After black Friday I moved out to Vegas to figure out life. I had just started to shake off some terrible life tilt and was getting some good staking deals on Part time poker when in an instant, it was all gone. The only thing I could think of to do was to sell everything and move.So that's what I did.
I had been out to Vegas a year prior but didn't know anyone living out there. I found a chick needing a roommate on some site and I packed up my 2007 Dodge Stratus with my chihuahua peewee , my clothes and my PC and $4500. I left Raleigh on June 6th and rolled into Las Vegas at dawn on June 9th.
My new roommate didnt get off work till 5pm so I had all day to kill. I drove around town trying to get the feel of my new home. I took Peewee to the dog park behind the East Side Cannery and drove around downtown until I found Pawnstars.
I was super tired midday so I rented a room in a really old motel downtown on Las Vegas Boulevard , right beside the Post Office. I tried to nap with my dog who was super hyped at any noise- I kept envisioning how many people had slept in the room so I made Peewee a blanket bundle and set out to walk downtown.
I finally got up with my new roommate and settled in. I won several of the grand tournaments at the Golden Nugget, I crushed the Orleans Friday night and several of their dailies, I scooped the Aria daily and nightly. I was crushing off of a $4500 roll and then when the series was over, and everyone left town, I was still sitting with some residual life tilt from another period in my life. I needed to become a better people person and work through some issues, so I decided to work.
I had never really had a job and I was 34 years old. I was lacking some things in my life that I knew to be a better person , I had to work on. So I brainstormed and decided that the best job that would make me great tips, allow a lot of personal freedom and set my own schedule was to deliver food.
I set out to work two jobs, not just one. I had never held a job more than 90 days my whole life and I wanted to not only work one, but to work two and become a new person by hard work and immersing myself into a new situation 2200 miles away from bad memories.
It was the best thing I have ever done! I got my first job at Jasons Deli , downtown , right there in the Southern Nevada water district building next to the IRS. They did a huge amount of catering to Zappos, The mayors office , The Smith Center, World Market - basically the whole east side to Flamingo and as far North as the Speedway ! Schools, hospitals- Ricks Restoration, Pawn Stars, Zuffa !!
My 2nd job in the evenings was the east side Pizza Hut off of Sahara and Nellis. I chose that store particularly because it's delivery area is the edge of the mountain and a lot of local traffic instead of that crazy downtown traffic I was driving in during the day. I tried to set myself up to have success and I had so much of it.
Anyway, it's at this Pizza Hut that I got invited to take part in a scam to steal money from the slot machine tournament at Sunset Station in Henderson. I applied and was immediately hired to be a driver and since I wanted to work nights, I was a good fit. The girl who hired me was from Ohio and she was around my age and 8 months Pregnant. She was dating a guy who worked at Sunset Station as a manager in one of the restaurants and after she came back from having their baby , he got her a position at Sunset, out of pizza hut. I didnt think anything else about her, I was there to work and do my thing , but some of the people that were there before me were close with her and would always talk about her and that they see her regularly. the usual work chit chat.
Probably 4 months go by and out of the blue her best friend at the pizza hut, a guy named earl from chicago , starts calling my phone one day needing to talk to me really bad, so I stop by his apartment on my way to work .
He begins to tell me that " donna" has been working at Sunset and has been in charge of the slot tournament and that if I wanted to , she could rig it to make sure that my card # was the winner of the slot tourney- the only catch was that I split the $2000 prize with her.
I didnt tell anyone I worked with about poker. None of those people had any clue other than it was played in a casino. There was nothing i could gain from these people by talking about poker. But poker was the first thing I thought about. The embarrassment of moving to vegas to change your life , only to be caught up stealing 1000 from Sunset Station, I was fucking horrified.
I held it in though. I was just gonna politely decline and go to work and thats what I did , but before I did, he told me all about it. However since she left Pizza Hut she was there and she got that job and immediately started rigging it- here's how it went-
They have the slot tourney promotions- get a certain amount of points on a certain day and you qualify for the slot tourney. The slot tourneys are on special machines cordoned off just for the tourney- You show your card number, it gets validated for points. They sit you at a machine and give you the play and whatever points you total goes on a list and then a percentage of the list gets paid out- at 7pm the slot tourney winners list is posted by the cage- you go up and find your number and see if you placed in the money- it's all anonymous.
He said that he did it for several weeks in a row and that he was scared to do it again. They had already used her mother in law, and some other person but now they needed someone new..... me
LOLLLL you know what kept running through my head? How fucking insane it is to stroll up to that pay window pretending you won the slot tourney 3 times in a row when there are thousands that play it. I am dead ass serious. I was thinking of Russ Hamilton type undeniable cheating and this guys asking me to steal after they had already stolen so much.
She moved back to Ohio and I never heard anything else about it except that earls car got repossesed for non payment. I guess he didn't bink anymore slot tourneys.
This lesson taught me that cheating is so easy that people with no gaming experience were cheating hard core and didn't get caught.