Laughlin Edgewater Part I

WEEKEND DAYS- EDGEWATER

HOTEL

My Edgewater host Janella set me up with a fine room again overlooking the river and with a safe and a coffee maker. The anti slip rubber mat for the shower is very useful. I have trouble sometimes with soap feet keeping my balance. Everything is clean and new looking and fine. I have a good little table and table lamp for my computer and it fits in the safe so I feel more secure when I am out of the room. I like the view of the river and the mountains way off in the distance. I like it here on a low level floor as well as it gives me great views of the riverboats passing. There was even a cute bikini girl bathing in the river and behind the palm tree grassy area with her wet hair flowing, and water crystal clear to the rocky bottom, it looked like an advertisement for a tropical paradise. Such an odd contrast to the desert.

My first night I slept very well after only having three hours sleep and a nap in the bus on the trip up. I was tired as I stayed up at the plaza playing poker until 3 AM.

This is such a fun and comfortable place in August. There are boaters and families and young folks everywhere, unlike other times of the year when gray old guys like me dominate.

ROOM SERVICE

I used room service at the Edgewater since I would be able to lock up my valuables in the safe and wanted more coffee anyway. As I left, I asked them to do me next so there was no chance of coming up in mid cleaning in my wet bathing suit and dripping in the hallway waiting for the finishing touches.

I also asked for coffee and they gave me plenty to get me through tomorrow, so I'll skip service tomorrow.

I first went to brunch in my dry bathing suit and a nice button shirt and then on to the pool from there.

That worked.

It is a very undressed community here.

TELEVISION

I do miss having the TCM channel as I did in Vegas. I love that commercial free station with those fine old movies and that would break up my day when I am too tired or broke to play well.

GAMBLING

I played quite a bit of video poker and even some slots. I save a portion of my bankroll to play heavy vp here as these two comped weekends are the only times that any of my rooms or food depend on my play. Friday night I was in the hole for $272 when I started the live poker and the cards just came to me while the table paid off these finely developed hands. In a short while I had few friends at the table and had accumulated almost $200. The rest of the evening was much more normal and I left with only $123 profit, happy my losses had been hedged as I have a number of days here to play yet.

I decided to just do one more $20 before bedtime, seven pulls on the Megabucks, and that left me with just $17. I thought I'd play it through the video poker and I just could not lose. All those elusive quads came as well so in a short while I cashed out for a profit of $150 and so reduced my losses for the day to $19. Pretty damn good given all my other lost sessions this week.

Saturday afternoon was the best VP session in my recent memory. I hit aces and about five other quads bringing my winnings up high enough for the poker machine to skim off some and cash it out to me automatically. I have not had that happen in many, many sessions. It helped offset my heavy losses.

Saturday night was not so good. I had a couple beers and a hamburger with homemade chips at the Boiler Room but it was too crowded and it took forever to get food while I kept pumping in twenties.

The guy next to me shouted into his cell phone for half my time there reviewing his former life of bar fights and other low life activities, remembering who had done whose wife, and all at the top of his lungs so he could hear himself over the rock music. It was very annoying.

I played 8/5 Bonus while I waited and the low volatility did not help me. The first twenty had gone by without a single hit. Two pair were few and far between after than. I lost $70. Then I went over to the poker room and got on a 2/4 where I played badly and then on a 2/6, where I could see all these guys were locals who knew each other and knew this game perfectly.

No tourists.

I would be the fish.

So I just left. Lost $65. I realized that Saturday night or not I was too tired to be up for 2 AM poker, so I listened to the Dixieland band for a while, played some VP and Megabucks and went to sleep down $100 for the day.

Best hands- Quads are the saviors of 10/7 DB although a good run of FH and Flushes will do a job as well. One day after trying for hours for the development of quad aces ( $200) the damn things were dealt to me. They also came as part of my run of quads on my most productive session.

No straight flushes.

Plenty of four to the royal making my heart skip a beat and allowing me to practice again preparing for any tragedy of near misses at wealth. I heard the Megabucks winner only had twelve dollars in the machine. Amazing! I have not seen any big wins on my $21 Megabucks seven pull play a day. Why, on those seven pulls I should have hit twice, don't ya think?

I revisited the Colorado Belle on Sunday and found a much softer game, but I lost more. I played about twelve hours with just a break to see that I had also lost with my poor showing in the video poker tournament. No money. I enjoyed the poker. I played poorly in the beginning against the better players and then gradually grinded my way back to near even until some aggressive guys come and created huge pots which I lost.

I liked the game.

The Edgewater poker room is moved to a pleasant and quiet spot near the sports book. I think I like the Edgewater room better than the Belle. It is less noisy and may attract more tourists, but I was too tired for that as well on Saturday night when the good poker usually can be had. I had done well there on Friday. Amber, Floyd, and Rebecca were the dealers. They are all friendly and pleasant folks. Floyd may think that some of us talkers are a bit silly at times, and he may have a bit reserved disdain for our foolishness, but in general it is a very comfortable room and a quieter contrast to the Plaza room. Floyd is always friendly, but perhaps guys from Montana cannot be silly. Amber makes up for that, and I love flirting with her and listening to her complain when I move my seat away from her and to a spot where I can see better. All the dealers are friendly.

They will squeeze ten players into these nine person tables, and it does get crowded in the seats next to the dealer. Someone needs to design a table that accommodates ten players and still is small enough so the dealer can easily reach. Perhaps a table that expanded for the tenth player would work.

The game is 2-4-6 limit and that extra 6 makes a good bit of difference. $3 is taken for the house and $2 is processed into promotions for the players, so there is some good money to be had for high hand awards. Sadly, no aces cracked, so of course mine were cracked by an opponent who chased his low pair of sevens to the river for trips in spite of my raising and then betting as much as possible. I let him bet the river six, so at least I did not get raised. He was not so dependable that I could lay down the aces and save the six. Here position cost me six dollars as he would have checked into me and hoped to trap me. I had bet out every other time. It is important to do that with aces in good position because then on the river you can often save six dollars by checking. It is important to not bet single pairs in any position on the river unless representing something larger or being on a table with an idiot calling low pairs. Even then I'd rather give up the last bet needlessly once in a while than face the raise. Guys with two pair will raise the river just to see if they can represent something huge.

It was a fine game and good fellows at the table. One named Barry knew a lot about Henderson and casinos there and I gained a good bit of information on tournament play. He plays so much he says they all know his name in those Henderson card rooms. He played a good game I thought.

He told me that his wife played hours and hours of video poker and established so much play that they had good comps. He thought the machines were fixed and that her strategy of “Never take the low wins, but go for the royals” put her well ahead of others they knew. I talked a bit about Nevada law and random number generators, but I was wasting my breath. He knew she did well and was ahead for most of the time although they kept no records of their wins and losses. I wondered why I wasted my breath. If all players were like her, the casinos would not be letting my 10/7 DB slip away into rotten pay tables. Even here at the Edgewater the few full pay machines do not pay points. The money through them, however, does count toward the formula for room comps and so far I seem to be winning that count. This is the first host I have ever had. I tried once at the Orleans but they did not respect VP poker play and when they did give me a bit off one room, it was grudgingly. I'm a low roller, and I like asking for deals, but I don't whine, easily take, “I'm sorry” for my answer ( the Four Queens is giving lately but maybe not after I chased the royal there way over my bankroll allocation) and I resent being treated with disdain.

That is one reason I liked having this host recommended by VP writer Linda Boyd on a Midwestern Board video poker board she hosts. Live poker is full of whiners too, but it does not have to be that way. My largest win in recent years was at novel writer John Blowers home game (Life on Full Tilt: confessions of a Poker Dad) where I took $1000 in a low level cash NL game in one evening, most of it his.

“Hey Dewey,” he said, “the progress toward turning this novel into a movie is going so well and I am having so much fun since I quit my job and devoted myself full time to writing and working on all the details of the movie, that if I circulate a bit of money to my friends so they have a good time, I enjoy it as much as winning.....well (with a chuckle) almost as much as winning.”

There is a man with class.

He took a lot of criticism from Annie Duke on that “Best Damn Poker Hand” show when he was first to be eliminated on some rag hand he played on a lark.

I stopped watching the show.

Too many of these competition shows, and there are dozens of them now competing in fashion, cooking, dancing, you name it, have that section where the “judges” humiliate people by telling them “the truth” I find that humiliation offensive. Opinion can be made, and we do it every day at the poker table, in ways that do not degrade the learner/listener.

Well, I ramble.

You know what I mean, however, because you read these boards where every so often the tone of a poster is acerbic. I suppose I have fallen in to that trap once in a while, but it is not satisfying on a personal level.

Joe was another fellow at the poker table and I know I have seen him here before. He was dressed in a black outfit and walks with a cane. He was a friendly guy. His talk was old age outrage at the failing body. The doctors were telling him to have neither coffee nor tea. Tea seemed to bother his stomach the most which is just the opposite from my own responses. He basically said that since he did not expect to get out of this life alive, he'd do whatever in the hell he wanted. The doctors were all hypocrites anyway, Joe said, as he would see them out having a cigarette a few minutes after trying to get him to stop smoking.

I was thinking how much gamblers tend to be undisciplined and how difficult that is in these last decades of life. More than the general population, gamblers are not disciplined and careful but want to be in constant party mode. The careful folks are the ones shocked by our gambling and those for whom losing a bet would just seem so irresponsible. I often find it hard to tell my gambling stories to such people, however, I have to listen to their golf stories.

Golf, they think, is much superior to fishing or gambling. Well, there is something to be said for getting out walking, but there the superiority ends. While we may have some second hand smoke in the casino, the golfers have second hand high power chemicals all around them. What looks like pristine green is grass grown to ecologically resemble cement. And I challenge any golfer who plays and travels regularly to beat the cost of my gambling hobby, even with my losses. Let's see them find 23 days away from home at $12 a night for hotel and under ten a day for food and drinks (minus tips- I don't keep track of those but it would be a wash).

And in between gambling I fish for panfish. This sport costs me nothing, puts food in my freezer, and puts me out rowing in a real natural setting.

I don't drink while fishing. So in Vegas I can drink.

I watch my foods at home, not successfully but I do what I can. So in Vegas I can eat an occasional potato chip. It tastes so good when I have not had a white potato in perhaps six months.

And I don't like losing money either, but it is, after all, only money, and I play the best odds I can find. Also, the poker table is a fine place to practice mental metaphorical life experiences where only money can be lost.

Losing on the river costs me chips, but it prepares me for the luck of the end of life, lets me pratience, teaches me how random reality is, and keeps me humble.

Okay, I ramble again. Sorry. It does me no good to defend gambling to my buddies, so I have to do it here where I have a chance.

I met one board poster who I have often seen here in Laughlin and enjoyed catching up with him a bit. He posts less on the generic boards now, but he is on one of the poker boards. He was good with language and very funny. So while in the Belle, I chatted with him a bit. His board name was Mohave and his writing was very good. Perhaps I can talk him into writing in a few more places. He is on a major poker board, which I think is a fine poker discussion, but I don't seem to get motivated to go there.

VIDEO POKER TOURNAMENT

How can a casino pay back 75 of 200 contestants, the top price being $10,000? The offer asked for $30 and gave three free nights.

Then the reception served us some fine finger foods which made my supper. It was a decent spread and waitresses came around pushing drinks and asking how to help us. I felt like a high roller. The only thing that I thought was not so interesting was the “present” some CD of video poker games for the computer that the casino probably got as a marketing deal. Most regular video poker players already have a good tutor and it does not look like this disc includes any instruction anyway. And why would it? I was hoping for a hat or a tournament shirt. I was not looking however for one of the Edgewater giveaway shirts as they have to be the worst promotional shirt I have ever seen, just a duplication of the Player's Card logo which is not very artistic. I love shirts and hats, but this one I guess I'll give away. In a lunch line I saw a wonderful shirt from these two casinos, so at times they must give away (or perhaps it was purchased) some better shirts. This had painted photos of the casinos on the back.

Session One- score 1005

I used a strategy that favored royals, sf, and quads. I also took a second to consider penalty cards. For example, if the flop included queen /king offsuit, I would be playing only one card, so I'd play the card that matched the fewest suits of the throw aways, or one that hand the best shot at a straight in spite of the throw aways.

Session Two-

While I was playing, my host Janella came by and talked to me and checked that I was happy. I asked about the comedy and within minutes I had a free ticket to tonight's show. She is a honey.

After the first session of VP, I started to play at the full pay machines and what a chore it was to readjust my mind. I had to really concentrate for quite a while, especially since I play 10/7 DB which includes a number of counterintuitive quirks. Finally I got it. Third hand gave me quad jacks and it was all quads after that. There was little to back them up, so I lost a good bit back, but I still ended up $262 ahead. My best VP session.

PURCHASES

Speaking of shirts I got four for ten dollars downtown that are very nice 2XX for my son who works hard for little money and hates buying clothes. These are irregular because they are spotted with black specks of some rubbery something, but it comes right off with the fingernail, so it was a good bargain.

I probably won't buy any Edgewater playing cards as they have fairly standard backs. I need some unusual cards of good quality for a dollar, and with no black marks on the edges. These are hard to find.

POOL

What a fine pool! There were plenty of people and lots of kids, but I had plenty of room for swimming. The water was perfect. The jazuzzi was empty of people and wonderful. In early morning the building shades the water, but even at noon there were shaded areas in which to sit out of the sun. No cabanas, just sheltered tables, but perfect for reading or playing a game of chess or for parents watching their children. No lifeguard. Bathrooms were clean. At the entry to the pool was a Dairy Queen for refreshing cold drinks. Also there was a pile of styrofoam cups so if a swimmer arrived with a drink in a glass it could be put in the cup and then brought into the pool area.

I got good exercise and was well entertained with the antics of the kids. I know that old guys, especially poker players, are supposed to be grumpy about a group of kids laughing and jumping and playing games in the water, but for me it is a delight. I swim at home in the lake we life on and enjoy the quiet, but it does get a bit dull. I also enjoy hearing some Spanish and being in a group of Latino people enjoying life. Here for the cheap price of a ticket to Laughlin I can experience a taste of Mexico without the espense, the worry over crime, or the traveler's experience. Delightful in every way!

So I am refreshed and ready to try my hand at the first VP tournament run. I'll be more than content to finish in the first fifty and earn $50 or more.

FOOD

I ate at the brunch buffet and what a treat for just over $5. A chef made my overeasy eggs sprinkled with onion, cheese, peppers. There was smoked salmon with capers, onion, and tomato. As they do in most places with Latino customers, the hot sauce of choice was Cholula rather than Tabasco. My favorite. Somewhere they found stone crab. I eat this often in Florida right off the boats. It is rather delicate and does not keep long. This was in good shape and while not quite a good as the right off the boat fresh stuff, it was still really good. Oddly someone had cooked them in something that clung to the shells and was greasy so the work of it was messy. But I endured and ate two large helpings.

The bacon was not crispy.

Is it ever??

Lots of interesting cold salads. Plenty of fruit. The ice cream machine was open and they served small M and M and peanut toppings. They had a chocolate chip cookie that made my dessert.

Boiler room:

I had a Mexican style hamburger with those finely cut homemade potato chips and enjoyed the food, but Saturday night was just too crowded. The music was pretty strong rock and roll and it was fine, but not my favorite. It took a long while to get fed there.

I may go back tonight, but I'll get a different hamburger. The burger was good, but I did not think the Mexican topping was very hot or authentic.

Granny's Pioneer Buffet- This trip I have kept track of my food costs (less tips) and if my food is comped here at the Edgewater as I think it will be, I went into a $25 buffet having spent only $16 on food in my first seven days.

So I guess this place is a splurge.

I was happy to get an early reservation as I know I was up early and had time to get hungry, and I wanted to be back for the second try at the VP. tournament where a couple royals would net me a nice ten grand. That is the top prize.

At first I was anxious because they have a dress code and I wore a T shirt. That would be against the rules in winter, but now the summer code is in force and precludes beachware, tank tops, ripped jeans (hmmm at the Italian opera these are the latest fashion) and swim wear. Walking shorts are fine. I had walked a good ways and did not want to walk back. I was saved by winter.

This is a gourmet restaurant and here we are treated very well. The waitresses are unrushed as we are. They watch and wait with precision. They are pleasant and not snobbish. They will bring out cooked to order eggs, make a bloody Mary or fill your champagne glass, bring plenty of juice and coffee. They will pay attention to all this. You never have to look around.

I passed on coffee twice and the second time I said, “I'll have it with my dessert.” So when I went up to get dessert, she watched and poured the coffee so it would be hot when I came back. Then she warmed it once. All without me so much as glancing in her direction.

The hostess did a very odd thing however. At first, she seated me at a table set in the corner by a coffee and juice table. I am a large fellow and she should have easily noticed that I could barely fit through the space. Another woman did notice and she moved me when the hostess went back to the front. I wondered if this was due to the T shirt, or because I was a single diner. Reservations should have indicated that they were not crowded.

I ate at ten as the place opened. It was very uncrowded and I would do it again. As folks came in at then thirty, it filled up enough for the conversational noise to obstruct the delightful quiet classical piano music. Well, you can take some folks to the gourmet, but you can't teach them to use their gourmet restaurtant voices. Forget the dress code. There should be a sign up about that.

There is one very interesting wall hanging in the waiting area. It is the first page of the San Francisco Chronicle from September 9, 1897 and the articles report:

*No More men for Manila ( including a little graphic drawing of typical Manila scenes.

*Peary's letter from Greenland

*An announcement that the Baltimore/Ohio railroads were to become transcontinental

*And the oddest story of all to entertain gourmet restaurant customers as they wait for seating, an article telling the story of a chef who tried to poison an emperor.

These would be interesting the average person.

I wonder if you can guess why I might be especially intrigued.

Seating took a few minutes. It was all very relaxed. A sign announced that we had a table in our name for no longer than 2 hours. What a fine relaxed time this might be for a romantic interlude.

I had tasted the fine food here once before so I knew I wanted some snails and lamb chops. The snails are not quite the garlic butter recipe that go me hooked in France, but they were very good nonetheless. I did not ask for snail utensils and I was sorry as they were coated and difficult to manage without getting the coating on the fingers. And no, I did not lick my fingers. What part of gourmet didn't you get?

I did get good use from the fine green linen napkins.

I was hungry enough to eat very well. This would be my meal of the day. Perhaps I'd have a snack at the Boiler Room later if the crowds had thinned and the music softened. But I am not certain I'll do that. Maybe I'll get a Dairy Queen.

So I had tastes of lobster Newberg, full of nice large chunks of meat shrimp Alfredo, one crab claw, a perfectly cooked broccoli dish, moist crab cakes in a dill sauce, a skewer of fresh fruit to cleanse the palate, and a flambes dessert of black berries, blueberries and banana in Grand mariner.

I also indulged some fine crispy bacon. Mundane perhaps, but I have not had any yet this trip.

And although I do not eat sushi, I was interested and tried one along with a small bite of black caviar. Green and red were also available.

I skipped the beef dishes, the interesting cold salads, and many other taste sensations including frog legs which were dry last visit. I skipped the cold raspberry soup although I remembered it was good.

My bite of dessert with the flambes was a tiny bit of layered cakes, surrounded by chocolate with a checkerboard pattern all shaped like a large tear drop and topped with a bit more chocolate and a berry.

I generally just have a bit of soft iced cream for dessert and skip those buffet desserts that look rich and taste bland. If all the little desserts taste as good as they look, that alone would be worth the price of the buffet. I love this place!

Now I am drinking coffee in my room so as not to be so sleepy from eating when I play my second session of the VP tournament.

DRINK

Say what you want about these low end casinos. I can tell you that I am more likely to get better comped drinks at the low end places than at the high end. I always enjoy Myers Rum at the El Cortez. Plaza had the tequilla 1800. Now here at the Edgewater they bring St Pauli Girl dark beer, even into the poker room. Getting comped dark beer anywhere is very hard and generally the best I have found is Sam Adams and that comes in a cup from the tap and I don't like it that much. My neighbor Ron drinks it while I drink NY Saranac beer, brewed in many assorted flavors and types in the old Utica Club brewery. When we can't think of anything else to say, we argue about these beers. It becomes a little like a discussion between a Yankee and a Red Socks baseball fan, only I don't care about being a fan of baseball, and Ron is an ardent Yankee fan who insists on drinking a Red Socks beer. And that area of NY needs the business much more that Boston. I wish that it had a wider distribution.

These St. Pauli Girl bottles are a real treat, but Saranac is better.

Back a couple decades ago in my family room I had a large poster with the St. Pauli girl serving her large mugs of great bier. She is a cutie and the beer tastes so great that as I am writing this I understand that just before I quit this last session I saw a jack of hearts and read it as a jack of diamonds, so I quickly cashed out. Now I realize it is time for my nap. Know when to walk away; know when to RUN.

COMEDY

After my busted comedy experience at the River Palms last trip where one of the comics was an amateur and not a good one, I was leery of seeing another comedy act. However, this was great. It was “sold out” but I managed to sit uncrowded and have a view over another uncrowded empty seat. Many decided to watch while standing in the back.

Both talked about sex and relationships. The woman was billed as one who had enjoyed many relationships over her lifetime, while the fellow was the family man complaining about his wife. They were both very funny. She had some takes on sex that were unique and she was very skillful in presenting them. She also talked about her baby, a surprise, in odd ways, like justifying sending her to work as a baby model, and the entire set was very funny. She was not crass. She just came across as a woman who used the male need to have daily sex. She had some good material also from a visit to troops overseas. She has played on desperate housewives??

He was very animated and used his body and facial expressions as well as fast talk to make us laugh. His humor was family humor. It was all about how marriage is a power struggle for controlling space. It was all funny and the audience was laughing the entire time. He could tide their laughter and adjust his timing speeding up or giving funny facial pauses and he worked in a good bit of material. Janella got me a ticket, but full price this show would have cost $10, tax and everything included. Some even were mailed free drink coupons. That was the case of the woman next to me who lived in Apple Valley, California , there with her sister from LA.

We had a good chat, but she was a heavy sports fan, and I am not good in that department because I follow no sports. They were bantering and funny and we had a good time joking about and kidding and waiting for the show to start.

Almost everyone here is from California and nearby. They are shocked that a guy from upstate NY would be here.

“Well, you don't have that NY accent,” she puzzled. So once again I needed to explain why we say “upstate” NY and distinguish ourselves from that part from NYC folks. I told her I live in the country on a small lake a half hour from Massachusettes, not much farther from Vermont, and she was very surprised that such things even existed in NY. I told her I had been raised in Buffalo, and so we talked too about “Western” NY.

“That is near Canada?” she asked.

“Right,” I answered.

I asked her if they raised apples in Apple Valley, but she just laughed and said it was “high dessert” Then she speculated that there were so many horses who left “road apples” all around the area, that perhaps those naming the town had been thinking of those apples.

I don't know.

I do know that in upstate NY we could call a place “Apple Valley” and let folks pick there own fruit. We have fine orchards near my home. Where she lived you would think they could celebrate some of the fine deserrt growth. On the way up to Laughlin I was taken with these small red cactus. I don't know their names, but I might if folks who named these Nevada towns used some common sense. And I don't mean horse sense, either!

I am having such a fine time. When I was at the Plaza, I was thinking it was foolish to travel way out here on the bus, but I am happy to be here now.

It is an entirely different flavor.

And where Vegas can be rather quiet in August, this place is hopping with young people taking advantage of the cheap rates and the opportunity for easy water fun. As I write the rented jet skis zip up and down the river. At home these annoy me, but here we are insulated from the worst of the sound and it is fun to watch them and to watch the river taxis and other recreational boats. I got a fine sense of the strength of the current when I saw a boat just drifting by. The captain was on the phone. I wondered if they were drifting because they were broken down and if so, why they did not have a signal or an anchor.

It is a bit too hot for me to really enjoy much Riverwalk walking, but I may do some after I move to the Tropicana on Monday. I'll be gambling less those days, doing a bit of shopping at the Riverside, buying another watch at the Watchman store (I left mine home, and I miss it) and wandering about a bit in spite of the heat. I did enjoy seeing the koi carp again last night between the Belle and the Edgewater. Otherwise, I have not seen too much. There is something wonderful and old fashioned about these river taxis speeding to their next stop on the night river.