X Sept 2011 Chicago Grid & the Quest for Gold

After 3 trips in this year, I was only 16K away from Gold status in MLife. My problem is, I'm not a very loyal player. I have 3500 tier credits with Total Rewards. And a ton of points with Treasure Island. I know if I concentrated my play I'd get so much more. But I always get the itch to hop around in Vegas and my play pulls me in every direction.

I'm not an idiot, I know the ADT so I'll play all MGM one day & all CET the next. So I convince the wife to book another round this year, which took some work since we only go to Vegas 2 times a year. Pushing for 4 was pushing my luck. But she gave in and we booked last month. I log in to Mlife online before we head out on Saturday (9/10) and 12K in my points were gone! turns out I had some in there from last August that expired. Now I gotta play enough for 28K to hit it.

Saturday

Security was pretty tight at the airports, being 9/11 weekend and all. Makes you wonder how well they check the rest of the year. "Sure we check your luggage, but this weekend we are going to REALLY check your luggage".

Get to MGM pretty fast, room is ready to rock, nice welcome basket from my new host Rob waiting for us.

Decent room, great view. But they have those stupid dotted skins on the windows so you cant really see out them.

Almost 7:00 PM and we are off to the races. MGM has all of the slots I love, and I've never stayed there. We are mostly playing $0.25 & $1.00 slots and hitting left and right. Nothing big to put me over the top. But a ton of play. It cant be just luck. I've never sat on a machine with just a $20.00 for so long in Vegas in the last 10 years. Maybe I was just ruined by all the tight slots at CET properties. I've always done OK at the MGM ones. Just not as good as this. Lots of new games here that I loved. They have an all new pinball game. It looks like the new Top Dollar ones that are out there with the dual screens. A TON of fun, and it rocks out Pinball Wizard while you play. I love this game! It was pretty much a push for me but the wife took about $100.00 off it.

They finally have a "Strike it Rich" machine there. I play it all the time at Blue Chip near Chicago. It doesn't fail me this trip either with a nice $175.00 win.

We round out the night after about 6 hours of gambling, the wife is up $200 & I have all my money, plus the cab fair from the airport back. Full bankroll after 6 hours with no huge wins! We check on the Mlife points over at NY NY since we wanted some Fultons Fish and we ran through 14,000 already. That 28K in 3 days will be cake by this point. Off to bed with gambling fever still

Sunday

Check in early at Mandalay Bay no problem. Nice room, over looks their awesome pool that I've always meant to go to but never got around to it. I stay here a lot. They comp well, I probably get more free nights here than any other MGM prop and yet I never gamble much here. They just dont have a lot of slots I like. I play about a hundo through on some $1.00 Top Dollar machines and get no top dollars. I kept hitting this bank the entire trip and not 1 Top Dollar ever! So we head over to Luxor. I haven't stayed here since they De-Themed the place, but it was my favorite casino since my 1st trip. Back when they had those talking camels! Its sad that its all gone, but I play here anyway. Up down Up down for about an hour.

They have a bunch of those 5 line Instant Spin machines, and I was banging on those like an ATM the whole trip. $.25 & $1.00 ones, 5 line or 3. I just couldn't lose on them. I didn't take any pictures of those wins. Since its an Instant Spin and who wants to see a picture of just the credit meter. But I got $100.00-$150.00 about 4 times during the trip off those machines. The wife even hit for 575 quarters at MGM with her 2 spins. We pretty much skip the crappy castle. Not worth my play, even if they comped me well I wouldn't stay here again so why bother. They got nothing I want. NY NY I ran a couple hundo through. Same story at Monte Carlo. No big wins yet, but a ton of action. Maybe they loosened up the strip? At least on the MGM side of things.

Get over to Aria and they have my favorite grinder machine. I rack up a ton of points on this thing. It has a side game where you risk doubling up after every loss. Hard to explain, but if you guess right you are golden on it. I didn't have to guess at all when it coughed up this one after about 30 minutes on it. I was still on my original $20.00 buy in as well, at $1.25 a whack that's some decent play!

Spend about an hour here and swing over to Belliagio. Same story. Nothing big but a lot of play for us both. I start hitting up their $1.00 Top Dollar machines and hit $40, $60, $15 (I know, they should have just pissed in my face with that offer) and I finally got one to crack for me. Double Top Dollar machine $85.00 offer Times 2 so $170.00 then it doubled that again times 2 so $340.00. My 1st decent hit this trip! I grab that and we head off to Mirage.

Rinse Repeat. Lots of play. Up down, Up down. Never had back to back days with this much play before. Our arms were starting to hurt with all the play. After about an hour in Mirage we check their MLife instant swipe machine to see where I am. 75,015 points on the money. After 2 days. I'm Golden

Now that the pressure is off I figure its OK to give TI some play next door. I just go on a tear here. I didnt even get a chance to grind on some machines. It was all stick and move with big hits. $250.00 here, $100.00 there. Again no whoppers but pretty damn good for quarter machines. I got $1,000.00 off them on $1.00 Wheel of Fortune my last trip so I always get TI fever that brings me back. I took a couple of pictures of the harder wins below.

This never happens. I'm lucky if I get 5X Cherries. Good for $250.00

And believe it or not this was my 1st spin.

Its about midnight now so we head back. Day 2 totals the wife is back to her original bankroll after a lot of play, and I'm now up about $600.00

Monday, last full day

I try to stick to my usual daily allotment of cash for the trip. Determined to go home a winner. That would put me at even for the season if I took home my $600 profit that's sitting in my pocket. 4 trips, all staying at nice resorts, almost all my meals comped. A couple free shows etc. All for free (Less airfare) for an entire year? This is why I do Vegas instead of Disney World

Use some express comps at the Bayside Buffet at home base. Its good as always. I still have some more express comps to dump so we do Shark Reef. We did it once years OK and I remember thinking it was OK. We have one of the finest aquarium's in the world right here in Chicago (Shedd) so it takes a lot to stand out. But we really liked it this time. Maybe because it wasn't crowed and we could see what we wanted at our own pace.

They had a "pet a stingray" exhibit. The wife liked that, I don't touch. Not a big animal lover anyway. They had these hard shell ones you could pet and it turns out they were actually crabs.

We found that out after Mrs Grid touched one and it freaked out and flipped over

So I decide to give CET some love. They coughed up some nice rooms this year. We always enjoy our stays at Planet Hollywood. And I was surprised home much I liked staying at Rio a couple months ago. Big mistake. All of our slot successes from the MGM properties the last couple of days were getting smoked at CET joints. PH took $150.00 off me pretty fast, dumped another $100.00 off a Paris pretty fast. Even Ballys got me for $50.00. I almost made it out of Caesars with some money after a nice hit on a giant Instant Spin machine gave me $60.00 to put me up 10 bucks. But the wife wasnt feeling well. So she hit the restroom I hit another slot while I was waiting and suddenly my 10 bucks up, made me 50 bucks down there. I lose about $400.00 pretty fast and its only 3:00. Damn you CET! Why have such fun looking properties and stuff them with such tight slots!

I do the unthinkable, and split days between 2 players clubs. I dont care if my ADT is going to take a hit. Its my last day and I want to have fun! We leave Caesars and hit Bellagio again. Its going well. Lot of play but I still haven't gotten my CET losses back yet. I'm sitting at even. The wife still feels bad so we cut things short. I go to cash out the $100.00 ticket I'm holding (started with $100.00 here so after almost an hour of play I'm even).

We start walking over to the free monorail to get back to Monte Carlo, so we can grab the free one at EX and head back home, and I hear the Ghostbusters theme. Holy Effen Shit. They have a Ghostbusters slot! How this slipped off my radar I'll never know. I remember reading something about one a year ago, but here she is. Right in front of me. The only one in Vegas!

I slip in that hundie and start to rock out. Its Glorious. My childhood favorite meets my grown up tastes. I start by playing $.50 min X2 so $1.00. I'm getting plenty of .50-2.00 wins but nothing big. And no bonus rounds. Egon tells me to play max bet to increase my odds. Who am I to argue with a scientist? I give him the $2.50 a whack he wants and it starts lighting up. Slimmer starts coming out to hang around. And even when I dont get a win, he licks my credit meter and adds $5-$9.00 for me. Nice guy!

You get zombie hands that come out and turn losing reels into wilds, and those are huge hits. I landed $35.00-$75.00 each time that happened. After about 30 minutes my $100.00 is gone. The screen says 3 bonus games, I kept getting 2 bonus symbols but never that 3rd to actually play it. Son of a... I reach in and grab another $20.00 and feed the beast. I'm having a ball and I dont care what it takes I'm playing this sucker till I get the bonus round! That 20 goes fast, so does another 10. After 100's spins in 45 minutes or so.

No Bonus Round. Why does something I love hurt me so much? No pictures of it for the boards since wifey was ill and its her camera phone. Bad enough I made her sit there for almost an hour dieing while I pissed away $130.00. We get back to the room & watch the end of the Bronco/Raiders game. She feels better so we head back down to give Mandalay Bay some love for the free room. After a few hours I'm down just $100.00 even with aggressive betting. Its almost midnight and I don't want to risk 12:01 AM triggering another day into my Average Daily Theoretical. Who knows for sure when the new day begins, I don't want to risk it. So we call it a trip. The wife is down only $60.00 the entire trip. And I go home, with a ton of gambling under my belt, 50,000 more tier credits with MLife, a shiny Gold players club card. And $20.00 profit That's how you win in Vegas!

And if anyone is a fan of the Hangover slots, they are now at all MGM properties. CET wants $6.00 max bet, MGM is only $3.00 max bet. It makes a huge difference when it comes to game play on these. Max Bet gets you the progressives AND all the other "guess" amounts at the end of the bonus rounds. If you played the same $3.00 on one of CET's machines you have only a 33% chance of actually winning your progressive if you hit it. Since you have to guess where its hiding. I checked and they are still 6 bucks at Caesars & PH and they still had suckers playing on them. I've played these 5 times this trip (when they were empty) and I walked away with $35, $55, $125 and -$40.00 so I was at 75% win

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