RaleighCraps's Blog

Feb 20 Day 2 Night 3

Went to bed at 4:30, up at 10:00 AM again. If I have any money in my pockets, it seems to prevent me from being able to sleep. I swear if I had unlimited funds, I could go down to the craps tables and not leave for 72 hours. It is Monday, and we are supposed to leave Tues at 1:00 PM, but by now they have realized that the Mardi Gras parade will have the main drag shut down, so they tell us we will be leaving at 11:30 AM instead. Great! We now get to sit in the frigging airport for an additional hour and a half. Oh wait, there are no craps tables there, so perhaps this may be a good thing. Cue the defeatist attitude.

Back to Monday. We head down to the Grand so I can burn my Harrah's Reward points. I have been carrying about $340 worth, and I have almost lost them twice. It is time to spend them and be done with it. I have already decided on my gift, and know I will have a few extra points left over. We get there and decide to hit the lunch buffet first. My Diamond status at Harrah's has ended, and I am barely hanging onto Platinum at this point (putting all my major play in at Beau Rivage), so I only have a BOGO buffet offer. Without thinking about it, I put the BO on my rewards points ($11.99) and we eat. Then I head to credit office to get my gift. OH NO ! I am now 300 points short of the gift. The stupid buffet took 1200 credits and I only had 900 extra. I am sew STOOPID! Now I need 300 credits, and I need them NOW. I cannot play craps to get them, as they won't credit my account until the next day, and I will not be there to cash them in.

I go tell my wife to start racking up my slot points, but after watching her play at the penny slots, I realize it is going to take a while to get to 300. So I head off to find my favorite slot, Texas Tea. I finally find one that is open, pump in $40, and after a few spins realize I am sitting at a Texas Tina. DOH. Don't like this at all, so I cash out my $29.88 and decide to check out the $1 slots. I have never played a $1 slot in my life, but there it is, a $1 Texas Tea game. In goes my $100 bill, and I put in the 29.88 ticket. I notice the credit says 129.00. Hey, where is my $.88 I am thinking, just as the machine spits out a ticket for $.88. Smart ass machine.
I am playing 9 rows, 1 credit, so $9 a spin. My reward points are racking up quick, but even better, I am winning enough to keep me playing. BAM! I get a $150 winner. I keep playing, looking for the bonus game where you pick the oil derricks, and also the bonus of the dividend check. I eventually get to play the oil rig bonus twice, and I get one dividend check. The highest total I had was $250, and I cash out $197. A WIN! But more importantly, I now have 350 reward points, so I truck back to the credit office and get my gift. With that out of the way, I find my wife and tell her she needs to watch me play $1 Texas Tea. $100 bill in, a couple of minor wins and 12 spins later I am busted. She comments how much fun that looked to be, and then proceeded to explain how she had been playing on $200 and was up $200 the whole trip. grrrrrrrrr

So we part company, and I head to , wait for it............., the craps table. $5 game here, so I can go $5 / $50 odds and still have plenty to throw away on the place/buy bets. I decide to play $64 across, and do a full press on the first hit to get me to Buy range. Alas, different casino, same story. No shooter can back up a decent roll with anything other than PSO. have allotted $200 for this game, and it is gone fairly quickly. Amazingly, I hold strong, and do not dip into my pocket for more. This is probably not sound strategy, as the $5 game is a much better fit for my now limited BR. However, I want to make a final push at Beau, and I am looking to maximize my comp dollars, which will happen only at the Beau. And since the Beau pays for our room and flights, it is important I get them the play. So Grand gets me for $200 on the craps table, and $43 on the slots.

Back to the Beau. I settle in with my friends to play some Pai Gow Poker, but this time I don't give them my player card. I need to really investigate this some more. Is the 3 hours of play I get worth adding to my time, if it is only being rated at $25, when my craps play rating is usually around $150+? I think the lower play is actually hurting my rating. For the 3 day trip, I clocked in at 17 hours of craps and 4 hours of Pai Gow, and my wife put another 6 hours on my card in slots. They are getting plenty of hours from me, that is for certain. I log a few hours with them, and then head off to the craps tables about 11:30 PM with the other craps player in our circle. He has been getting stung too, but brought extra with him, so I borrow $1000 to give me a $1000 buy in (I have a few hundred left). I decide to play it cautious and wait for a point to be made, before I start laying serious money on the table, while my buddy goes $90 inside. I get bored doing this though, so I decide to play 1 come bet, 2 if anything hits. I get one shooter who hits my come bets 4 or 5 times, and I manage to go up about $700. Meanwhile, my buddy standing right next to me gets killed. Same game, both right way bettors, I survive and he gets killed. I pay him back the $1000, and I have about $700 to play with, plus the pocket money, so I am okay. Time for my run!

The $10 table is getting full of idiots (see definition in blog 1) so I move to the table behind me, that only has 5 people. Uggh, it is a $25 game, but everyone else is playing $10. (Beau raises the table min when they want to close a table, but they grandfather you in.) So now I have to play $25 on a table with $20 players. Not ideal, but at least I know what I am dealing with, and new riff raff will be minimal. But $700 is light for a $25 game. I play pass line on my roll only, and just place bet 1 or 2 numbers, and expand as numbers get hit. This keeps me playing, and I am actually making money a little bit at a time. I have a nice 4 point roll, 2 of them with $100 odds, one with $150, so now I have some chips. I continue to only play PL on my roll, but play a bit more inside numbers. I have picked out an older gentleman on the table, who has had a couple good rolls, and he and I both play the same game, although he plays all the hardways for $2 / $4, and some for the dealers. I hate that, as it is always a bit messy, but I know if it can get to just the two of us, we might be able to light it up. Finally, the last $10 player leaves, and we look at each other, and up walks a player with $50 in his hand. Haa. He will see the sign and leave. NOPE. Bets it on the field (3x 12) and hits the damn thing. He gets to play for almost 20 minutes, but he was definitely messing up the vibes. Not very scientific I know, but I swear it matters. He left, and finally it was just me just left of stick, and the other gent, center wall on the right. He looks at me and says "Finally, you and me, lets get something going." I reply " I've been waiting for this for an hour." He throws, makes one point, 7 out. I get one point, 7 out. Not a great start, but not bad.

For the next 30 minutes, we trade throws. One guy will have a decent roll, but when the dice pass, it is no good. Probably what we should have done was just pass the dice right back to the guy who just rolled, to see if that could break the mojo. During this time frame, I manage to make some money, as I was not pressing my bets, and fortunately neither of us was PSO. Then he has a PSO, and I come right back with PSO. He was putting $220 or so across, so that really hurt him, and he decided to call it a night. I knew the crew wanted to early out, so I told them I wanted to roll a few more times and would quit. As I watch him walk away, I throw another 4 point roll, along with some nice inside hits. A quick count shows me with 2000 in my rack. Not bad, puts me down about 600 for the trip. Of course, I don't quit. And as soon as I take a chance and put $270 inside, that is the roll I go PSO. Give me a freaking break. I am coloring up for 1293, when another player comes to the table. I tell the box to give me the yellow, but give me back my 293. I will play that since this new guy showed up. We play for another 20 min or so but nothing great. He leaves and I go for one more roll. I play $90 inside, and when one hits, I press them all to $180 inside. So, I am getting either $70 on 6/8, or $$87 on the 5. I get NUTTIN, as I 7 out. Couldn't even make my favorite center field 9 point. Off to bed, at 4:30AM, AGAIN.

Bags have to be ready for pick up at 9:00 AM, so I am up and showered by 8:30. We head down to casino, but the only open table is the crapless table, and there are a lot of players so it is choppy as the Bering Sea in 80 mph storm gusts. Not my kind of game, so I head to Pai Gow to kill time. I sit down, and the dealer wounds me right from the start. However, another dealer replaces her shortly, but I don't know if this is the relief dealer in or out, and I don't ask. The new dealer is way kinder to me, and I actually win back the money I had lost. There were only two of us, and we were each banking. Soon two more joined, and I was debating on playing the Envy Fortune bet, when the other banking player left. So I decided no. Two hands later, straight flush. NOOOOOOO . $250 pay NOT RECEIVED. And I had played it every hand the last 2 sessions on full tables.... timing timing timing. But I am up $100, so not bad. Uh oh, the other dealer is back. Who cares, the cards have turned in my favor. I pushed the first hand she was back, then my straight lost to her higher straight. My three pair lost to her better hand, and my A high straight lost to her damn FLUSH. Down $200 and done. Three premo hands, and all three losers. To make it worse, I had banked on one of the hands, so I would have won that hand if I had not banked.

Pushed back my loser chair, stood to my loser feet, and walked my loser ass to the cafe for a loser's breakfast. Counted what was left of my loser BR, and decided going through TSA would not be a hassle this trip home. Had a good breakfast, better than a loser should have, and got on the bus for the loser trip home. Had a good bloody Mary at the airport, got on the plane, and slept like a person who had LOST sleep for the past three days.

Can't wait for the BR to recover so I can do it again! After all, what are the odds of two bad trips in a row? Can't be much. I'll probably get it all back the first day next trip. See y'all in 6 months.

Feb 19 Day 1 Night 2

Went to bed at 6:30 AM, and was up about 10:00AM. Headed to craps table while I waited for my wife and the other 3 members of our group. Played for an hour, ended up down $100. Three of us head over to IP to play Hot Shots slots. I have had 3 big losses and no wins on the IP craps tables, and have no desire to play there. I run through $40 on the Hot Shots and then go off to look for Pai Gow Tiles. Unfortunately, there are no Pai Gow tiles to be found in Biloxi, so I end up opening a Pai gow poker table. I play heads up, banking every other deal, for about 20 minutes, at which point the table fills in. Player at 3rd base is getting killed, so after 15 hands or so he moves next to me. A friend of his comes to the table and starts to sit at 3rd base, but the guy next to me warns him that is a cold spot. Player sits anyway, and proceeds to go on an amazing heater. Bought in for $400, and after 2 wins was betting $100 and $200. He must have won 10 straight hands. I played for 3+ hours and ended up $400. When I left, 3rd base had well over $2000 in front of him. They had the fortune and a progressive pot bet, at $140K btw. I played the progressive after some cajoling from the table.

Back to the Beau around 5:30PM, in time to pick up tickets to "Yesterday, the Beatles". That is the second time we have gone to see them. Not sure I would pay for it, but it is a good show when you are a comp. Show is at 7:00, so kill time playing Pai Gow Poker. I needed to play a game that would go easy on my remaining bankroll for a bit. I don't like messing with the quarters, so I only bet $40, $60, or $80 with an occasional $100. I will bank if the others don't mind. The reason I mention the bet levels is because when I checked with the host on my play, the damn floor had me rated at Pai Gow Poker for $25. How do you get a $25 rating when the minimum I ever bet was $40 ? Do they cut your bets in half when you play Pai Gow? In any event, my friends convinced me to play the fortune $5 ENVY bet at least when the table is full. I hit a few hands, and ended up about even for the session. After the concert went back to the table and played for a couple more hours down about $200, but then I made two $100 bets, won, and left even.

Back to the craps table. Like a moth to black light, mosquito to the electric zapper, mouse to the little cube of cheese, lamb to slaughter.......
Played for a couple of hours, until 4:30AM. Went down about $400, stayed there for about an hour, got back to even, back down $400 for another hour. I would hold at that level for a long time, then get a shooter to get me back to even, but never two shooters in a row. If a shooter made 2 points, the next one was guaranteed to go PSO. I seriously cannot recall where two shooters made a point back to back in any of the first 2 days. It is almost impossible to get ahead on tables like this. But I was racking up hours, and not getting hurt. Unfortunately, I ended down again, leaving me about $900 for the last day. :(

And yes, if you want to know, this craps session was rated much lower than I have been rated in the past, for the same type of play, although they did manage to get the hours right. Since I was mostly just playing $50 odds and starting $44 to $56 inside, it was not worth complaining about. Getting rated $50 avg vs $80 avg doesn't really buy you anything. IMO, it is the $180 and above that gets the extra perks.

Feb 18-21 trip to Beau Rivage - Night 1

Since I enjoy reading other blogs on gambling trips, I have decided to ante up one more.

We left Sat evening on an MGM junket flight. There are two travel groups on the full 737 (300 I think). The 2.5 hr trips are always fun on the way down. Free alcohol, alcohol being a loose term here. I think it is probably closer to turpentine, but you can't beat the price. A $5 tip is usually enough to get them to stop back a couple of times for refills, if your intestines are impervious to acetone. We also play money bags, $1, $5, $10, $20, and a $100 bag when there is enough interest. For those that don't know, you put your seat number on the bill, and throw it in the bag with the same denominations. The bag goes back up front, a bill is pulled out, and someone is already positive on the trip. Have played this game a dozen times, never won, but always felt it was fair. On this trip though, the $1 bag winner was in the back of the plane, while the other bag winners were ALL from the same row #3! I think a 737 seats 149, in 30 rows. Anyone care to calculate what are the odds that 3 out of 4 winners all come from the same row? Needless to say, no one wanted to play the $100 bag after that.

Since we had left on a Sat evening, we were able to leave 30 minutes early, which got us to the Beau Rivage about 10:30 PM. Another nice thing about junkets is you hand over your luggage when you board the plane, and never think about it until you go to your room, and there it is! If we could just leave from a private hanger and avoid the TSA, that would be like hitting a parlay on snake eyes 3 times in a row, starting with a $10 bet. :-D Nirvana

On the craps table by 11:00PM. Was prepared to just go lay down, and go back to the tables when the idiots cleared away, but it was not overly crowded, and I found a spot on a $10 table.
Definition time. Idiots (n) - 1. players who repeatedly make late bets. 2. Players who play horn anything bets on most every roll, with odd amounts, and don't even know when they win, or when they are even on the damn bet. 3. Players who bet really strange amounts on the place/buy bets, almost like they are trying to confuse the dealers. 4. The player who added $2 to his odds bet for the dealers after every throw of the dice, and had to hold his hand on the stack because it got too tall. (actually he was a ****** idiot). --- Back to the gambling report......

Instead of buying in for $1000, I buy in for $700, which was the same amount I did on my last $2400 winning session, even though I am not the least bit superstitious. Or am I? I generally play $10 PL bet, with between $50 - $100 odds. I will place bet 6/8 for $18-$30, and buy bet 5/9 for $20-$30. I used to press it all to get to a $90 bet asap, but now I press some amount each hit, but bank some too. First shooter nets me +$100 and I am happy the dice have honored my buy in strategy. Alas, shooters 2,3, and 4 are all ZEROS, proving that there are, in fact, zeros in a craps game, and my smile is now upside down. ARRGG, I bet it was $600 I bought in with before. Dice come to me, and I proceed to set a point of 8. I then throw 11, three times in a row, and no one is playing the yo. I throw a few place numbers, but can't make the easy 8 point. I proceed to bleed chips for the next 3 hours, getting down about $600 at one point. BINGO, finally get a shooter who hits my 6/8 place bets, and my 5/9 buy bets, along with a few points. Counting bets I could pull back from the table, I am back to even. I think about walking note to self. STOP thinking and START walking when you get back to even, but I don't want to leave a table that has finally gotten hot. The next 2 ice cubes both go PSO, PSO, so I'm instantly back down $220. Now who's the idiot?

There was one other noteworthy roll in this first session. I occasionally play come bets and decided to play a come bet every roll on one shooter. I made my PL bet with $50 odds, and bet $20 to $30 on the remaining numbers across. When the come bet was set, the place/buy bet + winnings would help get my odds to $50. If my come bet hit, I would press the odds to $100. Playing like this, I managed to get bases loaded. $10 come bet and $100 odds on every number. I was primed to make some money now. Shooter then went into the yo, craps, craps, yo sequence and I could feel the vibration in the train wheel. My gut was telling me to call off my odds, but the gambler in me did not want to lose out on hitting my come bet with full odds. If you don't know where this is headed, you have never played craps....... I leave the bets working, and the shooter rolls the seven. Lights out. $760 gone, $700 of which I could have saved.

I have mentioned this elsewhere, but I have started working my come bet odds on the come out rolls. Prior to the bases loaded sequence, I had three come bets on the table, which is generally about the point where I will not work them, but I was feeling it, so I let them work. Also ,the 4 and the 10 were two of my numbers, and the 2x odds payout is a sweet hit, when the shooter has just set a tough point for the table. Shooter throws........ a 7. Uggh $300 in odds lost. Later, I have 2 come bets up, with $150 odds, and again I work them. 7. WTH! OH fer TWO. Down $450 on 2 throws. I will still play that way, because I feel it works over the long haul, but man did it bite me this trip.

I quit at 6:00 AM down $900. Lost more than I would have liked, but I have 7 hours of play in the books, and I had two good chances at finishing in the money, but fate said otherwise. In reviewing my trips I have found that the difference between my winning sessions and the losing ones usually comes down to the big roll. There is almost always at least one big roll (or perhaps 3 good rolls in a row) at some point in my session. If I am playing that roll normally and get some early presses in, I will make a lot of money,and virtually guarantee a winning session. (The bases loaded is a great example of what could have been the big roll. If I could have squeezed just 2 more numbers out of that shooter I would have had 300-500 more in my bank,and 5 numbers would have put me up $1000. Instead, the 7 out just made it an average roll. I made a little the roll, but most of my winnings were on the table and didn't pay off.

Final note on this first session. Shifts changed at 4:00 AM and I was not paying enough attention, so I didn't ask the outgoing box for my rating. When I left at 6:00 AM the box could only say he rated me at $90, but had no clue about the first 5 hours. $90 was about right as the table was very choppy and I was just floating along waiting for something to make it interesting. Turned out I should have paid more attention. Damn box for the first 5 hours rated me at $75. The style I was playing in the past would always get me a $150-$180 rating. Poor ratings was a definite problem on this trip, including a 3 hour session on a $25 table where there were only 6 of us playing. They completely lost track of me and gave me NO PLAY. I raised hell with the casino host on that one, and a floor boss. They said they would review the tapes and I should come back in a couple of hours. When I walked back in, the host addressed me by name and said they reviewed my claim, and agreed I was at the table for the 3 hours. This play was from 12:00AM to 3:00AM and once again a shift change occurred. I had played 45 minutes on the new box, and he had me rated at $275, but only for 15 minutes. They also 'claimed' they adjusted my play to 45 minutes at the $275 rating.

I'm not sure I believe they would review security tapes for this, and instead feel they are either straight bs'ing me, or perhaps they did credit my hours, but never reviewed the tape. However, the fact that the host recognized me was a bit strange, AND, I do not remember telling him that I had played for 45 minutes with the new shift. I knew from the prior talk with the host that they had me at 15 minutes, and I had told him that was not even close to correct. I'm pretty sure it is just BS.
LESSON LEARNED. ALWAYS engage with the pit/box early and get that rating established BEFORE the shift changes. It is too damn important to leave to chance.