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Weather or Not

Bob Dancer

A significant part of the country experienced colder than usual weather starting January 25 and lasting for a while. While Las Vegas escaped most of the cold weather, January 25 was a day I was scheduled to fly from Newark, NJ to Asheville, NC to begin an 11-day Cherokee trip. Both airports were snowed in, and I tried to cope as well as I could.

My flight from Las Vegas into Newark was on January 24, arriving about 6:30 p.m. When I arrived, I learned my flight the next day to Asheville was cancelled. I searched for any flight on January 25 that was still open and was traveling from Newark to either Asheville or Atlanta. I found one into Atlanta on Spirit Airlines, leaving at 5 a.m. I booked it, hoping I could travel before the storm hit. At that time, we didn’t know how big the storm was going to be, or exactly when it would strike, but it was supposed to be bad.

That left me about 10 hours to rent a car, drive two hours to Atlantic City, pick up free play on both Saturday and Sunday, play it off, sleep and eat if I could manage either or both, and then drive two hours back to Newark. When I left Atlantic City at 1 a.m. for the drive back to Newark, the flight status listed online was still “on time.” 

The drive to Newark was dry until I was very close to the airport. I kept driving past signs that told me serious weather conditions were coming, and non-essential driving should be avoided. I kept asking myself what in the hell I was doing.

When I went to check in at Spirit, I discovered my flight had been cancelled — as well as more than 80% of all flights in or out of Newark that day. Spirit had a seat available on a flight to Detroit which was scheduled to fly out soon, and from there, after a six-hour layover, I could fly to Atlanta if that flight didn’t get cancelled. Since some chance of getting to Atlanta on that day was better than no chance, I got on the flight to Detroit.

On the flight from Newark to Detroit, I had a window seat, and there was only snow to see out there. I couldn’t see the ground at all until just before landing. Detroit had snow, but the airport was operational. Some flights were taking off. Others weren’t — but that was a function of the weather at the destination rather than the weather in Detroit. Atlanta was currently allowing flights to land, but that could change at any moment. I got a brief amount of sleep sitting up in the Detroit airport. Not quality sleep by any  means.

While I waited to see if my flight would take off, I called Cherokee and inquired if by any chance they would have a driver in Atlanta near the time I was supposed to arrive? No such luck. It’s a three-hour drive from Cherokee to Atlanta — in dry weather — and their only drivers were booked elsewhere. 

Bonnie was traveling separately from Vegas to Asheville, North Carolina. Originally, I was going to fly from Newark and meet her there. A car from Cherokee would transport us both to the property. But now, I was flying to Atlanta, some 200 miles away from Asheville. I haven’t traveled the road between these two cities before, but I know it’s not all flat driving. The elevation at the high point on that route exceeds 3,400 feet — which is plenty high enough to be snowy and/or icy in the current conditions. Driving from Atlanta to Asheville was going to be out for me — I was too tired for a three-hour road trip in a car I wasn’t used to in bad weather. I’d concentrate on getting to Cherokee and let the casino driver pick her up and bring her to me. Bonnie and I both know the driver, Chris, who was scheduled to pick her up and that wouldn’t be a problem.

Renting a car in Atlanta was going to be an issue. There were cars to be had, but nowhere close to Cherokee to drop them off. Enterprise has a location relatively close to Cherokee, but the Enterprise rental location within the Atlanta airport was closed for the day. The cars I could get would have to be dropped off in Asheville — a full 60 miles away from Cherokee.

The plane did take off from Detroit and land in Atlanta uneventfully — and the passengers on the plane gave out a heartful cheer. I checked my messages and found out that Bonnie’s plane to Asheville had been cancelled. I texted this information to Chris so he wouldn’t drive out there for nought. 

I checked Lyft and found out that I could get to Cherokee for $320 from Atlanta. I decided this was better than driving in icy conditions to Cherokee when I was sleep deprived and in a car I wasn’t used to — and then dealing with getting to and from Asheville to return the car. Before I ordered the Lyft car, I checked Uber and found out the ride cost $260 — and if I was willing to share a ride, $165. Yes, I was willing. I hoped whomever I shared with didn’t mind my snoring. Not for the first time, I was amazed that the rates varied so much between these two companies that offered essentially identical service.

Turned out that I paid the “share” rate, but there were no other passengers. Sometimes you catch a break.

I arrived in Cherokee and checked in. I was more tired than I was hungry, so I immediately went to bed. My plan was to awaken at 2 a.m. and play $50,000 coin-in before the casino day changed at 6 a.m., earning me 5,000 Tier Credits and the maximum daily bonus of 10,000 TCs. I can redeem one Experience Credit (requiring 250,000 TCs) for $450 in free play, so earning some extra TCs would be worth money to me to obtain.  But when my alarm rang, I turned it off, rolled over, and slept longer. I was worn out by both the lack of sleep and the stress of not knowing how I was going to cope with my transportation problems caused by weather conditions that were both serious and uncertain.

I had my toothbrush and toothpaste, but no other toiletries. I’d flown into Newark for a day with just a backpack — and my clothes and things were in a suitcase Bonnie was bringing. With the weather, she ended up getting here Thursday night — four days later than originally planned. I wore the same clothes day after day, washing out my underwear nightly. The handheld hair dryer became a clothes dryer. When Bonnie finally saw me, she laughed at how scruffy I had become. But we were together again, clean clothes were at hand, and everything was okay in our world.

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Boyd: Weathering the Storm

Despite bad weather, the fourth quarter for Boyd Gaming was steady as she goes. Wall Street expected $334 million in cash flow and Boyd delivered $337 million, along with $1 billion in revenue. That was achieved even with soft business in the Midwest and South, as well as in the drive-in business in Las Vegas. Locals play in Sin City remains solid, which was a saving grace. Destination customers just weren’t coming, which hurt business at The Orleans, for one. To console investors, $185 million in stock was bought back, and projects in Virginia, Illinois and suburban Vegas remain in train through 2028.

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Steak ‘n Shake Deal at the Fremont

I know some of you are thinking, what’s the big deal about a fast-food meal in Las Vegas? That isn’t the reason you come to this town. But this one is significant for several reasons.

First of all, McDonald’s pulled out of the D and the Plaza over the summer.  There are no McDonald’s in the downtown area. Sometimes you just want a quick bite.

Secondly, Steak ‘n Shake is more short-order cooking than fast food. I’d rate it quite a bit better than the Burger King, McDonald’s, Checkers, etc. options.

Third, $5.99 barely gets you a cup of coffee in many places. So getting a full meal for $6 is quite a find.

Finally, the Fremont Food Hall is an attractive place to visit and eat, with other good choices for good quick meals.

As a bonus, if you’re downtown and don’t want to walk to the Downtown Grand via 3rd Street , you can cut through the Fremont casino, exit the north doors, and be very close to the Grand.

Check out my Las Vegas Savings Tips page for further suggestions.

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MGM: Shoot the Messenger

Don’t you just hate it when reality refuses to conform to Big Gaming’s preferred narrative? MGM Resorts International CEO Bill Hornbuckle sure does. That would explain the hissy fit he threw last weekend. Faced with a Las Vegas that was 9% down in visitation in December and off 6% in gambling grosses, Hornbuckle stuck with the ‘Happy days are here again’ mantra.

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Found It!

Bob Dancer

A few weeks ago, I wrote that in the hours shortly after New Year’s Eve midnight I was cruising downtown Las Vegas looking for slot attendants resetting machines. Due to the W-2G threshold changing from $1,200 to $2,000 effective January 1, most machines needed to be reset to make them lock up at $2,000 rather than $1,200. My search on January 1 was unsuccessful, as I reported.

One of my readers, Mike, suggested I was off base. The jackpot meters have nothing to do with resets. Well, yes and no. The meters are unrelated to each other, to be sure, but some games need to be reset whenever such a change is made — and a few are positive when this happens. 

Most games, of course, don’t reset at positive levels. With Buffalo Link, for example, the meters reset to a value of 100. At this level, the game returns about 80% and only players oblivious to the meters will play. (There are a lot of such players.) But there are definitely at least two games that reset positively.

On January 17, I found one! Or rather, I found a circular bank of four slot machines which had all been reset. Not immediately before I got there, but not too long before. Maybe a day or two? I can’t be sure.

How do I figure? There were four identical machines with perhaps 40 different combinations of denominations and number of coins required. You could play it for as little as 50¢ per spin — to as much as $50. 

The $50-per-spin games are pretty formidable. Although the player definitely becomes the favorite at the level these meters were at, these are gambling games with considerable variance. Losing more than $10,000 playing a positive game of this size isn’t that uncommon. The vast majority of players who frequent this casino are not in position to play games requiring such bankrolls. The smaller games on these machines, where anywhere between 50¢ and $20 was required to play each hand, had all been played and the meters were no longer attractive. Perhaps by one person who made a day of it. Or perhaps by several people.

But among the four machines, there were five playable games — three for $30, one for $40, and one for $50. I had some money on me, but quite a bit less than $10,000. There was no guarantee I had enough to play one game — let alone all five. Bonnie, however, was with me because we had gone out to dinner together previously using casino comps. As is often the case in such situations, we checked some machines before we went home. If I ran out of money, Bonnie could sit at the machine while I went where I needed to go to get some. We would make sure the machine displayed an unattractive meter amount while Bonnie quietly sat in front of it so anybody walking by would have no reason to challenge her for the chair. I told her about this possibility before we started, and she was fine with it. She was actually pretty excited about us making some “big money.” Regardless of whether the results would be plus or minus, we don’t split gambling results, and this would all be my money we were dealing with. But she’s my biggest fan. Plus, she gets to experience hitting big jackpots with no financial risk to her at all.

When I started playing, I didn’t know there were other positive games on the other three machines because they were occupied. I loaded the first machine with $2,000 before we started. Playing for $30 per pull, it took longer to insert the 20 Benjamins into this machine than it did afterwards to hit a jackpot of $3,700. It took 20 minutes to be paid. I would have shifted over to one of the other machines while I waited, except all three were being played by friends of each other — for either 50¢ or $1. When I hit the jackpot, the players on the other three machines scurried over to take look. They were excited because playing for low stakes, they rarely hit jackpots. One finally saw that I was playing $30 a hand — and even asked me if I knew I was playing for that much! I told her I knew.

Just as we were finished with our first game, (it was the only good one on that machine), one of the other machines opened up. I had Bonnie hold the current machine, without playing, while I checked all the games on the recently vacated machine. Had there been good games on it, I would have had Bonnie hold that chair while I finished off on the machine we were playing. When the third machine opened up, and I found two suitable games, Bonnie sat there until I was available — which came about rather quickly because I hit a jackpot for $2,100 and it was going to take awhile to be paid.

Over the next three hours, we took down all five games — and received a large number of W-2Gs along the way. We ended up ahead a few thousand dollars — but nothing major. It was a decent result — but nowhere near what it could have been. I figure that where we started on those five games, our average expected win for the five was more than $15,000. We got nowhere near that, but I’m still glad we checked those machines that day. Plus, we put thousands of points on both Bonnie’s card and mine and will likely result in bigger mailers in the not-so-distant future.

How am I so sure that these machines were reset only a day or so before I got there? Well, I’m not 100% sure. But close to that.

Consider this: In the previous three months, I have checked those same four machines several dozen times — and have found plays for $20 or higher twice. This time I found five such plays all at once. I figure these games were just too big for casual players and so they remained on the machines. At this casino, the larger denominations don’t get much play.

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Bobby Vegas — Tips and Treats, Henderson to Fremont Street

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

I’m recovering slowly, but must be getting better, cuz I’m writing this blog.

Our good friends at Rainbow/ Emerald Isle have a sweet promotion for February: two premium tickets to the Eagles at Sphere, eight winners, four each at Emerald and Rainbow. Drawings last two days of the month. Each ticket earned with 200 base points or $200 coin-in. Same for video poker. Not too shabby.

These casinos are a stacking gold mine, with so many opportunities I can’t even list them all. Gifts, food giveaways, wheel spins, etc. Frankly it’s HARD to play there when several promotions aren’t happening at once. Stack! Pick up the lists at either promo booth.

Check your new MRB free wheel spin at Emerald. Just 100 points. $1 per point. That’s just $100 in.

Also, BOGO or 50%-off MRBs at both Emerald’s Grille and Rainbow’s Triple B Diner.
And if, like me, you’re chasing the fantastic middle-of-the-night super multipliers (50X! 75X!), Emerald’s Grille is open 24/7.

Multipliers aren’t available on their highest multiline VP games, like 10/6 DDB, but plenty of games (9/6 JoB at the Rainbow bar or 8/5 Bonus Poker) when combined with multipliers are positive expectation.

Multipliers start at 25x and go up to 100x. Points are normally .067, so you’re adding 1.7% up to an incredible 5+% for 75 X. I’m not even including the two 100x periods as they only last 30 minutes. 25X-earning periods last up to 2 hours and there are LOTS of these.

You can play both casinos back to back for 50X an hour each, then 75X if you’re willing, like me, to play all night (2-5 a.m.). Then “eat your points” at Emerald Grille.

Summarizing: You’re earning wheel spins, gifts, and freebies, while earning tickets for the Eagles on base points, then multplier points can be used for dining combined with your MRB coupons. Sweet!

Anthony raves about Emerald Grille’s super breakfast special, while I really love Triple B meals and handmade milkshakes.

Here’s the kind of deals they have. Friday night at Emerald Grill: lobster AND filet mignon with a shrimp cocktail and salad. $25. That’s high end for them. Most entrées are low to mid-teens, breakfast specials less. With your MRB? Half-price. On points, free.

Oh, and the monthly mailer gives you a free meal every week at either diner.

Next!

Down on Fremont, Downtown Grand is slowly re opening Freedom Beat. Yay!

There’s a breakfast special you can get with one of their room deals and a double-burger deal on Thursday (now open 8 a.m. to 2 p.m. Thursday to Sunday). Or hop over to Magnolia at Four Queens with your MRB.

At the Plaza there’s been a rare downgrade to the Max Bingo prize, which is now $30,000 (was $50K). The bingo-and-room deal is still fantastic.

The deals keep coming, folks. So keep scuffling.

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5 Happy Hour Sports Bars to Hit (When it’s not Super Bowl Sunday)

5 Happy Hour Sports Bars in Las Vegas

With Super Bowl week approaching, all eyes are on game-day viewing (and betting) across Las Vegas. But before Super Bowl Sunday pricing, crowds, and limited menus take over, there’s still time to take advantage of weekday happy hours at sports bars and sportsbooks around town.

Curated by the team at Happy Hour Vegas, these five sports bar happy hours offer solid food and drink deals any day of the week except Super Bowl Sunday, when most venues suspend happy hour in favor of special event pricing.

If you want a deal on food, drink and sports, here’s where to go…

1) The Front Yard at Ellis Island

Where: Off Strip — 4178 Koval Lane, Las Vegas, NV 89109
Happy Hour: Monday–Friday, 4:00 PM–7:00 PM (no weekends)

What is The Front Yard?
Front Yard is a two-story indoor/outdoor sports bar featuring an 18-foot big screen, multiple HD TVs, and a second-floor atrium with Strip views. The venue serves craft beer from its on-site Ellis Island Brewery and offers bar-top gaming with clear sightlines from nearly every seat.

What is Happy Hour At The Front Yard?
Happy Hour Drinks

  • $5 Ellis Island Brewery draft beers
  • $7 Cocktails & Wine

Happy Hour Food

  • $7 Bites Menu (examples include Bacon Mac & Cheese and Smoked Pulled Pork Sandwich)

Super Bowl Sunday note

  • Super Bowl packages with open bar, bites, and reserved seating start at $175 per person (happy hour not available that day)

Why it’s worth it
Portion sizes on the bites menu are generous, making this one of the few places where you can eat and drink well for under $15 during happy hour. $5 craft drafts paired with $7 food options make it a strong pre–Super Bowl week value play.

👉 Full happy hour details at HappyHourVegas.com

The George Sportsmen’s Lounge

Where: Durango Casino — Southwest Las Vegas
Happy Hour: Monday–Friday, 3:00 PM–6:00 PM

What it is
Located inside the new Durango Resort, The George blends vintage Vegas energy with a modern sports-lounge setup. Indoor dining is paired with a lively outdoor patio featuring wrap-around LED screens, and it sits right next to the sportsbook.

What you get
Happy Hour Food — $7 each

  • Truffle Fries
  • Buffalo Chicken Dip
  • Shishito Peppers
  • Hummus Duo

Happy Hour Drinks

  • $6 well cocktails
  • $5 beers (Coors Light, Pacifico, Modelo)

Why it’s worth it
Upscale food, big screens, free parking, and sportsbook proximity make this an easy win. With $7 food and $5–$6 drinks, you can comfortably keep your tab under $20 in a polished, high-energy setting.

👉 Full happy hour details at HappyHourVegas.com

BetMGM Sportsbook & Bar

Where: Park MGM — The Strip
Happy Hour: Daily, 7:00 PM to close

What it is
A more relaxed sportsbook bar on the Strip, BetMGM offers comfortable seating, large screens, and a late-night happy hour that’s easy to time with evening games.

What you get
Bar Bites — $7.77

  • Stadium Hot Dog
  • Cheesy Nachos
  • Cheesy Quesadilla
  • French Fries
  • Sweet Potato Fries

Beers — $7.77

  • Bud Light, Coors Light, Heineken
  • Miller Lite, Dos Equis Amber, Pacifico

Upgrade option

  • $20 combo: full-size burger, fries, and a beer

Why it’s worth it
A 7 PM daily happy hour is rare on the Strip. The $7.77 pricing is easy to remember, and the $20 burger-and-beer combo delivers clear value compared to standard Strip pricing.

👉 Full happy hour details at HappyHourVegas.com

All American Sports Kitchen

Where: Ahern Hotel — The Strip
Happy Hour: Daily, 2:00 PM–5:00 PM

What it is
A straightforward sports bar focused on classic American comfort food with wall-to-wall TVs. Expect jumbo wings, loaded nachos, and casual game-day energy without Strip pricing.

What you get
Happy Hour Food

  • $3 fries
  • $10 loaded nachos
  • Eight additional items priced between $3–$10

Drinks

  • Drink pricing not currently published

Why it’s worth it
While drink pricing isn’t clearly listed, the low-cost food menu makes this a solid early-afternoon option. It’s an easy place to post up, grab inexpensive bites, and watch multiple games without committing to premium packages.

👉 Full happy hour details at HappyHourVegas.com

The Stadium

Where: 1508 South Main Street — Arts District
Happy Hour: Monday–Friday, 4:00 PM–6:00 PM

What it is
With 23 giant screens and a true neighborhood sports-bar vibe, The Stadium delivers big-game energy outside the Strip. The menu leans into elevated ballpark-style food with strong drink pricing.

What you get
Happy Hour Food

  • BBQ Chicken Flatbread Pizza — $10
  • Pepperoni or Cheese Flatbread — $10
  • Ballpark Nachos — $9
  • Mini Pretzels with queso — $6

Happy Hour Drinks

  • Specialty cocktails — 50% off
  • Wines — $2 off
  • Well drinks — $4
  • Select beers — $3

Why it’s worth it
A $3 beer paired with a $10 flatbread makes this one of the best under-$15 happy hours for sports fans. It’s casual, affordable, and built for watching games without Strip crowds.

👉 Full happy hour details at HappyHourVegas.com

Why Go Before (or After) Super Bowl Sunday?

Most sports bars suspend happy hour pricing on Super Bowl Sunday and move to fixed packages or premium menus. These five sportsbars offer a consistent happy hour when it’s not Super Bowl:

  • Weekday value
  • Clear food and drink deals
  • Plenty of screens
  • Lower commitment than game-day specials

If you want to know the deal before you walk in, these happy hours are the smart play. Also, check out the full line up of Happy Hour Sports Bars in Vegas….There are 43 of them listed at Happy Hour Vegas.

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