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Vegas Fanatics meetup, epic Slot pull, tourney win, FP wins

Discussion in 'Full Las Vegas Trip Reports' started by ballagio, May 24, 2016.

  1. ballagio

    ballagio Silver
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    VegasChic asked me to recap the VP slot tourney this weekend as I placed in the money (not enough in the money to brag home about) as inquiring minds may want to know what happens in a slot tourney as this was my first.

    So this was a last minute trip. I decided the weekend before to enter the tourney after my host called me to ask if I would reconsider the tourney. I initially told him that we were busy. I also wasn't ready to pony up $2500 to enter even the odds to win $100k were better than trying to win it at the slots with just $2500. I booked my ticket and was trying to figure out where to eat so I head to the boards. That was when I saw VC's post about the tourney. She invited me to meetup at the tourney.

    I flew in on Friday morning and got a rental car in time to check into my room and the tourney. At tourney check-in, they informed us that we would be getting a nice piece of luggage to carry our $100k home. Everyone would be getting it instead of just the winner. Too bad. I thought I would be carrying bricks (the good kind) home in that thing. Lunch was provided at Hong Kong Cafe which was where registration was at.

    This was a good sign for me. Last time I ate at Hong Kong Cafe on New Year's, I won a $12k jackpot so I took this as a good sign. After lunch, I went to Venetian HL to test my luck. While messing around, I hit quad 10's on video poker for $1250. Not sure what I was doing but will take it. I actually almost hit the double up option on the win by mistake. Luckily, I caught myself.
     
  2. ballagio

    ballagio Silver
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    1d430f625adefa83b160c236758ebd5a.jpg

    Almost hit the double up option as this was my third hand. $100 in $1275 out. Good start.


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  3. ballagio

    ballagio Silver
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    I had a good feeling about the tourney with this start. I almost missed my tourney time. You had to be there before your time so they can make sure the right person is at the right machine. I was in second session. First round's score was 11635.

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    Great score. I was in top 10 or 15 for my round. Probably top 20 after first full round between two sessions.

    After my round, I introduced myself to VC, VCSis and Evoni. Very nice people. Within 5 minutes, they asked me to join the slot pull later that night. Such hospitality. If niceness were a criteria for gambling wins, Adelson would be bankrupt.



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  4. dvandentop

    dvandentop Chairman
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    So great to meet you man wish that dang wheel of fortune would have put out. I tried it Saturday and was ice cold too
     
  5. KingJasonSlots

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    @ballagio, so wonderful to meet you!! Congrats on your tourney win and that lovely 4oak! Hope to see you at a future meet!


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  6. VegasChic

    VegasChic Buffalo Huntress
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    Awww, thanks for the kind words!

    Thanks also for taking the time to post this- I'm doing mine as well, but from more of the losing standpoint, lol! We all agreed you are lucky when it comes to hit and run, and even the tournament, so I'm really looking forward to the details of some of your hits and how you eventually made out!

    So glad you were able to join us for dinner and the group pull! It's so much fun meeting members- and also to be staying at the same property in this case to keep running into each other on the casino floor checking in to see how we are all making out! Makes you wonder how often we walk past other members without ever realizing it!!

    Looking forward to the rest of report!!
     
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  7. VegasMonkey

    VegasMonkey the pleepleus
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    Good to have met you Ballagio!
     
  8. Rick1323

    Rick1323 Gold
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    Thanks for the recap...enjoying it!
     
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  9. VegasChic Sis

    VegasChic Sis Silver
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    It was great to meet you this weekend! Awesome that you were having some amount of success converting your free play!!


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  10. ballagio

    ballagio Silver
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    It was very nice to meet you and your wife. Loved the suit. I wished I had the swagger to wear it. I wished that wheel would have paid. I usually take a couple of stabs at the $100 level per trip if I am up. There is always next time.

    It was a pleasure to meet you as well. It was awesome that you cashed in the Wynn tourney. I ran into some guys who played in that tourney on Saturday night. They had zero luck at Wynn and we're looking for a change of scenery and luck.




    Thanks again for organizing the pull and as well as letting me crash dinner. We will have to compare food notes one day over a big slot win.

    Thanks for the invites and encouragement this past weekend. Sorry to hear about the loss. I was losing at the beginning but figured that the loss was worth it to meet all the wonderful folks from the board. The slot pull turned my luck around though my wife would say it was her flying in on Saturday to save the weekend. Since our anniversary is next month, I will let her keep believing it even though we all know the truth.

    I will try to finish the report between these playoff basketball games.

    Thanks for the hospitality over the weekend. Glad to see the big hit at the end. Hopefully you had some success converting the FP.
     
  11. ballagio

    ballagio Silver
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    There really wasn't time in between to get in too much trouble because I had just met Evoni, VegasChic and Sis. So I decided to stay and cheer them on. It was better than playing anymore slots. I wanted to play conservatively because I was already out $2500 for entry fee.

    I wished my presence brought VC some luck but it was an average middle of pack score. My next round was an meh round of 9238. After two rounds, I was still over 20k points. My host said it took a little over 30k to win. Anything close to it might be in money.

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    Last round went down the gutter. I didn't hit any big wins but had enough smaller wins to get a respectable middle/lower of pack score of 7859.

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    Total was 28,732. Not enough to win. Maybe there was a chance at placing. Had the last score been anywhere close to the 2nd round, I might have had a chance to be in top 5.



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  12. ballagio

    ballagio Silver
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    So after the first tourney ended, we said our goodbyes. VC, Sis, and Evoni graciously invited me to join them for dinner at Beauty and Essex at the Cosmo.

    I had a few hours to kill and decided to test my luck with the good start. Wrong decision. I should have went back to the room to unpack or sleep or anything. I proceed to slowly bleed. My hit and run style turned into a run strategy. Lost all of my $1250 win from earlier and then some. Could not hit anything from reels to VP to videos. Found myself down $2500 which was $5k if you include the tourney entry.

    6pm could not arrive soon enough. I figured that was it for the trip. Well, at least it for the night except for the group slot pull.

    Dinner was good. It was nice to meet VegasMonkey and MonteCarloPlayer. We had an assortment of dishes from the menu. The hostess for the restaurant was outside in the open with a glass display table of jewelry. Weird setup. She led us to the pawn shop. Then they opened a secret door to a dark restaurant.

    Food was a mashup what seemed to be what Chris Santos might want to eat. The flavors were good. I can't say that the food was life changing. I also couldn't make out what genre of food it would be. Maybe it was chef eats as opposed to fine dining. It felt like it was geared towards hipsters palates. Nothing wrong with hipsters. I am just not as cool. I just want to be fed and fed well. I also wasn't cool enough to take any pics of the food.


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  13. ballagio

    ballagio Silver
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    After dinner, it was the slot pull. It was really nice to put faces to board personalities. Everyone was super nice with an interest in gambling. Go figure. It sure was different hanging out with gamblers than with friends you go to Vegas with. I have some friends that I will not meet up in Vegas. I am sure everyone has those folks. Great people but terrible Vegas wingmen.

    We had 12 folks for a BR of $6k. Everyone seemed to miss. The slots seemed tight like my last trip to Cosmo. No real hit. Maybe because it was $25 and above slots. I picked $100 wheel but fired 5 blanks. Vegas Monkey picked the lucky machine with a hit of the night. There was some major excitement when we pulled off quad 2's after getting dealt a pair of 2's. Amazing feeling.

    We get paid $950. I joked to VegasMonkey that we did not need the $50 bill. I decided to get rid of it by putting money into the $25 wheel that we tried earlier in the pull. First spin was a bonus for $1k. Maybe I should have kept the $50? Either way, turned the bill into 10 bills. No complaints here. Done gambling for the night. The wins made me only down $1100 for trip.

    Next up is the party in VegasMonkey's suite.


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  14. VegasChic

    VegasChic Buffalo Huntress
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    In hindsight, I think we may have been better off picking just 3-4 machines during the pull and pounding them each a little harder. That said, there are many times they hit within the first few spins and the frequent changes could have made a tidy profit. Would have been great to get some great hits along the way, but VM saved us all with that amazing 4OAK with kicker!!
     
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  15. ballagio

    ballagio Silver
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    Went back to wrap around suite where VegasMonkey graciously served delicious lemonade with Lay's ketchup chips and Not so Secret Pizza. It was a great time to meet all of the forum members. Hung out for a while while still on the high from the slot pull.

    I thought about going downstairs to press but decide that last losses at Cosmo was still fresh. Decided to go back to VP with VegasChic and Sis.

    I decide to keep playing with the money from the Cosmo. It started out well. I don't remember all I played but started drinking and winning. 30 minutes later, I was up for the trip. Small bonuses but not enough for W2 so I will take it. Up $2k now. Contemplated going to be a winner but we all know how that goes. Decide to press and win big since I was on a roll.

    Hit $100 Top Dollar with $1k. No luck. Did the same with wheel. My wins were gone in 5 minutes. Ouch. Go on tilt. Try to swing for the fences to get it back quickly. Big mistake. $25 slots don't last that long if you don't get any hits. I should have called it a night or go to the BJ tables. Too late. End the night at the Free Bet BJ table. Up and down. No hands to note except that I lost every Free Bet. When I hit BJ, it was 6 to 5 even at the $25 table. I took it as a sign and colored up down another $500. Decided to go to Wynn to change scenery.

    Not good there either. Lost another $1k playing $5 and $10 slots. Down $3500 now. I need to be around VegasMonkey for luck. Where are you? Decided to call it a night for real. Wife was coming tomorrow so needed bullets to play with her.


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  16. VegasChic

    VegasChic Buffalo Huntress
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    Now by this point you realized you HAD placed in the tourney for that day, right? You got $2500 freeplay!! Yay ballagio, so happy for you and great to see a member get a piece of the prize pool! As the night went on and you were starting to lose, was any of it from trying to convert freeplay, or all cash from the BR??
     
  17. ballagio

    ballagio Silver
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    Actually, I had not realized that I had placed. I thought it was only $500 FP which I wasn't counting. We left the awards ceremony early to make dinner so I didn't hear what you needed to win. The threw out a number of 29k to win $2500. After I heard that number, we left. Had I listened closely, that was the score you needed to win cash. There were 8 or 10 more that won $2500 in FP below that score. I actually didn't find out until the next morning until I looked at my points. It actually showed it on the screen but I was too busy to pay attention. Had I looked that night, I would have figured it out. Turned out better because I would have played the FP during the losing streak.


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  18. ballagio

    ballagio Silver
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    I almost always leave FP for the end of the trip or when I am on a hot streak or for the wife to donk off. She actually spent $300 of my $1500 FP spent on this trip. She put it into Pink Diamonds $5 and got zero hits. Not one hit. So I personally converted $1200 FP into $4800 the next night. Still have $1500 left but will get to details later.


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  19. ballagio

    ballagio Silver
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    So next day, went to airport at 10am to pick up the wife. She was flying in for one night as we leave early the next morning. The benefits of a Southwest companion pass. We had to pay for her flight out but the return would be free.

    We grab brunch at Grand Luxe since everything else was a wait or not open and my session was at 11:30. While waiting for my session to start, I check to see if I won anything other than the $500 FP. To my surprise, I had $2500 FP waiting for me. I don't know where I placed. I assume it was like number 21 or 23. If I placed, it was by the skin of my teeth. Pressure was off because I had a guaranteed $3000 FP now. Anything would be gravy.

    My first session was average. Not great. Not a great start. It only takes one good session to be in the running.

    6e31e43da20b4fc22ee04fa652b97f6a.jpg

    I scoped the my machines. It seemed that my machines for the next sessions were hot and getting high scores. I know it is not scientific but it seemed that machines go hot and then cold the next session. That was what I observed the previous day.


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  20. emmas

    emmas Gold
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    Read your short synopsis of the trip on another thread but really enjoying the details. I can't wait to read about your hot streak.
     
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