It's Not A Bender, It's A Lifestyle.

Aria Xmas. I snapped up a *breathes in* Stay Well Deluxe King Strip View Room for the Xmas festivities. Say that 5 times real fast. I guess some of that bad gambling in June/July paid off, at least in a way. My offers went up across the board, had good, better than standard rooms available at at least 3 or 4 comped nights at almost all MGM resorts. Coming in Sun-Fri probably helps, too. No weekend days = better rates and more comped nights. The base Aria room is one I've had many times and is solid if a bit boring, but the Stay Well package will be a new twist. The location is perfect as always for my generally center-strip tendencies. Less cabbing and hopefully more cash saved by not being on an extreme end of the strip like I have been lately. Plus, baby gets a view. Couldn't have done much better on the resort/room/rate ratio, really, I ended up spending more on the airfare than on a 5-Star resort in Vegas, as this one all in was only $442 for 5 nights, 3 nights comped and m...

Well, that wasn't great. The trip was standard, the gambling was not. Absolutely got ass-blasted on VP. Took $6K bankroll, came back with $400. I have thoughts. I realize, and even realized DURING the trip, that I expect to win on VP now. My VP skills have evolved enough and I play perfect strategy to the point that if I don't hit at least one handpay on a trip I'm peeved. On this trip, I was very peeved. It made what should have been a fun trip, less so. Much less so. And it shouldn't be. In the old days I expected to lose my whole bankroll. It's a budget, and more often than not (see about 90% of these post-mortems) I came back with bupkus. It didn't really bother me. But now that 3 out of the last 5 trips have been successful (coming back basically even or at least only down a bit) that has now become an expectation.  The rest of the trip was fine. I did fun things, had some good meals, saw a lot of my Vegas buds, it was good. MB was good. Good room, resort ...