Trip Report - 11/16 - 11/21

I was back in Vegas at the Riviera for the semi-annual backgammon tournament. This is always a highlight of my year as the backgammon event is really well run, the stakes are higher and I get to play around in Vegas for 5-6 days. Here are some highlights of my trip.

I was traveling alone this time as my wife couldn’t make the trip due to her schedule at work. I flew in on AirTran on Wednesday morning. The flight was uneventful and I got a good price of $218 from Atlanta. Delta wasn’t competitive on the price so AirTran got the nod. The new Recaro seats on the 737 were pretty comfortable (as airline seats go).

A short wait for the $5 shuttle bus got me to the Riviera cheaply and I was the 2nd stop. The shuttles are clearly the way to go if traveling alone. I paid $10 extra for VIP check-in which probably saved me 20 minutes and I got the room location/format I wanted on the 19th floor of the Monaco tower. The room was very clean and functional and the maids did an excellent job each day, ($25 tip at the end of the trip). This was also the right location because the backgammon action was in the penthouse of the same tower just 5 floors above. This is a great venue for the tournament and the view of all of LV is excellent with windows on all sides of the ballroom.

I won my first scheduled afternoon match in the Super Jackpot. That evening I walked over to the Peppermill and had a decent swordfish dinner. It was a bit dry, but now that I’m on a low-fat diet, it was a good choice, I headed downtown where there are some good 2-deck blackjack games I wanted to play. I took a cab, but later in the week when I used the Duece I realized that the bus is a great option from the North strip to downtown. It’s only $2 and
it didn’t make that many stops. If you were going from Mandalay Bay, however, you might get annoyed as I’m sure it would be stopping 20 or 30 times. The buses are brand new with comfortable seats and a good view from the upstairs. Hopefully they’ll be able to keep them clean.

First I stopped at Fitzgerald’s for the Spanish21 game where you can double-down three times on the same hand. I got to do that once, but lost the hand. I was busting everything and lost $240. This was luckily one of only two really bad sessions the whole week. I might be swearing off of this particular ’stunt’-blackjack game from now on. I tried out the Blackjack-Switch game which is sort of fun. You get two hands, and can switch the top two cards before playing each one out. They only pay 1-1 on blackjacks, and if the dealer draws to 22 you push. It’s still a low edge game and gives you more things to do to make the game a bit more interesting.

I walk down the street to the Plaza for the ‘real’ game. They have an excellent game here, Stand on soft-17, double on any two cards, double after split and resplit aces up to 4 times. It’s two decks, but dealt out of a shoe which is a bit odd. Apparently there were some ‘hole-carders’ that won a bunch of money there so they went to the shoes to prevent players from catching a view of the hold card. I played a nice long 2-hour session, but couldn’t really break through and lost about $40. The count went high quite a few times, but I often was getting a 13 when I saw 20s on other spots on the table.

I hit the craps table at the Golden Nugget as my last stop, and played the don’ts for about 20 minutes and won $30. No cheering from my corner of the table, but it was nice to get paid when the 7 showed. I hit Mermaids and LaBayou for some free Mardi-Gras beads.

I was beat so I took a cab back to the Riviera. The driver ‘helpfully’ suggested that we take the freeway, but I put the kibosh on that one. Clearly straight up LV Blvd is the fastest and closest way to get from downtown to the Riv. He only got tipped $1 for that little stunt. I still had a little left in the tank and hit the PaiGow table in the Riv for an hour and managed to break even.

Thursday the main tournament started and I gratefully was able to sleep pretty well until about 8:00. Usually the jet lag and excitement screw me all up and I can’t sleep worth a damn when in Vegas. I bought a player-team in the Calcutta auction which turned out to be a great idea, (see end of report). But the main tournament started off badly, as I lost my first match. I made another trip to the Peppermill for dinner with a group, and I had the cobb salad which is huge. I ate about half of it and was proud of that! After dinner I managed to win my second Jackpot match.

I just managed to miss going in to Westward Ho one last time, as I walked over that night but they had closed it up at 4:30 in the afternoon. It wasn’t a big haunt of mine, but it’s too bad there is one less choice on that part of the strip. I found a good 2-deck BJ game next door at
Slot-A-Fun, where you can only double on 8-9-10-11 but everything else is OK. It’s also good because they have the Lucky Ladies side-bet, which can be a good bet when the count is extremely high (you get paid from 4:1 to 1000:1 on various first 2 card 20s). I had a good session counting the cards there. I was down almost $200 and on my last bet when I had the dealer head-to-head. The count got high early and I was pushing out max bets almost until the end. I went from -$160 to +$165 in that one shuffle, and colored up. Sweet!

Friday morning I went for another free breakfast buffet at the Riv. I play a couple hours or so at some table game there, and that has always been good for 1 free breakfast each day. On the last day the buffet was closed for some day, and they gave me a comp for the coffee shop worth up to $30. I’d say I’m getting a pretty good comp deal from them for only playing PaiGow for $20 a hand for 90-120 minutes. Probably their computed cost for a breakfast buffet is way less than the $10 I’d have to spend.

The tournament continued and I lost my first consolation match as well. I decided to enter the mini-match side event, (2-point matches, 64 players), which also turned out to be a good idea. That night I lost in round 3 of the Super Jackpot losing 15-1 (ouch!), so the backgammon (so far) had been a pretty big disappointment.

I’d gone to Tony Roma’s inside the Stardust the night before and gotten a decent chicken dinner, and they had a deal if you did an Internet survey you’d get $5 off your next visit. I cheaped out taking the $5 discount and went again. The food and service were perfectly fine, but it’s not a gourmet meal by any stretch, just a decent dinner for a decent price. Also, it’s a
great idea to get there right at 5PM when they open or a bit earlier, as it can fill up pretty quickly.

I played some 25cent 10-7 Double Bonus at the Riv and got several full houses, but ended up down $15. I got some more BJ play in at Slot-A-Fun, but started losing most of my big bets and walked away $120 poorer. I figured I could get even later. The blackjack offerings at the Riviera have become so bad, I only played PaiGow there this trip. They had lots of 6:5 games, only one 6-deck shoe with H17 for $10 and a CSM, and the 2-deck game(s) were always $25 and up.

Saturday I continue doing well in the mini-match tournament, winning my 3rd and 4th matches. But being out of the big events I had a lot of free time. I went over to the 1/2 price ticket booth and got a ticket for Havana Night Club at the Stardust. It is in the old Wayne Newton Theater, and it was only $34. It was 90 minutes of good energy and fast paced music at 10:30 that night, and the dancing and costumes were great. Not an ounce of fat on any of the dancers; they were all appropriately young and pretty. Theoretically their defection from Cuba was the largest mass defection to the US ever. I’d recommend the show, especially at the price.

A friend from Atlanta was living in Vegas with a poker buddy so I hooked up with him and we gambled around a bit. He told me to sign up at the Sahara for a new player’s card (I tried to get player’s cards everywhere this time, just for the souvenir value), and they have quite a few good promotions for first time card owners. You get $10 of free slot play with the card. I played it through and ended up ahead $5. You also get $50 of chips for $40, a $10 table game match play coupon, and an ‘Ace’ to play as your first card on any blackjack hand. I made $30 at the blackjack table as well. You have a big-time positive expectation on those promotions. We decided to drive down south and darkened the door of the Silverton, but didn’t find anything that interesting to play. The Bass Pro Shop and aquarium were pretty cool, though.

Sunday was the last day of the tournament, and I promptly lost my first Last Chance match in 2 games. So I was 0-3 in the main event and lost in round 3 of the jackpot. However, the mini-match worked out great, and I won the 5th and 6th match to win a $740 prize. More importantly, though, was the results of my Calcutta team. In the Calcutta auction, you purchase teams of players, and if they do well, you get a portion of the auction prize pool. Only 2 of the 5 members bought back their portion, so I still had 70% interest in the team. One player was in the finals, and the other was in the consolation finals. Both of them won their matches! Having the top 2 prize winners out of the 109 players on the same team was incredibly lucky, especially with my 70% interest. I won $4070 for that little coup, easily paying for the trip and several others to come. The last day was the best!

I hit the PaiGow table again in the Riv, and after about an hour managed to get 4 aces! This was good for $125 and a net win of $180 for the session. My buddy and I decided to make another downtown run that night, and we played a lot of 2-deck at the Plaza. Things went better this time and I won $160. We tromped around until we got too tired.

I had a red-eye for Monday night booked, so I had all of Monday free to fool around town. I went downtown on the bus, and had my best session yet at the Plaza BJ tables, winning $275. I also got a player’s card at the Golden Nugget and you get $10 of free play. 15 minutes at a 5c Texas Tea machine netted me $34. I hooked up with my friend a bit later and we decided to go
to the Shark Reef at Mandalay Bay, which was pretty cool. It was a bit smaller than I expected, but really quite impressive. It’s a $15 ticket. We didn’t play while we were there, but the rules were good at the 6-deck games: S17, DOA, DAS, and Surrender. $15 limit, though. Going back to the Riv my last table game session turned out really badly at the PaiGow table at the Riv. I lost $300 and won about 5 of 30 hands. Ouch! I still ended up ahead on the gambling about $125 for the trip.

Flying home on the red-eye was pretty miserable, as I really wasn’t able to get much sleep at all. I’m going to book and afternoon flight next time around.

Vegas was great, I had some good success at the BJ tables, enjoyed a lot of PaiGow and made a nice profit at the BG tournament. The blackjack offerings have really gone downhill at the Riv, but there still are some nice games in town worth playing, but they have to be hunted down.

Looking forward to the next trip in May!

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GPC