Going out with a bang
March 2013: it was our last full day in Vegas. We woke up around 8:00 am, took a shower, got dressed and were ready for our last day in paradise for this trip. We were staying at New York – New York, which we always do at least a couple of nights on every trip to Vegas. We decided to have an early morning walk down the Strip. Today was St. Patrick’s Day and the weather was great with temperatures in the mid 80’s. We took some pictures for our website at several locations and there wasn’t too much foot traffic on the Strip (which is why we like early morning walks).

At 11:30 am we met a very dear local friend for brunch at the Tropicana Beach Cafe. After brunch, we decided to do some shopping. We wanted to buy some shoes, belts and other stuff we needed since we hadn’t had much time to do any shopping during this trip. Our shopping expedition took us about 1.5 hours and we were back at New York – New York around 3:00 pm.

Since we had plans for the evening and we had to check-out of the hotel really early the next morning we decided to gamble a little. This was probably the last chance we would get to do some gambling during this trip and our legs needed the rest after all the walking we did.

We sat down at a large bank of Wheel of Fortune machines (quarters, max credit was 5 quarters a spin) in the middle of the casino. There were 10 Wheel of Fortune machines and only the last two machines on the right were available. We sat down and inserted $20 into the last machine on the right and started playing max credit. Since these machines often pay some small prizes $20 can keep you playing for some time.

The 5 quarter WOF machines are different from the 3 quarter WOF machines. The 5 quarter machines have 5 win lines instead of the 1 win line on the 3 quarter machines. Besides that, you need 3 spin symbols on a win line to trigger the bonus on the 5 quarter WOF machines instead of 1 spin symbol in the middle of the 3rd reel on the 3 quarter machines. We were hoping this machine was going to show us some love because all we had done the previous 2 nights at New York New York was lose.

It didn’t take long until we got our first bonus spin on the Wheel of Fortune. The wheel spinned for a long time and stopped at 500 credits. SWEET, our first $125 prize. This was a nice start. We got some other nice prizes on the reels like 123 and 242 credits. This machine was paying out. Great score! We played for about 30 minutes and decided to cash out at $180 (it’s nice to ‘bank’ some profits and put your TITO tickets away). Good result: invested $20, cashed out at $180.

We inserted another $20 bill and with $10 left we got another bonus spin. This time the wheel stopped at 400 credits. This was getting better and better. Another $100 win. Played a little longer, had some additional small wins and decided to cash out again. Second round of the ‘match’: invested $20 and cashed out at $140. Another TITO ticket into the wife’s purse.

We repeated the same routine and inserted another $20 bill and started playing again (by the way, drinks were coming fast so we became more cheerful by the minute). This time, we played for about 20 minutes before we really started to win anything decent. But since we were still playing on that same $20 it didn’t matter to us. We got a couple of small wins and decided to cash out at $50. TITO number 3 and an additional profit of $30.

We repeated this routine two more times, investing $20 and cashing out at $60. So another $80 profit. This was turning out to be a very profitable day. We had played for about 1.5 hours an started to wonder when this machine would cool down. We inserted another $20 bill and decided we would spend a maximum of $60 to see if this machines was going to pay out something big. Then lightning struck. We played for a couple of minutes, winning some and losing it again (but still playing the same $20) when we got a bonus spin on the Wheel of Fortune. The machine spinned and spinned and it seemed to take forever. And then it happend, the machine stopped: 2000 credits. HELLO $500!!! That was our sign to cash out and quit while we were ahead. We played the remaining credits and cashed out at $500. We counted our winnings, our TITO tickets totalled $990. A whopping $870 profit.

WHAT A WAY TO END YOUR TRIP TO VEGAS.