Ongoing VP TR, PART 2!

thanks for writing that leon, always love reading your reports

Great trip report, as usual. Especially so since it can't be much fun writing about a trip where you got curb stomped, yet you put in the same amount of detail/effort as you do after a big win. Much appreciated by those of us who can only live vicariously through your exploits.

The price of food has already been beaten to death this report but, damn, I would be so angry paying those prices that I wouldn't be able to enjoy a meal. And I'm not normally one to shy away from expensive restaurants. Guess I'm officially old.

Great report as always, sorry about the results though, ugh

I have no doubt it's harder taking the time out of your day to write a losing trip report rather than a winning one. I appreciate you sharing the ups and the downs. Hopefully it will turn around soon. Thanks Leon

Thanks for the detailed report, as always.

Bad chips are a pet peeve of mine and I am not sure I could consistently go to a place with them. I know you mainly play VP, but it sounds like those weren't your favorite, either.

Sounds like great service outside of the spa (all day pass can't mean that you can stay all day, but can't leave and come back.... can it?)

Thanks for the read. Sorry about the results. Appreciate you soldiering on and writing about the experience. Note to self: FB apparently pumps Run Bad through the air conditioning vents.

ooof. Brutal trip - I can’t remember a bigger loss??

Thanks for writing up - as someone else said, it’s 10x harder to write up bad results:experiences and youve done it exactly the same as a big win - you’re a true Pro

Thanks and I hope you run well at the local

ugh sorry Leon to hear about the runbad at FB.

I had relatives that stayed at FB a few months ago in a suite. They liked their room but hated the casino & restaurants. I liked the spaciousness of FB and their room but I never gambled there. And my relatives complained about the high restaurant prices so I took them to some off-strip restaurants (which they loved!)

fwiw your overall review of FB is the first comprehensive one we have in LVL. Thanks for your work!

How was the vibe overall in the evenings? Do you think they're going to be successful long term?
I was only in there during the day, but it was so dead, and so isolated, kinda worried for their prospects.

Thanks for the report. DSTP should be banned!

I echo a few others: your TR in a loss is no doubt not lotsoffun...but we all appreciate it, and it's keeping it real. Variance demands losses. Thank you. Hope to hear another before year end. Maybe try casino #3.

Thanks for sharing as always,

Wish you better luck next time

Thanks Leon. Sorry to hear about the tough trip. Appreciate you writing it up (as many others have said above)

don't like the genre that much, nor do i like covers very much either, but this is 10x better than the original

It's bad enough that it's a factor in me not wanting to play craps there, ever. More on this below.

Someone asked me about how dead FB was and if they can "make it". Obv this is just my opinion but I think the answer is no. The place doesn't have much of a vibe right now, mostly bc it's so damn big and bc IMO it's built for a fundamentally younger crowd than the Wynn. The color scheme, the feel... it's hard to explain but as I mentioned in the TR they feel like "new money" vs old. HOWEVER- new money needs a vibe. They need a feel. They need it to be crowded, to see and be seen (painting with a very broad brush here, obv). What they don't want is to walk into empty restaurants on the weekend in what is supposed to be the hippest, newest place on the strip. They don't want to wait in line at a restaurant, but bump the line/get an exclusive reservation. BUT- the place needs to be full to even need a line!

I suppose it all depends on how long the money/senior investors are willing to wait for a solid ROI. We know FB is 20 yrs in the making and passed ownership 3-4x before it finally got built, all ending in the original developers repurchasing the property, for LESS than they sold it for! WTF America, WTF capitalism. How does a place not get built, pass hands over and over and over, sit fallow, copper wire etc sold and investors dumping money in yet somehow people MADE money along the way... that cost obv got passed along somewhere to someone. Anyways, digression aside my understanding is the Koch brothers have a significant stake in FB and they essentially have infinite money. It depends how long the investors are willing to wait/when they realize they've bet on a long-term loser. My bet is they dump it on another sucker and write losses off onto a non-existent shell company and somehow make money on the deal.

I'm glad I wrote this TR up. I've had bigger losses before but this one stung bc I wanted it to be fun/good so badly and as mentioned my bankroll is short. Writing it up helped me solidify my thoughts, however. One thought I keep coming back to is that the gaming at FB, in its current state, is just not fun for me. For craps, it's the chips. I'm shocked how much this matters to me, but then again I bought a customized set of real chips for myself early in the poker boom. Waited 2 mo for them to be made/delivered, and they've seen so much play over the decades... I appreciate good chips and solid colors. I loved the old school Bellagio chips, for example. The font and numbers that seem like they were handwritten in by a calligrapher, the colors, man... esp the high value denom chips. I can still picture them in my head. Anyone who hasn't seen what the original Bellagio chips look like should google them- they're beautiful.

FB's chips are basically the opposite.

Similarly, the VP... there is literally nothing there that I really want to play now that I hate DSTP. I hate the new All-star 3 cabinets and the Wynn has all of those games in the same and the (better) old formats. The multiline machine at my local has both a better paytable AND TDB. I dunno... like I said I currently miss the Wynn and I've been able to solidify my thoughts by writing the TR. I'll be back to FB, but right now it'll be for a very specific reason- a slot tournament or offer I can't refuse, a family trip, or simply to eat there.

Of course, if I get the bink of a lifetime there I just might change my tune...

Always appreciate the time and effort you put into your trip reports. Why the hate for the All-star 3 cabinets? I understand that different joints will configure them differently for games offered, pay table etc. But if I chose UX with the same pay table as an All-Star II or dedicated UX machine, I can't say that I notice any difference. Certainly for me - broken speaker, bad lighting or uncomfortable chair, nearby smoke all have a greater impact on which machine I will sit at.

I've been playing quite a bit more Super Triple Play VP, with the juiced quads for the extra credit per hand. I feel it's a bit less variance than STP/DSTP all things considered, and certainly less variance than UX. DDB premium quads pay the same as default TDB quads and trips still pay 3:1, so if you run a little cold it's not as bad of a bloodbath.

I definitely feel you on the old cabinets vs new cabinets as well -- I own a few machines for home use, and the older platform is just more comfortable when you get in a rhythm of play it seems. I like the feel of the old-style buttons more than the OLED video buttons, too.

It's just a feel thing. I know there's theoretically no difference, but the combo of the graphics/feel/etc make for a less pleasant gaming experience. I can't put my finger on it better than that.

Yeah. I was looking to play more of that at FB, but 5$ credits was too high for me, and there was no fast pay available on the floor. Like I said, suboptimal gaming conditions all things considered.

Thought 2+2 would appreciate this pic. I started a home poker game about 6mo ago, mostly so I could teach my boys about math, statistics/probability, making decisions, risk/reward etc etc. Long story short it has blossomed into a recurring weekly thing where everyone, myself included, really looks forward to the next game.

We play 1/2$ limit and many different games- hold 'em, omaha hi and hi/lo, stud, razz, 5 card draw and ace to 5 double draw have all been introduced. Only myself and D really know what we're doing, but everyone is learning and D and I don't take it seriously.

SO- in the pic: these are my custom chips that I got made in 2003. The table is one I bought for the game. Several people have gotten hurt badly enough in prior weeks that I might have to back the limits down a bit. All this is to say it's quite serious for some, even if it's not for me.

We're playing razz. I have yet to intro stud 8 or better but we're planning on it "soon".

I'm dealt an ace and 4 in the hole and a 3 up. I catch a 2 for a perfect four on 4th street. As you can imagine, no one folds in this game. 5th street I hit the 6 for number 2. After I make it three bets everyone but our nanny finally wakes up and decides they can't play their K, J or whatever other paint they've been catching. My hand is literally TOO good for this game. Since it's a friendly game, I talk (a lot), and I figure who cares. I literally say to nanny "my hand is too good. I want to win more of your money. I don't want a 5. No 5. If I catch a 5 I'll have 4 to a 6 low and even you can't call me then. No 5". He laughs as the 6th card is dealt.

5. OF M'FING spades. I have a made a wheel AND a straight flush. I lol bet and he obv folds. Duh. I take the next 5 min to explain the gist of stud 8 just so they understand that I have used up all my run good for the next 5 lifetimes on a ridiculous, meaningless home game. I'm really scared of my next Vegas trip now- I can't have an ounce of run good left in my body after this hand. What a waste.

(Cards out of order since I grabbed them to arrange as I was explaining the bad beat to the rest of the table. And yes, this is a bad beat).

Best game known to man or beast: Lowmaha.

Omaha 8, but the board stops when there's a low. Might be on the flop. We had 14 cards on the board once, due to pairing & high cards.

Best played as limit or spread limit.

Of course, for maximum pain, we made the qualifier 7 instead of 8.

If you're interested in other oddities, Here's a thread started by BigBlue56 some time back where people described games from their home games.

He....likes the variance.

WOW. THANK YOU. I told D about Lowmaha. Both of us are literally giddy with the thought of introducing it at this week's game. I don't remember being this excited to play in a long time. I also checked out that other thread and I agree with a lot of the posters- max potential for pain = amazing home game. My guess is we intro the game this week and probably don't play another version the rest of the session.

The answer is I like the variance. I want to make huge hands frequently. Can't do that at Bonus or JOB (at least, the definition of a huge hand has fundamentally changed for me).

I do like and play spin poker but there are few things more irritating that having an amazing draw in spin and missing over, and over, and over, and over... and I have to say I've noticed the same on spin. I'm sure the math all works out, but one sure seems to draw at a gutshot straight and hit in all three spots an AWFUL LOT (coupled with missing over and over), and boy, when you hold one ace the other 3 aces seem to all come out at once, ON THE SAME FRICKING COLUMN an awful lot. But how much of that is just being human, fooled by randomness, selective memory etc? You got me.

I'm glad to hear I was able to repay a tiny bit of the thrills you've given me over the years, leon.

Variance can be your friend if you are getting huge loss rebates, hopefully you are?
The fact you are bemoaning your bankroll when this looks a pretty normal loss for 500K-1M through suggests you should rethink you strategy.

D.

Really enjoy the thread with all its honesty. Highly entertaining, every time! Hope you hit some big scores next trip, whenever and wherever that may be.

Question: I was wondering if you or anyone else knows if VP machines have to demonstrate that they "deal" randomly from a (digital) deck, or whether the machines are only audited to insure that the payouts are statistically in-line with the total expected payout from the respective pay tables over a large sequence of hands?

The more I play VP, the more I feel pretty sure that it is the aggregate payout outcomes that are true enough to pass audits, but that certain machines / games spit out the cards very differently, and in ways that are not card-deck random.

Put another way, is anyone ever required to check (a) the code as written, and (b) the code as executed to see that over, say, 1 million hands played the number of pairs dealt or trips hit from holding a pair is within a statistically acceptable range for a single deck?

To make an extreme example, you could still wind up with a 98% payout machine meeting its expectation of 98% (over a ton of hands) by having it deal a few extra Royal Flushes while intentionally killing the smaller draws to pairs, flushes, and straights. I'd just like to know how the VP machines are audited, if anyone knows.

Thanks again for the great thread...