Bob Dancer

Posted on May 2, 2023 by Bob Dancer — 11 Comments

Some Thoughts from a Cruise

As I type this, Bonnie and I are aboard the Norwegian Cruise Line Encore on a 15-day Miami-Panama Canal-Los Angeles cruise. We get highly discounted 7-day NCL cruises from Caesars because we have achieved Seven Stars status. But a Panama Canal cruise has been on our bucket list for a while, and here it is. Seven Stars players get “significant” discounts on all NCL cruises — even if those discounts are not as big as we get from 7-day cruises.

The Encore is a relatively new NCL ship — one of those with most of the restaurants and entertainment venues on levels six, seven, and eight. It is huge, holding up to 4,000 passengers. But passenger amenities are much less than we’ve experienced on other NCL cruises. Perhaps this is a major change in NCL policy. Perhaps it is unique to the Encore.

Posted on April 25, 2023 by Bob Dancer — 10 Comments

Hanging on to Points

At most casinos, you accumulate slot club points. Sometimes these are good for comps only. Sometimes you can redeem them for cash and/or free play.

When you redeem slot club points for cash or free play, this is taxable income. I know that many players “forget” to report this, but it’s taxable nonetheless.

Posted on April 18, 2023 by Bob Dancer — 18 Comments

It Goes Both Ways

In January, I had an incident at the Harrah’s Cherokee casino that I wrote about. I started my trip by taking a $20,000 marker, consisting of eight $2,500 TITO tickets and began to play $5 Deuces Wild. When I hit four deuces, I got two more of the same size . When I hit royals, I collected eight more.

It was a very successful trip and at the end, I had far more than eight of these tickets. I had signed for every one of them. At the end of the trip when I cashed out, the cage said one of the $2,500 tickets had been cancelled. They weren’t going to pay it until they figured it out.

Posted on April 11, 2023 by Bob Dancer — 8 Comments

She Don’t Know What She’s Doin’ but She Tries to Do Her Best

Author’s Note: I wrote a similar blog recently, with some readers requesting more information. I think there’s enough different between that piece and this one to make this one worthwhile.

The title of today’s blog comes from a mid-90s song “Baby Likes to Rock It” by the Tractors. I’ve liked that lyric since I first heard it when the song was new, and think that it’s a perfect fit for explaining Bonnie’s gambling.

Posted on April 4, 2023September 18, 2023 by Bob Dancer — 15 Comments

Betting With Bonnie

Bonnie and I’ve been together for about 10 years — with our ninth wedding anniversary coming up next month. We knew each other, more or less, for about five years before that in that we both belonged to the same square dance club. Bonnie would come with her husband Fred and I would be there with Shirley. There were about 100 “regulars” and we all knew each other. Each “square” consisted of eight dancers who would dance together for about five minutes, and then the squares would get shuffled and you’d dance with another group of dancers. While I thought Bonnie was a nice lady, I had no thoughts of us ever hooking up together. We were both married and I thought Shirley and I would be together so long as we both lived.

Posted on March 28, 2023August 24, 2023 by Bob Dancer — 18 Comments

Time to Be a Good Samaritan?

This blog suggestion was sent to me by a friend, “Al.” It happened at a casino somewhere in the Mid-West. I honestly don’t know where exactly.

Al was playing video poker near a bank of Quick Quad machines that weren’t very popular. Possibly players knew how to play the machines and avoided them because they had lousy pay schedules, or maybe they just didn’t know how to play. I don’t know. I haven’t seen them. (If you’re in the latter boat, you can get a free copy of “Quick Guide to Quick Quads” on www.videopoker.com.”)

Posted on March 21, 2023 by Bob Dancer — 13 Comments

Do APs Cheat?

At the recent World Game Protection seminars, casino expert Sal Piacente said: “Advantage players don’t want to cheat and aren’t doing anything illegal, but instead use their minds to beat the game, whether watching to see if a dealer exposes a hole card or by card counting.”

I’m not so sure.

Posted on March 14, 2023August 29, 2023 by Bob Dancer — 6 Comments

Smoke and Mirrors

I’ve written two recent blogs about a drawing in Reno that was supposed to take place in early March. It was cancelled due to weather, and re-scheduled for the end of June, nearly four months later. Normally writing continually about a promotion that is of interest to a relatively small percentage of my readers doesn’t make sense. But this time, several of you asked me how this change would affect my “go-or-not-go” calculus. So, I’m writing again.

Posted on March 7, 2023 by Bob Dancer — 4 Comments

As Good as I Once Was

In 2005, country music star Toby Keith released As Good as I Once Was, a wonderfully self-deprecating song about a guy reaching middle age and not being as good as he was in his prime. In a clever twist of words, Keith sings that he’s not as good as he once was, but he’s as good once as he ever was.

If you haven’t seen the video, check it out on YouTube. It’s cute.

Posted on February 28, 2023August 24, 2023 by Bob Dancer — 13 Comments

Maybe we Will Go

A few weeks ago, I wrote about a drawing at the ROW in Reno (a Caesars property where the Eldorado, Silver Legacy, and Circus Circus are all connected indoors), where Bonnie and I had each accumulated more than a half-million tickets during our stay. While that is a lot of tickets, everybody gets free tickets and daily multipliers, depending on their tier level.

I mentioned in that article that probably we won’t attend the three nights of drawings because the combination of prizes and probability of winning them wasn’t all that high. I said that would be my decision, “depending” on other factors.

Author: Bob Dancer