Visitreno

[RenoLady]

Just back, last night, from 3 nights and 4 days in Reno; we met R’s Spokane family for a 21st b-day for one of the kids. It was also R’s b-day trip, and they hooked us up for a tournament. I think I’ll write this using a topical style, since I don’t think anyone wants to go through the whole trip chronologically with me. Mainly because I can’t remember it all this time, and some of it would be repetitious anyway.

SET UP:

There were 11 of us, ½ in their 20’s; the other ½ 40’s, and one 70 year old, (R’s Mom). ½ of us were at El Dorado, the other ½ at the Fitz, as usual. ½ of us were from Davis; the other ½ from Spokane. Okay, so you’re thinking I have too many halves, or who belongs to which? You’re working too hard at this, relax, I’m just trying to give you a sense of our make up, okay?

I’m glad they stayed at the Eldo, it gave me a chance to check out a couple of their rooms in two different towers. I believe Eldo is the only hotel I haven’t stayed at in Reno. There was a difference in their rooms. One was in the Virginia/Sierra tower, the other was in the Skyline. The Skyline was bigger and nicer, but Virginia just plain jane. The Eldo was nice enough, but I would only pay as though I thought I’d end up with the crappy room, and at Circus prices. It was no Atlantis or Peppermill.

You know, I’m always doing this, leading big groups around Reno or Vegas; responsible for their happiness, wallet and digestion. I always say it’s the last time, until I get the next excited phone call from the family member or friend with the news of an upcoming vacation or event that MUST take place in Nevada. Something happens to me, I forget how at least one person ALWAYS forgets that we’re meeting at 10 AM on the second floor of Fitz’s for breakfast, and the other 10 people are looking to me to decide to abandon the latecomer or continue with the growling stomach and slow gambling bleed, cuz they really rather be at (fill in the blank) casino. Or how maneuvering 11 people down Virginia Street to get an awful awful burger involves at least one person stopping to go to the bathroom, another stopping at their favorite machine, and the line of us stretched 2 city blocks because someone is sprinting and Grandma is shuffling.

However, as large trips go, this one was pretty good, and here’s why:

FOOD:

This time, for food, I figured something out, I announced the time for meeting, if they were late by 5 minutes; they were on their own. We didn’t have to sit together, tables close was fine. I wouldn’t change the time based on individual hungers or need, not hungry now? Don’t come; eat later on your own. This firm approach worked well.

We ate at the usual joints, Fitz’s buffet, Limerick’s, Molly’s, Cal-Neva’stop deck, their steak house and the Nugget. All were the usual satisfying meal, but the Fitz’s buffet has improved since December. The quality is up, or we were there on a good day….

GAMBLING:


Wow, good trip. More people won than lost. I’ve NEVER seen that before. Everyone played slots, no table games. My daughter was playing a penny Super Cherry (my nemesis). She won over $400 playing 15 lines, 3 on a line in about 5 minutes over several bonus rounds. Unbelievable. Her uncle went on a non-stop drink fest, beginning with bloody mary’s at 4 AM on Saturday, and continuing on through beers, and then Crown Royal and coke until the following 4 AM. The more he drank, the braver he got, and the more he won. I’m talking stupid penny games that usually eat up a $20 faster than you can get a drink. He was constantly in bonus, and getting combinations I’ve never seen before. He won $75 on a bonus round in penny Wild Bear playing two on a line. During a bonus round of Turkey Shoot, he of course found the two bull’s eyes, for an extra 30 spins; he had it up to 10 times pay with 20 spins left. He got an 800 cent line at 10 times pay for $80 bucks for just one of the spins! Grandma spent her usual $100 over the whole weekend, slow playing nickel video poker, than hit for a $120 win an hour before she went to the airport to come out $20 up.

My daughter (G) and I team play when we start losing to slow our play down, and check each other’s foolishness when reaching for money. You know what I’m talking about. Losing $20 at Cleopatra, never getting the bonus, and instead of getting up and leaving the loser, reach for another $20 and play double the amount. When we team play, we’re very strict and hold each other to the rules: ante up $30 each at a time, sometimes re ante-ing once. Turn the $60 into fives. Sit next to each other, play only 1 fiver per machine unless either: it doubles or more (cash out the $10); the other player is winning, or you’re waiting for your drink (got to have your priorities here). I swear, we have NEVER lost much on this. We usually just get bored with the structure after a day or evening of it, and split the leftovers, continuing on with our own foolish and solo play.

While daughter had won the first evening at Super Cherry, her generosity with her cousins, payment on her room, meal portion, and overall heightened sense of intelligence about her ability to play pennies, (causing her to make bad decisions), soon found her $400 gone by the next day. Rather than dip into more of her own funds, we decided to enact the responsible team play. This began Friday, the first full day, after breakfast at Cal-Neva. Our first 6 fives ($30) was gone before we needed a trip to the bathroom, and since we were drinking beer, chased with a water to avoid headaches, that’s pretty fast.

Then it happened, we found THE machines. It began with G seeing old favorites hooked to a jackpot sorta thing. Hard to describe machines, but I’ll try, cuz if you’re there low rollin’, you NEED them. Basically, they’re the kind of machines that need 3 triggering doo-dads to get a bonus. Once you’re in the bonus (15 free spins), in addition to the normal fun extra pay, every time a wild symbol comes up, it does it’s wild thing for the pay line, and then….it starts blinking. You touch it, and it gives you either some more money (bad/boring) or it says Grand; Major; Minor or Mini. These all have jackpots associated with them: Grand ~$8000; Major ~ $600; Minor ~ $100 and the Mini ~ $15. You need to get 3 of one of them, and the jackpot is yours. Now get this, how much you play does NOT affect the chance or amount of the jackpots. It’s 20 line and you have to play all lines PLUS an extra nickel for this jackpot feature, but only 1 on a line. That’s it! 25 cents a pull to maybe win $8000 bucks, really.

First thing that happened was G won a large line item for $30. We cashed that out, and were back even. I soon had the bonus feature, figured out the jackpot thing, and won a mini. I can’t tell you how exciting this is. You often have filled all the jackpots with two of them, only needing one more to get one (you can get more than one too, we did). More often than not, you fill up two of the Grand jackpots, so every spin with a wild symbol, gives you a chance to get the top prize. Yeah, you’re not going to get it, but your adrenaline doesn’t know that, so it pumps it out, you laugh, order more beer, and the fun increases.

Oh! You can re-trigger the spins during the bonus. Once we did this, having 30 spins, we were getting a wild symbol, sometimes 2 or 3 a pull. We had all the jackpots covered and had already won the mini, then we won the minor, and still had about 10 more chances, with wild symbols, we didn’t get another, only more points/coin, but still cashed out $150 for that quarter pull. We ended up taking $400 out of there over 4 hours. The next day the mojo was still going and R won a $125 jackpot, but yesterday it didn’t deliver in the 20 minutes we gave it.

I have to mention one other machine. Miss Kitty. Oh my gawd, what a cute machine! The symbols are all these cartoony cute animals that a talented grade schooler must have drawn. Birdies, fishies, mouse toys, balls of strings, it’s Miss Kitty! Now Miss Kitty is of course, wild. But what’s so slick about this feature, is besides being wild in normal play, when she appears in the bonus feature, she sticks, and can exist on EVERY space, except the first row. So by the time you go through your 10 spins, she may be completely covering the board, except that first row, which determines what the line will pay all across. We won every time we played, and I took out $120 on one bonus round with a 50 cent bet. Both machines are in that sunny area near the top deck at Cal-Neva.

FITZ’S TOURNAMENT:

Besides being in Reno for the Spokane family and 21st b-day; we were also using R’s b-day offer (free rooms/meals). But it got tricky. We had paid for an upgrade to a suite for the family to hang out; and G also had a room. After the booking, she decided she wanted to stay over an extra day, but R couldn’t as he had to fly out of Sac on Sunday, necessitating a trip home Saturday. You’re already confused, aren’t you? Anyway, I talked the host into adding a day on G’s room, but using her flyer special on the Saturday, and pay for the Thursday since it’s cheap that night anyway. Probably more info than you need, but it confused the heck out my host, since I called and made these changes/additions after the original booking. He wanted to know if we were there for the tournament, what tournament? He explains, hooks me up and now I’m there for the tournament, G as my alternate, since R leaves early. Whew. Why does this matter? Because none of the extras were right the whole weekend. Which promo are you here on? No drink badges for R’s b-day, but one for me for the tournament which I could have the next day, but not on Thursday. Tournament entry, but no gift for R. Free B-day dinner in Limerick’s for R, but no food for the tourney…on and on. I dealt with it, worked with the host and ended up with everything, now the tournament.

This was a slot tournament, old fashioned slots, (bars and 7’s), and the high score over 3 rounds wins top prize of $5000. Have you done one of these? No skill, unless speed/timing of pounding a machine as fast as you can for 30 minutes is skill. They let you alternate, good, it hurts and you don’t WANT to do two rounds with only a few hours apart. I took the first session, pounded away, discovered that if I waited to alternate hands (must do every 30 seconds) at the precise moment the reels activated, I would never miss a beat. I was in first for ½ the time, ended up in second for that round with 12,700 points, most folks were under 10,000, with a couple over. They gave first place of the session $25 bucks. My sis was also there, cheering me on, letting me know where I stood, and I think it helped. She is also a nurse and masseuse and massaged my shoulder and G’s shoulder after the workout. Cool.

I shared my discovery with G, she took the advice, and won first in her session with 13,800 points. Ah-oh, pressures on. Two high scores, I figure if we can get 10,000 points on the final, that’s an average of 12,000 points a session. Who the hell can beat that? We discuss strategy, and decide the young shoulder will play the final round. The whole fan-damily is present, we’re cheering her on like she’s running a marathon, instead of beating a button on a machine like a caged rat at a feeder bar.

After 10 minutes she has 3500 points, that’s a 10,000 pace! At 20 minutes, 7500 points, still okay. At one minute left, she hit 10,000 points, finishing with an extra 400 over. I told R I KNEW we had to be in the money, and each 20 points pushed us up the prize chart. R is very practical, he told me not to get our hopes up. That a lot of folks were just as lucky as us. The prize pool only paid to $750 at 5th place, than $100 for 6th and so on, so you HAD to be up there to get anything.

Oh yeah, what’s R still doing there? Well, as he watched our earlier progress at the tournament sessions, he just couldn’t tear himself away. His flight left at 11 AM the next morning, and while he didn’t want to risk getting stuck on our side of the mountain, (we have many times, not just weather, mudslides and accidents have shut that pass down), he was having a great time!

G’s was the last session, we were to meet at the cabaret in one hour. That was one long hour. I was hopeful, R looked sad at me, he hates me to be disappointed. Finally, the appointed hour! We sat around nearby machines, ordered a drink and waited. Besides R, G and I, sis and G’s friend had also stuck around. They began the results with 10th place, they also announced their score, and I knew we had more, as they moved up the list, getting to 5th, and our name wasn’t called, I knew we would see at least $750. 4th place at $1000 was called. At 3rd, the announcer paused and shuddered over the name, I knew it was us. Our name is 13 letters long. Sure enough, third place! $1500 bucks!

I got a hug from my host, a cheap cardboard yellow paper with my 3rd place award and a trip to the main cashier. I had to fill out a W2g and then collected the prize money. G got ½, as we were team playing to the big dog! We gave our family/cheerleaders, $50 each, and bought dinner and wine. It was now after 9 PM, so I had our host get us another room so R and I wouldn’t have to share a double bed in G’s room and we were set!

What a fun trip. Even coming home over the mountain last night at 20 mile per hour was alright. Next trip in March.

[alison]

Sounds like a fun trip! Thanks for sharing. Did you ever make it to the Pep for the free play promo?

[stan_allen]

Excellent report! The joy of gambling is clearly evident and on display.

[Barb]

You write such a fun detailed report. I Loved it Barb

[jerry]

wow, I felt like I was there.
Thanks RL

[john]

Awesome report, RL! You guys must have caused quite a stir at the tournament with all that cheering and screaming. Congrats on your win.

[RenoLady]

Alison: One of the "11" in the group didn't want to go. In fact, she announced, the first morning at breakfast, that she wanted to do something "different" today. "Different?" I asked, truly puzzled....

...we were gambling, drinking AND winning, and she wanted to do something different? I suggested other casinos, historic and natural points of interest, nah...nothing. Get this, she wanted to go SHOPPING or to a spa!

This lady was a new girlfriend of R's brother. He is a "Drambler (gambler/drinker) like us, and this was their first gambling trip together. We looked at each other confused, and not a little sad. This was obviously a relationship not going anywhere. We had to stay downtown so she could "spa" it, yet monitor his drinking and gambling habits. Sigh

Yeah, we were pretty obnoxious with the hooting and cheering at the tournament. But then, we always are. In fact, I think the bonus rounds are really only excuses to make noise and order another beer.

[john]

I'm guessing the casinos love that type of behavior. Other patrons see that and are encouraged to gamble and have a good time themselves. When I open my casino, I'll commission your group to come in and raise hell.

[alison]

Shopping or a Spa??? Lame! You can do that anywhere. Hmm, i dont see that relationship lasting for sure. What a bummer. Its always dissapointing when everyone is not on the same page.

[RenoLady]

John: Hey! I never thought of that! I could get on the payroll of these casinos as a "screamer" though, it's not really so much screaming, as laughing and hooting. A "hooter?"

You know, for us degenerates of Reno, we could take a new prospective friend there, right away, as a screening out devise, thereby saving a lot of time in determining whether we were wasting our energy in pursuing the friendship.....

[Dave]

What a great report as always!
Not wanting to gamble in Reno??
Never heard how your rooms were at the Fitz.?
Is it getting better there with new ownership or ?
They are sure taking the negative hits on Trip Advisor.
Thanks again for the great report.
Dave

When are you guys going in March?

[Bama]

That's right - it is March Madness time. We arrive March 19th and stay 4 nights.

Great trip report by the way - i got off track with my own trip excitement.

I look forward to trying a few of those penny slots.

[PEB]

RenoLady,
Thanks for the great trip report, made me feel like I was almost there with you at the Fitz slot tourney I love their slot tournaments, always have a blast. Congrats on your 3rd place win!

[Mammothgambler]

RenoLady, awesome trip report, thanks for sharing! It looks like the luck is really widespread here in CA right about now (and I'm sure glad I'm not the only one that's had to go home going 25 mph).

It's great you have the leadership quality about you. I know how it goes with the large groups, sometimes everybody's got their own plan sometimes and then there's others that just aren't used to the casino scene, period (such was the case with some of my neighbors on the Tahoe trip). It's good you kept it all together and got rewarded big time for it. Congrats on your big win!

Mammothgambler

[RenoLady]

Thanks guys for the nice replies!

Dave: Fitz is no worse, or better, for that matter, then it's been under the bankruptcy receivership. I see no physical improvements to speak of.

We don't pay for these rooms (or much anyway), and the staff is the best. If we were paying rack rate, I wouldn't stay there. There are just too many problems with the HVAC and water systems.

Not sure about March yet, I just got back from the "other" place in Nevada, at Midnight last night, I haven't gone through my mail yet; I spyed some Fitz's flyers in there.