Gather round, my advantage player scuffling children (“Please, sir! More coupons!”) and let me tell you the tales of Santa Vegas and Coupon Karma.
I’ve already encouraged you to use all your Member Rewards coupons before they expire, but what if you still have some left?
Here are two stories to warm your hard-boiled EV-calculating hearts. The purpose — nay! hey gift —is to keep an open mind. Don’t assume you know everything. More will be revealed!
I mean, does prayer work? Is God a good bet? Duke University did a double-blind study praying for two cancer groups. The group that was prayed for (unbeknownst to them) did statistically significantly better than those that weren’t. Hunh.
Now, I’m not making any assumptions about exactly what’s going on, but it’s very interesting, isn’t it?
So there I was, flying into Vegas with an extra unused MRB. The lady sitting next to me on the plane turned out not only to be a video poker player with her own MRB, but she was meeting family and was thrilled when I gave her my extra MRB for her clan.
Coincidentally, and many of you math freaks may call this unrelated correlation, it just so happens that was the trip I hit 14 four-of-a-kinds. Kinda cool, eh?
Then there was the time pre-COVID when there still were hard-copy American Casino Guide coupon books and I’d double stack coupon runs with both the MRB and ACG.
I’m up at Rampart and realize I have an unused matchplay. I HAVE To go back in for another roll of the dice. It’s a tough job, but someone’s gotta do it.
I’d also been distributing unused coupons everywhere I went. Texas Station, Four Queens (where the slot booth lady, seeing me give away a Magnolia coupon while waiting in line, reminded me to check my ACG and let me use both the MRB and ACG free-play coupons. “Well, thank you ma’am!” As Jean says, you catch more bees with honey than vinegar.)
So back to Rampart. I go back to the crap table and the guy I’d left there has turned his original $100 buy-in into a row of blacks and greens. He makes another point and I place my $10 with the $10 matchplay on the pass line.
“That’s it?” he asks me.
“That’s all I got.”
Shaking his head, he mumbles something to the dealer, lays down some chips, rolls an 8 for the point, then a hard 8.
The dealer pushes $200 over to me.
“Whoa! What just happened?”
“Oh, he just threw some green on hard 8 for you.”
Now that’s why my favorite movie is not The Cooler though I do love that one), but It’s A Wonderful Life.
I’ve run out of word count here, but for good cheap pasta, I just have six words:
Sign up for Buca di Beppo! More on that in my next post.