It is 6 p.m. Monday - and Brad and I are just now getting rested up after chasing around town yesterday doing some great Mother’s Day casino promos. We usually play video poker only 3 or 4 times a week and a typical session is about two hours. The old gray mares just ain’t what they used to be! However, if there is an extra good promotion we might stretch out to a 4- or 5-hour session.

Once in awhile, usually on a holiday, many casinos run super promotions – and yesterday’s Mother’s Day was a perfect example. We started late morning, hit 6 casinos, and didn’t get home until midnight. No wonder we needed to rest today!

I thought I would tell you about our activities yesterday, to give you an idea how important promotions are to video poker players who want to play with an advantage, increasing the likelihood that they can pull out a long-term profit. What we did yesterday is just an example. Every savvy player in town did not do the same promos. There were more than any one person or couple could do in one day. So each player had to analyze the various promotions and decide which ones made the most sense for them, i.e., considering casino location, game selection, and the free time they had. I will also talk about how you can find out about casino promotions so perhaps you will have more and better options on the next holiday.

We got up earlier than usual (we are late sleepers) because we needed to pick up at 11 am our out-of-town guests we had put up at the Palazzo and take them to the airport. The airport drop-off area was the usual Sunday morning madhouse but once we took the tunnel to I-215, the freeway was not crowded and we were at Green Valley Ranch by noon. We found our favorite Multi-Strike machines empty and beckoning to us so we could start playing immediately.   This was a surprise because many people who get Station mailers (as we do) had 6X points this day and these machines are quite popular. 

In the past bonus-point days have been Station-wide and advertised in the media and anyone could take advantage of them, but in recent months there has been a switch to specific-property promotions and you only earn bonus points if they were listed on your mailer. This same thing is true with the Coast properties – fewer all-property public promotions. So one of the main ways to learn about and take advantage of promotions is by playing enough to get mailers from the casinos. This is true both for casinos that cater to locals and for downtown and Strip properties that cater more to tourists.

We had to leave GVR at 4:30 because we had been invited to a VIP dinner at the Hard Rock scheduled for 5. This was an extra postcard offer not in our regular monthly free play mailer. A dinner invitation is something we can easily turn down – we throw away hundreds of dollars of food comps every month – but this one came with an offer of $100 free play. Brad always says that if you want him to eat “banquet food” (which he really dislikes) then you must pay him to do it! Actually we had TWO “banquets” conflicting at 5 p.m. The other one was the tournament award dinner at the Venetian and we were kind of anxious to see how much Brad had won since he had three good scores. But we knew whatever he won he could pick it up at a later time – and tomorrow he will pick up $1500 at the Venetian cage for his 5th place win!

Next came a quick stop at Ellis Island where we each picked up our regularly scheduled bounce-back of $25. We had planned to complete our “circle” around that big block by stopping at Tuscany where we would pick up our regularly scheduled free play and then play for awhile at their 10X-point promotion. But earlier in the day, a friend had called us to find out if we knew that Silverton was giving 5x points all day. I find out that this fact had been “hiding” in a small ad in Friday’s paper that was promoting Mother’s Day menus in their restaurants, but I had been busy and hadn’t read Friday’s paper as I usually do before holidays since that is where you will often find last-minute promotions by locals casinos. Once again, I was grateful for networking – one of the ways to stay abreast of important casino news. 

So we skipped Tuscany, blowing off the $30 free play we could have collected. We got to Silverton about 7 p.m., went to the players club to check the details of the promo and to get new players cards since I hadn’t packed the Silverton baggie in my traveling file I stock each day before we leave to do battle with the casino. Normally we would be tired and ready to go home by 7 p.m., but this was a double-dipper promo since they were running another promotion the whole month of May in which you could get free play for your points instead of the previous comps-only. And we could earn our 6x points on one of Brad’s favorite machines – quarter Hundred Play. Actually it was a triple-dipper promo because our play would earn us future bounce-back free play mailers also. 

But our bodies gave up about 11 p.m. and told us we just couldn’t stand any more fun that day. We did manage to stop at the Palms because it is near our condo and I played off a $40 free play coupon that would expire at midnight.

And then it was home to our welcoming bed.

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Someone e-mailed me this comment on the Palms room offer I mentioned in my last entry: “I'm sorry, but THAT offer is NOT for any yokel & therefore should not have been mentioned.”

I appreciate the input. This is the sort of thing that happens to me when I have so many ideas in my head but don’t get them all out in print. I did mention this Palms offer being for just a few dates but I forgot to emphasize that this came as an e-mail directly to me -- and I have been a fairly heavy player at the Palms since it opened. That, of course, was an offer that the man off the street probably would not be able find.  

The point I was trying to make with this example was that it was a really bargain price compared to offers I had received in the past. (Actually I don’t take any room offer from a Vegas casino that is going to cost me real money since I can get all the comped rooms I need for our out-of-town visitors so this was just a theoretical exercise.)

The point of that whole blog entry was to show how players who search diligently can find all sorts of bargains, especially in this period of a declining economy.  And I want to mention now that more and more casinos are using the Internet for marketing to their customers and I recommend that you sign up for these messages at any casino where you would like to stay. Now the quality of the e-mails you will get will vary greatly. Some will give you prices that you can beat at other Internet sources. Some will give you a room offer for the next few days – and you live half way across the country and can’t possibly get a reasonable airline ticket in time. 

However, you will find some gold in some of these e-mails. We have received free play offers, cut-rate show ticket prices, and (like the above example) reasonable, even bargain room packages. If you sign up at casinos that are within driving distance, you may snag some last-minute valuable deals as casinos try to fill their property with warm bodies that might drop some gambling dollars.

You can  usually sign up for these e-mail messages at the casino's Web site.

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Tuscany Casino's April mailers for locals had errors in them, according to a sign at the slot club desk. Corrected information:

1.  Weekly free play pickup schedule is Monday through Wednesday for the first one and Thursday through Sunday for the second one (just as it has been for several months). 

2.  There are still 5x points on Wednesdays and Sundays although this was not mentioned in the mailer.  This promotion is for everyone, not just for those who get mailers.

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