Trips to Vegas: August 1992

Sunday, August 30, 1992

Vegas insanity reached its zenith with this trip. At 2:30 in the afternoon, Mike and I decided to fly to Las Vegas on the next available flight, and fly home on the last flight out that night. We ended up being in Vegas for a total of two hours. And we lost.

Since the guy who was supposed to paint Mike's house didn't show on Saturday, we decided to go to Vegas. We got a flight leaving at 3:30 p.m.

We had a real hard time getting a room; almost everywhere we went, we caught the pit's attention with the amount of money we were playing with, and you could tell they were more than willing to give us a comped room, but they just didn't have any. Finally, at about 2:00 a.m., the pit at the Dunes said they had a room for us. This after I had gone up to the check-in window and had been told that "the Queen of England couldn't get a room here tonight."

The pit at the Imperial Palace apologized that they were out of rooms and offered us a free meal at their top-of-the-line steak restaurant. Total comped meal for the two of us: $66.00.

Well, I learned this trip that I've got to change the way I play craps. Mike and I played at the same tables the whole trip; he won a little bit, I lost a ton.

Mike and I decided to break my new car in, so on Saturday (August 1) we called a VIP number for Fitzgeralds (which had been given to us by a pit boss) and made reservations for that night. Then, at about 10:30 p.m., we hit the road.

It was a dismal, dismal trip. We exclusively played craps, and never got on a really hot roll.

While we were waiting to get a cash advance at Caesars, Jay Leno stepped up to the cashier's window next to us. All sorts of people were coming up to him, shaking his hand, asking for photographs. We asked him if that kind of thing got to him, you know, always getting hounded in public. With a smile on his face he said, "Well, it pays the bills."

Mike was having a decent roll at The Mirage. At one point he rolled his point of five, and it turned out that a high roller at the other end of the table had made a hop bet on the five for about $20.00. Mike's next roll was another five to establish a new point, and the guy had left his hop bet out there, so he won again. He pressed it up to about $40.00 and said to Mike, "If you roll it again, you get half." Well, sure enough, Mike rolled another five. He looked down at the guy as if to say, "Hey, you said half," and the guy immediately said, "Give him half!" It was a great moment, plus by rolling the five he made his point, so everyone won.