Day 1: We Have Arrived. ELCO Forever!

Chris “I wonder how high Lake Mead is usually, compared to Lake Austin?”

Me “Well, for one, it actually has water in it.” Zing!

Wednesday September 23, 2009

“Wow.  Is that Hoover Dam down there? Doesn’t look too big from up here.”

We had visual confirmation from SWA flight 209 of the wondrous concrete arch-gravity marvel: The Hoover Dam, the world’s 35th-largest hydroelectric generating station. Check.  No tour needed now – we just got back half of our Friday.

Chris produced quarters with a nod/grin as we disembark and plays the first slot we see: zilch. Obviously we hadn’t made a proper offering until both of us have had a pull.  Dropped in two more quarters to make it max coin (not playing max allowable coins on a slot or video poker machine is like digging in at the plate against Nolan with a table leg in your hands). BOOM. 12 bucks. Split the win, we were both off and running +$6.

Retrieve luggage, hit the shuttle over to Alamo. After enduring several perfunctory attempted upsells (no eye contact or anything, pathetic) and the sight of multiple extra employees wandering around behind the counters taking great care to NOT HELP us would-be renters languishing in our cattle pen, we got our shiny newborn Hyundai Accent (.3 miles on her!).

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DIGRESSION: overall we got a good deal at Alamo. $10/day weekend special. Special was no good wed-thurs so we rented a car for one day at $46 and came back a day later to swap it for our $10 car (which was a better car, we snapped up a nice-handling Elantra with power everything). Extra trip saved $35. Worth it for our low-rolling crew. The lot attendants were easygoing on car selection coming out (“whichever one you want from those couple rows, bub”), and fast and cheerful coming back in. We didn’t bother to offer the free upgrade coupon/tip because we wanted better mileage. Our first car easily racked up 36 or 37mpg. Next time I’ll check in online before I leave and use the blue kiosk to quickly check in upon arrival to Alamo. I didn’t do it this time because I wanted SWA rapid rewards credit which you have to get at the counter if you don’t book the car thru SWA.com.

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We cranked up the GPS (thanks Pop!) then it was off to the former jewel of downtown (still is to the locals):  EL CORTEZ. Built in 1941 and renovated a couple years back. $132 for 2 people for 4 nights (wed-sun) off travelaxe. Heretofore known as SHANGRI-LA.

Let me break this property down for you.   If you don’t mind a little smoke in the lobby/casino/poker room, the ELCO is a great value.

• Reason 1:  upon check-in the nice desk attendant hooked us up with a fun book (many good coupons), 2 free nights if we come back in December (no restrictions!), and a coupon for a free bottle of wine with our steak dinner.

• Reason 2:  a basic “non-smoking pavilion” room featuring some of the most comfortable beds I have slept in at a hotel. Of course when you hit the sack at 6am your standards are somewhat lessened non-existent, but my queen bed was just as comfy during daylight non-zombie-tired hours. Bathroom a tad small but they made people smaller back then, no? She even offered to upgrade me to a tower room for $10 for all 4 nights. On the way over we had decided that $10 was going to be the amount I tipped her if she did it for free. My brain flamed out while taking inventory of the fistful of perks in my hand and I declined. Why? I still don’t know. Who cares?

• Reason 3:  quiet. I bought a nice white noise machine off ebay for this and future family trips because I am a light sleeper and my tinnitus makes it tough to drift off. Worked great but we really didn’t need it too much. We were never disturbed by the live music from the middle of Fremont St. Experience (2 blocks away) or from the several booming clubs/bars on East Fremont District (next door). ElCO is in an ideal spot: far enough for quiet and short enough to walk over to the FSE in a flash.

• Reason 4: got to play poker with Jackie (see below).

• Reason 5: overall great “Old Vegas” vibrations. From the numerous rows of old-school “coindropper” video poker flattops to the .25 roulette, $3 craps, $3 BJ (& $5 double-deck 3/2 BJ!), 1-3-6 poker room, “gamblers gourmet” (they’ll bring meals to you just about anywhere on the property, mostly so you don’t have to leave your favorite machine to eat), extremely friendly staff and great deals, this place is our new downtown “HQ/lair/home field” for any future visits. Once they are up, jump ahead to day 5/6 for an almost equally positive Bally’s (down on the strip) review.

CHAD:

“El Cortez.  It’s great because it’s right across the street from The Western and I think it’s the last place in Vegas (besides The Western) to have old skool coin dumpers.  Not only that, but where else in Vegas could we experiment with roulette systems, win a slot “tournament”, play cards with the owner, force fold opponent’s nut straights, win 800 quarters, have the blackjack dealer play all of our hands, get our mugs on key chains and be comped like kings immediately upon check-in?  Nowhere, not Caesar’s, not The Palm’s, not The Wynn, not even The Western.”

On to our first coupon-related action. We pulled out our $10 free slot play coupons from both our Las Vegas Advisor and American Casino Guide books to cash in at Club Cortez (players club). The courteous Club Cortez lady loaded $20 FSP each on our players cards and Chris proceeded to play/cash out +$27.50 playing .25 video poker. He bested me on fsp winnings, yet without fail he always managed to do so. Christopher also hardly ever played slots/vp with his own money, saying it was much more fun to play the promo free play, especially since his touch contained considerably more Midas than mine.  Except for my quads win (see day X) I would also heartily agree.

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DIGRESSION: we each bought the LVA and ACG coupon books online for $65 total shipped for both because of the copious amounts of coupons casinos use in these two books to attract new and repeat (but especially new) business. Free slot play, match plays (bet $10 they pay $20 if you win), half-off buffet’s, free photo keychains, BOGO hotel rooms et.al. They paid for themselves and then some, in a pretty significant way for some of us. Chris even kept stats for the whole trip. I managed to keep stats for, oh,  a couple hours.

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Fun book gave us $5 free food each. After discovering the Flame (El Cortez Steak House) was not open yet we each got a great burger (for $1.25 each!) delivered right to the bartop video poker machine where we were each enjoying a free beer (pint of Blue Moon and bottle of Coors Cutter) courtesy of,  you guessed it, our fun books. I think we tipped him like $4 or $5. Being service industry vets and just all-around Mr. Nice Guys we resolved to tip generously the whole trip to keep vibes good, and make up for the fact that we were basically on one giant coupon run with poker and pinball mixed in. To the uninitiated: Vegas runs on tips. The good-tipping mojo definitely pays off.  It certainly did in our case, both in good Karma and the joy of seeing the surprised smiles and thank-you’s of dealers/croupiers when we tipped at least a buck on every coupon win. Apparently coupon-jockeys are a parsimonious (read: cheap-as-****) bunch. We also tipped the cage on a big win. Tipped the housekeepers, cocktails, tournament dealers (that was even on top of their $5 per player hold back from the casino), and even buffet waiteresses, even if they weren’t good. I even tipped a buck to my prime rib slicer at Sam’s Town. The omelette-station chef at Paris b-fast buffet (delicious, try it) even turned down a tip! Although I noticed the crepe-station guy wasn’t so hi-falutin’.

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Up next while we waited to leave to pick  up Chad at the airport: 1-3-6 spread limit poker at the venerable ELCO poker room. Well its more of an “excuse me” poker area with only 3 (or 4?) tables.  BUT we had the pleasure of playing low limit poker with 80-something retired multimillionaire Jackie Gaughan- the former owner and current penthouse resident of the ELCO.

CHRIS:

“Fun – a complete donkey game – but absurd – We only played for half an hour.  Down 3 Dollars – 1 blind; 2 calls both pre-flop and missed on both.  I would actually like to play this game ALOT more….Like 3 nights a week if it were down the street from me…..I do not think they took down a rake more than half the hands……(they always took the high-hand bonus buy-in juice). Other notes:  They were surprised by our casual $100 (rack of blues/$1 chips) buy-in.  And us coming back.  And tipping the dealers.  And tipping the waitress’s.  And making a two dollar bet on the river with the nuts(second session)….but hey he called……”

For you poker players I’ll add that there was only a single $1 blind but you had the option of making it $2 or even $3 if it was on you! Plus a straddle option. It was a crusty cross-section of locals, and well, more locals. Also I almost gave a cocktail waitress a heart attack when I tried to order a water and a coffee at the same time. I was mystified at first but later she told me they aren’t allowed to put in more than one drink order every 20 min or so because of mgmt cracking down on players buying in for $20 in chips and drinking $300 worth of booze. You could tell who these players were because they never tipped the standard buck-a-drink (even on coffee and bottled water) for the free drinks. I noticed one barkeep showed a sense of humor by cramming like 20 cherries in one of these no-tipping freeloading joker’s fu-fu cranberry drinks! Her conundrum made sense when she explained it. I certainly didn’t want her to get sacked b/c of me and my coffee/water scam.

Next we cruised to the airport to pick up Chad. Joyful reunion from all of 24 hours ago. It’s always good to get the team back together. Time to clock in, get to work and have some fun! We made a beeline for Arizona Charlie’s Decatur for their $100 cash back promotion for new players. Unbeknownst to us, our sweet AZ Charlie’s promo was long gone! BARNACLES!

DIGRESSION: If you have a list of casino promotions (not coupons but new players club signup promos) that you want to take advantage of, be sure to call ahead to the players club (the acg coupon book you will have purchased has contact info for every casino of note in the country) before you drive over there. For alas,  We were crestfallen in a BIG way after this disappointment as we were hoping to attempt some real home run swings with that free $100 (single tear slowly streaming down each of our faces)…

Undaunted (and still uttering choice unprintable phrases), we made a lateral move and drove over to Red Rock Casino/Resort to get our $10 free slot play and $120 in (non-negotiable) chips for $100 promo. Our first experience with “non-negotiable chips” was instructive. As in when they gone, you gone! Or you SHOULD be gone, if you know what’s good for you, unless you were planning on settling in for a longer session or you are bunking on-site. Which wouldn’t be bad, as this was a nice place, although somewhat out of the way, much like the dreaded Rampart Casino, to be lambasted moments from now. RR seemed like a first class resort. Still, like most “resorts” on and off the strip it was really too cavernous for our tastes. I think Chad and I were more or less even, but Chris walked out +$80 with no memory of how he did it (and Chris doesn’t drink, which is a good quality to have in your DDriver). He suspects it was Texas Hold’em Bonus table game which I don’t remember playing there either…

Peeling (maybe chirping…OK groaning) out of there on our way back downtown I noticed Suncoast, but WISELY decided to skip it. We determined that at that moment in the evening (11? 12? cst) self-parking in the garage and walking all the way to the gaming area for $5 MP each wasn’t a good deal.

Then right after we were back on the road I noticed the Rampart Marriott and very UNWISELY decided to stop and use our $45 total matchplays each. Be warned:  we thought we were playing standard Vegas-rules 3/2 blackjack but it turned out to some hideous hideous monstrosity known anachronistically as “Super Fun 21″. The rules were so utterly discombobulated and super-fun-for-the-casino’s-bottom-line that it was like so many lambs to the slaughter for our Matchplays.  Needless to say with losses on 4 of 5 attempts (Chadwick read the tea leaves and decided against playing his final MP) including an unfortunate spin of the roulette wheel we hi-tailed it out of there with a $80 free shirt, a $45 free hat, a $25 free deck of cards and a dent in our wallets/self-respect. With MPs of such magnitude we could have been contenders. Instead, if I ever again come across Atari Rampart (a great game I used to love) I’ll have to slowly, bitterly turn away and weep.

CHAD:

“The Rampart.  The place is total nondescript, homogonized swank.  If you didn’t know any better you might be fooled into thinking you were somewhere nice, like The Hilton or The Palms (har har).  It seemed fitting that it was snuggled up next to master planned, gated communities in the heard of Vegas sprawl; it probably makes mad scratch and has a golf course.  Their free T-shirts suck so bad that they’re cool and their match plays are rigged.”

So then it was back downtown to check Chad in, get him his perks, and get downtown to the FSE to hit some of the old school gambling spots. We engaged some more minor MP’s with mixed success, and more importantly discovered  our new favorite table game at the 4 Queens casino: Texas Hold ‘Em Bonus Poker, aka Ultimate Texas Hold ‘Em. Its a cross between let it ride, caribbean stud and Texas Holdem, the best game ever. We must have played for over 2 hours before getting a delicious heapin’ helpin’ of late/early breakfast at Magnolia cafe in 4 Queens at 4am cst (6 am our time!). Homerun on our first THeB session: I was up $130, Chad up $1XX, and (holy fish paste) Chris was up $250. Of course there were some corrections later in the trip as we kept playing/honing strategies at this fun game, but those wins got us some much-needed momentum and breathing room.

We were fully conked-out even before physically landing on our ELCO mattresses by 4:30 or 5am. It was to be the earliest we would ever go to sleep in Nevada. With all three of us comfortably in the black (esp. Chris at +$325), “SUPER FUN” day 1 was in the books!

Day One Thoughts:

• Talking to you, city of LV:  when downtown is hopping and jam-packed, why even have the cross streets open at all? Its dangerous and annoying. If you cordoned off the center you could save lives and the cabs could easily stop short and make a small u-turn to pick up fares.
• Here’s 1 more reason why Texas Holdem Bonus is a great game. If you just stick to the ante bet it has an effective house percentage that matches the best games in the casino at 0.5335%! The wizard of odds has decreed it! Just try to do better playing Craps or Blackjack. And no, I’m not talking to you, dice-setters & card-counters.
• No huge blunders on day one, yet letting missteps roll off my (our) back(s) and refusing to go on “tilt” (briefly follow that link if you aren’t a poker player) was to be the hallmark of our trip. I had been training my mind for just these moments. Results of my no-tilt mindset were somewhat mixed at the low-limit poker tables but mostly I played rock-solid when it counted (for the bigger cheddar). This concept is old news to poker players/gamblers but this being my first trip with real money in play I wanted had to have my emotions in line and vibe set to positive.
• There will be no further mention of the word “vibe.”
• Quick Vegas travel checklist: Comfortable shoes. Sunscreen. Popping Probiotic or Enzyme capsules before assaulting the buffets. Lightweight backpack/messenger bag with comfortable straps. Everyone’s cellphone numbers written down on sheets of paper in everyone’s wallets. In case anyone loses their way and their phone at the same time. You never know how much fun you might get into!

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