It’s been awhile since we have had a general tips post.  Here are some odds and ends that we thought of that I know could benefit some of our fellow Vegas travelers.  So here they are in no particular order:

-If you are mainly a table game player and rarely play slots, you should consider changing it up a bit.  The rating systems are slanted even more heavily towards slot players now than ever before and unless you are sitting down with over $500 per session of blackjack and willing to bet at least $25 per hand, don’t expect much notice from the pit boss.  So now what?  Well what you can do is play the $1 Wheel Of Fortune.  It’s the most popular slot machine by far and you will get the biggest bang for your buck.  The key is to, “pimp them and leave”.  Lori calls it that as you basically take whatever winnings that you come to at any point and just leave.  For example; you put in $100 and play for a bit and you get a wheel spin.  Congratulations, this is what EVERYONE wants.  So you get $35 on the spin and you hear the clapping soundtrack, yeah!  Now you have done some winning (and some losing) on the session, but that spin of the wheel puts you to $128 on your total credits. Great, now leave.  I know that you are thinking that it’s just $28 of profit, but the point is not to win a ton; it’s not to lose any while you are trying to get rated.  Only in Vegas would $28 not seem like much of anything, because if you were at home and you saw $28 on the floor you would pick it up.  Now do the same thing here.  Use it for cab fare, or tipping (as you know I am all about), food, whatever.  What normally happens is that people just want to keep playing and playing and eventually they will lose all of their initial money.  So don’t let that happen to you.  Just take your winnings and go to the next stop, do what you do and play again later.  You won’t always win, but you will come out way ahead in the long run.

-Water.  A no brainer here, but still it has to be said.  Drink water all the time.  Too often people don’t and it can get ugly.  Especially in the summer months with 100+ degree temps.

-Use your points/comps on your trip.  A lot of times the play that you have done over the course of the trip has afforded you some comps in the form of discounts of just free crap.  Use them on the trip that you are on because they start to expire the moment you leave.  One thing that a casino host told me is that at the end of your trip you should go to casino marketing and have them apply whatever you have earned toward your hotel charges.  You have to go to casino marketing though, because the two systems are not connected and it doesn’t happen automatically.  Take what they give you, because they are definitely going to take from you!

-Have a plan, however loose.  The worse thing to do is to be wandering around aimlessly without a destination.  It’s too hot and things are too far apart to be doing that.  Plus random cab rides add up, so have an idea of what you want to do and plan around it.  Seeing a show? Great, plan dinner at or near that location. Want to watch some sporting event? Realize that you are on the West Coast and there might be a time change (like Sunday Night Baseball at 5 pm, what’s up with that?)

-Call your bank before going and tell them that you are traveling to Vegas.  There is a lot of fraud and if you have a bank like mine (Bank of America), they have a huge fraud department that works almost too well.  This is only really an issue if you need to go to the ATM, especially inside a casino because this may trigger something in their network to shut your debit card down.  Don’t let this happen to you.

-If you have to get money out of an ATM, don’t do it in the casino.  Recently the casinos have jacked up their fees to some crazy levels.  Our flight attendant on the way out actually made an announcement to that affect.  So we checked, and sure enough they had to the tune of $22+.  There are ATMs (Bank of America) in The Forum Shops @ Caesars (3 I believe), there is one on the 3rd or 4th Floor of the M&M store down by MGM and ATM at Casino Royale has a fee of only $1.00. Plus there are ATMS at all monorail stations (Bank of Nevada).  These are normal ATMs with normal fees.

-Ask for matches.  They seem to be the only things that are actually free, i.e. you don’t have to gamble anything to get them.  I actually saw a no money exchange for matches at a sundries shop in Ceasars.  I don’t even smoke and I almost asked for some.

More tips as they come up, but this should get you going in the right direction. Viva Las Vegas indeed!

And now for a break from our regularly scheduled program, I present to you Pittsburgh Gil! 

Greetings fellow degenerates!  It’s your ol’ pal Pittsburgh Gil here to spread the good word.  You all doing ok?  Fantastic!  So anyway, Donnie Boy and I took a little impromptu trip to the Gulf Coast a couple of weeks back and the world simply must hear our harrowing tale.  And by “the world”, I mean the 12 of you that read this blog. 

The backstory of this trip was rooted in uncertainty.  But that uncertainty soon turned to triumph.  Your’s truly was admittedly a little on the fence about doing this trip at first due to financial matters.  I have an adventure approaching in Italy which is certainly not as cheap as say…not going to Italy…so I had to conserve.  Throw in the fact that we could not find a room at a casino for under $200…and apprehension set in.  But fear not good readers.  After some deep introspective thought whilst bathing in an 82 degree bubblebath at home two nights before the trip, I had an epiphany.  An epiphany of fun.  I was all-in baby!

Donnie Baseball and I pulled anchor in Atlanta mid-day Friday and started the arduous journey to our 5-star hotel…the Quality Inn on Washington Avenue off exit 97.  This turned out to be our best lodging option because I utilized my 20% off at Choice Hotels ASCAP discount to get the room for just $60 a night.  What is ASCAP you might ask?  The American Society of Composers, Artists, and Publishers.  I’m a published songwriter.  A brilliant one.  Deal with it. 

After 5 1/2 hours and two bags of peanut M&Ms, we reached our amazing hotel, had a Johnny Walker, and promptly hit the IP for gaming galore.  Our first night can be summed up with 3 words:  City, Of, and Champions.  It was here where I was privileged enough to watch my Penguins upset the Detroit Red Wings on the road to win the Stanley Cup.  All this while enjoying a bucket of 5 beers at a discounted price!  With Pittsburgh officially now being The City of Champions, it was time to celebrate.  Don and I hit the BJ tables hardcore-style.  Several hours, beers, and Maker’s later….we were doing well.  It was nearing 1AM and I was plunging deeper into a drunken stupor so we decided to end the night soon.  But not before hitting some nice hands and ending the evening slightly up.  I’ll take that any night!  Then we stopped so Don could purchase a 3 gallon jug of water.  Then to bed.

Day 2 began ominously.  The Denny’s that we wanted to patron for lunch was closed for remodeling.  We ended up at a Waffle House.  Don ordered every breakfast item known to man and I got a chicken sandwich.  Don made the right choice.

Back to the IP for my first ever real poker tournament!  I’m somewhat new to poker but am learning at a frenetic pace.  I was apprehensive about this as well but I decided to just roll with it.  We bought in for $60 but got like $2500 worth of chips.  I honestly didn’t even know tourneys worked that way.  I ended up getting assigned to the most boring table ever.  Old, quiet, steely-eyed men were on special that day.  And they were all at my table.  Despite liking poker, this is one of my reservations with the game in a casino.  It can be kind of boring and not all that fun depending on who you’re playing with.  Oh well though, I was in this for the learning experience.  Well….I did pretty well.  I won 3 hands, played for about 90 minutes, and outlasted 5 others at my table.  It wasn’t until this tiny, crazy, loud Asian dude bought in that things started to go downhill.  He sat right next to me and talked my ear off…perhaps threw me off my game a little.  He was good though and sounded like Khan on King of the Hill so at least I was thoroughly entertained.

At this point, I bowed out gracefully and headed down to the casino to wait for Don.  He didn’t last too much longer than me and we were soon on another BJ table.  Don took this table by storm and quickly won about a grand.  Hedge economics works, people.  Stellar.

We decided to head out for a bit and cruised the ocean strip and downtown Gulfport.  Downtown Gulfport is about as exciting as my grandmother’s backyard….unfortunately.  Then it was off to a BBQ joint called The Shed that I’ve heard about but never had the chance to visit.  If you’re ever in the area and even remotely like BBQ……GO!  All I have to say, just do it.  And don’t eat anything for 3 days leading up to it.

Back to the IP one last time.  We decide to play some dollar Wheel of Fortune slots and I hit wins of 160, 300, and then a spin for 400 in about a 5 minute spin.  AMAZING!!  I cashed out $775 from my $100 buy-in.  This was my single best session in personal gambling history and I was flying high.  To celebrate, we went for a quick drink at the IP pool bar.  The IP’s pool area is quite nice with a good bar, food, and a giant TV overlooking the pool. 

We then had a couple more decent BJ sessions, was frightened by a redneck in a wife-beater who for some reason stored his pack of Marlboro Reds down his shirt in his wife-beater as opposed to his pocket or simply resting them on the table, and then called it a trip.  

Final Thoughts:

- Don did very well, a true BlackJack ace

- I had my first ever trip where I came home with more money then I went with, including all food, gas, entertainment, etc.

- the drive down to Biloxi is just bearable enough.  Not too long, but an hour longer would be rough.  Very do-able.

- The Shed rules

- the IP has an awesome comp system

- Matthew Broderick was wrong.  There were no “Blues” had by Don and I in Biloxi this weekend!

- F YOU MATTHEW BRODERICK!!  Your wife is weird looking.

The BLT in the Mirage is hip, new, and most importantly good. Located where the Sigfreid and Roys’ White tigers used to be (it’s still strange to not see them there) and is directly across from the new RhumBar (which use to be the gift shop).

This is the latest and seemingly last “upgrade” that the Mirage is going to do to complete its transformation from an old stogy casino with an outdated theme, to one that is more urban chic than anything. This is definitely geared toward attracting a younger clientele as PH (formally the Aladdin) has done.

So in keeping with the transformation, BLT is a burger joint that has many different kinds of meat on the menu. You have your choice of a normal USDA burger (several grades), American Kobe beef, Salmon, and even a Veggie burger. Somehow Lori found the chicken finger (kids menu of course) and I ordered a Swiss burger. I have to say, it was choice. 

The atmosphere was great and we just sat at the bar, got some JWB and coke and watched the Subway series on one of their multiple flat screen TV’s. It was interesting to watch the kitchen as it was a virtual theater in the round. The grill masters were in the middle while everyone else was around them in a complete 360 degree kitchen. It was all open to see and fairly organized. Very Iron Chef. 

So two thumbs up for the BLT at the Mirage, a great place for a burger and some adult beverages.

So during one of our Vegas romps; myself, Lori, and 44 were at the Mirage playing blackjack at around 2 pm.  There weren’t a lot of people there and basically we were just going to kill some time before we had to go somewhere to do something else.  44 has an incredible ability to plan for things, but not over plan.  He always comes correct with a dinner reservation that is on point with whomever we are running with at the time.  A fancy affair is normally the case at least once a trip, however this was not going to be one of those evenings.

Nevertheless, we are all playing blackjack at one of the handicap tables that are always sprinkled throughout a casino on a few blackjack pits.  You can recognize them because they are always low (like the old school sit down table top video games) and there is always a seat missing for someone in a wheel chair to roll up in.  Cool.

Our dealer had to be, no lie, 80+.  He was funny, but kind of crotchety.  Like, “I have survived WWII for this shit?” kind of crotchety.  It was glorious.  We laughed at him and each other while we were playing and 44even tried to get a picture on his first generation camera phone, FAIL.  However we were happy just playing and killing time.  This was mainly due to the fact that our dealer was slow.  I mean like mind numbingly slow.  But that was cool because we are all having a good time and he was telling jokes and just generally being old and ornery.

Now contrast this with the experience that Lori and I just had at Caesars. Lori was playing in the main pit off of the entrance (which has some of the best players odds in all of Vegas) and I was watching her and the roulette table next to her.  There were some crazy drunk people who claimed to have a “system” for roulette.  Of course it didn’t work, but I digress.

So Paul (the dealer) is a young man by comparison.  Seemingly in control of all of his motor skills, married, and even had a friend meet up with him during his break.  What he didn’t have was any semblance of speed by which to deal the damn game.  He was so deliberately slow that several players left out of disgust.  It was just so choppy and purposefully slow that it made it hard to even enjoy the “action”.  Now from a player rating standpoint this is a good thing because you are rated on the length of time you play versus your avg. bet size.  However there comes a point where it’s just too slow.  This was that point.

Eventually Lori made a little money and we had to bounce.  Paul was killing the Mojo, and we just had to find a new spot to start punishing Vegas.  That spot as it turned out, was Harrah’s. Thanks Paul for umm, nothing.

Getting to the airport is normally key in Atlanta. There are always some sort of random delay that crops up. Phantom accidents on I-85, extremely slow security lines, random aircraft issues. We have seen it all on our trips out to Vegas over the years so we get to the airport with a couple of hours to spare.

Well it turns out that we really didn’t need to get there so early as we were bumped from US Airways to Airtran as our original flight was delayed coming in and of course we would have missed our connector.

The Pros: A new direct flight, crappy pretzels, and more drinks than you know what to do with.

The Cons: We found out that our bags “could” make it to Vegas as Airtran’s baggage system is a manual one. Excellent.

So we are waiting for another couple of hours to take off and Lori noticed something on the Runway. There is a sign that is hanging underneath the Jetway. You can see it more clearly in the second photo, but yeah it’s clear that no one reads those signs until there is a reason to.

Thank goodness there was no reason. We got on our plane with no further observations other than the fact that CNN would not actually proclaim Michael Jackson dead, but only in a coma. More on that to come as well.