40. With Mike Stefanidis - The Four Queens, March 20-21, 1993

• Mike and I never play slots to any extent, but we had always talked about each throwing in $20.00 and playing some dollars. So, that's exactly what we did at the Golden Nugget. We each got twenty dollars and sat at machines right next to each other, agreeing that if either of us got a jackpot, we'd split the money. Well, I ended up lining up three 7s for a payout of $1199.00!^* So, not a bad win: $599.50 apiece. Of course, that made us cocky and we lost the entire wad in about ten minutes at the crap table. No joke.
  

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^*The casino worker explained that the payout was one dollar less than $1200.00 because for payouts of $1200.00 and more the casino has to report it to the IRS.

39. With Mike Stefanidis - The Four Queens, March 6-7, 1993

• We drove in my car and made pretty good time. We left Mike's house at 6:00 p.m. and arrived in Vegas at 10:30 p.m.

• We didn't have a room, so somewhere between Barstow and Baker, Mike used my car phone to call the Four Queens. Since he was listed as a high roller, they gave him a free room and free food.^*

• We started betting a lot of don't pass in craps, and it went very well for us.

• On the way home we ended up stopping at Whiskey Pete's for about two hours.

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^*From this trip on, whenever I took a trip with Mike Stefanidis, he got our room and our meals free.