed to El Cortez to play BJ. It was surprisingly crowded, so Doc, Nareed, and Tupp went to play craps while Wiz, Loach, Paisiello, Tiltpoul and I played BJ. The BJ game was good for the most part. Very few suckouts, and only one dealer BJ, so we were all able to stay pretty flat (as far as I could tell). The theatre trivia was really flying between Tiltpoul, Wiz, and Paisiello. At around 4, the last of us called it an event and went our separate ways.

For me, that way was to Laughlin. I wanted new Riverside and Edgewater chips, and I wanted to show Harrah's some play. It turns out that Laughlin was VERY busy for the holiday weekend, and there were shows at both Riverside (George Lopez) and Edgewater (Paul Anka) on Saturday night. I had very different experiences with respect to both shows. At Riverside, I played UTH and won pretty big (+400). There were no big hands, but i didn't lose a hand that I didn't fold in my entire 45 minute session. I did get my new chip, and I remembered why I didn't take one previously. They're creepy as hell. Riverside has two basic chip formats. One has pictures of the property as a then and now kind of thing (that's the chip I had already), and the other has a picture of Don Laughlin. I don't want a picture of Don Laughlin, but I took a chip anyway. When I left Riverside, security tried to deny me access to the ramp because I didn't have a show ticket (apparently, the open air venue is the roof of the garage?!? It took about 10 minutes of wrangling to get the guard to agree to watch me push the down button in the elevator and let me head out to Edgewater.

At Edgewater, I played PGP for about 30 minutes. It was up and down, ending flat (up $3.xx, which I gave the dealer). I found a much less worn $5 chip, so I was happy with that. And I'm pretty sure that I could have seen Paul Anka for free. I know that because I took a wrong turn and walked into the show tent, and nobody stopped me. At all. I only left when i thought to myself "If I stay in here, I'm going to have to listen to Paul Anka...I'd better leave."

Then I headed to Harrah's. I didn't play as much at Harrah's as I'd thought that I might. Mostly, their game selection is really awful. Worse than Edgewater by an order of magnitude, which is really all that needs to be said about that. I did check into my hotel room, but decided to drive back up to Vegas instead.

On my way back to Vegas, I stopped at CalNevAri to see about their 1 table game. The table is there, in the corner, covered by a table cover, some extra restaurant items, and a lot of dust. So much dust that I probably wouldn't use one of the napkins that was on there. Anyway, it was pretty funny. The bartender and all of the patrons were singing along to the radio when I walked it. They're all upper middle aged women. I'm a 31 year old guy. I could swear that the music stopped when i entered, but in retrospect it was only the bartender who stopped singing. And she only stopped long enough to get me to go away. I struck out on that chip.

I got back to Vegas around 12, played at Sunset again until 4, and called it a night. No fights at Sunset this time, and the UTH table was open so I played that instead of PGP. I got pretty well killed, except for one hand where I got quad 9s. That made up for the losses plus a little bit.

I played at Sunset for about 6 hours on Sunday before I headed to Fiesta to meet up with everyone to annoy Dan. I banked on the PGP table for about 4 of those hours. For about an hour, there was a woman at the table who clearly was against the idea of me banking. Only she kept kicking my ass. On the last round of banking, she audibly tsked at me - and then she pulled a royal with $15 bet on the fortune bet (a $2,250 hit). I sure am glad that bonus isn't player banked!

At Fiesta, I'm convinced that the games are rigged. That dirty unethical Mr. Lubin has stacked things against the player for sure! The craps game is so cold, even the dice run away from the table. And the PaiGow Poker game has some kind of rule where the players don't win if the dealer's hand is queen high. But the dealer's hand is only queen high when the players have monster hands. It's trickery, I say! Trickery! Ok, enough...Fiesta was fun. We had a good time, and it was nice to meet Dan. But the craps table couldn't have been colder, so it would have been good if a spot elsewhere had opened up sooner. I bet $3 pass with 1x or 2x odds. I lost $97 in 20 minutes. I won 1 bet (one!) in that time. And that wasn't even a winner 7 - someone closed out a point of 5. So i licked my wounds and sat at the EZ PGP table when a seat opened. That's a great game. Fast and elegant, plus nobody has to play with quarters. I've liked it ever time I've played it. Alas that table was cold as well. The only time I got a really good winningly powerful hand, the dealer was q-high and we pushed. At about 11pm, I bid farewell to Doc, Nareed, and Tupp, and headed back to Sunset.

From midnight Sunday/Monday to about 1:30pm on Monday, I played about 9 hours of PGP. I went on a pretty big roll, and from about 3am-7am, I only really lost when I was banking. That's supposed to work differently, but it never comes out that way for me. Oh, well. I know it's the best play, so I'll keep making it.

All in all, this was a great trip. It was good to see people again, and to meet new folks as well. It's always interesting to meet up in real life. And I even managed to win a bit net for the trip. i think this is the first time I've ever left Vegas a winner.

Sunset Station Notes: $16 resort fee is a bit excessive on a "free" room. $90 upgrade fee is about right for the 2 room suite, with 1/2 bath in the living room and wet bar/kitchenette. Still, when the kid said "your room is comped and you got upgraded to the suite," I really did expect the room to then be free. Oh, well. Overall, the property was excellent. Good mix of table games, slot variety looked OK, VP options were good to great. Food was excellent, though with the holiday I never did brave the buffet line. I booked my room when I thought my fiancee might join me. Looking back, I'd probably use another free room offer (so, $16 room after the resort fee), but not try the upgrade. I didn't need that traveling by myself. Never had a problem parking by the hotel/cafe entrance, though the bowling/theatre side parking was much busier (there was a PBA event in the bowling center).

I do have a couple gripes about the dice table at Fiesta: 1. As I said, I'm a novice player, but I've never seen the dice leave the table that much. Especially shooting in the direction of the steakhouse. Many people had that problem. This is something that Tiltpoul mentioned was a problem as we were waiting to play, so it's not like it's new either. How much does it have to happen before the table surface is deadened in some fashion? 2. Saw a really really horrible call after one of those no-rolls. Guy stick right calls "my bets are off" after the dice left the table. dealer takes down his buy bets, but not hardways. Shooter 7s out. Dealer collects hardways. Guy complains that those are bets too and should have been off given his call. box rules that they need to be called off separately. Box was a real ass about it, almost as if there wasn't someone's money on the line. Borderline unprofessional behavior, and on a cold table where no players were happy. A little goodwill would have gone a long way.

Maybe I'll think of more to add later, but that's what i've got for now. I'll cross-post or summarize in the wrapup thread.

I flew from Minneapolis to Saint Louis and back today, connecting through O'Hare. I was in Saint Louis for about 3 hours, and visited Harrah's and Ameristar. I took the trip because I needed 4 more segments to cross the next frequent flier threshold on United, and because the value of my December offers ($175) was more than the cost of the flight ($116 + fees, about $140). As it turned out, I had really awful luck and only got $115 out of the $175 in free play. Oh, well. At least I also got a story or two out of the trip:

1. I ran into Mike Ditka at O'Hare on the way to Saint Louis. For the most part people left him alone. Except for one guy who went for a little Bill Swerski schtick and said "hey, Coach. Tim Tebow or da Bears, who wins?" To which Ditka simply raised his bottled water and responded "da Bears!"

2. I'm a big fan of Notalwaysright.com. I might submit this one, though I'm not sure they take submissions from other customers. I'm particular about my seats on airplanes. I'm 6'4 and my legs are long for my height, so I usually try to get an aisle seat either in the exit row or in the first row of coach. All that really matters here is that I know damn well what my seat is...

I'm flying on an airbus A320 from MSP to ORD. Coach seats are arranged ABC/aisle/DEF, and my seat is 7C. I've boarded the plane and sat down, as has the passenger in 7A. A woman walks up and says "Sir, you're in my seat." I say "no, I'm not." She says "That's my seat!" I say "7C?" She says "7B!" I say "that's the middle seat." She says "but prefer the aisle." I say "so do I, and this is my seat." She says "you're in my seat!" I say "7c??" She says "no, 7B!!" I say, "that's not this seat. That's the middle seat. Your seat is the middle seat." She says "but I prefer the aisle..."

It was a lot like this exchange from the Kentucky Fried Movie:
The Architect: What are you saying?
The Nurse: Leave her... come back to Montana with me.
The Architect: I could no sooner run away from her than myself.
The Nurse: I'm not asking you to run, I'm asking you to face reality!
The Architect: Whose reality, yours or mine?
The Nurse: My reality AND yours, that's whose!
The Architect: What are you saying?
The Nurse: Leave her! Come back to Montana with me!
The Architect: I could no sooner run away from her than myself!
The Nurse: I'm not asking you to run, I'm asking you to face reality!
The Architect: Whose reality, yours or mine?
The Nurse: My reality AND yours, that's whose!
The Architect: What are you saying?

I never did hear back from Caesars Entertainment about my plan to visit all of their properties in calendar year 2011. I can't help but notice that my plan was very similar to the Great Race to Total Rewards promotion that they ran. At any rate, I managed to visit every single CET property in North America between 7/23/11 and 10/2/11. I even have the (linked) crappy cellphone pictures to prove it.

Kansas City:
Visited: 7/23/11
Harrah's North Kansas City

Council Bluffs:
Visited: 7/24/11
Harrah's
Horseshoe

Harrah's Council Bluffs is very proud of their fitness center...


Hammond, IN:
Visited: 8/7/11
Hammond Horseshoe

Joliet:
Visited: 8/7/11
Harrah's Joliet

Southern Indiana:
Visited: 8/8/11
Horseshoe Southern Indiana

Saint Louis:
Visited: 8/20/11
Harrah's Saint Louis

Metropolis:
Visited: 8/20/11
Harrah's Metropolis

Leaping tall buildings is easy when you're 14 feet tall.

Phoenix:
Visited: 8/31/11
Harrah's Phoenix Ak-Chin

San Diego:
Visited: 9/2/11
Harrah's Rincon San Diego

Someone tried very hard to keep me from getting from San Diego back to Vegas. This fire closed I-15, so I had to take I-10. I blame Fantasy Springs.

Vegas:
Visited: 9/1/11
Caesars Palace
Planet Hollywood
Rio
Harrah's
Paris
Imperial Palace
Flamingo
Bally's
Bill's
O'Shea's

Laughlin:
Visited: 9/2/11
Harrah's Laughlin

Chester:
Visited: 9/4/11
Harrah's Chester

AC:
Visited: 9/4/11
Harrah's
Caesars Palace
Showboat
Bally's
Wild Wild West

Windsor:
Visited: 9/5/11
Caesars Windsor

This was my view for most of the crossing of Lake Michigan on the way from Detroit to O'Hare.

Cherokee, NC:
Visited: 9/10/11
Harrah's Cherokee

Tahoe:
Visited: 9/18/11
Harrah's Lake Tahoe
Harvey's Lake Tahoe

Reno
Visited: 9/19/11
Harrah's Reno

New Orleans:
Visited: 9/29/11
Harrah's New Orleans

Bossier:
Visited: 9/29/11
Harrah's Louisiana Downs
Horseshoe Bossier City

Tunica:
Visited: 9/30/11
Harrah's
Horseshoe
Roadhouse

Biloxi:
Visited: 10/2/11
Grand Biloxi

At first, I was trying to put myself in the pictures, and made a point to always wear the same shirt. Then Hammond Horseshoe threw me out for taking pictures, and Harrah's Joliet wouldn't let me do anything either. I couldn't find anywhere worth photographing at Hammond as I was leaving, but I did take one protest pic on the roof of the garage at Joliet. So I more-or-less abandoned that and just took pictures of the properties from there forward.

Some of the travel was more intense than I'd anticipated during this event. I went from Phoenix to Vegas to San Diego to Laughlin to Vegas to Philly to AC to Windsor in one 5 day period. I was almost strip searched by the Canadians at the tunnel crossing in Detroit. It did *not* help when I said "yeah, I'm just going to Caesars. But I was in AC yesterday, and Vegas the day before that, and San Diego before that." Later, I went from New Orleans to Bossier to Tunica to Biloxi to New Orleans in 4 days.

I spent Sunday 8/7 in the Chicago area, and I was at the newly-opened Rivers Casino for about 4 hours during the afternoon.

Rivers is very conveniently located in Des Plaines, IL. The casino is approximately 5 miles from O'Hare International Airport. It is very close to the Hyatt, Westin, and Marriott Suites hotels on River Road. If you've ever had a flight cancelled at O'Hare, the odds are pretty good that you've stayed at one of those hotels. The casino itself does not have a shuttle to the airport, but it would be very easy to hop on the Hyatt or Westin shuttle and walk the 2 or 3 blocks (respectively) to the casino.

The Rivers Casino has 1050 slots and 48 table games spread out over 43,000 square feet. Unlike most other Chicagoland casinos, the Rivers' machines are in clusters and not rows. I think that will be very nice long-term. There are many more end machines, and it seems that very few people actually want to play mid-row. In the short term, this poses some major traffic flow issues. I would estimate that there were maybe 2000 people at the casino while I was there. With fewer than 1300 seats, there were very many people standing around and the choke points that come with clusters of slots were painfully difficult to navigate.

I had a rental car for the day, since I was also visiting Hammond Horseshoe and Harrah's Joliet on my quest to visit every Caesars' Entertainment property in North America before October 3rd. So I parked my car in the garage at Rivers. The garage structure may have been the highlight of my trip. It was logically laid out, and easy to navigate. Those were rare and appreciated in and of themselves, but the garage also had maybe the coolest feature I've ever seen: parking spot availability lights. Above each parking stall, there is a sensor that determines if the stall is occupied. If it is, the light is red. If the stall is empty, the light is green. So, it's easy to see from the head of a row (or across the lot) whether there are any open spots in the area. I really don't know why more covered lots don't use this system. It made parking about 1000% easier than it was in Hammond or Joliet.

The table games at Rivers featured high limits and comfy chairs. BJ was $15/$25/$50/$100 on the floor, and all seats were taken. In fact, the only open seat I could find at any card-based table game was at a $10 Mississippi Stud table. There was a very nice craps/roulette pit. Craps mins were $10/$15/$20, Roulette mins looked to be $10. Those limits all struck me as high for a sunday afternoon. Slots were mostly of the multi-denom video variety. VP looked to top out at 8/5 JOB. I can't believe they wouldn't have a better game, but of the terminals that I managed to sit at that was the best I could find at any denomination. The player card information area on the machines includes a little TV video screen. There were a few places where the actual TVs were hard to see, so I could see how this would be nice on gameday.

Rivers has several dining options. All of the food at Rivers is laughably expensive. The Buffet bills itself as a bargain at "only" $20 for lunch and $26 for dinner. The burger place, Flipt, runs $10-$20 for a meal. The steakhouse, Hugo Frogs, runs $20-$80. Even the coffee shop is overpriced. I ate at Flipt and at the coffee shop. Flipt cost about $18 for a burger, onion rings, and a soda. The food was very good, but that's about double what it was worth. At the coffee shop, I ordered a fruit tart and a soda. the kid at the counter looked at me and said apologetically "the fruit tart is $6." He didn't move to get it. I had to say "I do want one. That's ok. I mean, that's CRAZY, but whatever, you know?" before he would go get one for me. The total for 1 fruit tart and one soda was $10.50 after tax. Holy. Crap.

I played MS stud for about 2.5 hours during my visit. At a $10 ante, I figure my average bet was about $25. I had amazing luck, and finished up $500. The value of my comps for that 150 minutes of play was about $3. The dealers at the table were excellent. Maybe a little green, but hardworking and good. Sadly, the floorpeople were both incompetent and uppity. One tool in particular berated the dealers so badly that I thought the girl at the next table was going to cry. For a very nice casino, that was just so far out of place that I'm not even sure what to say about it.

Note: Usually when I know I'll be writing a review like this, I bring a little pad and take notes. That way, I get the info right for games that i don't play myself. Unfortunately, the hyper-vigilent security folks at Rivers decided to thwart my effort to write a thorough and positive review and confiscated my notepad. Hopefully I'm mostly right on the slot and craps/roulette info...