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Otoro Robata Grill & Sushi (Mirage)

The Mirage is closing next month, so why are we reviewing Otoro Robata Grill now? Two reasons. First, we had a terrific meal there. Second, we figure lots of people will be heading over for a last look at the casino, so dinner at Otoro might work in well with that plan.

As the name indicates, this is robata cooking, which pretty much means skewers cooked over very hot charcoal. There’s also a full sushi/sashimi menu. The oysters in truffle ponzu with kizami and chives are a great starter if you don’t mind fading $39 for eight ($4.88 per). Sweet-and-sour calamari with wasabi vinaigrette ($18) is another winner.

A tall Kirin beer was $22 and a single Murai Nigori sake was $13.

The Skewers

Meat skewers are $10 (chicken) to $32 (baby lamb chop), seafood is $10 (salmon) to $28 (lobster), and vegetable is $6-$10. Trying all three categories, we went with Togarashiu sirloin steak, lamb chop, Chilean sea bass, and shishito peppers. We haven’t reviewed many robata restaurants, so we don’t have a lot to compare to, but the Otoro skewers were as good as any we’ve had. They’re not the teeny skewers you get at the Japanese Izakaya’s; instead, they’re substantial and three to four per person are enough.

The Sushi

Sushi and skewers make a good combo. There’s nigiri, rolls, and sashimi. The nigiri comes two pieces to an order, most selections priced $10-$14 ($21 for uni, $38 for bluefin tuna belly). We had several, including akimi tuna and a spicy yellowtail hand roll. Although the robata cooking is the main focus, the restaurant’s name comes from otoro bluefiin tuna, so the sushi is also a priority.

The Verdict

Everything we tried was good. It’s ironic that we’d have the best meal we’ve ever had at the Mirage (except for some buffet visits when it was there) just as the casino is about to close. It’s not cheap—the bill was $263 for two, including $55 for drinks—but you can get the experience for less during the Fri.-Tues. happy hour (see ENTERTAINMENT), which might fit in even better on a farewell visit to the Mirage. Check out the full menu here.

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Xiao Long Dumpling

This place opened in Chinatown (4275 Spring Mountain Rd.) in late 2021 with a ton of hype and high expectations, given that the restaurant’s name is its purported specialty, xiao long bao soup dumplings. We were impressed at the start — big room, plenty of customers, interesting menu — and it was looking like another good play in Chinatown. But it didn’t hold up. We tried several items—wonton in chili sauce, scallion pancake, beef chow fun, sauteed green beans, and, of course, the soup dumplings. Odd as it may sound, the best dish was the green beans. Price isn’t a problem; most of the dishes we had were $10 and under, with the chow fun most expensive at $14.95. A tall Asahi beer was $12. Our bill for two with two beers was $97 and we had a lot to take out.

Scallion pancake
Sauteed green beans
Beef chow fun

Peanut Butter Wontons?

One dish did stand out, but not in a good way. The spicy wontons are served in a peanut sauce that tastes a lot like peanut butter (the wontons are at the bottom). It’s a strange mix of flavors that we found interesting at first, but then too strange to keep eating. Think wontons mashed in with a Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup.

The Soup Dumplings

The dumplings were good. The pastry is very delicate, so you have to eat them with a spoon. It was a minor annoyance that they stuck to the paper they were served on, so some were punctured in the process of getting them out of the basket. Overall, we’d rank them below others we’ve sampled, e.g., China Mama or Shanghai Taste.

The Verdict

Hours are 11:30 am to 10 pm daily. Located in the Chinatown Plaza, Xiao Long Dumpling is easy to find and and get to, but there are too many other good options in the area to make it a priority, unless you just gotta try those Reese’s wontons. Click here to check out the full menu.

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Big rebound for Vegas; The woman who said no

Hardly the cruelest month, April made up for some recent and discouraging numbers for Las Vegas in particular and Nevada in general. Gambling receipts on the Las Vegas Strip tallied $666 million (the Mark of the Beast?), a 6.5% improvement over 2023 and 38% higher than May 2019. Locals casinos fared up even better, being up 16% overall, to $270 million. Table game hold was up on the Strip and baccarat was much tighter as well. Wagering at the tables (+20%) and slots (+43%) eclipsed 2019 figures. Baccarat winnings vaulted 80% from last year (when, to be fair, hold was very loose) and non-baccarat table games nosed up a percentage point. The one-armed bandits saw a 4% decline in coin-in.

Continue reading Big rebound for Vegas; The woman who said no
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Chicago Brewing Company at the Four Queens

Chicago Brewing Company at the Four Queens

A Reader Leader alerted us to the great scene and good affordable food at the venerable Chicago Brewing Company in the back of Four Queens. Though we’ve had drinks and watched games at this venue’s bar many times since it opened in 1999, we couldn’t recall eating there and a search of the archives turned up no review. Given the attention that Terry Caudill, the owner of Four Queens and Binion’s, has given us over the years with coupons (plus a recent two-part Question of the Day interview), we were happpy to give it a try.

In the far corner of the casino, you walk up a short staircase and enter the bar. With its brick walls and picture windows overlooking the slots, it’s a classic brew-pub and sports-bar scene, with numerous screens filling the walls, all showing sports.

It’s open 24/7, serves breakfast all hours, and boasts a non-smoking taproom. Cigars are available for the smoking section. The beer brewed on the premises has won awards at the Great American Beer Festival and the World Beer Cup. Ales include golden, brown, and pale; you’ll also find American amber, Bavarian wheat, and Irish stout, among other small batches and specials.

The food, as our LVA correspondent insisted, is good at great prices from a big menu.

Appetizers start at $6 for garlic knots and include meatballs, quesadillas, fries, chicken tenders and jumbo wings, calamari, and shrimp cocktail ($8-$16). Soup, chili, and side salads are $5-$6. Numerous sandwiches and burgers (including filet mignon sliders) go for $10-$15. Thin crust and deep-dish Chicago-style (natch) pizzas come in 9-, 10-, and 16-inch pies from $10 to $15 with various toppings at $1, $2, and $3 extra. Desserts are $4-$6. As you’d expect from the same casino with Magnolia’s and Hugo’s Cellar, it’s big food at reasonable prices. There’s also a happy hour Sun.- Thurs. 3-6 p.m. and 11 p.m.-1 a.m. with $2 off drafts and 50% off house wines and well drinks.


We tried the raspberry-pear-almond salad and chicken club with onion rings, both excellent and filling.

Best of all, we had the pleasure of lunch with our very old and dear friend and best-selling author Jean Scott. It was appropriate that we ate at Chicago Brewing with her; this reviewer first met Jean and her husband Brad in a room upstairs (comped, of course) way back in 1992. She was here on a visit from Georgia to play in a mahjong tournament, her new passion. We’re happy to report that she’s still as vital, frugal, and, as you can see from the photo beautiful, inside and out, as she was 32 years ago.

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One Casino

Bob Dancer

Online, I read one person (I’ll assume a male) who said he lives across the street from a casino, and he plays to win. That’s all I know about him. He may live in Las Vegas where there are 20 or more additional casinos within a relatively few miles. He may live in a place where the next closest casino is 60 or more miles away. I’m going to address the latter situation, whether it applies to this particular player or not.

For a period of time when I had a “real job,” I used to walk to work — which I found beneficial for a number of reasons. I’d get exercise and have more useful time to spend than did others in the office who drove an hour or more each way to work. Some of those benefits apply to a casino being right across the street. But there are major differences.

Texas Hold’Em and other poker players sometimes refer to “outs,” which can refer to the number of unseen cards in the deck that can lead to that player winning. Sometimes it’s one card only (such as it must be the K♠); sometimes it can be many cards (e.g., any heart, any four or any nine). The more outs you have, the better your chances are of winning.

Similarly, sports bettors know that if you can only bet at one sportsbook, your chances for winning are very slim. If you can bet at any of 10 sportsbooks, and carefully pick and choose among them on the best price for a given game, your chances of coming out ahead are much better. Plus, if you win too much at one, you can stay away from it for some period of time. Many sportsbooks restrict winning players.

For video poker players, casinos themselves can be considered “outs.” The more outs you have, the better your chances are for winning.

Many casinos, of course, are basically unbeatable at video poker. Period. The best games there return less than 98% and the slot club and promotions don’t return nearly enough to make up for that. Possibly there are progressives that are sometimes positive. Sometimes there are variations of Ultimate X which can yield a return of more than 100% if the previous player left it in that condition. But those are short plays that don’t happen with dependable regularity.

A few other casinos, think South Point, for example, but there are others, have slightly positive games 24/7 which become even more positive during certain promotions. But these casinos usually restrict players who consistently win and/or only play during the juiciest promotions.

The “best” circumstance for players is to know of several such casinos and play among them according to which one has the best deals currently. If one casino has 10x points on Mondays and has beatable games, play there on Mondays. If another one has good drawings on Saturday nights, plan your life around playing enough to earn drawing entries and showing up there most Saturday nights. Until you win a few times. Then take a few months off. If one casino gives you a big bonus for the first $20,000 coin-in you play in a month, and nothing additional thereafter, it makes little sense to camp out there every day.

It also helps if you have more games than just video poker that you know how to beat. In keeping with the theme of this blog, each additional game you can beat can be thought of as an out. Although casinos can be quick to kick out successful blackjack players, winning at many other games in a casino is tolerated. For me, my fallback game is slots. Other players are good at poker. Still others have table games they know how to beat. Most games in a casino can be beaten under the right conditions — but knowing those conditions and finding them isn’t trivial. And there might be many other knowledgeable players who are also scouting for those conditions, meaning they don’t last long when they arise.

For me, while I still play a lot in Las Vegas, I also know of good games out of town. Some are “fragile,” meaning if I tell my readers under which conditions I go to play my out-of-town secret games, the casinos would adjust and change either the games or the conditions that make them positive. But I do share the information with a few people who in the past have shared valuable information with me. Sometimes I have paid “finders fees” to players who let me know of good opportunities.

When one lists the secrets to success at video poker, such things as outs and being networked to players who help you are not usually listed. But to me, they are important.

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NO DICE AVAILABLE AT THE TABLE? GIVE CARD CRAPS A SHOT

This post is syndicated by the Las Vegas Advisor for the 888 casino group. Anthony Curtis comments on the 888 article introduced and linked to on this page.

A.C. Says:

Where there’s a will there’s a way and that seems to apply doubly in gambling, where casinos find ingenious ways to circumvent laws that disallow certain games. One of the best examples is card craps, where the traditional game of craps is played without the demon dice. This article explains the basics. For the most part, card craps mirrors dice craps, but there are some differences in the house edge, due to the effect of removing cards from the decks being dealt (the procedures vary). Basic strategy is to bet the don’t pass and lay the odds, which often outperforms the same strategy in traditional craps, and depending on certain variables, can even yield a small edge for the player (this effect can be enhanced with the proper card-counting system). Note that there’s a typo in the last sentence under “Don’t come”: It should read, “The payoff on all winners is even money.”

This article was written by John Grochowski in association with 888Casino.

NO DICE AVAILABLE AT THE TABLE? GIVE CARD CRAPS A SHOT

Giving players the games they want is part of the business for casino operators, and plenty of players have made clear they want craps. Through the 1940s and ’50s it was the most popular casino table game in the United States before it was overtaken by blackjack in the 1960s.

But some jurisdictions don’t permit dice games, with California being the leading example. What’s an operator to do?

Continue reading …

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Play Playground

Play Playground

Play Playground opened at Luxor in mid-January. This 15,000-square-foot facility on the second-floor Attractions level offers a couple of dozen “larger-than-life nostalgic” games and two bars. Nostalgic? That’s right. Play Playground boasts no VR, AR, or video games. Rather, the activities consist of adult versions of childhood physical, memory, puzzle, and team games designed for friendly competition; most games keep score and leaderboards track the highest ones. The entire experience is advertised as lasting up to 90 minutes.

You check in at the desk, show (or buy) your ticket, fill out an annoying waiver on a tablet, and get your badge, which gives you play credits on the competitive games and tracks your scores to compare to the leaderboard; you can also trade points for prizes. When you run out of credits, you can continue participating in activities that don’t require the badge for activation, such as the Bounce House, Bullseye Bounce, Balloon Room, photo machine, three-story slide, and ping-pong-ball catchier.

The credit games include Perfect Popper (fit shaped foam into their spaces on the wall before time runs out), Doctor Doctor (put the patient’s parts back together again), Ringer Run (move the ringer through the maze without touching the track), Poker Parkour (race along the balance beam without getting knocked off by big swinging poker chips), High Five (similar to Bop It), and activities with names like Find Words, Move It, and Ramp Up that involve ball rolling, letter and word combinations, and the like.

Like the illusion museums, it’s best to come with at least one other person to play the games with and compete against and larger groups seem to get the most entertainment. But even at 15,000 square feet, the space is fairly cramped and when it’s crowed on weekends, the lines can be long and the energy ebbs. Otherwise, it’s good wholesome fun, a definite departure for this town, but true to form for the Attractions level at Luxor.

Note that though Play Playground started out with kids’ hours, it quickly pivoted to 21 and older only, probably due to the ready availability of alcohol at the two bars.

Tickets start at $37 with a $2.50 service charge for booking online; hours are Sun.-Thurs. noon-midnight., Fri.-Sat noon-2 a.m.

Here’s the kicker. If you drive to Luxor, even if you don’t spend another dime there, you’ll also have another opportunity to reach into your pocket and pay the casino: If you’re not local, it’s $18 to park. It doesn’t matter if you stay 24 minutes or 24 hours, it’s 18 smackers. And we have to say, paying it is damn painful — and almost precludes us from reviewing attractions like these. We can’t in good conscience recommend coming here and ponying up 50% of the attraction price just to stash your car for an hour or so.

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Bobby Vegas: Point Multipliers Are Very Important for Advantage Play

Bobby Vegas: Friends Don’t Let Friends Play Triple-Zero Roulette

Good gambles often show up in unlikely places.

The newly combined Rainbow and Emerald Isle Casino in Henderson, as mentioned previously, merged their weekly food comps in the monthly mailer and have combined their point multipliers. Some go as high as 100X

First, I eat at Rainbow’s Triple B, (five-egg Western omelet with perfect hash browns and an English muffin and spaghetti and meatballs to go using an LVA MRB 2 for 1 for an amazing $14). And I timed it so I could play during 25x points.

Using Rainbow’s 25 x points multiplier periods, I’ve won thousands of dollars and hundreds in comps, all while turning a negative expectation game into a positive.

Now at the bar is 25x video poker. I hadn’t played there; the schedules were mediocre and 15 feet away were positive expectation Double Double Bonus and other juicy games.

Hmmm. By adding 25x (+2.5% ) to their crummy 9/5 JoB, I went from 98.45% to — drumroll, please — 100.95% total return! All while earning 25 points per hand.

Meanwhile, also nearby was an old fave slot machine, Triple 7s (9-line penny games at 20 lines or $1.80). They paid 50 points per spin , which is actually +2.75%.

I’ve watched and played this bank of slots, attempting to hit some progressives in the high four figures. I’m a net winner on these machines and on this trip the progressive was at an all-time high of $11,500. I didn’t hit it, but did win over $200 while earning thousands of points and more comp dollars..

I also played their lovely Double Double Bonus full-pay 10 liner and won $100 on a $2 bet. It was my last hand and I had only $1.96.

Then I went over to Emerald Isle, where a 50x promo was going on. From there it was on to the Pass next door.

I’d started receiving mailers from the Pass, offering a weekly $7.50 food comp and some spin-to-win slot play. Okay, I hit the lowest amount ($5; it goes up to $500), but it was my birthday. Would I like some birthday comps? Sure! Another $10 in slot play and a $20 food comp!

Wow. And I’ve played maybe an hour total there.

I enjoyed their diner, played some fun VP, and cashed out with $13.75, with a free brownie Sunday and I’d earned $2 in comps playing all on their money.

Now Gold Coast and all Boyd casinos offer 10x on Saturdays and Tuesdays (senior 55+ days and on Tuesdays free bingo as well. Hey I’ll always play when it’s free!)

At 10X? Figure it this way: .05 x 10x= .5 + 99.54 =100.04! That now turns everything in their VP inventory, from 9/6 JoB on up to a 100%+ game.

People! Hit it!

[Editor’s Note: For more on Rainbow and Emerald Island, here’s another Bobby Vegas post. Be sure to read his three comments, which also have excellent information.]