A Southern Gambling Trip Report (Part 2) – Goals

Okay, we have decided to combine visits to two casinos, Harrah’s New Orleans and Grand Biloxi and  have chosen a date that starts near the end of one month and ends in the beginning of the next month –  to double our benefits.

Actually there were a couple more “dips” on our Southern Trip ice-cream cone.  Since both these casinos are Caesars properties (the umbrella company formerly called Harrah’s) we could complete/add on to our entries into their Great Race promotion, where you qualified for increasing amounts of bonus points the more of their properties you visited.  In addition, we both were very close to having enough points to renew our 7* status for another year, so our play at these two casinos would finish that goal.

Speaking of goals, that is an extremely important but complex gambling factor I’d like to discuss now.  People often ask Brad and me whether we  gamble for profit or fun.  Not a simple answer.  In my first book, The Frugal Gambler, the title of the last chapter is “Breaking Even is a Terrific Thing.”  And that was our goal from the time we first discovered “advantage gambling,” just to have casino fun that didn’t cost us anything.  And it didn’t take long before we achieved that goal, covering our expenses of traveling from Indiana for our casino visits to Las Vegas and other gambling playgrounds.

With continuing study and more experience, we started making more than expenses.  Did our goal change?  Some things did change. We moved from blackjack to video poker when we found out that the casinos were rewarding machine players more than those at the tables.  With comps covering our room and food bills and good profits at quarter video poker more than covering transportation costs, our bankroll was steadily growing.  Why not move up when we would see good opportunities at higher levels, first to 50-cent, then dollars, and eventually tackling high-denom multi-line games.   

But we never had a dramatic change of goals.  We still wanted to break even so our casino fun wouldn’t cost us any money from our own pockets.  We had adequate pensions and enough savings for a comfortable, albeit not lavish, retirement life.  But, let’s face it, if we could make more money while we were having all this fun, why not do it?  And earning all those comps that changed our lifestyle from just comfortable to fairy-tale luxury?  What was there not to like?

Eventually, at least subconsciously, part of the “fun” of gambling was the “sport” of sparing with the casinos.  They were trying to get our money and we were doing everything we could to extract some from them.  So we were really playing two “games,” and I guess you could say we really drifted into having two goals.

The reason I went into this subject above so deeply, is to explain how and why goals can change, even temporarily.  Brad and I both like New Orleans and the trip sounded like something that would be a relaxing change for us.  But after I piled the casino-bennies ice cream cone as high as I could, I had figured our edge, if we had one at all, was razor-thin. I’m much more anal about gambling than Brad is and I wondered if we should go.  Brad, always more sensible in this area, pointed out that we take other vacations where we plan to spend our own money for the whole trip.  Just because we were going to be in casinos, didn’t mean we needed to have an “advantage.”  And then his favorite remark when my “crazy frugalness” finally gets to him,  “Jean, you are almost 73 and I will be lucky if I reach 80 in January.  THIS IS THE OLD AGE YOU HAVE BEEN SAVING FOR YOUR WHOLE LIFE!”

Stay tuned for Part 3 and the details of our just-for-fun-and-nothing-more casino vacation.  A hint:  it involves….horrors…..slot machines!