Las Vegas August trip report

[Alan Gruskoff]

Just getting back from a birthday vacation and meetings in Las Vegas.

I stayed at the Wynn, which is one of the nicest hotels anywhere (5 Diamond) besides having a casino.  They have this elegant 24/7 Terrace Point Cafe off their Pool are that has gourmet breakfast and meals anytime and free WiFi so I was there often.  A pit boss I knew from Rio was there now and said it was a great place to work. He said they want you to do your Job and be nice to people. As if the latter was a new thing, yet that seems to work.

The Wynn has 10 beautiful Craps tables right at the room elevators entrance, which is convenient. There were at best a few people at a few tables, but I managed some good sessions and left on the plus side.  They usually are $25 minimum bet tables, sometime $15 in the daytime, and often $50 later. Lots of guys with $2-5K in their rail.

There was one rich, but poorly dressed fella (sleeveless t-shirt at the Wynn?) working tens if not hundreds of thousands in his rail round the clock, and then an empty rail and on the phone, and then another full rail, this went on for all the time I was there on a "Private" table. I have to admit being curious about that.

I also has some good sessions at the Rio, which can always be counted on for some lively play in the evenings, jamming at 2-3 AM.

I did have one nice session at the Paris which had 4 full tables going at $10 Min. The Craps tables are a little hard to find at Paris, but had good games going at 10PM.  I played Pass line and Place numbers with the lady shooters and Dont Pass on the men shooters and that seemed to mostly work.

Since it was my birthday vacation I did make sure to get off the tables and see some shows. The best was the ICE: Direct from Russia at Riveria, way better than expected, a troupe of 30 highly skilled skaters & acrobats that are all super model beautiful, even the men. Worth seeing again. I did also see the back-from-vacation re-opening of Beatles LOVE at Mirage. You cant help but admire the fantastic staging and aerial 3D presentation of great imagination.  I had a seat I could not fit my legs into made worst my a fat drunk next to me who could not keep from rubbing his fat drunk self up against me, making that show physically torturous!

I can report coming home with a little more money than I left with, which since I was playing kinda conservative, is a good gambling trip for me. Being up after 4 days of gambling is always good, even if its not a lot.