I almost titled this “My Video Poker Obituary,” but came to a different conclusion.
First, Rainbow cut its point promotion by two-thirds and halved the food-comp program. Okay, the new owners realized they were literally giving away the store, but it’s still a great place to play, eat, and win. Are you earning points for the Vegas Aces and Rod Stewart giveaway June 26th? If not, get cracking!
Now it’s the Downtown Grand.
What a great run. It lasted a few years, as it often does, before they tighten the screws. Which they did. For one, they were running a real Gives Good Gamble program and Anthony and I were fully on board. But now, according to VPfree2, DG pulled the plug on the Furnace Bar progressive. Oh, come on!
I know they were making oodles of money on that game. There were approximately 24 places at the bar, with people pouring in money night and day, especially when the progressives crept up to and past breakeven. But nope. Gone. The other video isn’t great.
My opinion? Plain corporate mistake.
I had a conversation with the general manager as to why they no longer give points on e- roulette, a very high-edge game. I’m one of those who works roulette for comps, part of my program to easily earn half-price prime rib and $7 breakfasts with as little as $25 played. Now? Gone.
The GM’s answer? “Comp cheaters!”
Oy vey. On a 5+% game? Those “comp cheaters” playing high-low, red-black, or odd- even were paying the house 5% to earn 2/10ths of a percent in comps. Cheaters? Seriously? It seems pretty much everyone in this calculation wasn’t playing smart. BTW, when I played for my daily half-price coupon at Freedom Beat, I had an expected loss of $1.25 to $2.50 on a discount worth $7 to $15.
So here we are again, moaning like any other Boom baby for the “good old days” when the music was better and the VP was richer and Giving Good Gamble was what Vegas was all about. But I digress.
What I want you all to know is I researched VPfree2 and found 21 casinos all over Vegas that still offer games from 9/6 Jacks or Better (99.54%) to 100%+ games and I’ll be reporting on them, and the next places I’ll be frequenting — where the games are good, the rooms are reasonable, and the fun is real.
Until then, remember, that “It’s not hard to win. It’s hard to walk away a winner” takes work! Enjoy!
I both love casino people that are bad at math, and hate casino people that are bad at math.
Let’s name these ‘Comp Cheaters’ Alice and Bob. We’ll also have a regular person named Carol in this mix.
Alice plays $5 on Red, Bob plays $5 on Black, and Carol, that odd duck that she is, plays $5 on the 0 / 00.
We do this for 38 spins, and for some strange reason, every number hit once! What are the odds? (Don’t tell me, nor will I calculate it and tell you.)
Anyways, Alice is down $10 after hitting Red 18 times out of 38, so is Bob after hitting Black 18 times out of 38. (Both made $90 on their wins, and gave back $100 on their losses.
And Carol is also down $10. Sure, she won $85 on each Zero for $170, but gave back $180 on the 36 spins that weren’t on 0 / 00.
The casino loves Carol because she lost 5.26 percent of her money.
The casino hates Alice and Bob because they each lost 5.26 percent of their money…
Great article. It boils down to greed & the bean counters taking away the good VP. Fellow Boomer here. Thanks for doing the research.
Welcome. More to come Ryan. I live for the hunt and when I find gold well, as they say $100 won is much sweeter than $100 earned though in this case you earn it through research and then love it through winning..until thry figure us out and take it away.
What changed at Rainbow? I played there and at Emerald pretty extensively the last half of June, and I didn’t see that either place’s regular promos had changed at all. Rainbow still has the earn 700 points get $10 x 2 promo, the 1500 points wheel spin promo, the 200 pts gift promo, etc. etc.