"So, How'd You Do In Vegas?"

As I alluded in my post of yesterday, the question you see at the top of this post is the question that everybody always asks you when you return from Las Vegas (or from a trip to the Rivers of Meadows Casinos, for that matter).  So, when we departed for Sin City, I decided that I would keep a log of just exactly "how I did" while there. Now tracking your wins and losses is tantamount to asking the car dealer, "How much does that car cost?"  In other words, if you have to ask, or, in this case, keep track, you shouldn't be doing it in the first place, but what the hell?

So, to answer the question.  I took a stake of $500 with me to play with, and I'd have been willing to lose that with the idea that I had fun while playing.  When I tallied it all up on Monday night before bedtime, I was in the red for the whopping amount of $24.70.  Losing that small of an amount over four days is a "win" for me.

Lowlights:

• On two occasions I made a "what the hell" bet at a roulette table.  Dan and I would each place $20 on Red for one spin.  Twice it came up black.
• On three or four occasions I fed money into a slot machine, violating my oft made promise to never play slot machines.  They don't call them one armed "bandits" for nothing.  I know that people sometimes hit big on slots, but I hate the damned things.
• On separate occasions, I lost $60 and $100 at a black jack table, and it happened so fast that I felt like I was gut punched by Mike Tyson.

Highlights:

• I made $15 bets on three of the four NFL Playoff games, going with the Chiefs, Patriots, and Eagles (I didn't bet on the Cowboys-Rams game), and I won all three of those.
• On two occasions, I left the black jack table with a $50 and a $60 profit.

• On Monday night, our final night, I started with $100 at a $15 black jack table at the MGM Grand Casino.  It wasn't going well. I was down to only $25 in chips, and then it turned.  I started to get some good cards, made a couple of nice hits, and I cashed it in when my stack got to $175.  Let me tell you, THAT felt good, and it was the gambling highlight of the trip for me.  It was the last bit of gambling that I did on the trip. I knew that if I pushed it, that sweet taste in my mouth would have, inevitably, turned sour.

I also made a $15 bet on the Pirates to win OVER 79.5 games this year, a $15 bet on the Patriots to win the Super Bowl, and three separate $15 bets on Jordan Speith, Dustin Johnson, and Tommy Fleetwood to win the Masters.  If any one of those guys win the Green Jacket, that $24.70 loss will be turned into a very tidy profit.

I will say that it was really fun to be in various casinos while NFL Playoff games were taking place.  Wherever you went in the casinos, you were never far from banks of TV sets where you could see what was going on. Dan and I spent some time watching the Patriots game while ensconced in the Sports Book at Caesar's Palace.

Sports Book at Caesar's Palace

Sunday, January 13

That was a different experience.  The place was huge, it was packed with people yelling and cheering, and you just marveled at the thought of how much money was at stake for many of the degenerate gamblers who were doing the yelling and screaming, certainly a lot more than my measly fifteen bucks.

No doubt about it, Las Vegas is a fun place.  We arrived at our hotel at about 8:00 on Friday night, spent three full days visiting other hotels and casinos, eating some great meals, and catching two shows, but by the time we checked out on Tuesday morning, we were ready to go.  Three days was just right for us.

Viva Las Vegas!!

My Pirates Bet

While on our Vegas Vacation, I see that Neal Huntington had a press conference - not sure if it was here in Pittsburgh or down in Bradenton - and announced that in the period of 2013 through 2018, the Pirates have had the overall NINTH BEST RECORD IN MAJOR LEAGUE BASEBALL, and have made the post season in THREE OF THOSE SIX SEASONS (going 2-5 in those three appearances, which I don't believe he mentioned).

I swear that, while sitting in Las Vegas, I could hear the fans  cheering, the bands playing, and the fireworks exploding that was surely taking place in Pittsburgh over this joyful news.

WE'RE NUMBER NINE!!

WE'RE NUMBER NINE!!

WE'RE NUMBER NINE!!

Sorry I wasn't home to take it all in.

Anyway, while out in Las Vegas, I figured that I had to make some sort of bet on the Pirates.  The Paris Casino Sports Book had the Over/Under for Pirates wins in 2019 set at 79 and 1/2.  Now, if I were a logical, unbiased, objective better, I would definitely go for the UNDER on this bet, however, I'm still a Pirates fan at heart, and I didn't want to put myself in a position of rooting against  the Pirates winning if, say, the season came down to the final week, and the Bucs were sitting at 76 or 77 wins. It will also make it really interesting if,  on the final day of the season, the Pirates are sitting 79-82. Should that be the case, I am going to really, really be paying attention on what would otherwise be a meaningless 162nd game of the season, and I'll be very unhappy if Clint decides to play nothing but September call-up scrubeenies and give Doyvadas Neverauskas the ball to start that final game.

What did I bet, you ask?  All of $15.  It won't break me if I lose, but I'll STILL want to see Jameson Taillon starting that last game of the season!

Oh, and Marilyn happened to have a two dollar bill in her wallet, and she wanted to do something "fun and frivolous" with it in Las Vegas, so she put that Thomas Jefferson on the Pirates to win the 2019 World Series.  At 150 - 1 odds.  A tidy little $300 payout when the Bucs kick the Yankees' or Red Sox' asses come next October!

Caesar's Palace Sports Book

on an NFL Playoff Sunday

Viva Las Vegas, 2019

The seed was planted over a dinner with our friends Dan and Susan right after Thanksgiving.  "We're thinking about going for a long weekend in Las Vegas right after Christmas.  Whaddaya think?", said Susan, and before we knew it, CLICK/BOOM, we had booked a long weekend trip to Las Vegas, and thank you Southwest Airlines and the Paris Las Vegas Resort for making such  great deal to fly out and stay in the Town That Moe Greene Built, and so it was that last Friday night, we were welcomed accordingly:

For Marilyn and I, it had been ten years since we last visited this uniquely American playground, and if anything, it has gotten bigger, brassier, and more over the top than ever.  Las Vegas truly defines the term "sensory overload", and we had a ball every step of the way.

In all we visited and won/lost money in eight different casinos: Paris, Bellagio, Mirage, Caesar's Palace, Venetian, Encore, Aria, and MGM.  We saw two different shows:

Marilyn and I had actually seen "Love" in 2009 when we last visited Vegas.  We said at the time that it was so good that we'd like to see it again someday, and so we did.  The show has actually changed some since then.  Some different Beatles songs are featured now, but still the same great Beatles music (need I say more?) and still those marvelous acrobatics and dancing moves of the Cirque Du Soleil performers.

As for David Copperfield....well, it was simply an amazing show of magic and illusion.  It seemed to me that I have seen Copperfield do his thing on television forever, so it surprised me that he is only 62 years old.  To see his act live on a stage was really a fantastic thing to see.  And he does this twice a night, three times on weekends, throughout the year.  As the concierge at our hotel said, "He's a machine."  

When we decided that we were going to the Copperfield show, it triggered a memory for me.  Many years ago, David Copperfield was going to do a show in Pittsburgh, and I remember at the time that my mother said that that was something that she wouldn't mind seeing.  I don't think she ever got to that show back then, so I dedicated my visit to that show two nights ago to my Mom, which was kind of nice.

We had some great meals at some cool places.

This restaurant, Mon Ami Gabi, is in the Paris Resort and includes an outdoor seating area that simulates and outdoor Parisian cafe.  It is directly across the street from the Bellagio, so when you are there for dinner in the evening, you get a great view of the famed dancing fountains of the Bellagio.

And when you breakfast there, which we did twice, you get this view.

The other fancy meal we had was here.

Carbone's is located in the Aria Hotel and Casino, and it is an "Authentic New York Italian Restaurant".  More than being a great meal, which it was, dinner there was a real experience.  The atmosphere made it a dining event as much as a meal.  Many thanks to my Highmark friend and fellow retiree Sandy Tomlinson for recommending the place to us.  

Another very cool thing that we did was ride The High Roller.

It is a huge ferris wheel that takes a half hour to make a complete circle.  At its peak, you are 540 feet above the ground, and it really is spectacular to see all of Las Vegas and the surrounding desert and mountains.

A really fun thing to do.

Of course, the question that everyone asks you when you return from Las Vegas is "How'd you do at the tables?"  Testing the laws of probability, of course, is an integral part of the Vegas Experience, and we did do that, but that part of the trip deserves a separate write up, which will be forthcoming in the days ahead.  Watch for it.

In closing, no matter where you go, even Las Vegas, there is always a Pittsburgh connection...

Here's looking at you, kids....

"Hamilton" Comes to Pittsburgh

Fifteen months after seeing Lin-Manuel Miranda's extraordinary musical "Hamilton" in Chicago, Marilyn and I saw it once again last night as the "Angelica Tour" spends a month long engagement in Pittsburgh.  

In the less than twenty-four hours since the show ended last night, we have already been asked "How does it compare to what you saw in Chicago?"  I am not going to do a  full-scale review of last night's performance.  Much of what I said about the Chicago performance, which you can see here....

http://grandstander.blogspot.com/2017/10/we-see-hamilton.html

....can also be said about the touring company we saw last night.  I can also say that it was every bit as good, and maybe even better, the second time around.  We saw things in this performance that we didn't remember seeing the first  time.  The show is so visually beautiful and the choreography so compelling, yet you might miss much of by concentrating on the main characters in a given scene.  Two such numbers illustrate this point.

One is for the song "Satisfied", where Angelica Schuyler essentially creates a flashback of the previous number, "Helpless", that describes the courtship and wedding  of Alexander and Eliza from her, Angelica's, point of view.  The second is "The Room Where It Happens" where Hamilton, Jefferson, and Madison can be seen in the background as Aaron Burr sings of his desire to be a part of what is taking place amid the chorus dancing to the music.  We saw things we didn't see the first time, and I am sure that we will see others that we missed last night when we see it for a third time at some point in the future.  

I want to recognize the amazing cast that we saw last night:

Alexander Ferguson......Alexander Hamilton

Charnette Batey.............Eliza Schuyler Hamilton

Josh Tower.....................Aaron Burr

Stephanie Umoh............Angelica Schuyler

Paul Oakley Stovall.......George Washington

Bryson Bruce.................Marquis de Lafayette/Thomas Jefferson

Chaundre Hall-Broomfield.......Hercules Mulligan/James Madison

Jon Viktor Corpuz..........John Laurens/Phillip Hamilton

Isa Briones.....................Peggy Schuyler/Maria Reynolds

Peter Matthew Smith......King George III

Of course, none of these are familiar names, but all of them were remarkable and wonderful performers.  In fact, both Ferguson and Batey were understudies who were, for whatever reason, thrust into playing the lead roles of Alexander and Eliza.  The lady sitting next to us was grumbling to her husband about having to "watch understudies", but you know what, they were just terrific in these roles, and we had no problem at all watching them.  In fact, Alexander Ferguson, who on a regular night, plays in the ensemble and also a couple of minor roles in the show, also serves as understudy, not only for the Hamilton role, but also for the roles of Aaron Burr, John Laurens/Phillip Hamilton, and King George III.  The fact that one guy might be called upon to play any of these four major roles on a given night in the show makes him all the more amazing to me.  Miss Batey, too, is normally in the ensemble, but she also understudies the roles of both Angelica and Peggy/Maria.

We love the show, and we loved seeing it once again here in our home town.  This show will tour and be performed forever, and we will never miss the opportunity to see it again someday.  It will always "blow us all away."

NFL Playoffs, Week #1, and the GCR, plus a CFP Prediction

Thoughts and comments after Wild Card Weekend.....

• With final scores of 24-22 and 23-17, the Cowboys-Seahawks and Chargers-Ravens games would appear to have been close contests.  They weren't.
• Biggest Egg Laid on Wild Card Weekend:  The Houston Texans who fell behind 14-0 in the first quarter against the Colts at home, and were never for a moment in that game.
• If Andrew Luck isn't the comeback player of the year, then they ought not to even have that award.
• Indy HC Frank Reich - who may well be the NFL Coach of the Year - needs to lose that beard.  Not to be insensitive, but he looks like a guy who stands at a busy intersection during rush hour and asks for your spare change while the light is red.
• Lamar Jackson may well be the Next Great Quarterback in the NFL, but his performance yesterday shows that he is still very much a work in progress.
• The poor kicker for the Bears is taking all the heat for that clanger off the upright at the end of the game yesterday, but this should be remembered: With the season and playoff future on the line, the vaunted Bears defense allowed the Eagles to march down field with under four minutes to play and score the winning TD on a fourth down pass with under a minute to play.  So, yeah, it was all the kicker's fault.
• I fear that if the Super Bowl ends up being Patriots vs Cowboys, the TV viewers will miss at least  third of the game because network cameras will be overloading us with owner's box shots of Jerry Jones and Robert Kraft.
• On at least three occasions during these four games, I saw punts and/or kickoffs returned for significant and meaningful yardage, something that I cannot remember seeing the Steelers do in all of this past season.

The GCR (Grandstander Confidence Ranking) only went 50/50 in picking the winners for Wildcard Weekend (right on Cowboys and Chargers, wrong on Colts and Eagles).  2-2 headed into next week.

And speaking of the GCR, here's how those rankings look after the first round.  Note that I have decided to go to a more conventional 1 through 8 ranking, rather than the higher confidence number through the lowest as I did last week.

1. Saints
2. Chiefs
3. Chargers
4. Rams
5. Patriots
6. Colts
7. Cowboys
8. Eagles

I know that I should be giving more love to the Eagles, but somebody had to be Number 8.  There are twenty-four other teams who WISH that they were #8 in the GCR.

That leads to the GCR predictions for next weekend:

• Chiefs over Colts
• Patriots over Chargers*
• Saints over Eagles
• Rams over Cowboys

* You will note that I have one variance in my predictions with the GCR.  According to the rankings, the Chargers should beat the Patriots, but I just can't bring myself to pick against the Pats.  Yeah, I know people have been saying that the Pats dynasty is beginning to crumble, that Tom Brady is showing his age, but until it actually happens, I just can't allow myself to pick against the Patriots in the Divisional Round of the Playoffs. Plus, I don't trust Phillip Rivers in this spot.

So there you are.  As always, watch, but don't bet.

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There is also another significant football game to  be played tonight, Alabama vs. Clemson for the national championship in the final of the College Football Playoff.  An entire season of college football was played, we sat through weeks of hype and discussion as the CFP rankings were released each week, we saw two absolute stinkers played in the semi-finals of the CFP last week, so we could come down to this:  Alabama vs. Clemson for the fourth straight year in the CFP, the third year in the Final game.  Perhaps we could save ourselves a lot of angst and melodrama by just penciling in these two teams for this same game next year as well.

Well, if it is repetitive, we are assured of one thing -  a competitive and exciting game, as each of their meetings in the past three years' CFP games have been.  On can only hope after seeing those two clunker semi-final games, and some less than compelling NFL games this weekend.

I am calling for an Alabama win, but I have discarded my usual "watch, but don't bet" advice.  While at the Rivers Casino last week, I visited the new sports book and  placed a $15 wager on Clemson getting +5.5 against the Tide.

Random Thoughts On A Disappointing Steelers Season

After ten games in 2018, the Steelers stood at 7-2-1, held a comfortable lead in the AFC North, and they appeared to be headed towards a playoff spot and first round bye.   What then followed was a disastrous 2-4 finish that included losses to two lousy teams, the Broncos and Raiders, a loss to a very good Chargers team wherein they gave away 16 point lead at home, and a win they barely eaked out over another crummy team, the Bengals.  Oh, they did manage to get one monkey off their backs by beating the evil forces of Kraft, Bellichick, Brady, and the Patriots in that 2-4 stretch.  That was quite satisfying at the time, but when the totality of the season is considered, it turns out to have been, at best, a hollow victory.

So, yeah, this team, one that by all accounts seemed to be loaded with Super Bowl caliber talent, ends up missing the playoffs and the 2018 season can only be categorized as a disappointment (or worse!).

Some random thoughts from this section of The Grandstand....

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With perfect 20/20 hindsight, Steelers management clearly underestimated the resolve of Le'Veon Bell and his willingness to not get paid in the short term in hopes of getting a huge guaranteed contract in the long term.  Bell was certainly within his rights to do so, and, financially at least, he was the only person who "lost" anything by this strategy.   Whether he gets the big money he desires remains to be seen, but if you placed a gun to the heads of Art Rooney, Kevin Colbert, and Mike Tomlin and insisted they speak the truth, I'm willing to bet that they now wish that they would have traded Bell before the season started and gotten something, even a mid-level draft pick for him.  As it is, Bell will achieve free agent status and the team will get bupkis for him.

Of course, the Steelers could impose a franchise tag on him again next season, but please, God, spare us from that particular melodrama again.

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The newspaper today tells us that, statistically at least, the Steelers had the sixth best defense in the NFL in 2018.  Really?  When you watched this team all season, did you ever once think that you were watching a top tier defensive unit?

The defense forced only 15 turnovers all year, and had only eight interceptions, and I would have guessed that they had even fewer than that paltry number.   It was baffling to me to watch a team that just could not force turnovers on a regular basis.  This became all the more glaring and galling when in the game against the Patriots, Joe Haden DID make an interception, and off of Tom Brady, no less.  That play was critical in the Steelers winning that game, and it made the fact that they had so few throughout the season all the more frustrating.

I am not a football coach, so I won't even pretend to talk about the X's and O's of the game, but it seems to be obvious that something needs to be done with the defensive coaching staff leading into 2019.

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Special teams.  On the plus side, there was that fake field goal attempt that led to a Chris Boswell-to-Alejandro Villanueva touchdown pass, there was a blocked FG by L.J Fort, and there was, well, what other good things were there? Chris Boswell's implosion has been well documented, and did the Steelers ever have a kick off or punt return of any significance at all this season?  If they did, it's not coming to mind right now.

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Ben Roethlisberger hung some great numbers this year. Total yards, TD passes....he set team records in both categories, and he became the first Steelers QB and only the seventh NFL QB to throw for over 5,000 yards in a season.  There is still no QB I would rather see with the ball late in the fourth quarter when you need to drive a team down field with little time left on the clock to get a score to win a game.  This was demonstrated time and again this season.  The win against Jacksonville comes to mind, and even in losses to Oakland and New Orleans, Ben did what had to be done when the game was on the line.  He even finally outplayed and defeated the great Tom Brady.

He also led the league with 16 interceptions, including a terrible one in the closing seconds against Denver in the end zone when he was on the cusp of pulling off another fourth quarter, last minute comeback.

What caused this to happen?   Poor coaching and play calling? Bullheadedness on Ben's part?  Or after fifteen seasons and at age 36, is Father Time beginning to catch up to Big Ben?  Again, I'm not a coach, so I don't pretend to know the answers.  I'm glad that #7 will be back at the helm once again next year, but he can't go on forever.

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There were bright spots that need to be recognized....James Conner's performance sparked the team through that mid-season 6-0 streak and that 7-2-1 record.  He seemed to more than make up for Bell's absence.  Still, there were two critical fumbles that led directly to the Browns being able to pull off that tie in the season opener, and in another game, the exact one I cannot remember at the moment, that led to a Steelers defeat.  Plus, he missed three games due to injury down the stretch, so he has yet to be able to stay on the field for a full sixteen game schedule.

Also, T.J.Watt sure seems to be a guy on defense who was well worth that number one draft pick two years ago.

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And then there is Antonio Brown.

First off, Brown is the best WR in football.  He is also probably the best player on the Steelers team and its most valuable player (and that fact that he wasn't voted that award by his teammates appears to be quite telling in light of the events of the last week of the season).  

All that aside, the drama that he generates - and I am not going to list all of there incidents of this past season; if you follow the team, you know of them - along with the unbelievable narcissism, reached its zenith this past week leading up to the Bengals game. Skipping practices, not showing up for a final walk through the day before the game, then having his agent, not him, his agent, calling Tomlin and saying he'll play on Sunday, showing up pregame on the sideline and then leaving the Stadium at halftime, then not returning phone calls from his bosses, including the team president, all of that adds up to a guy who (a) no longer wants to be with the team, and (b) should not be with the team in the future.  His actions have led to what appears to be a breakdown in team morale, as evidenced in numerous quotes this week from unnamed players on the team, and has called into question Tomlin's ability to maintain discipline and the aforementioned morale among the team.  I know that there are salary cap implications that make it difficult to either trade or release Brown, but somehow or another, I believe that bringing Brown back to this team in 2019 is going to just allow what was apparently a real problem on the team and in the locker room to get even worse.

Antonio Brown is a great player and it won't be easy to replace him, but let's face it, the Steelers haven't won any Super Bowls, or even had a lot of post season success, WITH him on the team these last few years, have they?

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I imagine that the 2018 season post-mortem discussions that will take place among Art Rooney, Kevin Colbert, and Mike Tomlin are going to be really, really interesting these next few weeks. Oh, to be a fly on the wall.....

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Despite some highs - hey, the season was not without its great moments - and lows, in the end, the images of the 2018 Pittsburgh Steelers will forever be.......

Le'Veon Bell on a jetski in Miami, and 

Antonio Brown in a mink coat on the sidelines against the Bengals, right before he blew off his team and left Heinz Field.

On the bright side, it will be stress-free watching the NFL Playoffs without the Steelers in them this year.

Happy New Year To All Loyal Readers

Here's to a terrific 2019 to everyone in The Grandstand!