Let It Ride

“Let it ride” is a phrase sometimes heard around the gambling tables here in Vegas – you win a bet and instead of taking your winnings, you “let it ride” or “press it up” as a double bet on the next hand.  “Let it ride” is also the name of a particular table game on the casino floor.  Unlike Blackjack and Craps which are games in the public domain, Let it Ride is a patented and trademarked game and the casinos have to compensate the owner of the game for its use on their floors.  It is fairly popular with players even though there is quite a house advantage.  But it is not real popular with the casinos because they have to hand over a good portion of that house advantage to the game owner.

The game is a fairly simple one.  You make three required bets plus an optional bonus bet and then are dealt the first three cards of what will become a five card poker hand.  If your three cards are weak, you can pull back one of your three bets.  If your hand is strong you can “let it ride”.  The dealer turns over a community card that becomes the fourth card for each player’s hand and again you can pull back or let ride another of your three required bets.  The dealer then turns over the second community card completing each player’s five-card hand.  Your poker hand is paid or not paid based on a predetermined pay scale noted on the table.  One nice thing about the game is that you have an option on two of the bets.  Let’s say you bet $16 – three $5 bets plus a $1 bonus.  If you have a big pair in your first three cards, you will be paid on each of those bets.  But if you have a weak hand than doesn’t improve you will have pulled back two bets and only have $6 in play at the showdown.

It is a game that can wipe you out of your stake pretty quickly if you don’t hit any cards.  But it is a game where relatively you can win a lot of money if you hit a really big hand and then get out.  You are hoping to catch some big pairs, two pairs, three of a kinds, straights and flushes to sustain your play all the while you are hoping for a big hand such as a full house, four of a kind, or straight flush.

So where is all of this going?  I really like to play this game, but I dutifully stayed away from it until I had some winnings I could “invest” in the game.  We had been here nearly three weeks until I had some good winnings from some machines and made my first foray to the Let it Ride table.  Gary watched standing behind me as I played.  I was doing pretty well with my sustaining wins.  I seemed to have luck hitting two pairs and was holding my own or better vis-a-vis my initial stake.  AND THEN IT CAME!  I look down into my three card hand and there are two queens.  There will be no pulling back bets this time.  I have a guaranteed winner so I am letting it ride on all the bets.  There are two other queens somewhere so there is a 4% chance that next community card will be a queen.  The dealer turns it over – a queen.  I now have three queens in my hand.  The excitement builds at this point.  Gary points in at the table and says to the dealer just one more of those!   At this point everyone pretty much knows I am drawing for four of a kind.  There is one queen left somewhere.  It could be in someone else’s three card hand.  It could be in the stack on cards not used in this round of place.  But, there is a 2% chance that last  community card is the final queen.  The dealer turns it over – ANOTHER QUEEN.  Shouts of joy and arm thrusts into the air erupt.  The table is quite happy too.  With two queens as community cards, everyone is a guaranteed winner.

So, what did the table pay?  Each of the three $5 mandatory bets paid $250.  The $1 bonus bet paid $100.  I play one more hand “to clear my winner”, tip the dealer with some of my earlier winnings and leave the table with my $850 win as well as my initial $100 stake.

The odds of hitting four of a kind in a 5-card poker hand – 4,164 to 1.  I guess you could say it was my lucky day.

Golden Nugget

What a great name for a casino – The Golden Nugget.  Also known as just “The Nugget” it is the most upscale of the downtown hotel/casinos none of which are nearly as fabulous as most of the properties on “The Strip”.  We are very happy being in the downtown and one of the main reasons is that it’s a lot cheaper here.  We were at Caesar’s Palace one evening and ordered a couple of beers at a bar – $17 for two beers.  At the brewpub in “our hotel” it is $4.50 full price for an on-site craft brewed beer and between happy hour and football game discounts, the price is generally $2 to $2.50 a pint.  But back to “The Nugget”; one of their attractions is their display of two of the world’s largest real raw golden nuggets.  One of the nuggets shown to the upper right is Robin’s Nugget.  It weighs 189.7 Troy ounces or over 13 pounds.  The gold value is around $250,000 but of course it is worth much more because it is a rare large nugget.  The second nugget is the Hand of Faith Nugget.  It weighs 875 Troy ounces, or 61 pounds 11 ounces.  Its gold content is worth over a million dollars.  The nugget was found in Australia in 1980.  It was buried under less than a foot of ground and was discovered with a metal detector.  Can you imagine the thrill of that find?  We are in a region that has gold in the ground.  Gary, get out that metal detector!

One Million Dollars

Don’t we look happy standing in front of $1 million in $100 bills?  Did we hit it big in Vegas?  Did one of our lottery tickets finally come in?  Did we win the prize for being the one millionth customer?  Or, was it none of the above?  If you picked “none of the above”, you made the correct call.  At Binion’s, one of the downtown casinos, their main attraction to pull you in is this real display of one million dollars.  And they even take your picture for free standing behind it.  As it is all enclosed in plexiglass and there are always lots of people around, it might be difficult to make off with any of it.  And it would take quite a carrying case to boot.

 

It is hard to believe we have been here two weeks already.  Time flies when you are in Las Vegas, even for an extended stay.  So how is our self-proclaimed poker pro doing.  Well, he seems to tell a new tale of woe after he comes back from each tournament.  One day he had aces in the hole, saw another ace come on the flop and wound up chopping the pot as all five cards on the board were clubs.  He apparently has been outdrawn a number of times when he has had monster hands and was the overwhelming favorite.  But he did break through this week, cashing in fifth place in a 48-person tournament.  This was a “bounty tournament” where you earn $20 for each player you knock out.  He won $185 for fifth and $60 in bounties, but he is only about half way to even.  But with his card counting skills fully sharpened again, he has yet to have a losing session at blackjack.  I have been using the coupon book that we purchased and taking advantage of its free play and match play coupons.  That has helped to mitigate a bit my other losses in the machines.  In total, we really aren’t down very much for this being our sixteenth day here.

This is the casino guide/coupon book we purchased.  If you are in Vegas for just a long weekend, it may not help a lot, but for an extended stay, it has paid for itself a few times over:  http://www.americancasinoguide.com/

We don’t spend all that much time gambling.  Our Detroit Tigers are keeping us busy watching their games and we enjoy having a brewery right here at the hotel where we are camped.  We have been out and about the city doing some needed shopping in stores, off Craigslist, and even some garage sales.  We’ll have to report more later on some of our great buys.

The Heart Attack Grill

Here is another “Roadside America” attraction in Downtown Las Vegas – The Heart Attack Grill.   First and foremost, we did not eat there.  We took the warning from the owner himself that their food would kill you.  But we did have a good chuckle as we peered inside and saw customers (patients) dressed in hospital gowns being served by waitresses (in nurse costumes).  In reading up on this place, we found that the quadruple bypass burger is close to 10,000 calories.  Their Flatliner Fries are deep fried in pure lard and are served unadulterated – not drained of the grease from frying.  The shakes are made from butter fat cream.  If you want to see more, just click on the following link of the owner’s interview on Bloomberg TV 

http://www.bloomberg.com/video/my-food-will-kill-you-heart-attack-grill-s-basso-iJoqlgeOQ4~Xf~OgRbwOhA.html

 

Mr Gorbachev, Tear Down This Wall….

……and put a chunk of it in a bathroom of the Main Street Station Casino in Las Vegas, Nevada so that men can pee on it.  The Berlin Wall is is one of many “Roadside America” attractions in Las Vegas.  But only the guys get to see this one.   The urinals are mounted to an actual section of the Berlin Wall, complete with the wall’s graffiti.  I am not sure the sign and pictures up top serve to improve aim.

People Watching on Fremont Street

Fremont Street is closed to vehicle traffic from Las Vegas Blvd (the Strip) west to Main Street.  Above that entire stretch is Viva Vision, a canopy of lights integrating video, animation, and music.  At night there are short shows at the top of every hour.  It brings a lot of people to the downtown.  At the right is a picture from the Bon Jovi “show”.  And where there are lots of people in the street, there will be lots of street people trying to make a buck.  They are standing about the area hoping that people will pay for having their picture taken with them.  Shown below are Spiderman and Cupid.  Doesn’t everyone want to have their picture taken with a balding cupid wearing heart-shaped pasties and a makeshift thong?

Or, you could have your picture taken with the devil – wearing pasties and a thong.

Singers are popular too,  KISS or Elvis anyone?

Movie characters are also there.

And to close out this post.  How about a guy who plays a guitar with his teeth and a fairy princess?  It’s all happening right here in Vegas on Fremont Street.  And we are only two blocks away.

Urban Camping

We have visited a lot of cities in our travels.  Visiting a city poses the problem of just where to camp.  Generally we are out in the suburbs and are traveling to the city either via our car or by some form(s) of public transportation.  About the closest in campground we ever had for a city was in Denver where we stayed at very nice trailer park/rv park in the city of Englewood, about a mile or two from the Denver city limits.  We also were pretty close to downtown Little Rock as we were just across the river in North Little Rock and had a clear view of the city skyline, but we were camped along the Arkansas River and it didn’t seem like the city.  We also camped within Nashville, at the State Fairgrounds, but that was such a crappy place that that we left there after one night.

Well, Las Vegas is by far our most urban camping yet.  You can’t be anymore downtown than we are.  We are at the RV park of the Main Street Station Hotel and Casino, one of the downtown hotels.  The park is on the other side of the downtown freeway from the hotel, which creates a fair bit of traffic noise and the “park” is really just a paved parking lot.  Also, there is a fire station across the street from our site and we have a few sirens-blaring runs originate there every day and night.

But lest you think we don’t like it here and are about to move on – not a chance.  We are booked here for at least 30 days and we love it here.  Our site is at the end of a row so we have our own little desert landscape/patio area right out our front door.  And we also have a nice view of the only clump of trees in the park.  Just across that freeway and couple blocks walk is the famous Fremont Street, the original casino boom area of Las Vegas and now the home of The Fremont Street Experience with its light shows and entertainment nightly  http://www.vegasexperience.com/.  And our camp site is only $16 a day.

There is a stop for the city bus system right outside the park and we purchased one-month passes.  The downtown bus center is only a couple stops away and we can get anywhere in the city very easily.

Las Vegas is one of the places we would actually consider for when we come off the road.  At least we might be able to get family to come visit us.  We will have a good look while we are here.