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Brad and I are flying to Indianapolis today for a visit with old friends and family. We are hosting a reunion for Brad’s extended family, many of which he hasn’t seen for many years. Then we will drive north to Hammond to visit the Horseshoe casino. 

This will be a needed vacation away from my computer, so my blog will be on vacation too. But I will give a report as soon as we return to Vegas.

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I subscribed to the SaveLV.com Daily Updates a few weeks ago and I am amazed at the wealth of frugal information they provide. Free food giveaways, free entertainment offerings, so many ways to make your dollars stretch further if you live in or visit Las Vegas. 

Today’s Daily Update e-mail contained a good example of the unusual frugal offers this Internet site digs up – Harrah’s has teamed up with romance novel publisher, Harlequin, to offer two free Vegas novel downloads. 

These daily frugal finds (and much more) can be found on their Web site but I find it handy to receive their daily updates by e-mail.

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Tomorrow, Wednesday, April 15th, is the 30th anniversary of the Liberace Museum and it is celebrating by offering admission tickets for only 30 cents. This is a bargain (especially for out-of-towners) since admission is ordinarily $15 for adults and $10 for seniors 65+ and students with a valid school ID. Locals do have one other frugal option: Second Sundays are free to Nevada residents.

The Liberace Museum is located in the Liberace Plaza at 1775 E. Tropicana Ave. (at Spencer Avenue). The Museum occupies two buildings separated by the parking area. It is open Tuesday through Saturday 10 a.m. to 5 p.m., Sunday from noon to 4 p. m., and is closed Mondays.

Except for the second Sundays mentioned above, admission price includes a one-hour guided tour on Tuesday-Saturday at 11 a.m. or 2 p.m. and on Sunday at 2 p.m.

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In celebration of National Library Week, the Las Vegas-Clark CountyLibrary District is having an amnesty program beginning Monday, April 13 through Sunday, April 19. The program is intended to encourage the return of library materials by library users whose overdue fines are keeping them from coming back to the library. 

A cardholder must pay their outstanding balance in full in order to take advantage of the program. Fines and fees for lost, damaged or overdue materials owned by the Las Vegas-Clark County Library District will be waived up to $25, upon payment in full of any remaining balance on the account. Simply stop by any of the Library District’s 24 convenient branches to take advantage of amnesty week.   Fines and charges will not be waived over the telephone.

Lost library cards will also be replaced free of charge.

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From the Road Warrior column: “Motorists can expect delays and lane restrictions through September on Tropicana Avenue, from Paradise Road to Interstate 15.” We experienced this first-hand, an almost-an-hour crawl going east on Trop from Valley View to the east side of the Strip. This construction delay is a 24-hour event. And switching to Flamingo isn’t a good alternative if it’s after 9 p.m. since there is lane closure there all night. Thank goodness for the DI Arterial, which is the best way to avoid traffic jams crossing the Strip. 

From Norm’s “Vegas Confidential” column, quoting Bill Maher: “The Federal Reserve says Americans last year lost $11 trillion dollars in household wealth. You know, that is our own stupid, greedy fault for putting money in banks. If we’d lost it in Las Vegas, they would have at least comped the room.”

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We spent several hours checking things out and playing at M last Friday. It was VERY busy and the lines at the slot club are still much too long. The owner has said they are hiring 250 new employees right away to cope with the unexpectedly large crowds, but if you don’t have a players card yet and hate lines, you might want to wait a week or so. Also the buffet was a zoo Friday night, with even the comp line too long for us to endure. We left to go to another casino to have dinner.   Hopefully with more employees, service will improve soon in all areas of the casino.

This next M item of news makes me feel a little inadequate. I know that many savvy players have found great playing opportunities when a casino first opens, so I should have scouted a bit more carefully when I was at the VIP pre-opening party and I might have found this quarter progressive with a $10,000 royal. Of course, it would have meant waiting around until the machines were turned on at 10 p.m. and jumping on it ready to play into the night until it got hit. So since we went home and were in bed by 10 p.m., some smart gambler did take advantage of this casino mistake. I don’t know how long he/she had to play, but it was a nice payoff, and one the casino graciously paid off in spite of it being a mistake of an extra zero! 

You can read all about it at http://www.thebeargrowls.com/?p=314, which, by the way, is a very interesting gambling news site. 

In spite of opening problems, we really like the M Casino, and the employees are very friendly even if they are scrambling to give good service when they are very busy. 

We also find it easy to get to the M. You can just go south on Las Vegas Boulevard until you get to St. Rose Parkway, or you can travel south on I-15 and get off at the St. Rose Parkway exit, which is just one exit past the Silverado exit where South Point is located. I-15 south of Flamingo is usually fast and fairly so even during rush hour. Coming back north, however, is another story. We avoid I-15 North at almost any time except late at night. It really becomes just a slow-moving parking lot.

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Just got home from the VIP Grand Opening gala, before the M opens to the public at 10 p.m. We got our invitation through a host who used to work at another property where we played. (This is one of the good reasons why I recommend cultivating a relationship with a host.   We have followed some hosts through several property changes!) And one comment about this party besides the great food offered as we traipsed from one restaurant to another. I have not seen so many dressed-up people in a casino for a long time – and so many men wearing ties! It was stylishly fun! 

This new property is stunning, especially the arrangement of the restaurants so that most have terrace dining that overlooks the large pool complex. This will be the place where much of the entertainment action will take place, including concerts, themed pool parties, festivals, and other events.

But no matter how beautiful a casino resort may be, many of you will be like Brad and me: Show us the video poker! Although the machines were not open for play at this VIP party, we could check out the paytables – and they were VERY good. NSUD (a 99.7% deuce game) was available from single-line quarters to $25 Five Play! Lots of 8/5 Bonus in many denominations. There is one bank of 10 machines with 100%+ games on the quarter level – Full Pay Classic Deuces Wild (100.7%), a 100.6% Joker Poker game, 10/7 DB (100.1%), and 10/6 Double Double Bonus (100%). Be advised there is a sign on this bank: “Not included in any casino promotion.” (These machines also take 4 times the coin-in to earn a point, $4 in to earn one point.) 

The slot club pays .3% on all slots and most VP. (1 point for each $1 coin in and 333 points equals $1.) You can redeem your points for free play right at the machine or for cash by going to the slot club. You can also redeem your points (at the same redemption value) for meals, drinks, retail purchases, pharmacy purchases including insurance co-pay and prescriptions, spa and salon services, hotel stays, gasoline and car wash purchases. 

As locals, we will be waiting to see what mailings we will be getting after we put in some significant play one day this week! That and what promotions they run will determine whether M will be a casino we will add to our playlist!

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I get a lot of e-mails from players suggesting I speak to casino executives and see if I can get them to change things that they don’t like – the downgrading of video poker paytables, the cut in comps, the decline in customer service. I am flattered that they think, albeit mistakenly, I have that much influence – and in the past on occasion I have gone to bat for some player and helped right a wrong they suffered. But it was always a “little” thing. 

Today the problems casino customers are having are the result of mammoth casino problems brought about by the world economic meltdown. It is no longer as effective as it used to be for a customer to write to a casino executive about some complaint. He has much bigger things to worry about than the unhappiness of one player. 

If you are unhappy with the deep cuts at Harrah’s properties – and the gambling forums are full of the awful details of this “surgery” – you might find a recent article from the Wall Street Journal enlightening. I think many of us feel that casinos have a “license to steal” so they would never run out of money. “Harrah’s Changes Its Game” describes a company that is in desperate straits. 

I soak up as much information as I can about the casino side of gambling because that helps me figure out how I can be more successful on the player side. I realize that moaning and groaning about the cuts wastes my time. I find it is a better use of my time to constantly evaluate the situation.   Sometimes that means changing games, or changing casinos. It means always being flexible, not bemoaning what I used to be able to do but looking for new opportunities.

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Things are rough all over and it is changing people. I see the word “frugal” everywhere, even in the newspaper headlines. Someone being frugal is no longer looked upon as an “odd bird.” Suddenly my ideas are now in style! 

And of course we see the drastic changes the faltering economy is bringing to businesses, and casinos are no exception. We see their problems in the headlines every day. However, as gamblers who are personally involved in the day-to-day activities of many casinos, Brad and I see some of the smaller changes that don’t make the headlines, but show how severely the economic downturn is affecting them. 

I notice two distinct casino reactions. One is to cut, cut, cut. Cut employees even if customer service suffers, cut player benefits, cut machine paybacks, cut promotions. This seems to be the policy of the mega-companies and/or those casinos that are run by bean counters who may be financial whiz kids but who know nothing about the casino business and the minds of gamblers. Gamblers appreciate even the little perks, and they notice every cut that is made, even the little ones. I wonder if some of these casino executives know just how much about their casino is discussed on the Internet. Some of those “little” cuts are costing them much more in the public relations area. 

The other reaction is just the opposite: “We are going to have to try harder to get new customers and keep more of our old ones.” So those casinos are putting in better-paying video poker schedules, running more and better promotions, increasing player benefits, and training their employees to give extra-friendly customer service. These casinos know the casino business. They know that you shouldn’t look at the profit/cost figures for one week, or one month, or even one quarter. It takes time to develop casino customers that will add long-term value to your bottom line. 

Actually there is one other casino reaction – and it drives me crazy. Some casinos seem to be lurching along between those extremes I talked about above. One month they try to gain customers by “giving away the store”: a huge increase in mailed bounce-back coupons, running several overlapping extra-juicy promotions, and/or upgrading their VP paytables. Oops, they ran the numbers and someone in upper management wasn’t happy with the bleeding bottom line. So middle-management, wanting to save their jobs, slashed the bounce-back to a smaller amount that the casino had ever sent out, decided to have no bonus-point promotion that next month, and they set all their VP machines to a lower payback than they had ever been in the past. 

There is one thing that we casino customers do not like – and that is constant change. Although we realize that casinos have to tinker a bit with their marketing strategies, depending on the time of the year and other logical factors, we don’t like to see machine inventory and basic slot club policy changed every week or so. Recently many customers have stopped playing at a couple of Vegas casinos because they never know what to expect when they get there. 

I didn’t name names in this rant, but hopefully some casino executives will read it and know whether their policies are making customers happy or not! A customer will not continue to play in a casino where he/she does not feel happy or respected. Customers know when they are being jerked around!

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