A few weeks back, I was in Las Vegas and tried to hunt Lucky Ned down. I told him I had a two-for-one buffet coupon and wanted to take him along as my guest. My real reason for wanting to see him was to collect the $500 he owes me. Well, Ned used his world famous instincts to figure out what I was after and he ditched me. Wherever I went in Las Vegas, though, I saw the influence of his systems as gamblers WENT WITH THEIR GUTS.
On that trip, I stayed in far more luxury than I'm used to thanks to the generosity of my company's travel budget. My first night was at the superfancy Rio Hotel. I arrived at my room near midnight and some guy was already in there, messing things up. When I asked the front desk for a different room, they asked me who was in the room. I said I didn't know and the clerk asked, "Can't you find out?" Their "finding out who is staying in our rooms" staff must have been short-handed.
The Rio clientele seems to be stuck in an ongoing senior prom. All the women wear black dresses and the guys have shiny black pants, shiny tropical shirts and gold bracelets. The guys all smoke cigars that they pull out of their mouths between puffs, as if to say, "Boy, I sure am pretending to enjoy this," or "I paid ten bucks for this?" Each person had dressed to stand out, but in the exact same uncreative way as everyone else.
The steak special at the Rio is $5 more than the one at the Gold Coast. So, I went next door for dinner, where the casino smells like diarrhea. But not in an unpleasant way.
In the morning, I ate the Rio's humongous and mediocre buffet. It used to be great, but this time it didn't float my boat. After that, I took a swim in the Rio pool. They have a towel shack, but they won't give you a towel. They give a pool boy a towel and he puts it on a chair for you. I guess I'm supposed to tip the pool boy, but I didn't know that and got in an argument with him over who should be tipping whom. To get even for the room mix-up the previous night, I peed in the pools. All three of them.
When I returned from my business that day I checked into the Golden Nugget. This room was way fancy. It was so fancy that I didn't dare touch anything in the bathroom because it was so pretty. I bathed, shaved, and brushed my teeth in the casino restroom.
My friend Ted joined me for dinner because I was afraid I wouldn't be able to spend my whole corporate allowance by myself. We planned to test Lucky Ned's IncrediSystems under the full range of conditions from sober to drunk. Ted got loaded, I stayed sober. After dinner, we headed down to the Western.
Ted and I started at the dime roulette wheel. We could have played for bigger stakes, but wanted to simply prove the system worked without greed appearing to be a factor. I mostly followed Ned's tenets that the following three bets are the best: black, odd and multiples of three. He is right! He is also correct that the first 12 numbers come up most often. Ted tried to stay loyal to the number 33 by betting it every spin of the wheel, and increasing the amount he placed on it by a dime with each spin. However, Ted bet other numbers, which invalidated his loyalty, and it cost him some earnings. When Lucky Ned says you have to be loyal, he means you have to be LOYAL. I played Lucky Ned's Hot Pick of the Week and won three dollars and sixty cents.
Another player at the table, who said he was "Danny," was testing an advanced Lucky Ned system under extremely tough (inebriated) conditions. He was superseding Lucky Ned's specific advice with "Go With Guts!" and had a lot of chips in front of him. Also, Danny had been watching the table all day and "knew" which numbers were overdue. Every time he won he would shout that he "Knew it was coming." He even told us to bet some of his picks which I thought was a generous and very Lucky Ned-like gesture.
Lucky Ned's blackjack strategy proved to be a trickier beast. At the blackjack table, everyone wants to see your strategy chart and then each person has an opinion. The opinion is generally "Lucky Ned is feeding you a load of crap." That just proves how naive the everyday blackjack player is. I was the only person that doubled a 15 against the dealer's king. Same with my 12, and hitting on 18 against the dealer's low card. Others at the table grew increasingly annoyed (read jealous) at Ted's and my play and we were threatened with bodily harm. Luckily, Lucky Ned saved the day when the next hands we were dealt landed in the "Better Quit While You're Ahead" area of the strategy chart.
Skeptics of Lucky Ned might say "How much money did you lose?" To that I say "Lost my foot!" Why we won over $1000 in that place! Photos of Ted holding the checks he won that evening thanks to Lucky Ned's IncrediSystem will be posted in the Lucky Ned IncrediSystem Plaza.
One other note: the Western has an interesting photo policy in their casino. I asked the pit boss if I could take a picture. He said it depends. I asked what did it depend on. He said it depended on what I wanted to take a picture of. I told him Ted and myself using the strategy tables at the roulette wheel. The pit boss said no. I asked what I could take a picture of and he said "nothing." So, you may only take pictures of nothing in the Western Casino.
I went with Guts and I made the Western Nuts!
Because it was a business trip, I did not have the luxury of time. Before I could say, "Where are my trousers," I was on a six a.m. flight home. I was richer, wiser, sadder and also with a pocket full of receipts to make my employer pay.
