That's nice they had room service. I stayed at Paris in early April, no room service.

Does breakfast taste different when down 10k?

the dudes doing the pre slot hype huddle in pre tourn area pic ..lol

ty so much for mentioning that, i totally missed it the first time

leon, really appreciate you also posting menu pics, really makes the experience much more immersive, much more visceral

it puts me down in that chair awkwardly calculating whether to get what i want or get the cost effective options

I've played in a few VP tournaments at locals/downtown joints, but I've never seen one offered on the strip. I did play in a craps tournament at Paris earlier this year, but IME most strip tournaments are slot/blackjack/baccarat.

It looks like they're posing for a photo, but your idea is funnier.

Not really, but it sure tastes better when you're UP.

Definitely one of the best things about our comp situation, I generally don't have to make that choice. As I've said, there are a lot of things I'd never get at the Wynn if I had to pay out of pocket. Their prices are ridiculous.

As far as other tourneys, I think they have a bunch of them. I've seen signs for bac tournaments and heard of them reading other TRs. Same thing with craps and BJ tournies but less often. I'm assuming at least at the Wynn they reserve the table games tournies for big players which is why there isn't much publicity around them.

The only VP tourney I've seen at the Wynn was in 2016 and my dad and I played. I really liked that one and it definitely was something where the skilled, fast player has an edge. As my dad pointed out, he felt very uncomfortable and rushed during the tourney, intuited that he was at a disadvantage, and opined that most people probably WOULDN'T like the VP tournies (for the same reasons I want more of them). I think his thinking is correct, the Wynn is mostly interested in pleasing their base customers and not a few skilled players, and the fact is I haven't seen one since that one time. Shame...

I played a VP tourney long ago at the Four Queens, it was $125 to enter but that paid for your room for the weekend. They got maybe 150 entrants and you played two sessions of I think 500 credits and they totaled your two rounds. Had to get into the top 24 to make the semifinals round and collect any money.

Machines were JOB...but they had the double up option turned on. My first round sucked so in the second round I decided to use the double up option and on one hand I got a full house and doubled up 2 or 3 times and that got me into the top 24.

So the top 24 scores returned for the semifinals and I hit a couple double ups again (most people never used the option and didn't think about it as part of a strategy) and made it into the top 3 spots for the final round. Final round payouts as I recall were $1200 for third, $1800 for second and $5500 for first.

It was me and two guys about my age in the finals and all three of us were trying to double up often. I hit one quad and doubled once and that was enough to bink the tourney.

In every vp tournament I ever played, RFs were almost a requisite for a decent cash. Speed is somewhat helpful, but a RF or a couple of other big hands is far better.

Craps and bj tournaments are where skill is really, really helpful.

one thing that was nice that russ hamilton and mike postle were behind that i really liked was their blackjack tournament format, sadly it was killed by black friday as it was sponsored by UB hoping to increase interest in their bj offerings

you can still find old episodes on youtube somewhere

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultimate_Blackjack_Tour

Oh for sure, you have to make big hands. The tourney I played in the winner hit a royal, and the guy who came in second AND chopped the rebuy hit one too. I actually had a long conversation with the second place guy afterwards, obv he was so happy to hit the royal but neither of us could believe he CHOPPED his rebuy round with someone else- meaning, he literally tied this other person. So presumably that third person also hit a royal, and they still literally ended up with the same amount of credits.

The tourney I played in one had a set number of credits to bet and your score was all your hits. Starting credits were irrelevant, and NO ONE got through them all in the time alloted. So in a situation like that speed and skill are super important, the faster you can cycle hands the more likely you'll potentially make a monster.

Day 4

Nothing like sleep deprivation, and the knowledge that any gaming today will likely just increase the loss to help one sleep in...



Cannot recall the last time I woke up in Vegas after the sun was going full blast.

I get in a quick, losing session at UX, and then Mom and I grab room service again (forgot pics). After, I decide to give craps a try, since after all I should lose slower than at VP, right?

Wrong. Have another in for 10, out for 5 session. Just awful. Decide to head to my old usual- surely, it can't suck for THIS long, right?





So those two hits completely erase the craps debacle. I head back to UX, decide being stuck "just 10k" near the end of the trip isn't that bad, and decide to go for it with 10 lines again.



Helpful, but not enough.

So for pretty much the whole trip, every time I got dealt a made hand (eg, straight, flush, etc) on UX, I'd pause for a second before dealing the next hand and say a little prayer for another dealt made hand. Of course, you all know I'm rooting for the white whale, a royal, 4AWAK, something like that, and of course you know the vast majority of the time the next deal is garbage. So I found the next pic, while nothing huge, interesting enough to take.



And of course, it's actually a reasonably big hit-



Unfortunately the 12x's across the board were wasted.



Hold one to a royal and give me ALMOST every card I need FUFUFUFU



OMG on the 12x one time save this whole trip!

Result-


How about anywhere you MF'er.





Just enough to stay alive, no more.

At this point, I've pretty much given back all profit. I'm still even for the day. I've learned that our flight is now delayed several hours- mom and I were going to grab a quick bite, check out and head to the airport. As is, though, that makes no sense. So we reschedule the limo, get a late checkout and now I know I've got one last session after lunch. I elected to wait to redeem my promo chips for that last session, but I still collect them prior to lunch.



A whole 75$ in promo chips. Ugly chips too.







We get a light lunch at Red 8, everything is the usual 6-7/10.

I head back to the craps table to play off those promos and hopefully hit. Well, I do play off the promos (hit two out of three, they take the chip after the bet regardless and only pay even money except they said they'd honor the 2x/3x on the field so I played them there) but walk right into another ice cold session. I lost another 5k before I even know what happened, and what's worse is I didn't even kill that much time! Disgusted, I head back to UX for what will be the last session for this trip.



YYAAAHHH FU craps just FU!

Thinking to myself, "not one dealt quads this trip. Not one". Which... conjures the first dealt quads, FINALLY!



So... small. And as any long-time follower of my TRs know, OF COURSE THEY'RE 8s!!!! I hatehatehatehatehate 8s (in VP). Where the F were all these 8s at craps 1/2 an hour ago? OK, I digress...



No multiplier but anything at this point. Just keep 'em coming.



Comeback complete?

Result-




Comeback complete?

Result-


FFFBUDSKDFSDFNDS

Those two misses set me off a bit. I'm now just 1k up for the day. Screw it. Now or never!

That 1k lasts about 3 min. OK, F this casino. I head to the cage to cash all my tickets chips etc and then back to the room. Dead even for the day, two days in a row.

Postscript- thank god I went up when I did. I literally got back upstairs, told my mom the result, and then received a text from SW- flight RESTORED to the ORIGINAL TIME!

WTF. We're 45min away from scheduled takeoff. The limo technically might not even be ready. My mom is 74 yrs old and not particularly mobile. Should we even try? I convince my mom to head out now- worst case scenario, we miss the flight but now we give ourselves more time to try and get rescheduled. I'm really annoyed at SW. Love the heads up about the delay. Do NOT love getting a heads up unless it's a locked in, for sure thing.

Luckily, the limo was already waiting for us. Driver floors it, we check in 30 min before departure. Security is a dream... and we're sitting on board 1/2 hr after I got the initial text from SW. That's some last minute run good and I'll definitely take that!

Day 4 result- even
Overall- -10k

Post-postscript

After I hit the 64k at Barona in Feb it has just been pure ice there. Lost all of March, lost 10k on this trip, and have lost another 20k in April. Bottom line I'm stuck 90k from my previous height in late Feb. I'm a little shell shocked, to be honest. I've still got 100k working bankroll and I've paid for the Steinway grand, and have money set aside for the house remodel, but bottom line I feel broke. Part of that is because of how much I've given back, but another part is knowing I don't really have 100k left, MAYBE more like 30-40k because I would never be able to tolerate giving all of the cash back. I'd rather stop gambling than end up with zero cash, AGAIN. So, effectively I've got maybe 30-40k left.

Thus, I'm not going to the local at all in May. Next Vegas trip isn't until July. I've got to lay low for a while, let this runbad cool off and wait for another bink of some sort to present itself (eg, stock market) before I can fire away like I was before. Y'all probably won't see many pics from me in the next couple of months or so. But there will be more, at some point...

OUCH!!!

At least you filled in a couple of hands out of nowhere to avoid complete disaster. Those four to a royal misses are agonizing--even to those of us playing along at home.

I hope your mom enjoyed the getaway!

that appears to be someone's gum on the plate. whatever it is, it looks like TJ Cloutier

lol, RED.

I was disappointed there was no rating for the gum.

LOL I realized my gum had made it into that pic as soon as I posted it and wondered how long it would take someone to notice it. 2 seconds, apparently.

hahaha that is rough bud

A few months without a tr? Boooooo
Understandable. I guess we all knew you were going to come down to reality.

Also being on a plane 30 min from the text is nuts

Yeah, my previous bouts of run bad have taught me the time to dial it in is now, not after I'm broke and wondering what could have been.

Part of me is very frustrated bc there's no mathematical law that says I'm MORE likely to lose now after my sun run. The sun run happened and I got super lucky to live it. However, it's not like the machines know that I went on that run and thus and trying "extra hard" to get it back. And yet, the results the last few months speak for themselves...

The plane really worked out nicely. All the stars had to line up. Limo's not there, traffic, bad security line, TSA hassles me about the money in my bag, etc etc and we don't make it.

...but if you'd've missed the flight, the TR would have involved binking an airport slot to salvage the trip!

Glad you know when to hit the pause button. A lot of folks just don't have that gear. Remember, the casinos are always open and VP is never going away.

VP may always be around, but good vp games may not. Even bad vp games can become worse.

as always; thanks for taking the time to share these. sorry to hear about the loss, and I know you mentioned the piano and have money set aside for the remodel, but your gambling also funded a back yard renovation as well right?

Is card counting still a thing in vegas or do you like BJ? Seems like a decent way to attempt to keep the fun going while you have the gambling roll.

This 1 million percent - 20ish years ago you could find good full pay machines in many casinos on any denomination (even those on the strip!)

Now? At the quarter level and below, I don't know if there are any full pay machines on the entire strip, and even at the higher limits, they're not offering it (hell, look at leon's beloved 9/7 TDB going to 9/6, even at $50+ per push).

And they're just going to get worse. I don't think I've heard of a single instance of a casino increasing a VP paytable. They're just all slowly creeping downwards. Wouldn't surprise me if in 20 years everything is just 6/5.