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Taking What the Casinos Give You

Bob Dancer

Casinos are in the business of making money. In theory, casinos offer games of chance where the odds are in their favor and invite players in to play games that are rigged against them.

Under this theory, there would be no such thing as an advantage gambler. But the theory is greatly simplified — primarily in two areas.

First, some of the games offered are games of skill. You’ve heard of poker, blackjack, and sports betting. There are many more. And skillful players will do better than players without the requisite skill.

Second, casinos make mistakes — of many different types. Many times these mistakes lead to opportunities for players. Today I want to look at types of exploitable mistakes that I’ve discovered over the past 30 years. Many times, I’ve taken advantage of them. Sometimes I passed intentionally. Sometimes I heard about it afterwards. Sometimes I heard about it in plenty of time but didn’t recognize it as the profit-making opportunity it was.

This list is nowhere near exhaustive. Most of these happened in Las Vegas, but I’m sure they happened elsewhere as well.

  1. Game manufacturer providing incorrect information. The example that comes to mind here is Pick’Em Poker. This was a game that was worth 99.95%, but Bally Systems, the creator of the game, published that it was worth 98.8%. The game was popular (99.95% games tend to be that) and casinos kept putting it in for years — thinking they still had a cushion. Eventually, Bally sold the game to IGT, who rebranded it as Pick A Pair. IGT did include the original pay schedule in their offerings, but few casinos wanted a 99.95% game on their floor.
  1. Individual machine mismarked. Texas Casino (before it was Texas Station) had one 10/7 Double Bonus (100.17%) machine what was marked 9/7 (99.11%). While the front of the machine said it would pay 45 credits for a full house, you actually got 50 credits.
  1. Machine “too loose” for the casino floor. In 1995 at the Colorado Belle in Laughlin, the loosest games were dollar 9/6 Jacks or Better (99.54%), with most of the games quite a bit tighter than that. Two Bally Gamemaker machines were added. These machines included a number of games — including the Bally version of 10/7 Double Bonus which paid 400 coins for a straight flush rather than 250 and was worth 100.55%. The game lasted for a few months before the casino downgraded it.
  1. There are a number of examples where employees were bribed for small benefits. Slot floor people are minimum wage employees. If they’re in charge of handing out something worth $5 to players, which I’ll call scratchers because that’s a common way to do this, players will offer to tip $1 to get another scratcher or two. The casinos keep track of cash, but the scratchers are unmonitored, and employees are instructed when to hand them out. Under these circumstances, fraud and collusion will occur. Far better to design a promotion where this can’t happen.

It’s been more than 25 years since I bribed a casino employee to give me extra scratchers or such. But at the time, I was very tight on money and “needed” the extra. Today I’m not tight on money, but millions of players are. When casinos make it easy for players and employees to cheat, they will.

  1. There are examples where prizes, which are supposed to be chosen randomly, have codes on them which the savvy players can figure out. 

One casino mailed out some “to be scratched off in front of a casino employee” cards, with daily prizes ranging from being worthless to 5x points (which could be worth thousands of dollars to the right player.) If you had a strong light, you could see the prize through the card. It could be a hassle to go back to the same casino every day — but if you know beforehand when it’s really worth it, you make trips at the correct time. In the case of midnight-to-midnight 5x points, you arrange your whole schedule around being there at midnight when it starts.

Another casino let you pull scratchers out of a bowl. You then scratched off at the booth to reveal your prize. On the back of the cards, however, was a number which told the savvy player what was on the card. A code ending in 55 might signify $5 in free play and a code of 82 might signify $100 in free play. Some booth employees realized what was going on, and held the bowl at the player’s eye level, telling the player to draw one without looking at it. Some players, of course, drew more than one, scanned them all, and apologized as they kept the best one.

  1. Point multipliers are the bread and butter of many video poker professionals. To know how good this is, you must know how much single points are worth and what the game itself is worth. 

Sometimes you see mistakes with multipliers. Like when the marketing director at Eastside Cannery decided 10x points was a good idea because that’s what a competitor offered. The competitor offered base points of 0.05% and Eastside Cannery offered base points of 0.1675% and looser games. There were people holding machines for more than twelve hours before the promotion started.

Just knowing that one casino offers 4x points on Tuesday while another one offers 2x points on the same day doesn’t tell you which is the better play. It depends both on the value of the game you’ll be playing and how much single points are worth.

  1. Theoretical on machines. Years ago, several Harrah’s properties in Las Vegas offered high denomination 9/5 Jacks or Better (98.45%) with a theoretical of more than 4%. Some players came in twice a month, playing $150,000 coin-in at an expected loss of $2,300 each time) and they received $3,500 in free play each time they did this. Plus, slot club benefits. 

I didn’t hear about this one until near its end, but I did play it for a while. Long enough to be “discovered” by one of my students who was aghast that I was playing 9/5 JoB rather than the nearby 9/6 JoB machines (which required 2½ as much coin-in for one Tier Credit and had a theoretical of 0.46%). This lady asked me several questions and I just smiled and said nothing. I’m sure she suspected I was a fraud whose actions were not the same as his words.

Video poker is a lot more complicated than just learning which games to play and how to play them.

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F1 = flop; Adelson exposed; Shame on FanDuel

Bobby Vegas: What to do while waiting for your MRB

Spinning as hard as they can, opinion makers in Las Vegas have been trying to paint the Las Vegas Grand Prix as a roaring success. Well, if they can cherry-pick anecdotal information to make their point, we can respond with some numbers. For instance, Caesars Entertainment had predicted a 5% boost in its annual cash flow from Formula One Weekend. But, according to Truist Securities analyst (and F1 booster) Barry Jonas, that’s not the case. He informed investors today that Caesars “consequently fell a little shy of its expected +5% or +$25M incremental Y/Y EBITDA lift.” It suffered from the fact that “properties away from the track and less high-end did not fully benefit.” Quelle suprise. We coulda told Tom Reeg that was gonna happen. Jonas predicted, without explaining, that future iterations of F1-in-Vegas would “have wider appeal.” We’d love to know how. And does “wider” include the put-upon Las Vegas community?

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Sphere: Postcard from Earth

Sphere: Postcard from Earth 3

Since the first digital displays started illuminating the outside dome on July 4 and especially after it opened on September 29 for the first U2 concert and October 5 for the premiere of the movie Postcard from Earth, Sphere has garnered international acclaim as the future of entertainment. We checked out the “Sphere Experience,” as the whole movie-going adventure is called, as soon as we could.

We attended the 7 p.m. show and parked in the Howard Hughes garage (see below for a link to the parking details). It’s a 10-minute walk to the arena, but the exosphere displays build the excitement every step of the way.

Sphere: Postcard from Earth

The world’s largest exterior screen, it comprises 580,000 square feet of fully programmable LED bulbs, 1.2 million of them, each about the size of a hockey puck and holding 48 diodes that can accommodate 256 million colors. (This screen has more than four times the surface area of the Fremont Street Experience.) The closer you get, the more the display dissolves as the individual bulbs gain definition; it’s amazing each combines with the rest to produce such high resolution.

Since the 7 p.m. show was the first of the day (there are also 2:30 and 4:30 p.m. shows on some days), the doors were open before the start time on the ticket; we don’t know exactly when. Inside, the eight-story Atrium offers a number of attractions and concessions. Overhead is a massive mobile of metallic hoops. Five humanoid robots, dubbed Aura, hold court and gather large crowds; each focuses on an aspect of human development (connection, innovation, creativity, longevity, and productivity).

The lobby also boasts two 360-degree “avatar scanners”; these scan your entire body, then email you a video of your avatar in a virtual world in 3D (very long lines by the time we got there). Plaques scattered around the walls display some of the equations used by engineers in Sphere’s construction.

The most attention-grabbing display was a 50-foot-tall hanging holographic structure that changed continually into bright and unusual images.

You get an hour (or more) in the Atrium before the movie starts, exactly an hour after the ticket time. If you want to eat or drink, the concessions consist of several bars, three cuisines, and snack bar. Everything, as you can easily imagine, is pricey. The Atrium Kitchen offers hot dogs for $8, waffle fries for $7, and burgers, bulgogi, poke rice bowl, chicken tenders, and andouille sausage $14-$20. The Cantina serves chicharrones with lobster guac tacos, and steak torta $16-$19. The Taphouse’s tri tip, fish and chips, and tenders and fries are $17-$20. Peanuts, popcorn, and snacks are $6-$10, while beer is $18-$19, cocktails $15-$16), margaritas $20, Red Bull $8, and water and soda $7.

When the time comes, you head up the dizzying escalators, find your seat (and find another link for the seating details below), and get ready to watch the most immense, immersive, and impressive movie the world has ever seen.

Postcard from Earth starts with a spaceship taking off from Earth, one male and one female sleeping deeply. We won’t give away the plot, but the “postcard from Earth” is a way for them to remember where they come from. We also won’t give away the first effects, other to say that they are, in a word, astounding. The ultra-high 16K resolution (meaning 16,000 vertical and horizontal LED lights) on a curving 270-degree 160,000-square-foot, screen, almost four acres and 20 times larger than the largest IMAX screen, largest in the world) is an experience you won’t soon forget.

The “postcard” returns to Earth with helicopter-eye views of panoramic land and seascapes—mountains, forests, plains, the Grand Canyon, underwater—as the movie delves into the history of the planet and starts to develop the theme of “life inventing itself.”

Every frame of footage was shot via a lens that combined 11 individual cameras to create a one-foot-diameter wide-angle fish eye for the massive super-clear views at 170 million pixels of resolution. In addition, thanks to the haptic effects (vibrating seats and 167,000 speaker drivers, amplifiers and processing channels for the audio), you can actually feel the footsteps 100-foot-tall elephants and the stampede of a herd of humongous horses.

After the idyllic naturescapes, the scenery turns decidedly human, culminating with cars, planes, and pedestrians accelerating to hyperspeeds to illustrate the pollution and destruction of Earth, “mankind ignoring every warning.”

From there it’s ruins, cemeteries, floods, deserts, and storms, with more special effects enhancing the action on the screen, then it’s back into space to rejoin the intergalactic travelers, waking up, heading out onto their new planet, doing the Garden of Eden, reinventing life. The inevitable conclusion is, to us anyway, a bit melodramatic, but it’s certainly life-affirming and green! The movie is 50 minutes long, though it’s so riveting, it feels like 15.

The future of entertainment? Postcard from Earth is certainly the biggest and highest-resolution movie anyone’s ever seen. You’ll also see in our seating post, however, that the prices are nothing if not prohibitive. That didn’t stop thousands from attending the movie with us or the horde who lined up in the hallway all the way back to the Venetian we all passed by as we were herded out.  

One detail we’ve seen is especially intriguing: live action. The Sphere’s creative team has confirmed that they’ve placed cameras in Antarctica, with plans to install another on the International Space Station. A real-time surround-view live hookup to a working space station 250 miles above the Earth? If that movie shows up at Sphere, we’ll be there to experience it—prohibitive prices and all.

Here’s your link for the parking details. And this one’s for the seats and prices.

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Seating at Sphere

Seating at Sphere 3

We went to Sphere and saw the movie Postcard from Earth a couple of weeks ago and here are our observations and a recommendation about choosing seats.

You can an escalator from the lobby up a long way to the 200-level seats, then another up to the 3090- and 400-level seats.

We read about an overhang problem, in which the three balconies obstruct views of the screen overhead, but we didn’t really see one over the seats available for the movie. In the corners of the 100-level seats, there’s a bit of an overhang, but seats for the movies are only on the second (200), third (300), and fourth (400) levels. The 100 seats are for the concerts, on the floor and closest to the stage.

The bigger issue for us was with the 200-level seats. They seemed a bit low in relationship to how much of the dome the screen covers, two-thirds of it in total. In other words, it’s like any movie you see in a theater: The closer you are to the screen, the more you have to look up at it. And this particular screen stretches over four acres of dome surface! The screen towering over the 200 seats might not be an issue, but to us, it seemed like it could be.

Also, those seats cost $249. Each. True, the entire “Sphere Experience” is two hours, but the movie, definitely the main attraction, is only 50 minutes.

We paid $68 for our 300-level seats, the lowest price available at the time, but a check for this post showed that prices have gone up considerably since early November. Our 300-level seats now cost $99, while the lowest price for a seat is $89 in the 400-level nosebleed section. We did find $68 seats still available, but it looks to us like those are outside of the 10,000-seat section where you get the haptic effects (vibrating seats, wafting scents, and breezes) in conjunction with the action on the screen. 

Needless to say, we weren’t prepared to pay $500 for two to see a movie, spectacular though it may be (and it is; it’s the most unbelievable movie experience we’ve ever had), and we sincerely hope you’re not either. So we say buy the least expensive seats you can get; you’ll see the screen just fine from the 400 level.

We do need to add one other note of caution. Getting to the upper-level seats in this arena requires a fairly steep climb. The landing is between the 300- and 400-level seats; you climb down to the 300 seats (and up on the way out) and up to the 400 seats (and down on the way out).

Either way, if you have trouble on stairs, this will be a challenge for you. We watched unsteady moviegoers gripping the handrails for dear life. But breaks in the rails allow passage between seating sections and those were scary for a number of spectators. More than one asked for help from people seated near them, which proved a bit hazardous for both parties. 

We do recommend the movie and you can see our review here (as well as our recommendations for parking), but it presents a couple of tests: financial and physical.

Click here for the review of the Sphere Experience. And here for the parking details.

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Parking at Sphere

Parking at Sphere

Sphere is located at the intersection of Sands Avenue and S. Koval Lane across Koval from the Venetian Expo. With the 580,000-square-foot screen, largest in the world, lighting up the exterior of the dome, trust us when we say, you can’t miss it.

There is some street parking on Manhattan Street (east) and Westchester Drive (south) of the arena, but you’d have to get there very early and be very patient to bag a spot. At six p.m. for the 7 p.m. ticket, we saw a line of cars double parked on Manhattan Street, hoping for someone to pull out. Actually, someone did and there was a mad dash from the lanes in both directions; we say you want to stay as far away from that chaos as possible. 

Six on-site self-parking lots and one valet lot are all also east and south of the arena. In total, there are 307 parking spaces for an arena with a capacity of 20,000. Absurd. Worse, only two are currently available; the rest are still occupied by F1 grandstands and on the ticketing site, there’s no indication that they’ll be opening up anytime soon. 

Lot S charges $75 for the movie. Ridiculous. You can also valet park in the adjacent lot $125 (plus tip, preposterous).

There are also four garages across Manhattan Street at the Howard Hughes Center with 2,000 spaces. Though they face Manhattan Street, you access them from a single entrance on Howard Hughes Parkway (one long block east). That’s where we dropped off our trusty steed. There’s a pretty good view of the exosphere from the top of Lot 1. And from there, it’s about a 10-minute walk to the building.

We bought our parking ticket in advance on Ticketmaster — and if you don’t have that app on your phone, you should; these days, many if not most tickets are QR codes on your phone. So we don’t know how it works if you don’t have the code, though we assume an attendant can assist. For us, we showed the code and flowed right in. Though the initial price you see on Ticketmaster is $40, the final price is $20 (at least at the time of this writing). Not bad for an easy into and out of a highly popular attraction. 

Here’s the link to the Ticketmaster parking page.

We imagine that prices rise for self-parking at the Wynn and Venetian on Sphere concert nights, but so far at least, neither has changed the pricing structure for the movie. The Wynn is $20 for the day, but it’s a fairly long walk through that large property and across Sands Avenue to Sphere. The Venetian charges $15 for four hours and a walkway from the hotel takes you right to one the west entrance to Sphere. 

If you’re walking from elsewhere on the Strip, four of the five entrances to the arena are along Sands Avenue; the fifth, the Plaza entrance, is east of the building on Manhattan Street opposite Lot A. That’s the one you enter when you park in the Howard Hughes lots. 

Click here for the review of the Sphere Experience. And here for the seats and prices.

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Bad news in Illinois; Miriam Adelson, shill

Given the high hopes that preceded it, Bally’s Casino in downtown Chicago is no better than a succes d’estime. Whereas then-mayor Lori Lightfoot (D) had penciled in $12 million in 2023 tax revenues, Bally’s Medinah Temple crib is on pace to realize just over half that, having passed along just $5 million through November. Betting the Windy City’s fortunes on an urban casino was always a risky wager and it seems to be crapping out. Revenues at the temporary casino last month were $7.5 million, flat with October. On the upside, admissions to the casino rose to 86K (a 4% sequential increase), as players left $88 a head behind them. That puts Bally’s in the number-two spot in the state.

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HOW TO PLAY YOUR HANDS AGAINST A DEALER’S 9 UPCARD

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.

AC Says:

Another basic strategy primer from Henry Tamburin, this one specific to play against a dealer 9. These plays aren’t difficult to remember, as they’re mostly intuitive, and the strategy is almost the same for any number of decks. The most misplayed is not hitting soft 18. Other typical misplays are not splitting 9s and not surrendering 16 in multiple decks. Once you ace the test, you’ll have this section of basic strategy down cold.

This article was written by Henry Tamburin in association with 888Casino.

When a dealer shows a 9 upcard in blackjack, she has about a 77% chance of getting to a final hand that totals 17 through 21 and only a 23% chance of busting (depending on the number of decks shuffled).

A 9, therefore, is  a strong card for the dealer, which means…

Click to continue reading …

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Luxor’s More Buffet—Good Spread, Too Bad Otherwise

Luxor Buffet—Good Spread, Too Bad Otherwise 5


When we eyeballed the Luxor and Excalibur brunch buffets a few months ago, both looked good enough to try, but Luxor’s was less crowded on a Saturday morning, is in a nicer room, and seemed to have a bit larger selection. So we determined to return and try it.

On a Wednesday at 1 p.m. the week before F1, we walked right in; not one person was in front of us. The cashier said there was a line from opening until around 12:30. Breakfast is served from start to finish (8 a.m. to 3 p.m.), but she said that it seemed to her that the crowds treat it as more of a breakfast buffet, so to avoid them, it’s better to get there around lunch time.

It offers plenty of breakfast fare: fruit and melons, French toast, waffles, pancakes, apple crepes, cheese blintzes, biscuits/potatoes and gravy, scrambled eggs, hash browns, bacon and sausage, oatmeal and grits, bread and bagel station with a toaster, donut bar, and an excellent omelet station.

The lunch menu includes a Chinese station with egg foo young, orange chicken, chicken and green beans, egg rolls, steamed and fried rice; Mexican nachos, rice and beans, paella, albondigas, chorizo and scrambled eggs, peppers and onions; five kinds of pizzas; mussels, shrimp, and crayfish; roast beef, turkey, ham, and sausage at the carvery.

Luxor Buffet—Good Spread, Too Bad Otherwise 2
Luxor Buffet—Good Spread, Too Bad Otherwise 3

For dessert, it’s pastries, croissants, cakes, muffins, torts, brownies, cream puffs, and soft-serve for dessert.

Luxor Buffet—Good Spread, Too Bad Otherwise 1
Luxor Buffet—Good Spread, Too Bad Otherwise

All in all, both the variety and quality are recommendable.

For the weekday brunch (Wed.-Thurs., closed Mon.-Tues.), it’s $30.99 before tax and tip. But — and it’s a big but: You have to add in $15 for parking, $20 on the weekend when the brunch is $33.99.

You could, conceivably, get in and out in an hour to avoid the parking fee, since the buffet is located close to the casino entrance from the parking lots. We kept an eye on the clock, but we were going back for thirds and hadn’t hit the dessert station when our hour was up. Besides, hurrying defeats the whole purpose of a buffet. Still, unless you’re walking in, you’ll be paying a mere $1 less for this buffet and parking than you would for the superlative seafood spread at South Point ($45.95 with a club card and free parking). Sorry, but for us, that simply doesn’t compute.

Bottom line: For a good-enough brunch buffet, we’d go to Westgate (LVA 4/23). Parking is free and Westgate also gives us a coupon.

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Life is a Gamble – Joseph Merhi part 2 episode 13

Podcast – Sherriff AP episode #9

My guest this week is Joseph Merhi.  In part 1 we covered Joseph moving to Florida from a small town in Syria when he was 18 years old.  He spoke no English, but through grit and perseverance he went on to produce over 100 movies.  This is part 2 of 2, in which we cover Joseph’s move from Las Vegas to LA, and his pursuit of the movie business.

You can reach me at [email protected], or find me on Twitter @RWM21. If you like the show please tell a friend you think might like it, or if you are really ambitious leave a review wherever you listen.

Podcast – https://www.spreaker.com/user/7418966/joempt2final

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Maryland cools; Florida’s novel argument

Casino receipts in the state of Maryland slipped somewhat last month, tallying $158 million. That’s 3.5% down from 2022, but 12% better than 2019. Poor table win (-9%) drove the bulk of the decline. The weakest performance was that of Horseshoe Baltimore, which plunged 10.5% to $14.5 million, its second-feeblest turnout in two years. No surprise, MGM National Harbor led all comers with $66.5 million, despite a 7% dropoff. The other revenue-losing casino was Rocky Gap Resort, down 6.5% to $4.5 million. Hollywood Perryville was flat at just under $7 million, while Ocean Downs gained 7% to reach $7 million and Maryland Live was up 1.5% to $57 million, a titanic number in almost any state that doesn’t have National Harbor in it.

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