Blog 65 Many Trips To Las Vegas (our first time.)

I am not placing a picture for this blog because I do not have one that could even show you justice.]

(the decade of gambling in Las Vegas and really winning more than losing)

When I met Robert, I had already planned to go to Las Vegas, Nevada to see what the commotion of gambling and the city was about. I had gone before, but I never left my hotel and casino. This was going to be a four day visit around the strip. It was late 1987. It was nothing like it is today. There were not as many big Hotels. It was dark, scary at night, and many spaces beside each casino.

Well, I decided It would be better with Robert to go with me. So, they placed us in the last hotel on the strip. (the Sahara). Our package included a special room. It was very large. When we crossed the Nevada line in the plane. They had a drawing. You took as many dollars as you wanted, wrote your seat number on it and placed it on the bag. At landing, the stewardess pull a dollar and that seat won the entire amount. Robert won!! It was just over two hundred fifty dollars!

Back then, the table bets were a dollar, not five. The Sahara had a few teaching Blackjack Tables, where the dealer could help you understand the odds of winning in real games. It was so fun and funny, because real gamblers would not sit down because many mistake were made. The funny thing was that Robert was not really following the help. One in particular hand, Robert drew two queens, I had an eighteen, and the dealer drew a six. Robert SPLIT his queens! You never split a 20 pointer and you do not take a card (usually) when the dealer has a six!

Robert would not back off and insisted to split the queens and he was dealt two more queens. I froze at eighteen. The dealer flipped a seven and then a three for nineteen. Robert won double and I lost. He was doing things like that all night and kept winning, but making me lose. The dealer and I kept laughing because every normal play was losing, and Robert was winning almost every hand. (but many times had he played it right, we both would have won.)

Everyday, we would go a little farther down the strip. We played slots at the other casinos. We walked further down the strip every day, actually staying close to our budget, until we finally made it to the last casino at that time, the Tropicana. We had fifty dollars of playing money left, it was getting late, so we decided to to play dollar slots.

I am probably correct to say that almost everyone has heard a story that someone just “placed their first bet in a slot machine and won a huge pot. But, I am witness that those things happen. It was getting dark when Robert and I made it to the Tropicana Casino. We picked a slot machine that had double your money bars on it. We played our fifty dollars on it and kept winning back enough to play for a while. But, it was getting late and we had a long walk back to the Sahara in the dark.

I told Robert we needed to take our winnings and head back. I stood up and out of nowhere, Robert said, “Okay, but one more time.” He put a dollar coin in the machine and pulled the lever. Suddenly, the machine started making this loud siren noise. Robert got a double wild sign, another double wild sign, and a seven.

I looked and three sevens were worth two hundred dollars. I was ecstatic. But, the machine started pumping money over two hundred. I realized that he had the double wild which made his win four hundred. Suddenly, an employee brought me eight containers for the money and said that we would need this. Four hundred passed and money kept coming out. When I looked at the employee and she said that we had two double wilds , so our money doubled twice. We had won eight hundred dollars.

I sat back down and noticed that Robert had just been sitting and staring at the machine this whole time. I began filling up the containers silently. In the eighties, eight hundred dollars was a big win. We were still in shock. I immediately changed the coins into cash. Robert, still, was just staring at the machine.

Finally, I realized that we had to walk back down the entire strip with eight hundred dollars on us. We went to the casino bathroom and got into adjoining stalls. We began passing money back and forth to each other and placing all the money in hidden places in our clothes. Then we started back to our room, a mile away! Yes, we were actually concern that someone might have seen our win and were following us back to our hotel.

During our journey, we would run through the dark areas and go into every casino in between. We made it back to the Sahara, but our adrenaline was huge. So, I found a dime slot and decided to play about ten dollars in dimes. We could not lose. I won another two hundred dollars very quickly.

So, we decided to go to bed and get up early enough to play blackjack one more time. Again, we won a combined one hundred fifty dollars. When it came time to leave to the airport, we left. The fun thing was that the airport also had slot machines. Our flight was delayed, so we decided to play a nickel machine. In about twenty minutes, I had over fifty dollars in nickels and they called for boarding to our plane.

I hit the cash out button and got all my nickels into a plastic cup carrier. Our “last call” was announced and the cashier had a large line that would make me miss my flight. So, I had to take the bucket of nickels onto the plane with me. We realized that we won a large amount that covered our original cost, all our meals, souvenirs, and still had won much more than we lost. We were elated and addicted.

( Blog 66 Getting my mom and dad to meet us there the next time.)