Mike Breaks The Streak

As most of our friends already know, Mike is less than "lucky" when it comes to the casino.  In fact, I usually bring him along and then set him up in the spa for the day to chill out listening to his I-pod, hanging around in his robe, soaking in the calderium or frigidarium, while munching on some fruit and sipping some flavored tea.  He's my manly man!

Anyway, Mike does like to play video poker, BUT he only likes winning.  Now, of course, everyone WANTS to win...but some people, like yours truly, get gratification just from playing and the win is a bonus.  Mike, on the other hand, gets no joy from playing but is looking for the big kahuna.  In addition, he has decided that single hand video poker just doesn't give him enough of a "rush" so he has been playing triple hand video poker.  This means that instead of losing $1.25 a hand, he is losing $3.75!  Put another way, he loses his money three times as quickly!  I try to convince him to play nickels or dimes when playing 3 hands but he counters that the win wouldn't mean as much. (So true...but the loss would take longer!)

Okay, so bottom line is that he doesn't get the chance to gamble very often but I got another one of those "Mystery Envelope" invitations recently and since he is always my first choice for a traveling companion I asked him if he'd like to come along.  Cathy booked me a room at Caesars and upon arrival I set him up with a spa day (using my comps) figuring that would keep him occupied and out of the casino.

And it did....until he got tired of lounging around..... and went in search of a video poker machine he'd "like".   

Now, even though Mike doesn't gamble very often, he has gambled quite a bit in the almost 30 years we've been together and he has only once hit the elusive big daddy of all poker hands:  the Royal Flush.  A fact of which he reminds me constantly; to which I reply, "well at least your not Donna".  Donna who is one of my oldest and dearest friends has been playing video poker as long as I have and the poor thing has never even hit one!

So, it's Saturday night and we have enjoyed a light dinner in the Diamond Lounge (more about that in the next post).  It is now around 8pm and I want to head downstairs to try my luck at the progressive video poker bank that I like (it was over $1300 yesterday when it was hit by someone - not me -  and now it has climbed back up to the $1200 mark).  Mike tells me he is going to finish his glass of wine and then go up to bed.  I head downstairs, find a machine and then remember that I left my cell phone in the room so I figure I better run up and tell Mike not to try calling me.  Back up to the Diamond Lounge and Mike isn't there!!  Hmmmm, he must've drank that wine pretty quickly, right?  Wrong!  Coming out of the Diamond Lounge I see him at a bank of Super Times Pay machines!!!  Yikes!  If you think the triple play machines make you go through your money quickly, these Super Times Pay machines are even worse.  They are fun to play, but you have to bet 6 coins per hand - minimum 18 coins because you have to play at least 3 hands.  The pays are the same so even if you get a three of a kind it still only pays 15 so you lose 3 coins on a hand you'd normally triple your bet on.  The beauty of these machines is that there is a wild multiplier card that sometimes comes up and you have the chance to win 2, 3, 5, 8 or even 10 times the regular pay.  That is what you are paying the extra coins for.  Volatile??  You bet!


And here is my darling husband, drinking wine, betting $4.50 a hand....and you just know he is going to be steaming mad when he loses his money!


I remind him that we are leaving early in the morning, that he is already tired, that he should go to bed, yada yada yada...and I head back downstairs to my progressive video poker machines.


Time goes by, as it always does in the casino, and I feel someone touching the back of my head -- it's Mike!  Oh, no, I say "is it morning already?  is it time to leave?"  He's laughing, "no, I haven't been to bed yet!"   WHAT???  My husband never stays up later than 11 and that's only in a very extreme circumstance.  If he's awake at 9pm he's hours past his bedtime!!!  Well, it turns out he has finally broken his "can't get a royal streak" because he has hit not one but TWO royals on the same machine within an hour!!!


Insane that he stayed up all night -- but way to go Mike!

By the way, I hit one also,  jackpot of $1362 on the same machine that I hit in December.  This time it was a sequential Royal flush in spades (too bad it wasn't on the $25,000 sequential machine) which surprised me because although I was pretty sure I was going to hit one, I thought it would be in clubs for some reason so when I got dealt the center J-Q-K I didn't expect the 10 and Ace to pop up.