Here are a few chips from my trip to Harrahs in Maryland Heights, MO last week. I will trade or sell these as follows: roulettes $3, I-Bar chip $8 and Budweiser chip(red chip - says Budweiser Perfect Beer) $3. The NCV chip is new and is $10. I only have one so Greg gets first choice if he wants it. All prices include shipping.

Cindy and I were supposed to be at Harrahs in New Orleans last week but of course that wasn't going to happen. They offered to let us stay at several other Harrahs so we picked St. Louis which is within reasonable driving distance for us. Turned out to be an interesting trip since Harrahs was offering a guananteed $1000 first place BJ tournament for $50 entry fee. It was their very first BJ tournament. It may have been the first of any tournament there since the chips were still in the Paulson boxes. I entered and during the first round was sitting at a full table. The last table only had 3 players and they were going to start that way. They said it didn't matter how many were at a table! We convinced them to even the table count out a little and I volunteered to go to the empty table. We ended up with only 5 at that table so I had a nice advantage. I was in the running on the last hand. Unfortunately I had to bet first so had no choice but to bet the max. Dealer hit BJ on the hand and there went my chance to advance (if I had bet the minimum I would have won the table). After some agonizing I figured that for $50 and a lot of experience I should try again in the second round. There were lots of players who didn't have clue on how to play in a tournament so I had a decent chance. Second round wasn't kind to me but I still had my initial buy in when the last hand came up. The only chance I had was to bet the max and hope that the leaders would bet big and lose. Of course it was my luck that the dealer hit BJ again on that hand which wiped me out. The Harrahs people running the tournament were also clueless as to how it should be done. They announced that there would be a wild card drawing yet it never happened. I even asked what time the drawing was going to happen and they couldn't tell me. In the final round they did the unthinkable and had 2 final tables. With two tables there is no way to know where you are since you don't know how many chips are at the other table! Several of us told the tournament manager to go to Ameristar the next Wednesday, sign up for the tournament and see how it was supposed to be done.

Despite the tournament problems I had a good time and even came home $80 ahead for gambling. Cindy and I wanted to take it easy this trip so we did some antiquing and went on the Budweiser tour. Unfortunately, with the price of gas, I didn't want to waste another trip into downtown so I never made it to Casino Queen or President.