Weathering the Storm

My recent 4-day trip (1/25-1/28) to Vegas was quite eventful. I thought it might be a bad omen when my plane was making the final approach to McCarran Airport and I saw smoke coming from the Strip. It wasn't the Mirage volcano - as I later learned, it was the Monte Carlo. Fortunately, it didn't result in tragedy as the Clark County Fire Department really stepped up and took care of the blaze quickly.

After I managed to avoid the Strip traffic and navigate to the Strat, I quickly checked in and hit the blackjack tables. Well, my session didn't get off to a hot start, but I did almost get burned. There I was, sitting at the table, drinking my rum & Coke and minding my own business, and all of a sudden, a recessed light fell out of the ceiling and missed hitting me by about 2 feet! That should've been a sign - but I kept playing until I lost about $30.

I was hoping my luck would turn after I picked up my faithful friend, Steve, from the airport. But it turned out that it only got worse. I lost another $60 before dragging my tired, sorry butt to bed.

Saturday turned out to be a much better day, but we had to work hard for it considering the elements we had to battle. We like to gamble here and there when we go to Vegas, so we took the rental car and hit mid Strip. We tried to find a $5 blackjack table. Here's what we found:

• The Red Hat Society was trying to break a World's Record for most amount of women wearing red standing around and acting goofy. I think they broke it in a line stretching from Bill's Gamblin' Hall to God knows where. It was over 17,000 people, but as Steve pointed out, it seemed like 17 million. Plus, everyone on the Strip beeped at them... just what the Strip needed, more noise. My head hurt, and I found a new definition of Hell.
  


• Bill's Gamblin' Hall, usually a site for low-limit blackjack and craps, had few tables and very little fanfare. Thanks, Harrah's, for turning the fantastic Barbary Coast into a bland, uninteresting casino. I hope you plan to rebrand it and make it something fun soon!
  


• Imperial Palace also had no $5 tables, which was quite surprising. If this place didn't have low-limit blackjack, who would? We tried Casino Royale, only to find that they had 6:5 payout on blackack. No way!!! Don't ever play at a table with these horrible odds. The dealer told us, "No one on the Strip has 3:2 blackjack." That's a flat out lie. There are plenty of places that have 3:2 blackjack, you just have to ask!

Well, we gave up on finding low limits on the Strip and headed downtown. We stopped at the Fremont and found what we were looking for. As a bonus, we found a drunk dude who tried to tell stories about puppies and also attempted to serenade us at the table. When we had about enough of that, we decided to take a break and eat lunch. Or at least tried to. Steve and I had the worst lunch we'd ever attempted to eat at Lanai Express. After a few bites, Steve gave up. I was much more adventurous; I ate about 1/2 of my plate, and decided that I could take no more of my sweet & sour chicken. Yuk.

Did I mention Saturday was a good day? I guess it doesn't seem like it so far. But our luck was about to change. We saddled down to the Golden Nugget and cleaned up at blackjack. What a blast! Then we headed back to the Strat and won at blackjack and craps. It was quite a day. We topped it off with a nice dinner at my favorite Italian restaurant - Battista's Hole in the Wall (behind the Flamingo on Audrie Street). Great place.

By this time, Steve and I were both in the black for the trip. This trend continued for Steve, but it stopped for me on Sunday. By Monday morning, I lost the last little bit of my profit, but it was fun and breaking even in Vegas isn't such a bad thing. Especially considering we got some meals comped, our room was comped (from action on a previous trip), and I had some good stories to tell. Among the other notable strange things I saw/heard/said:

• More than one blackjack dealer told me 2 is the most dangerous card the dealer can have. Really? 2? I mean, it's no 6, but it's no ace or 10, either.


• One dealer sang "That's Life" (not well, either) while we were getting crummy cards at blackjack. We switched tables.


• Another dealer, the strangest dealer I'd ever met, made monkey-calling noises, dealt poorly, and generally made no sense while dealing. In Vegas, the bizarre is commonplace, and she was no exception.


• When asked at Battista's if we had any questions, I replied with my usual corny "about the menu or life in general?" response. The waitress did not find me charming and very, very quickly said "the menu" in a deadpan tone while she rolled her eyes. This amused Steve to no end, who repeated the story to his friends and loved the idea that she wanted no part of my tomfoolery.


• A few of the boxmen at the Strat were ornery fellows. Lord knows their job ain't easy, and they seemed to take pleasure in giving the craps dealers quite a hard time. "We're not keeping you from anything, are we?" one of them asked a new dealer. Apparently his pace wasn't quite up to snuff. It was amusing, but I'm glad I'm not a dealer at the Strat.


• One fellow who played blackjack, according to Steve, "had to tell a joke every six seconds or he'd explode." He kept telling the same ones over and over, too. The old "where are the 22 tables?" came up more than once when he hit and busted just enough to lose.

So, this short Vegas trip turned out ok, even though it looked like I might have to borrow money for vending machine crackers after that first night. Hey, it's Vegas, and as long as you know your limits, you can always have fun if you remember that you can weather any storm. Until next time...Mike