92. With Sherry, David, and Charlie - Sam's Town, June 20-21, 2010

• This was a stopover on our family vacation to Yellowstone.

• David and Charlie (especially Charlie) got a big kick out of the water show in the big atrium lobby at Sam's Town, and both kids enjoyed the breakfast buffet.

• I had great luck at the crap table. I only made a $5.00 pass line bet and one $5.00 come bet with 6x/8x/10x odds. (Sam's Town offers 20x odds.) Shooters just kept repeating numbers. I won $695.00 for about an hour's worth of play.
  

91. With Mike Stefanidis - Wynn Las Vegas, October 1-3, 2009

• Hey! We only stayed in one hotel this time! Mike got a comped room at Wynn Las Vegas. It was the first time either one of us had stayed there.

• This was sort of a last-minute trip. I had an $80.00 credit with Southwest Airlines from our last trip, and it was due to expire on October 11. So, we threw something together on short notice. (With the credit, I only had to pay $37.20 out of pocket for the round-trip airfare.)

• Our flight to Vegas was delayed by five minutes, so we were able to get on the previous flight at no extra cost. (Had our original flight been on-time, they would have charged us to switch.) The change got us to Vegas at least an hour earlier.

• Along with the comped room, Mike got some free slot credit (somewhere around $200). He was able to convert it to around $400 in real money thanks to a straight flush in Jacks-or-Better Video Poker.

• Craps was up and down, mostly down. The only monster roll was one Mike had at Wynn; I turned $300 into $1,300. Unfortunately, after his roll we walked over to Encore, where I dropped $500 and Mike dropped $1,000 when we played at a table where we didn't win a single bet. That's not an exaggeration. No repeat numbers, no naturals on the pass line or come. Nothing.

• The final day was dismal at the tables. We couldn't catch anything.

• Before we left, we played a little more video poker. On one hand, Mike inadvertently held onto a pair of 9s when he should have held four to a flush. His mistake paid off as he drew to quad 9s.

90. With Mike Stefanidis - The Venetian, January 22-24, 2009

• Once again, this was a "Room at Venetian/Room at Harrah's" combo trip. Mike got a $200 slot credit for his reservation at Venetian and a $750 gift card for Dillard's at Harrah's.

• I was even able to take advantage of a $25 slot credit offer I had received for the Venetian. The offer indicated that I had to be a registered guest at the hotel, but the woman at the players club desk made a phone call and was able to approve the offer because Mike had listed me as an occupant of the room on his reservation.

• I cashed out for $41.50 on my free slot play; Mike cashed out for $106.25.

• At Flamingo, we were able to play craps and watch the go-go dancers in a special party gaming area.

• While playing craps at Encore, the dealer accidentally paid me $50 on my $10 pass line bet. The mistake probably occurred because Mike was betting $50 on the line. Still, we were the only two players at the table with a full crew working. I waited a bit before picking up the payoff, figuring someone would catch it. No one did.

• During that same craps session, two very drunk, very skanky women stepped up to the table next to Mike. It was around 9:00 in the morning, and they said they'd been up all night. They reeked, they were vulgar, they were loud, and they were annoying. But the dice were hot, so we put up with them for a while. Once the table cooled, we got out of there as fast as we could.
  

• Friday night we ate dinner at Carnevino, Mario Batali's Italian steakhouse at Palazzo. Mike and I split a porterhouse steak called "La Fiorentina." It was the best steak I've ever had. It better have been. Price tag: $140.

• Gambling-wise, the trip was one of my best. I didn't post my biggest win, but with only a few exceptions, all craps sessions were winners.
  

• The only craps hand that even came close to being a monster was one of our last at Caesars Palace. A shooter rolled a bunch of 4s and 10s, followed by a bunch of 6s and 8s. I made about $800 on him, playing pretty conservatively.

• For more about the trip, take a listen to episode 199 of the Five Hundy by Midnight podcast. My call is at the 1 hour, 18 minute mark.

89. With Mike Stefanidis - The Venetian, January 24-26, 2008

• Like our previous trip, Mike received two great offers for free rooms, one from the new Palazzo, and one from Harrah's. The Palazzo offer included $150 in food credit and a $500 slot credit. The Harrah's offer included a free designer purse for Lynn. So, of course, he made reservations for both.

• When we arrived at the airport for our flight to Vegas, there was a huge line to get through security in the Southwest Airlines area we were used to flying out of. It was much longer than our previous trip. Mike got us a place in line while I went to check which gate our flight was leaving from. Turns out we were leaving out of Gate 1, which was in a separate area at the east side of the airport. We got out of line and headed to the Gate 1 security check, and there was literally no one in line.

• The flight to Vegas prior to ours was just boarding when we got through security. Mike checked at the counter to see if we could get on that flight. The Southwest representative told him that if we had paid full fare OR if our flight were delayed even five minutes, he'd be able to switch us. But, we had paid a special Internet rate, and our flight was right on time. No biggie.

• Mike lost $13.00 to me playing Pai-Gow poker on the flight. How can his luck be so bad?

• At the airport, the cab driver asked if we wanted to take the freeway or just take the direct route to the hotel. He claimed the freeway was faster, but a little more expensive. Neither Mike nor I thought the freeway would be faster. We told him to take us straight there.

• We checked in at the Palazzo, but they moved us over to the Venetian. The check-in hostess didn't really say why, but later one of the craps dealers said we were probably better off. The Palazzo had been open less than a month, and they were apparently still having problems with some of the rooms.

• Mike used his $500 slot play and was able to turn it into over $600. That's pretty good, because on average you hope to get back only about $250. Mike took $300 of his winnings and placed the 6 for both of us on the next crap table we played at. The 6 hit twice, so we both got $350. Thanks, Mike!

• Sue just happened to be in Vegas on business, and Dana had come along with her. We met them for lunch and dinner at Harrah's on Friday.

• Friday morning, the Monte Carlo down the street had a big fire on the outside of their top floors. No one was seriously hurt. Dana and Sue got some good pictures.

• Mom had given me $25.00 to bet on craps for her. I struggled with exactly how I should bet it, but eventually I decided that I would put it all on the field when either Dana or Sue was rolling. So, after I had just finished my roll at a table at Harrah's, it was Dana's turn to shoot the dice. She established her point, and I took out Mom's $25.00 in cash and announced, "All in the field, please!" The stickman pushed the dice in front of Dana, and without thinking, I picked them up and threw them! As they were in the air, Dana said, "Don't I get to shoot?" "Oh, no!" I thought, realizing what I'd done. The dice hit the table. "Yo-leven!" I'd doubled Mom's money. Thank goodness.
  

• We played craps pretty much the whole time, and only at Harrah's, Venetian, and Palazzo. Harrah's just wasn't as fun as it used to be, however we had a real good time at Venetian and Palazzo.
  

• The craps sessions weren't all that good, except for one shooter on Friday night who rolled a bunch of points, including a couple 10s. "Just roll the damn 10," became our mantra for the weekend.

88. With Mike Stefanidis - The Venetian, January 25-27, 2007 (-$347.00)

• Although we stayed at The Venetian, we also got a room at Harrah's. Here's why: When we were first planning the trip, Mike got an offer in the mail from The Venetian offering him a free room for two nights, $100 worth of food, and $500 in match play chips. So he went ahead and made the reservations. Then a little while later, he got an offer from Harrah's for a free room and a $750 gift certificate to Nordstrom! So, he made those reservations as well. (We used the room at Harrah's for toilet needs.)

• We had a huge session of craps that first night. I was up around $1,100, Mike around $2,000. It would turn out to be the only winning session of the trip, and we both ended up losing.

• When Mike cashed out after a craps session at Harrah's, the cashier inadvertently gave him $500 too much.

• During a hand of Texas Hold 'em Bonus Poker at The Venetian, Mike forgot to put money on the bonus bet. It was the first time he'd forgotten while playing at that table. He realized it after the cards had been dealt, and although he hadn't look at his cards, the dealer would not allow him to make the bet. Mike picked up his cards and looked down at ace-king suited. It would have paid 30 to 1, and Mike had been putting $10 down on the bonus bet on previous hands.

87. With Mike Stefanidis, Con Stefanidis, and Phil LaBarbera - Harrah's, May 26-28, 2006 (-$226.00)

• The original point of this trip was so that Phil could be an unseen chaperone for his daughter Casey and her friends who had planned to go to Las Vegas to celebrate graduating from high school; however, Casey and her friends ended up not going.

• Mary Whelan ended up "surprising" us by showing up Friday night (her birthday).

• The boxman at a craps table at The Mirage made one of the most amazing mistakes I've ever witnessed in Vegas.

  Mike, Mary and I were playing, and this guy at the other end of the table got on a nice, hot roll. By the end of it, I had $1,195 in front of me, after having bought in for $400. A nice $795 profit, which put me up around $200 for the trip. I asked to be colored up, and when the boxman totaled the $1,195, Mike threw him a five-dollar chip and said, "Make it an even twelve hundred!" So, the boxman gave two $500 chips and two $100 chips to the dealer, who passed them along to me. I thanked them and headed to the cashier, leaving Mike and Mary behind to play a bit more.

  The line at the cashier was too long, so I loitered around the poker area for a while to kill some time. Once the line had gone down, I went to cash out. I put the chips in front of the cashier, and he said, "Okay, twenty-two."

  "Twenty-two?" I thought. "What does that mean?"

  I looked down, and instead of two $500 chips, the boxman had given me two $1000 chips! I was cashing out for twenty-two hundred dollars instead of twelve hundred. A $1000 mistake! The fact that the boxman made such a huge mistake was unbelievable, but even more amazing is that the dealer didn't notice it either. Nor did I!

  It's very possible that the catalyst for the whole thing was Mike tossing him that extra chip.

  So of course I paid him back the five dollars.

86. With Mike Stefanidis - Harrah's, June 3-5, 2005

• This trip was to "celebrate" getting hired at Raytheon.

• We had some good luck with Fire Bets at craps.

• Mary and Frank happened to be in Las Vegas the same weekend, so we spent some time with them.