If we didn’t have a dollar to our name, we would be super rich in friendships!

Many of you have responded to my call for questions you’d like me to answer before I close out my blogging here.  One friend who has kept track of our families remarked that I hadn’t posted a recent picture of my sisters.  Well, here is one that was taken recently when middle sister, from North Carolina, came to visit the two Vegas sisters and we were able to have one of our every-five-year pictures taken.  Here, right-to-left, is Starr, 70, then June, 75, and finally the 80-year old!

Others have asked questions about Brad’s health, with those seeing him in person remarking that he is “looking good.”  And he does get around pretty well, mostly with a cane and only using a walker when there are longer distances.  He has recently been diagnosed with the beginnings of heart failure (a heart pumping problem) and with vascular parkinsonism,  in which parkinsonian symptoms (slow movements, tremor, difficulty with walking and balance) are produced by narrowing or blockage of blood vessels, rather than by gradual loss of nerve cells as seen in the more typical neurodegenerative Parkinson’s disease. This is on top of his previous long-time heart problems after a heart attack in 2003 – A Fib and coronary artery disease – but thankfully modern medicine has had many answers for him – a pacemaker, 7 coronary stents, and an extensive menu of meds.  He is slowing down – but with lots of naps, he continues to get out and about.  As he says, he is probably doing better than most men coming up on age 88!

Many of the questions pertain to our future.  I have already mentioned that I will continue this blog through December and into January.  I may want to do some other writing but I don’t know what form that might take – I do love to write.  I will probably continue to read and contribute to the vpFREE forum whenever I come across helpful gambling information.  And I definitely plan to use my Facebook account to chat about Brad’s and my future activities.  Search for “Jean Scott” and ask to be my friend if you aren’t already.  But one thing I am pretty sure about:  I won’t tackle writing another book or take any writing assignment with a deadline.  I am retiring from stress!

And probably the most frequent query is about what gambling we will do once we leave Las Vegas.  And most people don’t believe this answer – very little if any!  It is hard to explain – but we almost never gambled in a casino just for fun after our first trip to Las Vegas in April 1984.  After that trip, we decided this was the fun-est time we had ever had, but we knew we wouldn’t be in a financial position to lose $3000 very often– as we had that time – for this kind of vacation.   So, I went to the library to start studying how we could have this fun without losing money.  And the rest is history.

Actually, we have been “practicing” for our retirement from casino gambling these last couple of months in Vegas.  First, we were learning to accept the reality that physical and mental limitations would majorly cut down on  casino visits.  And then, it had been very obvious for a long time that there are very few advantage plays that don’t depend on future benefits, like mailers with bonus-points dates and free play. So, we have played a few times just for fun since we would not be here to collect those future benefits.  For example, instead of playing the higher EV but more boring single line NSUD video poker game, we would choose an 8/5 Bonus Poker game on Spin Poker, with a lower EV but  more fun for us.  We never had played the very exciting Ultimate X at the higher denominations in the past because we didn’t want to study a new very complex strategy.  But finding it at 10-play nickels – or even pennies – paytables be damned – sometimes has provided us an hour or so of fun with just a small “entertainment fee.”

The closest casinos to Columbus, GA, are Harrah’s Cherokee and Biloxi, both a 4-5-hour drive away.  We probably wouldn’t make a special trip that far just for fun play, and with no comps.  Flying is getting very difficult for Brad so that rules out a trip to Vegas or any other casino city just for fun.  We’ve had about all the fun we can stand in the 35 years visiting casinos.  If we just happen to be in a casino sometime, perhaps on a family vacation, we probably would give the grands a few bills and watch them play the slots.  Or, we might find a new VP game that looks interesting in which to invest some of our fun money.  But we are definitely retiring from advantage play and leaving the casino lifestyle.  And with no regrets – it’s been a fantastic life that will give beautiful memories forever.  But now we are ready for a new  adventure – just perhaps one a little less busy and more peaceful.

Next week I’ll answer more of your questions.  Fire away!

And by the way, if you want to have a book autographed or just want to say good-bye, Brad and I will be at the Gold Coast on Wednesday, December 18, between 4-5 p.m.  We will be in the drawing area.

10/28/2000

My favorite holiday — Halloween — is coming up and it’s especially fun to celebrate in Vegas. Many casino employees will be in costume, and casino Halloween parties abound. I will be dressed up for the occasion, but not attending any of the numerous parties to which we’ve been invited. Too many slot club bonuses on October 31 — it’ll be hard to pick. The Hard Rock, for example, will be giving 4X comp points. You can earn double points at all four Coast properties. (Note: Suncoast is awarding double, not triple, points, as was earlier reported in the LVA.) Look in the local newspaper for last-minute promotions. However, a word of caution: Make your costume as funny, as scary, as unique as you wish — but don’t wear a mask when you are in the casino. Masks make Security very nervous!

Speaking of costumes: A Discovery Channel TV crew was at Silverton last Friday night, filming all of us in our jammies. It was a “Graveyard Slot Tournament,” in which Silverton guaranteed to double any cash prize if the winner was wearing nightwear. Even Brad, who usually hates costumes, got into the spirit, although I had to go to the store to buy him a pair of PJs. Don’t worry — I shopped for them frugally at a local used-clothing store. And they’re now packed away carefully — in case he ever goes to the hospital and would need them.

And a way-way-back photo!

And I expect if you see us today, I’ll have on some Halloween orange but Brad probably won’t!

First, I want to thank everyone who gave greetings on our recent birthdays – Brad’s #86 and my #79.  Don’t worry if you missed mine – I plan to stick with celebrating #79 on December 29 every year for many years to come.  The seventies just sound so young these days!

Next, some comments about the “Comment” section here on my blog page.  Although I welcome many different viewpoints and encourage details from players from all denomination levels and varied goals, I do occasionally have to refrain from “approving” a comment and it will not appear.  I will not tolerate uncivil discussion.  I do often approve remarks with which I do not fully agree –  and readers must remember that they are the opinions of the commenters and not necessarily mine – when I feel they will generate some helpful information from others.  I cannot approve comments of an extreme political or religious nature since they often would plunge us into a chaotic argument that takes us far away from the spirit and purpose of this blog.

Now on to your questions.  Frequently someone will ask, “Why do you play at XXX casino; I can’t find anything good to play there?”  I have addressed this issue many times down through the years, emphasizing that not every casino gives every customer the opportunity for a “good” – that is, an advantage play.  Perhaps these good plays are at higher denominations that would not fit a lower-level player’s bankroll.  Or alternatively, good lower denomination inventory may not be attractive for those who can find options for higher level play with the potential for bigger profits.  Location plays a big part in choosing good VP plays; many serious players must travel far and wide if there are no good options locally.  And sometimes – actually almost always – much of the EV (expected value) of a play is made up of extra benefits and you rarely know how much a player is getting just by a casual look at “what they play.”  You don’t know how much coin they play through, how much free play they get in their mailers, or what special-promotion invitations they receive.

A related question Brad and I get: “Why don’t you play at XXX casino; they have good games there.”  Some of the explanation in the above paragraph applies.  But there is a bigger factor here for us.  We just don’t have the energy to “scramble” as much as we used to.  We are most comfortable with a casino schedule that includes several “days off” a week. Right now we play regularly in only 3-4 local Vegas casinos, all off the Strip and fairly close to where we live.  There may be other good plays in far-away areas of town, but unless we lose some of the nearby ones, we choose to avoid the horrendous time-consuming Vegas traffic whenever possible.

And related to the above discussion, there is one question I have been avoiding answering: “You said you were going to write a book containing yours and Brad’s personal life story.  When is that going to come out?”

I really did have a firm plan for this and actually had spent many days and weeks gathering and organizing years of notes.  But a couple months ago I suddenly “woke up” with the realization that I was tired of being on a never stopping merry-go-round, with another deadline looming when I finally met the previous one.  I love to write and will continue to do short pieces – like for this blog.  However, a book is a major project and tends to monopolize and overwhelm the author’s whole life, seeping into every spare hour and pushing out even more-loved druthers.

So, this planned book is now on my not-to-be shelf.  But don’t worry missing stories about our personal experiences, both in and outside the casino world.  I will continue to include them, as I always have, here in this blog.  Some of you will remember the 17-part series I wrote several years ago, telling the story of Brad’s gambling path that began when he was 5 years old.  If you are a newer blog reader, you can go back in the archives (Search “Brad Stories” under “Category” on the right side of the blog home page) and find that.  Actually, those archives go clear back to April, 2000, with the first article I wrote for “Frugal Fridays” and then continue every year until it morphed into the “Frugal Vegas” blog, telling of our gambling journey over the last 17+ years plus some personal details of our pre-casino life.  (You need to sometimes click on “continue reading” to get to all the articles for one particular month.)

In future blogs I will continue to talk about current subjects but occasionally I will reach into my notes and dig out some of the stories that go back 75-85 years, ones that I haven’t shared before.  Did you know I heard the word “discount” on the day I was born?  That will be the beginning of one story I am anxious to share!

A Red-White-and-Blue Las Vegas

Las Vegas is a city with patriotic feelings as strong as anywhere else in the U.S.A. As I’ve been traveling all over our spread-out city since September 11, I have proudly seen the proof of that everywhere, from children’s make-shift pictures of flags and eagles in the windows of simple homes in the most impoverished neighborhoods to the big new flags that wave from tall new flagpoles I can see above the cinderblock walls that guard the most exclusive suburban enclaves. When we went looking to buy a flag, no store in town had one of any size, so we cut out the full-page color flag from our local newspaper and put it in our window.

Sure, we’re a “company town,” but the towering casino marquees replaced their flashing advertisements of magic, or dancing girls, or the message of possible riches, with eagles and waving flags and the simple message of “God Bless America.” A couple of large casino companies have contributed a million dollars for disaster relief — but small businesses all over town have donation jars at their cash registers in their best effort to help fellow Americans in this time of crisis. Our firemen have been out on the street soliciting contributions for the families of their brothers lost; our entertainers are unselfishly showing up everywhere for benefit activities. And so many people arrived to give blood that the blood banks all over town were swamped.

If you just come here on vacation, you might think of Vegas mostly as the Strip, or  the downtown casino area, or perhaps a few casinos scattered around the outskirts. Actually, casinos make up a very small percentage of our city. If you fly into town in the daytime, you’ll see that most of the buildings are not tall casinos, but are red-tile-roofed houses, stretching in neat rows for miles and miles beyond the Strip or any casino. And in each of those houses is a person or groups of people that have lives much like residents in any American city. Some of these people will never enter a casino their whole life, will never play a slot machine or sit down at a blackjack table, will never eat a meal at a casino restaurant or see a casino show. Many may go to work in casinos, but when they come home and take off their black-and-white dealer uniform or scanty cocktail-waitress costume, they’re simply tired mothers who are cooking their families’ dinner or dutiful husbands who are cleaning out the garage when they would rather be watching a ballgame on TV.

Of course, many local residents do visit casinos, but because of time or money constraints, this is a special maybe once-a-month treat. Even most of the retired residents with extra time and money don’t go to casinos every day. Most of the time Vegas residents are busy with the same activities that you and your family are busy with in a non-casino town: going to school, earning a living, playing golf, standing in line at the DMV, reading old magazines in a doctor’s office, shopping at the mall, figuring out how to make enough money to cover all the bills, reading a newspaper, getting married or divorced, finding privacy time and space to have sex, doing volunteer work, welcoming new babies, and burying the dead.

And when disaster strikes in our beloved country, like it did on September 11, all of our eyes are glued to the TV, just like anywhere else, whether we’re in a casino or at home. For a few days life seemed to stand still, even when we wandered around doing necessary tasks, our pain so great we could barely breathe. The normally raucous casino atmosphere was strangely quiet, with most of the scattered gamblers around only because their planes had been grounded and left them stuck in a place where they really didn’t want to be. Everyone longed to be home, and that was where most Las Vegans were whenever that was possible.

Here are some players club hints that might put money in your pocket, help you earn more comps, or at least save you some frustration. Some are for specific casinos and some are general ideas that can be used in many casinos.

1. Is your problem you don’t play very often at a Harrah’s property, but you don’t want to lose the Harrah’s Total Reward points you’ve already accumulated? You know you have to put at least one point on your card every six months or they’ll go away, but earning just a few points will ruin your daily average. I have a remedy for this problem. Get the Harrah’s Visa affinity credit card, on which you earn one Bonus Reward Credit for every $1 you spend in net retail purchases. Use this no-annual-fee card at least once every six months and your Reward Credits will never expire –- and you won’t ruin your daily average! Apply for the credit card at harrahs.com by clicking on Total Rewards.

2. When you join a new slot club or a casino changes its slot club system, ask for a brochure that explains the club benefits and how the new system works. Don’t assume it works like the old system or like other slot clubs. There are many variations. To collect free play in some casinos, you merely download it and start playing, like at the Palms. In others, you must “prime the FP pump” by putting enough of your own money in for the first bet, like at the Station casinos.

3. If you need more explanation about a slot club than you can get at the booth or from casino employees, two Internet resources with casino databases can usually give you all the information you need to determine whether this is a casino where you want to play. The vpFREE homepage is at groups.yahoo.com/group/vpFREE, where there’s a link for joining the forum. Vpinsider.com also has a searchable database.

4. If you’re having trouble with the card reader and can’t download free play, it often pays to ask someone at that bank of machines if there’s any “secret” they know. This might save you having to try umpteen different machines, which sometimes works, or going to the slot club, which is a big bother. This happened to me at Red Rock and several people were nice enough to tell me to punch in my pin number with a pointy device, like a ballpoint pen, a key, or the stubby end of a cell-phone antenna. Ah ha –- so that’s the secret!

5. Check at any Harrah’s slot club to see what free or 2-for-1 shows are available for the various tiers of Platinum and up. The list may vary from month to month and there may be a monthly limit, but in Vegas, 7 Stars and Diamonds have a good choice of free shows. Platinums have a good choice of 2-for-1’s

I’ll probably leave the subject of slot clubs for a while, but I want to warn you that more changes are coming this month. Imperial Palace will be joining the Total Rewards program. And I just got word that the club at the Venetian will be changing completely in December (and probably sweeping in the soon-to-open Palazzo), but I have no details, except it’ll be called Club Grazie. They’re saying it will make it “easier to earn points” and they’re very excited about all the exciting changes. You all know me well enough now to know that I’m not holding my breath in anticipation of this excitement!!

12/13/2007

Many of you may have heard about the night a couple of weeks ago when lightning struck Brad in the form of a dealt royal on a quarter Hundred Play video poker machine at the Palms. In this columm I answer some of the questions we were asked on the various Internet forums.

Q: How much was that jackpot?
A: $100,000. Brad was playing all 100 lines. And yes, before you ask again, that takes $125 a hand to play max coins.

Q: You must be rich to afford to play that much per hand?
A: The only reason we can afford to do this is that I have been frugal for almost 69 years, which led to being successful at gambling for 22 years, which has accidentally allowed us to pile up a large gambling bankroll. When we first started playing video poker 17 years ago, our goal was only to break even and earn lots of comps. This whole fairytale life we live has surprised Brad and me as much as it might surprise you.

Q: What do you tip on a jackpot this big?
A: We usually tip 1% on smaller jackpots ($10 for $1,000) and go down to ½% or lower as jackpots get bigger ($60-$100 for $20,000). If we would have hit this at any other casino, we probably would have tipped $400-$500. However, the Palms is our “”home”” casino and has been since it opened: It’s less than two miles from our condo and Brad is there probably 4-5 days a week, although not playing on all those days. He stops by to bring me home a Sunrise drink from the Coffee Bean or Chinese from the food court. He picks up and drops off our football-contest cards and makes bets on our beloved Colts. He sometimes stops by to play for a couple of hours on one of the progressives when I’m busy in my office. We play together when there’s some good promotion or offer going on.

In addition, we’ve also done numerous TV shoots at the Palms and George Maloof graciously sponsored a big book signing for More Frugal Gambling. Therefore, most people who work there know us and we’re on a first-name basis with many of them. So, we tipped more than we would have in other casinos where we didn’t know so many people personally.

Brad gave $500 to the change gal who brought his check. That was shared with all the change people. Then we started passing out $20 bills to everyone connected to the payoff: the slot mechanic who checked the machine to see if the jackpot was “”valid”” (he isn’t allowed to take tips, but he couldn’t help it if we stuffed a bill in his shirt pocket); the security guy who stood by the whole hour it took to finally get paid; all the employees who came around to congratulate us; the porter; the cocktail waitress who brought us champagne; and the two camera people (yes, our picture is up on the slot club wall). Then I went back and passed out bills at the salon where Brad and I had just had our nails done.

By the time we finished taking care of friends on the Palms staff whom we saw later, it took almost $1,000 total to express our thanks. Plus, the Salvation Army got their usual share of any of our big jackpots.

Q: Did you go out and celebrate this wonderful event?
A: Well, if you call eating at the Palms buffet celebrating, yes. And when the estimate came in the next day to replace our sick heating/cooling unit, the $8,600 didn’t make my frugal brain hurt and that was cause for celebration!

Q: Did you all quit playing after Brad hit that jackpot?
A: Oh no. The only reason we were playing was to get enough points to max out a 4x coupon we each had, and he got the dealt royal on his first hand. So we had to play for about an hour longer. Actually, we continued to have good luck. I was playing for my coupon while Brad was waiting to get paid and I was dealt a quad, a first-time event for us on this game although we had played it quite a few times. And to explain the title of this article, Brad got one more royal (holding a lone K) a few minutes after he went back to playing!

—————–

On another note: We had a fun and successful Atlantic City trip the

12/20/2007

The holiday season is in full swing and much of the country will be preoccupied the next few days with gifts — the shopping, the wrapping, the giving, and the receiving. And then the frenzy of gifts will cease for another year. But if you’re a frequent casino player, the gift season is never over.

For more than 22 years, casinos have been giving Brad and me presents year round to reward our play. It’s said that you shouldn’t look a gift horse in the mouth, but in terms of value, the range has gone from “treasured forever” to “forgotten immediately.” The ones we’ve kept we either use or derive pleasure from looking at. Some we no longer own, but they’ve left a lasting memory.

A life-sized furry black gorilla comes to mind in that latter category, bought with points many years ago in the old Frontier gift shop. “George” sat in the back seat of our car for years, startling strangers, then bringing smiles, all over the country. When we moved to Las Vegas, we sat George on our patio glider where he amused all who passed by. Even after he got raggedy and bleached out by the sun, we still loved him. Sad to say, some thief must have loved him too: One morning George was gone, never to be seen again –- but certainly never forgotten.

In the practical category, almost every day I wear a Fendi watch I got in a high-level tournament, though I forget which one. And something Brad and I sink into every day with a thankful heart is a comfy massage easy chair that we chose during a Harrah’s holiday shopping promotion.

Many gifts that have special meaning for us are those we can give our grandchildren. When they were little, it was stuffed animals. Now that they’re older, it’s big-kid “toys”: TVs and computers for their rooms, iPods and DVD players they use when they fly to see us. And once they arrive at our house, they love to play the video poker machine that Brad won in a casino drawing, to practice for the day they turn 21 and can play in a real casino. It’s no wonder they say Santa Claus doesn’t stay at the North Pole very much: He’s busy visiting casinos all over the United States.

Gifts don’t have to be large or expensive to be appreciated. Many casinos have regular giveaway programs, offering several gift days per month. One man’s trash is another man’s treasure and not all these smaller gifts are worth a special trip for me. But some of the things I’ve liked enough to make an effort to get: logo terry bathrobes; “As Seen on TV” items like a battery-powered under-cabinet AM/FM clock radio, a Tap and Go can opener, and a Robo Maid sweeper; a 104-piece arts-and-crafts set; and a safety kit, including jumper cables, to keep in the car.

We like surprise gifts when we check into a casino room. Fruit baskets are welcome, but we’ve been happy when there’s something different: a basket of regional food delicacies we could take home or a one full of luxurious bath and spa products. We’ve been especially pleased when a host has noted that we don’t drink wine and ordered us, instead, the caffeine-free sugar-free soda and snacks we like. And probably the item, a very small one, which gave us the biggest smile when we walked into our room was a cute little rubber ducky sitting on the sink. We brought it home with us and it sits in our bathroom, always reminding us of our stay at a casino with a sense of humor.

Although most of our casino presents come from our comp points, regular casino giveaways, playing in tournaments, holiday shopping sprees, and participating in casino drawings, once in a while we’re surprised by a FedEx knock at the door. We feel like impatient little kids as we tear open a package we didn’t expect. Several times it’s been a fancy birthday cake, and once it was a birthday-in-a-box, including a decorated cake, streamers, balloons, and noisemakers –- everything one needed for a party. Recently, we were really amazed by a 7 Star box that came to Brad from Harrah’s Rincon in California.

12/27/2007

I knew I would quit writing this column at some point and I’m frankly surprised it didn’t happen long ago. When I started, I never dreamed it would continue, every week, for almost eight years! But I’ve always enjoyed writing “”Frugal Fridays”” and every time I threatened to quit, I just couldn’t bring myself to do it. One evening a couple of weeks ago, however, I really felt the need to slow down and I sent a resignation e-mail to Anthony right away before I could change my mind. I told him that although I loved writing the column, the constant pressure of a weekly deadline was getting to me.

He wrote right back and said he understood completely, but that he and his staff had been talking just that day about asking me to contribute to a new feature they were cooking up for the Web site, a blog section. And he suggested that perhaps switching from my weekly column to a blog format might free me from the deadlines from which I wanted to escape, but would let me continue to chat away in the informal style I liked. That idea appealed to me immediately, as the teacher in me would still have a place to impart information about the constantly changing Vegas scene and the innumerable facets of smart gambling.

I’ll add a few personal notes here before I take my leave, although I guess I might talk about my family in the blog once in a while. Many of you have asked about Steve, my Army Ranger son-in-law. In November he was halfway through his 15-month tour of duty in Iraq and was due his R+R back in the States. And you can imagine that those 18 days with his family were pure heaven for all of them! They spent Thanksgiving weekend with Steve’s mother and their extended family in Ashland, Kentucky, celebrating Thanksgiving and Christmas at the same time. The rest of the time Steve just wanted to live “ordinary life” in their home in Columbus, Georgia, giving Angela a rest from taxi duty for the kids’ busy schedules, watching Kaitlynn play in soccer tournaments and Zachary perform in karate demonstrations, and puttering around the house doing those man jobs that had piled up.

He’s back in Iraq now and has the same address as before, since he’s back leading his men on missions from the same base of operations.

1SG Steven R. Howard
A Co. 2-69 AR
APO, AE 09312

He appreciates all the boxes people have sent, because he can share them with his men, but he’s also grateful to you who have sent letters of encouragement and support. And he and Angela are both so thankful for all of you who are praying for him.

Angela and my two grandchildren are here with Brad and me this holiday season. They couldn’t bear the thought of celebrating Christmas in their own house without Steve being there. Our job is to keep them busy so they don’t miss him quite so much! It’s been a fun job for us.

So, in closing, although this is a fond farewell to “”Frugal Fridays,”” it’s not a goodbye to talking to you, my faithful frugal fans. Sometime after the first of the year, look for my Frugal Vegas blog to begin — along with three others: Stiffs & Georges, David McKee on the gambling industry; Gambling in Space, David Matthews on Internet gambling and technology; and Las Vegas Real Estate, Robin Camacho writing about the RE market.

Have your fire extinguishers near by when you read today’s column. I’m fiery mad at casinos! Why, you ask?

I’m so glad you asked –- although I was going to tell you even if you didn’t.

This fury of mine is not a new thing. It has flared up periodically for 22 years, ever since I started gambling in casinos. But most of the time, I’ve bitched to Brad and perhaps a few of my friends and then the flames have subdued fairly quickly. But this week I received a letter from the Gold Coast that’s one of the worst examples of misleading information I’ve ever gotten from a casino.

Before I give you the details, I need to explain that I accept the fact that casinos are profit-making businesses and can make any policy they want, as long as it isn’t against the law. They can change the way they do things, they can change machines, they can change their comp system, and they can change the way their slot club works. I may not like some of their changes, but my “job” is to adjust to them or if they’re unbearable, there are other casinos where I can go.

But I do expect casinos to give me information in a way that is clear and forthright.

Now to the Gold Coast letter. It started like this: “It is my pleasure to announce exciting news for Club Coast members.” I’m no babe-in-the-woods casino player, so I was on guard right away. I have NEVER been excited over news in a letter from a casino that has the word “excited” in the first sentence. The news that excites casinos is making money –- and it almost always entails finding new ways to get that money from me!

But now the letter tries to allay my suspicions and make me feel good by saying that they have listened to their “valued customers such as you” and that they will change from a coin-out slot club system to a coin-in one. Okay, I’ll ignore the fact that they don’t really value my play, since they’ve taken my name off their mailing list for bounce-back offers (although they seem to be able to find my address for this letter). But I do agree that a players club system based on coin-in is much easier to figure out than coin-out.

Then, in the next paragraph, they give the new slot club system’s numbers –- in bold print no less: “Every dollar of coin-in you play … not win … will earn one point. To emphasize they add, in bold again, “$1 of coin-in played = 1 point. Then they go on to say that “you can redeem 1,000 Points for $1 in cash back or comps.”

Now most players aren’t used to figuring the math of each casino’s slot club (or they don’t have the Frugal VP software which will figure it out for them automatically), so many may not realize just what this new change really means. They’re just happy that it’s coin-in rather than coin-out, because they always thought the old system was very unfair to you because they felt it was a double-whammy when you lost. (See May 19, 2000 column in the archives — lasvegasadvisor.com/frugalfridays-archive.cfm — for an explanation of why this wasn’t as severe a disadvantage as most players thought it was.)

But just in case someone was starting to think that maybe this new system might not be a good change, the letter hurried to talk about what would happen to your point balance on October 29, when the new system would be implemented: “Your point balance will be adjusted and tripled! The dollar value of your current point base will remain the same.” Yes, that was in bold just like I have it here.

Then the next paragraph waxes eloquent: “In celebration of this news and to get you off to a great start, we will enhance your fun and earning power by rewarding you with THREE POINTS (notice that it’s capitalized, italicized, AND put in bold) until January 14, 2008. That’s right, we’ll give you (back to bold and italicized) triple points for over two months! (And yes, they put in that exclamation point. I didn’t add it!)

Okay, just how did the Gold Coast (and Suncoast and Orleans)

11/7/2007

Last week I wrote a fiery retort in response to a Coast property letter that players received, one that tried all the tricks in the writing trade to mask the real facts in their recent slot club changes and to create a positive spin on cutting your cashback/comp earnings by two-thirds.

There have been many negative reactions to this tricky Coast letter, but I like the one posted by A.P. on vpFREE, reciting one of his favorite sayings: “Don’t piss on my shoes, then tell me it’s raining.”

I’m not sure if the Coast/Boyd executives read my column. But even if they don’t, I have the feeling that they’re aware of the heavy criticism on Internet bulletin boards and angry customer rumblings all over town. How do I know? Almost immediately, a flood of bonus-point days popped up at each of the Coast properties.

There have been reports from customers that they’ve been told that this new system will change again in early 2008, probably combining all the Boyd properties into one “master” slot club This may be true, since one of the sentences in that infamous Coast letter we just received reads like this: “The improvements we make at Club Coast this year will set the stage for a whole new wave of player benefits that will take place in 2008.”

God help us if they give us any more “improvements” like the present one. But let’s hope they listen to their customers, who might be just a little smarter than they think. Even those who aren’t math heads know when they are getting screwed!

You can change anything you want – that’s your right – but quit insulting us by running ads in the newspaper that say “ Club Coast – Just Keeps Getting Better”!

———————

And now to a different subject, one that relates to “real life,” not the artificial world of casinos. This is a recent note from my Army son-in-law, Steve, who is an Army First Sergeant leading infantry units supporting armor units around Bagdad.

“I sure have gotten backed up here doing this job. It’s almost good to be deployed in this position, because there’s just not enough time in the day to get everything done, so the time goes faster. I have been working on better time management, but there’s just not enough time in a day for me to manage. We have been doing a lot of missions lately. Just a few days ago we found the second largest EFP (explosively formed projectiles) cache in Iraq. EFPs fire a slug of molten copper that penetrates the armor on our vehicles. So I like to think we have saved many lives with this find. I am getting ready to go back out and follow up on more leads in the town tonight. It’s nice to be able to get out and catch some of these guys for a change.

“I hope to slow down in the next few days and write some thank you notes for the several packages I have received recently. These are always greatly appreciated. We guys can make a package of goodies disappear almost instantly!”

Steve will be coming home to Georgia around November 11th for 18 days of R+R. He and Angela and the kids can hardly wait. They plan to celebrate Christmas during the Thanksgiving holiday break, with Steve’s family in Ashland, Kentucky. Then Steve will be going back to “fighting the bad guys” for the second half of his 15-month deployment. When that’s over and he gets back stateside in the summer, he plans on retiring.

Brad’s and my “job” is to entertain Angela and the two grandkids here in Vegas over the Christmas holidays, trying to help them not have enough spare time to miss Steve so much!

Thanks again to everyone for their support and prayers during this worrisome time for our whole family.

11/16/2007

Now that I’ve spent two columns venting my frustration with the way the Coast casinos are publicizing their recent players club changes, I’ll settle down and give you some solid information about changes in other casinos.

Remember that every time a casino makes changes in its players club, you must re-evaluate the details and decide how they impact your personal requirements for a good place to play. Sometimes these changes necessitate crossing that casino off your list or decreasing your play there. Sometimes they may give you the opportunity to pick up a new casino where you hadn’t played in the past.

Circus Circus and Slots A Fun now have a new players club, but it’s independent of the club for other MGM Mirage properties. It’s offering a valuable double signing bonus. Everyone who joins before Nov. 30 is entered into a $5,000 drawing, and if you earn 5,000 points before the end of the year, you’ll get a $50 free-play bonus.

“Wild Card.” I love the name of this next new slot club that combines some of the Stations smaller casinos in a separate club of their own, independent from the main Boarding Pass club. This new “wild” club includes Magic Star, Barley’s, Wild Wild West, and Wildfire. (By the way, the Fiesta casinos still have their own card, but there has been talk for quite a while that they’ll be folded into the Stations Boarding Pass program, though no word on when this may happen.)

The Riviera has the new Club Riviera. You can still use your old players card, but if you get a new one, you’ll receive a randomly chosen sign-up bonus ranging from $1 to $1,000 in free play.

Hard Rock has a new 5-tiered players club called the Rockstar Club. It covers both machine and table play. It has some good features, but I was disappointed when the self-proclaimed “coolest players club in Las Vegas” dropped the earning rate. But they have been running some tournaments and drawings that have added some good value for the players. And I hope they take a lesson from the Coast properties and frequently offer some multiple-point days.

Most casinos tweak the details of their players club at times, some doing it so often that even I can’t keep track of the changes and it drives me crazy. Recent examples include some changes I like, some I don’t like, and some I would like to see implemented (for the casino executives who read this column).

1. South Point went from a coin-out system that they had when it was the South Coast to a coin-in system, a change that’s popular with players, because it makes it easier to figure. Now if they’d just get their card readers fixed so they record our session totals while we’re playing and we wouldn’t have to keep pulling out our card to see how many points we’ve earned.

2. The Palms keeps changing the qualification period for their bounce-back free play for locals, so we never know just when in the month we should play. They’ve changed data managers twice in the last three months and each new manager has his own ideas. For a couple of months they went to a more logical qualification period, figuring from the first day of the first month to the last day of the last month, taking in four complete months. This system is so much easier for players, rather than floating beginning and ending dates that could be anywhere within the month. I hope this new manager keeps to a logical schedule. (It would also be great if they’d quit going by daily average for locals, instead looking at our total play for the qualification period, like most other casinos that market to locals do. We’d like to come in and play more often, but if we don’t have time to play up to our usual average, we just don’t play at all. This seems like a no-brainer, where the casino would get more play from us if they canned their daily-average system.)

3. The Stations are trying a new mailing schedule, giving us our benefits calendar twice a month. As long as they don’t use this as an excuse to cut our benefits

11/21/2007

For the next two weeks I want to give some space to some casino games which I usually don’t mention much. My guest columnist is John Grochowski, a good friend and an expert on many different casino games, someone who can always be trusted to give solid gambling advice. He has written a series of “answer books” that cover general casino information, craps, and video poker. (You can order them at www.casinoanswerman.com.)

Next week John will answer questions about video slots and craps. This week the “answer man” tackles a question on Caribbean Stud Poker.

Q. Playing Caribbean Stud Poker, I had ace-king-8-5-2 and the card the dealer turned face up from her hand was an ace. I made the bet, because my ace matched his ace. Another guy at the table told me that was the wrong play, that you bet only if one of the other three cards matches the dealer.

The dealer didn’t qualify, so I won on my ante and just got my bet back anyway. Her next highest card was a 10 and there were no pairs. But was the other player right? I want to give myself the best chance to win, and I always thought I was doing it by betting with ace-king and a match.

A. The other player was correct. When we have ace-king in Caribbean Stud, we do a lot of splitting of hairs. One of those hair splits is that when we have ace-king and no other face cards in the hand, we bet whenever one of the other three cards matches the dealer’s face up card, and fold when there’s no such match.

Note the provision that there are no other face cards in the hand. If we have ace-king-queen or ace-king-jack, we bet if any of our five cards match the dealer’s face-up card, and with ace-king-queen, we bet even with no match if our fourth highest card outranks the dealer’s up card.

How much does all that gain us? Very little. With the strategy given here, you’ll face a house edge of about 5.23 percent of the ante or 2.56 percent of total action. According to Michael Shackelford’s outstanding Web site, wizardofodds.com, if you bet with ace-king when any of your five cards matches the dealer up card, the house edge is 5.33 percent of the ante or 2.62 percent of total action.

By far the most important component of Caribbean Stud strategy is to bet with all pairs. I’ve seen many players fold with a pair of 2s or 3s. Those aren’t necessarily winning hands, but in the long run, you’ll lose more money by folding and forfeiting your ante than you will by betting the hand and accepting that you’ll win some and lose some.

———-

Brad and I will be at Harrah’s in Atlantic City next weekend, Nov. 30-Dec. 4, and will be planning an informal get-together for all interested frugalites. It will probably be late afternoon on Saturday December 1. Check on my Web site, queenofcomps.com, next week for details of exact time and place. I’ll try to have the information up early, perhaps on Wednesday or before, so you can make plans to attend. Looking forward to seeing many of you faithful readers!

11/28/2007

John Grochowski on Video Slots and Craps

Q. I’ve read in your column that you advise playing all the lines on the video slots, even if it’s only one coin at a time. If I’m on a non-progressive machine and all the payoffs are multiplied by the number of coins bet on a line, might I be better off betting, for example, 15 coins on one line than one coin on each of 15 lines? Would I be better off with the higher payoffs, knowing that I wouldn’t win as often?

A. Concentrating all your play on one line means fewer trips to the bonus round. Not only do the bonus rounds contain all the fun of the video slots, but while you’re in the bonus round, you’re playing for free. You’re not making additional wagers.

Fewer trips to the bonus round means more of your time will be spent paying to play. Wagering 15 coins on one line, you will actually risk more money per hour than if you spread the same 15 coins across 15 lines.

None of that will make any difference in your long-term payback percentage. On most non-progressive video slots, that will be the same either way. You’ll get that payback in a different way if you concentrate your play on one line. That adds volatility to the game. You would have many more losing spins than winners, but no wins would be smaller than your bet. Just as on three-reel slots, you’d win big more often, but you’d risk more fast losses.

Losing fast is not a possibility I’d take lightly on a video slot. Most video slots have lower payback percentages than most reel spinners to begin with. If it’s added volatility you want, you’re usually better off betting three quarters at a time on a three-reel game than 15 nickels on one line on a video slot.

If you want all that volatility, that’s your choice. But by diminishing your trips to the bonus round and wagering more money per hour, you’ll lose more money per hour on a video slot by betting 15 coins on one line than one coin on each of 15.

Q. How much odds do they have to give you on the crap table before the player has an edge when betting pass and taking the odds?

A. Unless we’re talking about dice controllers and non-random rolls, the player never has an edge at the pass/free-odds combination. The combination has two components, the pass line bet and the free odds. The pass bet carries a house edge of 1.4%, while the free odds are an even bet. The more odds you’re permitted to take, the more the house edge on the pass portion of the combination is watered down. At single odds, the house edge on the combination is 0.8%; at double odds, 0.6%; at 10x odds, 0.3%; at 100x odds, 0.02%. The house edge gets smaller and smaller, but never disappears entirely.

In all my years of playing in casinos, I’ve seen only one proposition that had no house edge without also requiring you to take on a bet that did give an advantage to the house. That was in the mid-1990s, when one of my regular casino haunts offered a field bet that paid 3-1 on both 2 and 12. When both 2 and 12 in the field pay 2-1, the house edge is 5.56%. When the 12 pays 3-1 instead, the house edge drops to 2.78%. When both pay 3-1, the house has no edge at all — which is why you so rarely see such payoffs.

You can order John’s books at casinoanswerman.com.

And now, back to me. Check my Web site, queenofcomps.com, for details of a meet-and-great at Harrah’s Atlantic City this weekend. Actually there will be two meets –- one on Saturday Dec. 1 and one on Sunday the 2nd. The details are the same for each one: We’re meeting at Harrah’s Eden Lounge at 4 p.m., then deciding where to go to mingle and chat, depending on how many people show up. Hope to see a lot of you there!”

If you’re not getting any mail offers from a casino where you play, you shouldn’t just assume that the casino doesn’t like you. However, this might be the case; some casinos bar video poker players they consider professional or skilled. (Or they put them on their “No Mail” list, which effectively achieves the same result, since it’s usually marketing offers that make a play attractive to the knowledgeable, not just the game itself.) The problem with this is that casino executives often don’t know how to spot someone who is actually a threat to their bottom line.

• They often look at a short-term higher-than-average win for one customer, not realizing that skilled and unskilled players alike can have “lucky” short streaks.

• Sometimes they bar a player who has “too many” royals in a short time. They don’t know that an unskilled player often actually gets more royals than a knowledgeable player. Why? He often goes for a royal more often than accurate strategy dictates, thus loses more in the long run than the skilled player, in spite of pulling down more royals.

• Here’s a situation that happens quite often. A casino puts in one or more video poker machines with better-than-average payback paytables. This could be done purposely so that they can advertise these high returns to bring more customers in. Or it could be accidental: Perhaps a slot technician makes an error when he’s setting them up. Players come in and play these machines heavily. Is it surprising that many customers will always be looking for their best chance to win? Instead of re-evaluating paytables or just fixing mistakes, the casino often punishes the customers who had the audacity to play these machines. The same thing happens when a casino runs a good promotion. Woe be it that too many customers take advantage of it.

• One of the strangest “reasons” casinos might take away mail offers happens when someone gets dealt a royal on a multi-line machine. Hey, marketing people, do you really think any player, skilled or not, can make a machine deal a particular 5-card hand? That’s about as likely as someone being able to stand in the middle of Las Vegas Boulevard on a clear sunny day and do something that will cause him to be struck by lightning.

What can you do about the situation when a casino decides to “punish” you? Talking to your host is rarely an option, because he/she usually has no power in these sorts of matters. Some players have had luck in reversing things by taking the matter to upper management. Some punishments have seemed to be a violation of printed slot club rules and regulations (if it involved taking away past benefits rather than future ones), and some players have appealed to the state Gaming Control Board with some success. A very few have taken it to court, with even fewer winning their cases.

In most cases you have to just learn to live with the situation and instead of worrying about it, spend your time finding other casinos that look more favorably on you and will send you mail! Some years ago I was put on a “No Mail” list by one old-timer slot manager. One of his employees showed him an online review of one of my books, a review that unfortunately reported that I’d given some information about how to do some “sneaky” actions to get more slot club points, when in actuality I’d said the exact opposite, that this wasn’t ethical. I explained this to the slot manager, but he wasn’t computer-savvy and held the position that if it was on the Internet, it was true. I even brought him the book and showed him the passage that was misquoted, but he remained stubborn. Since I had no recourse, I dropped the matter, although his influence spread throughout the whole casino chain and to this day I get no mail from any of the sister properties.

So you may have to do as I’m doing in this case: Wait until this dinosaur dies or retires, then try to salvage my reputation with these casinos.

10/11/2007

Last week I discussed some reasons you might not get mail offers from a casino if you got on its bad side, even if those reasons aren’t not logical — and how difficult it is to turn this situation around. This week I talk about more logical reasons for not getting casino mail –- and how this is often easier to solve.

Some casinos will send mail to anyone who has played at their property, no matter where they’re from. Others will market only to customers who are within driving distance, perhaps 300 miles or less. Therefore, you might live in an area to which the casino just doesn’t market. For example, it used to be that Vegas Strip casinos didn’t do much marketing to locals and the locals casinos didn’t market to out-of-towners. However, this is slowly changing. As locals, Brad and I are getting strong mailings from some Strip properties. And some local casinos are marketing to out-of-towners who have previously played there

All is not lost if a casino doesn’t market where you live. You can still call the slot club or a host and ask about marketing specials or check for online offers. Some out-of-towners who come to Vegas frequently obtain a local mail box and give that address to casinos who mainly market to locals, using their out-of-town address for Strip offers.

You need to give your e-mail address at the players club of every casino where you play. Many casinos are now using the Internet for strong marketing offers. These are usually in addition to mail offers, but sometimes they send last-minute offers when there’d be no time for snail mail. And the Wynn casino in Vegas markets almost entirely to locals by e-mail, including the amount and times of your bounce-back free play. In fact, if you don’t get an e-mail about some promotions, you’re not eligible to participate in them –- a fact that many locals find to their sorrow when they hear that their friends are involved in a very juicy promo.

While you’re stopping at the player’s club to give your e-mail address, it’s a good time to check that they have your accurate snail mail address. Many people who haven’t been getting mail offers have found out that the casino doesn’t have their right address. And some casinos, when they have mail returned once from an address, just put a “No Mail” notation on the account. Be sure your address is complete, with the whole street address (including the words “street,” “drive,” “boulevard,” etc.) and correct zip code.

Be aware that even though a casino regularly sends you mail, the U.S. Postal Service isn’t foolproof. Occasionally, a mailer gets lost. This is one reason that we compare mailings with our friends and can notice any probable missing one. We also like to compare offers with our out-of-town friends. Often, a casino markets differently to locals and non-locals, but if we hear of a good non-local offer, we can contact our host and she/he will often see that we’re included. Also, quite a few casinos now have Web sites that include your personal offers, so you don’t have to depend just on snail mail. These include Harrah’s, the Venetian, and Station that I know of, but I’m sure this will be more common in the future.

A day without casino mail is a day without sunshine!

10/19/2007

Most of the time I write about Vegas, since that’s where Brad and I live and do almost all our gambling. But several times a year we take a trip to another part of the country, usually for non-gambling purposes like visiting our families. Once in a while, when a casino wants to provide us with a free vacation, we take a trip to another gambling area. That’s the reason we were in Biloxi, Mississippi, last summer, although it was a double-duty trip: We were able to have the Frugal Princess and our 2 grandchildren with us.

However, a couple of weeks ago we traveled to Atlantic City with another gambling couple, just for a change of scenery, compliments of Harrah’s. The other couple was using their free annual 7-Star-tier trip, which included a suite, $500 in food credit, limo back and forth to the airport, and free airfare. We’d already used our complimentary 7-Star trip to go to Biloxi, but players who’ve reached the 7-Star tier can always get free rooms, and we could use our Reward Credits on a 1-to-1 basis to refund our plane-ticket expense. We could have used Reward Credits for food, but that wasn’t needed, since our friends’ $500 food credit covered meals for the four of us.

We hadn’t been in Atlantic City for 10 years; we used to drive there occasionally from our home in Indiana. Still, we fondly remembered our strolls on the beach and the funky boardwalk. Back then the good gambling opportunities weren’t plentiful for out-of-towners like they were in Vegas, so we did more sightseeing on the coast than playing in the casinos.

This time we knew in advance that the gambling opportunities had improved, with quite a few good video poker games at the Harrah’s properties where we wanted to play. How did we find out this information even before we got there? As I stress many times, the Internet is a wonderful advance-planning guide. We went to the database at vpFREE, where all the best VP games AND their locations are listed. (You can sign up for free at http://groups.yahoo.com/group/vpFree.) This saved us the hours and hours of scouting it would have taken to cover the four huge Harrah’s properties. Of course, I also carried my trusty Frugal Video Poker Scouting Guide for when I came across a game with which I wasn’t familiar. (No, even though I assembled those charts, I don’t carry all that information in my head!)

I also found out a lot of helpful information for our trip by posting some questions on the vpFREE forum, which has many members willing to share their knowledge and experiences. They described the buffets, from the “don’t miss” to the “must avoid.” They gave details about good promotions they knew about and possible side trips.

We found one game that we ended up playing a lot, because it had the automatic-hold feature, which we have run across only a couple of times before. We really enjoyed this –- but not because it always held the right cards, which it didn’t. Anytime you find this feature, you must play for a while to determine how smart it is. Usually, the little man inside the machine who does the holding knows only a very generic strategy –- he hasn’t practiced on Frugal Video Poker or other software programs! But he holds the right cards often enough that it does save you time in the long run. You soon learn what rules he doesn’t know and it’s easy enough to change the hold in those cases. If you know the correct strategy and change when it’s necessary, this feature can help you play more accurately by keeping you from making basic oversight errors, like missing a small pair when you have two royal cards. And once you learn when the hold changes are needed, it can speed up your play considerably without losing accuracy.

In summary, I can say we had a wonderful trip. What’s not to like with a free four-night vacation in a beautiful room that overlooks the ocean, with congenial friends, all expenses paid, and you bri

10/25/2007

Last week I told you about our recent trip to Atlantic City and promised I’d talk about our experiences with promotions there.

First, I’ll discuss airfare reimbursement. The couple we traveled with had airfare included in the free annual 7 Star trip benefit they were using. However, we’d bought our own, figuring that we’d probably be playing enough to get it repaid by Bally’s, where we were staying.

Airfare reimbursement is always an iffy thing at any casino. The amount you have to play to get it is almost never set down in black and white. You have to go through a host to request it and the host usually has to go to a higher level of management to get it approved. The amount often isn’t based just on how much coin-in you give them, but can be dependent on how much you win or lose.

Harrah’s policy on this varies, depending on the policy of the specific property where you’re playing. I can’t give even a rough estimate of how much to play before you ask for your airfare back. But I took my own oft-repeated advice to “just ask” and got a positive answer, although this wasn’t an outright comp. We did have to use our Reward credits, but at a one-to-one ratio, which is better than a cash benefit we can get in Vegas by turning points into Visa cards. Mostly Reward Credits are used for food comps, but we have more food comps than we could ever eat up!

Doing promotions at non-Harrah’s properties in Atlantic City involved a discussion among the four of us. I know that Atlantic City casinos often have lucrative sign-up bonuses for new members, so we discussed whether we thought we’d be coming back very often during the next few years. We agreed that this wouldn’t be likely, since it’s a very long and tiring flight from Vegas to A.C. and none of us are as young as we used to be.

So we decided to take advantage of a sign-up bonus at Borgata, a new casino built since we’d last been in Atlantic City. It was a nice bonus for players who had a premium card from another property, and each of the four of us was either Harrah’s Diamond or 7 Star. They gave us each a Black Label players card, their premium-tier level, $100 in free play, and enough in our comp bank for two visits to their great buffet and a one-night stay on a future trip.

We tried to sign up for a similar promotion at the Taj Mahal on October 1 when we saw an advertisement for it in the casino, but found out it ended September 30. I hate when casinos don’t keep their promotion information up to date!

The Tropicana had a wonderful sign-up promotion going: 3x points for new members. But we decided we didn’t have enough time to take advantage of this one. We didn’t want to join and play just a little, then not be able to take advantage of a Trop sign-up promo in the future.

The night before we were to leave, we saw a flashing sign at Trump Plaza advertising a $100 sign-up bonus. The four of us had tramped around several casinos that day and the other couple said they were too tired to go to another casino, no matter how good the bonus was. Brad and I had always wanted to ride in one of those boardwalk rolling chairs, but it seemed we were usually in a frugal let’s-walk-and-get-some-exercise mode. But this foggy night, with tired feet, it seemed like a romantic choice and it was only $10 and a tip each way, a small investment to pick up $200.

I can only blame what happened next on the fact that I was exhausted. First, we had to wait 15 minutes at the slot club, because the supervisor was at dinner and no one else knew about this new promotion or how it could be done on their computers. When the supervisor came back, I should have verified the details of the promotion, but my brain was even more weary than my feet and I just remembered the sign flashing $100 and I assumed it was free play like at Borgata. So Brad gave her his driver’s license and she gave him a player’s card. Then she said that she had put $100 in his comp bank and it would be there for

In past years, I’ve discussed –- well, to be really truthful, I’ve complained –- about the problem of switching around several denominations in our video poker play. It does make for a very bumpy ride when you hit more royals on the lower denominations and fewer on the higher. All this year, so far, has seen us on that kind of ride. While picking up bounce-back money, Brad plays only an hour or two on a quarter full-pay Deuces Wild machine and hits a $1,000 royal. We play $1 SpinPoker for a short time and hit a royal on one line for $4,000. At a couple of places the best play is on $2 machines – and we’ve hit several $8,000 royals. We love playing Multi-Strike, but rarely find a good play. But we played a quarter one a few months ago –- again, for about an hour — and hit a royal on the second line for $2,000.

We mostly play $5 machines, quite a bit of single line, but mostly Triple Play and some Five Play. Even with the majority of our VP sessions in this area, we’d hit only two $20,000 royals by the end of August. One was on single line and one was on Triple Play. Needless to say, although we’d hit about the “right” number of royals (what the math dictates) for the number of hours we play, the fact that most of them have been on lower-denomination machines is the reason we’re in the red for the year.

It isn’t as much fun to lose as it is to win and a long losing stretch isn’t easy to endure, even when you’re doing all the right things: choosing the best VP plays, playing accurately, chasing promotions. But we kept the faith and plodded onward, thankful we had a big enough gambling bankroll that we weren’t ever even close to tapping our expense account or retirement reserve. I kept repeating, “You just can’t play $5 VP forever and never get a royal again.”

Finally, the tide turned over Labor Day weekend, quickly and in a very unexpected manner. I held an AK on a $5 Five Play machine and the other royal cards filled in nicely. Then the very next day Brad was playing a $5 Triple Play game and muttering to himself because he had only a lone king in the first position to hold. He turned to me to complain about his poor starting hands and then we both looked at his machine. Although it wasn’t making any noise or playing any music, it was flashing “Call Attendant.” Two $20,000 royals in two days after only two in the previous 8 months! Needless to say, it’s good to be back in the black!

And now, a not-so-happy update about Steve, our Army Ranger son-in-law. The last few months he’s been in a mostly administrative position in Iraq, albeit a very uncomfortable one in a makeshift primitive outpost in the “sandbox,” the heart of the Iraqi desert. But it was relatively “safe,” although that’s hardly a precise word to describe any place in that country. He’s now been promoted to First Sergeant (a diamond in the middle of the 3 up and 3 down for you military types) and is taking command of an infantry unit whose duty will be supporting tank units on combat missions. (Angela says they knew this was coming, that they wouldn’t “waste” an experienced Ranger in an administrative position for very long.)

I don’t have words to describe the fear in my heart. Angela is taking it as well as can be expected and stays busy to try to keep her mind occupied with the normal routine of her job and two busy teenagers who have to be taxied to their many activities.

Thanks to all of you who have written letters of encouragement and sent boxes to Steve. These do help his morale –- and keeps him from going crazy from a constant diet of Army rations! Since he’s moving to a different outpost, his old address is no longer useable. Just as soon as we get his new one, I’ll post it here.

Thanks again for all the expressions of concern and prayers.

9/13/2007

There are people in every area of life who become obsessed with one activity, whether it’s their job or a leisure-time hobby. A workaholic in any career may find that his family takes second place to his job. A woman may neglect her children because she spends too much time in computer chat rooms. Even a person who reads or watches TV all the time may find that close relationships suffer.

Someone who gambles faces the same dangers. A professional gambler who needs to make a living usually finds that it requires much more than a 40-hour-a-week schedule and the hours are not necessarily 9-to-5. If he’s a family man, this often puts a big strain on his wife and children. I’ve noticed the fact that a large percentage of professional gamblers are single or divorced.
Even if gambling is a leisure activity, some of these same factors can negatively impact home life and relationships, especially if family or friends don’t share this interest.

Although the majority of people who gamble are not obsessed with it, there’s no doubt that gambling is an intense activity.

Brad and I were brought together 22 years ago by our common interest in gambling – we met in an Indiana Moose Lodge tonk game – and ever since, casino gambling has been a major activity that we both enjoy, usually in the company of each other. For the first years, while we were still living and working in Indiana and had to journey to Vegas and other casino destinations, we balanced intense gambling while we were away with a more leisurely lifestyle when we were in Indiana, with time to do volunteer work that we enjoyed. We visited seniors and provided transportation with the Visiting Nurse Service and did many projects with the Salvation Army.

After several years, I “accidentally” – I never planned for this – fell into a gaming writing career that took more and more of my time and left less time for other activities. And when we finally moved to Las Vegas permanently, we found the town a gambling pressure cooker – so many lucrative opportunities – to do and to write about. So for many years now, we have lived a very intense life, fun but extremely busy.

Brad never seems to lose interest in gambling, even though he’s been doing it since he was five years old. But he does limit his time in a casino these days, because of the smoke and the lack of endurance that heart disease and medication cause. However, for the last couple of years I’ve found my interest in gambling to be waning. I’ve begun to wake up to the fact that I’m weary of too many hours every week taken up with the subject of casinos. If I haven’t been planning when and where to gamble or been actually in a casino gambling or picking up bounce-back, I’ve been reading or writing about gambling and casinos.

Recently, I came to the realization that I needed – and wanted – more balance in my life. I wanted an activity that had to do with “real” life, something far away from “artificial life” in the casino. And I wanted to do something that was beneficial to others.

Therefore, I’ve gone back to the classroom. Not in a high school where I spent so many of my early working years teaching English to teenagers, but as a volunteer in an elementary school down the street from where we live. Several times a week I spend a couple of hours helping small groups of 2nd graders improve their reading skills. And I’m loving it!

No, I’m not giving up our casino life. But this new activity is giving me some balance that I sorely need. And even though I’m gambling fewer hours, I find I’m now back to enjoying it more.

9/21/2007

I just finished reading a fascinating book by “Hollywood” Dave Stann, known as the “Bad Boy of Blackjack.” The title is Hollywood Blackjack, but the subtitle describes the book best, An Uncensored Guide to Doing it Like a Pro.

“Uncensored” is the key word here. The book is as startling as Dave’s spiked hair. “Irreverent” is the term almost all reviewers want to use. I won’t give a whole list of words that Dave uses that you usually don’t find in a book telling you how to play smart blackjack, but I will mention that among them are “bitches,” “hot chicks,” even “smoking hot chicks.” This doesn’t bother me, because I know Dave personally and he always treats me with respect; in fact, he autographed his book for me, “My favorite Queen of Comps!” But he may think of me as a former hot chick –- I hope so.

But I digress. This blackjack book is full of information, but it’s the first one where I laughed from beginning to end when I read it. And you’ll be entertained if you never played or expect to play a hand of blackjack. Because Dave isn’t just an expert blackjack player. He’s a fine writer, an actor, and a “character” wherever he shows up. And he shows up on TV a lot. You might have seen him matching wits and dealing cards on “Celebrity Blackjack” or baiting the other contestants on “King of Vegas.” I first met him when we were both in the first season of the “World Series of Blackjack” on the Game Channel and he already was perfecting his non-stop chatter to rattle his opponents.

You can catch his always-entertaining act this coming Saturday, September 22nd, when he appears in the second show of the second season of the “Ultimate Blackjack Tour.” It airs on CBS, 2 p.m. Eastern, 11 a.m. Pacific time (check your local listings to make sure; some local CBS affiliates might not carry it).

Dave’s book, Hollywood Blackjack, can be ordered here at www.shoplva.com or at http://rge21.safeshopper.com.

Coincidentally, I’ve also just read another BJ book I’d like to recommend: How to Win More Blackjack Tournaments: Tips, Tricks, and Strategies to Supercharge Your Game, by Ken Smith. No references to hot chicks in this book –- Ken is more button-downed than Hollywood Dave, not to mention happily married –- but it’s written by probably the best BJ tournament player alive today. Henry Tamburin, a BJ expert himself, writes: “”My worst nightmare is to find Ken Smith on my table in a blackjack tournament. He has the uncanny ability to keep track of every player’s chip count and then make a near-perfect bet and playing decision. He’s one hell of a tournament player.””

The book consists of a collection of Ken’s articles that have appeared in past issues of the Blackjack Insider Newsletter, plus several new tournament strategies by Ken that have never appeared in print before. For more information about the book, go to http://store.eSellerate.net/deepnet/kensmithebook.

The book is 98 pages and retails for $14.95. It’s available as an e-book that’s downloaded to your computer immediately after purchase.

9/28/2007

Two weeks ago I talked about keeping a healthy balance in your life if you live in an area where casinos were all around you, like we do in Vegas. I got a lot of mail about that column. One reader expressed his disappointment in my choice of tutoring at an elementary school as my non-gambling activity: “Frankly, it seems Her Frugalness is losing the touch… If she was on top of her game she would realize she could sign up as a sub teacher and get paid for her work.”

However, most of the writers understood that frugalness doesn’t mean never doing something free for others if you can get paid for it. Many applauded my decision and some said it was making them think of things they could do to bring a little more balance in their lives in Vegas and keep from getting “gambling burnout.” (And one teacher and I, both of us having substitute-taught in our younger years, agreed that this option would be like sending senior citizens for duty in Iraq!)

Although that column talked about our life after we moved to Vegas, the need for balance was soon noticed when we were out-of-town tourists. At first, when we traveled from Indianapolis to Vegas for a visit, we wanted to gamble all the time, like we had to make up for the time when we were home and, at that time, no casinos were within easy driving distance. But after a few visits we found such an intense gambling schedule was exhausting –- and playing blackjack or video poker for the 10th hour of one day wasn’t as fun as those first couple of hours. So we started taking naps to refresh our bodies and brains. We saw more shows to give ourselves a break.

We also started deliberately planning non-casino activities for part of each day of our visit. We took every factory tour we could find and visited every museum in town. We went on side trips out of town, like free bus tours to Laughlin. We took a daily walk in different areas of town, getting our exercise and seeing new and interesting things along the way. We even sat in on interesting court cases at the Federal Building.

Even though couponing was a form of gambling, it was a welcome active change from sitting at a blackjack table or a video poker machine in one place for hours at a time. We couponed up and down the Strip and all over downtown, making money and getting good exercise at the same time. It got us into a lot of casinos where we didn’t ordinarily play.

There are many resources for the tourist to turn to if they want ideas for non-gambling activities in Las Vegas. There is the Neon section in Friday’s newspaper, which is also online at http://www.lvrj.com/neon/. But one of the best is the Web site http://www.vegas4locals.com/. Although it’s an invaluable resource for locals, it has great ideas visitors could use, including up-to-date information about local Las Vegas community and cultural events and activities and a list of over 100 of the best totally free things to do and see in Las Vegas! You can subscribe to a newsletter there that will also keep you up on Vegas happenings.

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In my September 7th column, I gave an update on my son-in-law’s new duties in Iraq, now out in the middle of the action, much to the dismay of all of his family. He’s big on trying to keep us from worrying and here is an excerpt from one of his recent e-mails to Brad and me:

“Hey, I just thought I’d drop you guys a few lines to say hello. I’m starting to get settled in at my new location. I’m once again First Sergeant of a company. It’s not so bad in combat. I have a lot less paperwork to do at least, and time is passing much faster now.”

All I can say is that’s making lemonade out of lemons, but I’m still worrying! He and Angela and the kids are really looking forward to his visit back home in Columbus, Georgia, in November for two weeks of R&R. They plan to celebrate an early Christmas while

I just finished reading the July issue of Henry Tamburin’s Blackjack Insider e-Newsletter (BJI) and as usual, I was impressed with the content. For example, Ken Smith, the tournament pro that you’ve probably seen on the televised UBT blackjack tournaments, describes his recent unpleasant experience of being tossed out of a casino during the middle of a tournament (and he was invited to play!). Then there’s an article alerting subscribers to an $80,000 overlay that currently exists in the perfectly legal blackjack tournaments offered on the new site www.ClubUBT.com. There are also tips on the best places to play blackjack in Reno and Atlantic City, plus strategy articles covering blackjack tournaments, team play, crap tournaments, and Texas hold ’em. Something for everyone — and that’s just one issue of the BJI!

The newsletter is written for recreational players at all levels of playing experience who want to elevate their game to the next level. (So, even beginners will enjoy reading the BJI.) Henry has assembled a top-notch team of writers and reporters who write about everything to do with blackjack and sometimes other casino games where you can get the edge. Some of the topics covered in the BJI: listing the casinos that offer the best blackjack games in different areas (Atlantic City, Las Vegas, Reno, Mississippi, Midwest, and elsewhere), the best strategies to use if you’re a casual blackjack player, strategies for card counters or players who want to learn about card counting, blackjack tournament strategies from pros who make their living playing in tournaments, trip reports from pros so you can read how they make money playing blackjack, a monthly poker column because so many blackjack players are learning how to play poker, and a whole lot more.

Henry has been writing the BJI since 2001 and hasn’t missed publishing a single issue, so you can be assured the BJI will be around in the future. And because it’s written, assembled, and distributed rapidly by email each month, the information is current. (The newsletter comes as an e-mail attachment, which you can read on your computer or print out on your printer and then read it.)

An annual membership to the newsletter is only $19.95, which works out to a frugal 16 cents per article. But there’s more good stuff. BJI members have access to over 500 articles on blackjack located in the archives at www.bjinsider.com. There’s even a search engine on the site so you can find information on any topic about blackjack (as well as on video poker, craps, and poker) that has appeared in the BJI.

And here’s more frugal good news. Right now all Frugal Friday readers will receive $80 worth of free (I love that word) stuff that includes blackjack training software, e-books, and gambling magazine subscriptions when they sign-up for an annual membership (that’s right, you get $80 worth of gifts for a $19.95 membership … now that’s really frugal!). Just click here for the details: www.bjinsider.com/offer.

Speaking of video poker, I’ve contributed articles to the BJI on VP, and so have my fellow video poker experts, Skip Hughes and Bob Dancer. Here’s a link to one of my articles on Why Switch from Blackjack to Video Poker that you might be interested in reading.

Probably one of the most hilarious gaming articles that I’ve ever read appeared in the BJI. It was written by my friend and fellow gaming writer Frank Scoblete about his worst casino gambling trip. If you’ve ever taken a trip to a gambling destination and then experienced bad weather, you might relate to some of Frank’s experiences. Here’s a link to his st

8/9/2007

I just finished an intense month working night and day on the new and much-expanded version of Tax Help for the Frugal Gambler (which will be out before the end of the year). I’m so relieved it’s finished and in the hands of my editor that I’m giddy. That’s my excuse for this column – and I’m sticking with it!

AUGUST HOLIDAYS

1 Respect for Parents Day
1 Friendship Day
2 Ice Cream Sandwich Day
3 Watermelon Day
3 Tony Bennett b-day 1926
4 Twins Day Festival
5 Mustard Day
5 Sisters Day
6 Wiggle Your Toes Day
7 Sea Serpent Day
7 Lighthouse Day
7 Kids Day
8 Sneak Zucchini On Your Neighbor’s Porch Night
8 Senior Citizens Day
9 Polka Festival
10 Lazy Day
11 Presidential Joke Day
12 Middle Child’s Day
13 Blame Someone Else Day
14 Creamsicle Day
15 Relaxation Day
16 Elvis Memorial Day 1977
16 Bratwurst Festival
17 Thriftshop Day
18 Bad Poetry Day
19 Potato Day
19 Relaxation Day
19 Aviation Day
20 Radio Day
21 Spumoni Day
21 Hawaii Day
22 Be An Angel Day
23 Ride the Wind Day
23 Rick Springfield b-day 1949
23 Sponge cake Day
24 Knife Day
25 Kiss-And-Make-Up Day
26 Steven Wright b-day 1954
26 Cherry Popsicle Day
27 Petroleum Day
28 World Sauntering Day
29 Robin Leach b-day 1941
29 More Herbs, Less Salt Day
30 Toasted Marshmallow Day
31 Trail Mix Day

That list comes from the newsletter of Tom Wilkinson, the guy behind the chock-full-of-information Web site Vegas4locals (http://www.vegas4locals.com/), who finds more unusual (even weird) things to do in Vegas than anyone I know. And many of them are free or he provides a coupon or offer for a discount.

Speaking of oddball items – try this site – http://www.cheapovegas.com/index.php and the related http://www.bigempire.com/vegas/ where you can read about “Vegas on 25-cents a Day.” “Vegas for the Cheap of Heart” takes “frugal” to extremes I never even thought of, even long ago when Brad and I were first-class scroungers on the slightly weird side of Las Vegas.

Then there’s http://www.thevegashustler.com/. I would have never found an “Underground Guide to Sin City” except the gal that does my nails at the Palms told me that her husband runs this site and I had to check it out. These days, actually the closest Brad and I get to the wild “underground” of Vegas is when we get haircuts, or our fingernails or toenails prettied up at the Amp Salon (no, just me on the toe part; Brad eschewed that but does submit to a manicure once in a while). Those guys and gals exude the new Vegas always-a-party look. We keep saying we need to go clubbin’, but that’s hard to do when you want to be in your recliner by 8 p.m. And our recliner is definitely above ground.

I’m not sure this is weird or just scary. I went to http://www.familywatchdog.us/ and found there are a lot of sex offenders in the vicinity of our condo.

You don’t see much on TV related to video poker unless you’re watching a Travel Channel special on Vegas. But imagine my surprise when video poker has become a prominent part in the storyline of our favorite TV show, Big Love. Video poker and polygamy – now there’s one really weird combination!

[Editor’s Note: And speaking of weird, this seems like an appropriate place to add Jean and Brad’s “”money”” bathroom to the list of unusual restrooms we covered in Question of the Day on this Web site (7/31/07; these are public bathrooms that anyone can visit, while Jean’s is her own private bathroom that only she and Brad and I can see).

8/17/2007

Last Thursday at 7 p.m. there was a drawing at the Palms. We didn’t plan to participate because we wouldn’t have any advantage. You couldn’t win entries by playing; any person who had swiped their card once that week for a daily promotion would have one entry if they swiped their card that Thursday.

However, we unexpectedly found ourselves at the Palms at that time – a growing progressive had lured us – so we swiped our cards. The progressive was hit (sadly not by us), but instead of going home, we decided we could spend a few more minutes while they called 10 names, each one to win $1,000. How long could that take?

My first clue that this was going to be a waste of time was that we didn’t see any of the “drawing regulars,” those who can play for hours and hours and overwhelm a drawing drum. But we’re retired – we could spare the 5 or 10 minutes before we went home and jumped into our swimming pool for a cool-off.

The second clue came when, after they called the first 10 names, only two people answered the call. Eight more names were called and no one answered. Eight more names were called. Still no response. I don’t know how many times eight new names were called with no response. If I’d known I was going to write about this fiasco, I would have taken notes.

After umpteen rounds of name-calling, perhaps 15 minutes or so, finally one person yelled they were a winner. Everyone cheered. During the very next round, two more people claimed theirs. The crowd had been grumbling, but now everyone was happy. Only five more names to go. It wouldn’t be long before everyone could go home.

Wrong. They called five names, waiting two minutes to give the winner time to get through the crowd. Then five new names – and the same routine over and over and over and over again. It was now 7:30. We’d been standing there 30 minutes and mutiny was rumbling through the huge crowd.

I should also tell you that Brad had been pushing for us to go home since 7:10 p.m. He was so bored that he sat down at a keno machine and blew $10 trying to entertain himself. He kept grumbling, but the longer I stood there the more determined (he said stubborn) I was to see this thing out.

At 7:30, the employees running the drawing came to their senses and realized something I had grasped 29 minutes before: The rules of the drawing were unusual, to say the least. Sunday through Wednesday if you swiped, you got a slip of paper with some prize, usually some sort of mostly useless gift. But on Thursday, if you swiped, you just qualified for the drawing. But most people didn’t read the rules carefully and swiped on Thursday hoping to get a prize. They were just disappointed – thought the prize machine was out of paper – but never planned to stick around for the drawing.

Well, the employees huddled and said they would now draw ten names and maybe they could give out the last five $1,000 prizes faster. The crowd was ecstatic. Most didn’t care anymore if they won themselves – they just wanted five someones to win so they could go home.

Wonder of wonders, at 7:35 p.m. that first ten-number list contain my number. I was way at the back, but I held up my hand and yelled. The crowd went crazy and I was high-fived all the way to the drawing table to turn in my slot card. I don’t know exactly what happened next, since I was racing to the cage so I could be first in line to collect my $1,000 and let Brad take me home. But the crowd rushed by me in just a few minutes so I guess they quickly got their four more winners.

Are we going to do this drawing another Thursday? I may be stubborn, but I’m not crazy!

8/24/2007

Although I do have a chapter on slot machines in both Frugal books, I don’t often write about them in this column. As everyone who’s read my writings for the last nine years knows, I emphasize playing games that have the smallest casino edge, so you have a better chance to lose less money in the long run, i.e., basic strategy blackjack, or games that proceed at a slower pace so your money will last longer in the short term, i.e. paper keno. Unfortunately, most slot machines fit in neither one of those categories: There’s a big casino edge against you and they play fast as lightning.

However, I know that slots are the biggest entertainment for many players, and even conservative players who usually chose the “better” games sometimes stray over to them for a bit of play. Therefore, when I saw a recent article by Alan Krigman in his weekly email edition of Winning Ways, I thought maybe it might be of interest to people who occasionally like to take a shot at a big slot jackpot.

A caution: This is not a system to guarantee a win – you know I hate systems that give you false hope by telling you there’s a way to overcome a negative game by some form of money management.

Part 1
By Alan Krigman

One of my new heroes, Nassim Nicholas Taleb, believes history turns on highly unlikely events, which can’t really be predicted in advance, but seem logical in retrospect. He calls these “”Black Swans.”” Examples are the invention of the computer and the laser, or the meteorite from outer space that may have wiped out the dinosaurs and given rise to the age of the mammal. A small bet on such a thing will probably lose. But if it wins, the rewards can be enormous.

Mr. Taleb tries to apply this concept to the world of finance. He does it with small bets on events that are extreme long shots — bets that he usually loses, but can afford, because they’re small. He makes these bets in conjunction with larger bets on phenomena with a much greater degree of certainty, which pay modest dividends if they come through. Hopefully, the modest dividends help to cover the losses on the long shots and throw off a small profit to sustain him against the day when — hopefully — one of the Black Swans comes through for a fortune.

There’s an analogy in casino gambling. But big jackpots — and lottery prizes work the same way — aren’t really Black Swans, because they can be anticipated beforehand and their probabilities are known. Maybe you and I don’t know them, but the bosses in the $2,500 suits do.

Can you use Mr. Taleb’s general approach to go for the gold while trying to keep your head above water with much more conservative bets? Read the approach suggested [in next week’s column] and decide for yourself whether it’s something you may want to try.

—————-

Alan Krigman is a well-known casino gaming writer. If you’re willing to don your thinking cap, he can help you understand how the edge affects the chances associated with your gambling session performance and how to keep its impact as benign as possible consistent with other gambling objectives. You can get Alan’s weekly words of wagering wisdom, along with the acclaimed poetry of the beloved bard, Sumner A Ingmark, by subscribing to his free weekly email newsletter, Winning Ways. To do so, just send an email message — content is irrelevant — to winning-ways-subscribe@googlegroups.com.

8/30/2007

Here’s the guest article I introduced to you last week.

How to Get an (Almost) Free Shot at a Slot Jackpot
by Alan Krigman

People go to casinos to make money. Pretenses aside, the idea is not simply to achieve the ecstasy of victory and avoid the agony of defeat while getting a comp for the buffet. If it were, why not stay home, play chess or Parcheesi, and raid the icebox?

At the slots especially, many solid citizens gamble with a “go-for-broke” philosophy. They start with a certain bankroll and are willing to invest it in a try at whatever prize they think is worth the effort. Nobody actually wants to bust out in aspiring to bag a bundle and many losers kick themselves later for letting it happen. But folks frequently play and talk as if they don’t mind having lost, and fate often ends up testing their mettle.

It takes more discipline than most slot buffs can muster to quit with a modest profit or cut and run with a moderate setback. The promise is always looming that the jackpot, or at least a hit big enough to recover or stay in the game, may be just one spin away.
Table-game aficionados, particularly those who regularly play low-edge games like blackjack or craps with even-money or small-multiple payoffs, tend to have a different attitude. They’ve got to be realistic about risking a bankroll and leaving without it. But these gamblers are more apt than not to have exit strategies based on win goals tempered by their stakes. For instance, a bettor coming to a $10 table with $200 may realize it’s foolhardy to keep playing after a profit reaches $100 or certainly $200.

Here’s an approach that combines these strategies, attempting to achieve the best of both worlds. Divide a bankroll into two unequal portions. Use the smaller part to play the slots on a do-or-die basis. If you score, cash out and gloat. If you exhaust the allocated fraction, go to a blackjack table with the rest of your bankroll, aiming to win back what you lost at the machine.

To get an idea of how it works, make believe you start with $200. Divide it three alternate ways: $20/$180, $25/$175, and $50/$150. Say you play a machine with $1 max per pull that has a $10,000 jackpot. Slots differ from one another. But on a typical machine with a 94% player payback, the likelihood you’ll reach $10,000 before depleting your stake is about one in 10 million, playing with your whole $200 bankroll. It’s one in 90 million starting with $20, 75 million with $25, and 38 million with $50. Chances are better with $200; however they’re remote in any case.

Assume you lost the part of your money designated for the slots. What are your chances of winning it back, rather than going all the way down, by hazarding the remainder of the $200 at $10 blackjack? Following perfect basic strategy, the probabilities are 81% putting up $180 to win $20, 77% using $175 to recoup $25, and 59% investing $150 to earn $50.

Maybe you’re a fatter cat and come to the casino with $500. You might split it into $50 for the slots and $450 for blackjack. These are the same proportions as $20 and $180 on $200. Your chance of earning $10,000 at $1 per spin on the slots is one in 38 million as before. Your chance at recovering $50 with a $450 bankroll at $10 blackjack is 88%.

You have more cash on hand, though, and may wonder how bigger bets would impact this method of play. On a $2 slot machine with 94% return, all else being equal, the chance of a $10,000 jackpot would be better than on a $1 game. This makes a difference in the ultimate chance of success, which rises to one in 5,000 with $500 -– better, but not good (that’s an average of once a century if you play once a week). It’s one in 45,000 with $50. And getting back $50 at $25 blackjack with a $450 bankroll has 89% probability.

Prospects of one in 45,000 at winning $10,000 and 89% of breaking even still leave the danger of a wipeout at 11%. So you’re not exactly getting a free shot at the bosses’ bounty.

After the column last week on casino security, I found some notes in my files with more suggestions for your safety.

A casino safe-deposit box is a great security option after you win a large jackpot. Hotels usually provide safe-deposit boxes for their guests free of charge. Or the cage will take cash as “”upfront”” money that you can draw from as you need it. Some have suggested this option also has a bonus benefit: You aren’t as likely to tap into it as soon as if the funds were in your pocket.

Here are a couple of stories from the vpFREE Internet forum, with cautions about how you use your cell phone:

“”Recently I was walking through the parking lot of a casino around 11 p.m. This woman several steps in front of me was on her cell phone, apparently talking to her friend. She was describing in a very loud voice how she had just won $2,500 playing slots, and she was now in the casino parking lot walking toward her car. Anyone within 50 feet would have easily been able to understand every word she said. She probably had no clue that she was advertising to anyone within earshot that she was carrying a lot of money and might be a good robbery target.””

Someone else described this incident: “”Be careful when talking on your cell phone while sitting at a machine. If your concentration is totally on the conversation, someone can cash out your machine and you won’t even notice! I saw an old lady do this to a guy at the Palms. He was so engrossed in his phone call that she actually walked right up to the left side of his machine (he’d turned to the right in his seat), cashed it out, grabbed the ticket, and started to walk away, all with the guy sitting there talking! I was playing a couple of machines to his right and saw the whole thing. I stood up and stopped her from leaving, got the guy’s attention, and told him what happened. He didn’t believe me until I pointed to his machine, which showed “”Paid $300″” on the screen!””

Here’s another con someone warned about:

“”The thief sits down next to you and puts a dollar in the machine. He plays a couple of hands for the minimum, usually a nickel, then asks if you’ll watch his machine while he uses the restroom. He leaves his credits on the machine. He comes back in a couple of minutes, thanks you, and continues slowly playing the minimum. He’s hoping that you need to use the restroom, and will ask him to watch your machine — after all, he trusted you! If you do, he’ll, of course, cash out your ticket and take off! If this doesn’t work in a few minutes, he just cashes out and tries his con on someone else.

“”Perhaps you don’t know this service that all casinos provide: You can ask for a security guard to walk you to your room or to your car, a good idea when you’ve won a big jackpot that drew a lot of attention on the floor or just if you’re carrying a lot of money. This is a courtesy service with no charge. Most people will want to at least offer a tip, although it’s against many casinos’ policies for security employees to accept them. However, the offer will always be appreciated.””

7/13/2007

Brad and I had a great time in Columbus, Georgia, visiting the Frugal Princess Angela and our two now-teenaged grandchildren, Zachary and Kaitlynn. Brad, with Zachary’s help, kept busy doing the household “man jobs” that had piled up since Steve left for Iraq. And we both pitched in doing housework, laundry, and shopping to lighten Angela’s load of being both Mom and Dad and holding down her job as the executive assistant to an attorney.

However, it wasn’t all work and no play by any means. After 22 years of being retired from cooking, I wasn’t about to start now. So we ate dinner out most evenings. And we enjoyed having more leisure time for TV and movies and shopping, things that Vegas often keeps us too busy to do. We continued our regular exercise program, with a swim in their backyard pool most evenings after it emptied of all the neighborhood friends of the kids.

The high point of the visit for all of us was a luxurious casino weekend stay, compliments of our annual Harrah’s 7 Star trip – which had already paid Brad’s and my airfare from Vegas to Gerogia. We all piled into Angela’s van for the five-hour drive to Biloxi, Mississippi, where we stayed at the Biloxi Grand. Our exalted 7 Star status began as soon as we stopped at valet. No need to go to a check-in desk, even in a VIP area — we were greeted at our car with the keys to our rooms. We found that they’d assigned us to a huge suite, plus an adjoining room. This gave us a big living room in the middle, flanked on either side with large bedrooms, each with its own bath, one including a two-person Jacuzzi that looked out over the Gulf. There were three flat-screen TVs and since room movies are free for 7 Star cardholders, we had three different movies playing much of the time so everyone could have a choice.

Each room had a box of fancy food delicacies, which were attacked immediately by two always-hungry teenagers. Fortunately, our room account was loaded up with $500 in credits, so the kids could – and did – eat anytime they wanted to. We skipped the gourmet restaurant since the kids preferred to graze more frequently at the faster venues, from the buffet, snack bars, or Starbucks. They ordered up room service when they were watching free movies in the room and we all pigged out when we were lounging in our free cabana at the pool, another 7 Star perk. Even with all that gluttony, at checkout time we still had about $125 left from the $500 use-or-lose credits. However, the frugal family wasn’t about to let that go to waste, and mad shopping in the gift shop at the last minute found that we had to leave only one cent in the account!

And, yes, the adults did gamble. Angela doesn’t have any casinos near her, so being able to play is a real treat for her. Brad and I enjoyed having a vacation from video poker most of this trip, but we did put in some play during the three days we were staying at the Grand. I always learn something new when I play in a casino that I don’t usually visit. Tune in next week and I’ll give some of my findings from this trip.

7/20/2007

Last week I talked about our recent 7 Star trip to Grand Biloxi. I always like to visit a new casino or one that I haven’t been to for a long time. I usually get some new and valuable information that helps me continue to make good choices about where and what to play.

Since the Grand Biloxi is a Harrah’s property and I already play or have played in other Harrah’s properties both in Vegas and other locations, I wanted to examine their Total Rewards program. I already knew that all Harrah’s casinos have the same requirement for earning base points (or credits, as they call them) on their card: It takes $10 coin-in to earn one base credit on a video poker machine, $5 on a slot machine. These base credits are the ones used to determine your “tier credits.” You need, annually, to get to and maintain 4,000 base credits for Platinum Level, 10,000 for Diamond, and 100,000 for 7 Star.

Most other policies concerning the Harrah’s Total Rewards program fall under the heading, “It Depends.” The most important variation is in the matter of “bonus” credits, which you might (or might not) earn at the same time you’re earning base points. That number depends on the machine you’re playing and the property where that machine is located. Slot machines earn the most bonus credits, but how liberal or conservative the individual casino sets this number depends first on the competition and then on how loose or tight they set individual machines. In any case, you can’t know this information without trial periods on the machines you want to track – and sometimes even this doesn’t give exact answers, since the amount of time spent on a machine might be a deciding factor. Video poker machines are usually set to accrue bonus points more slowly than slot machines, and the trend is for the ones that have the best payables (like 9/6 Jacks of Better) to give no bonus credits at all. (We found this to be true at the Biloxi Grand.)

Another policy that differs from one Harrah’s to another is how they give bounce-back cash. In Vegas we get a cash coupon in the mail. Since we live there, we can collect all the bounce-back cash that’s sent to us. However, when we travel, we often find that we can’t collect the bounce-back we earn, because we won’t be going back to that area before the bounce-back coupons expire. Thus, we were happy to learn when we got to Biloxi that the Grand gives same-day Free Play instead of mailed bounce-back coupons, so we got several hundred dollars that we wouldn’t have collected had we received the coupons in the mail after we returned to Las Vegas. (Hint to casinos: If you do send bounce-back coupons to out-of-towners, please take the zip code of the customer into consideration and allow for appropriately longer redemption periods!)

One thing we’ve noticed is that 7 Star benefits vary from casino to casino. We’ve had friends go to one Harrah’s property where several casino executives met their limo at the casino door to welcome them. Other friends went to another Harrah’s property where they were not only not given any special attention from casino employees, but they didn’t have even a small fruit basket as a welcoming gift in their room.

We were really pleased with the 7 Star benefits we received at Grand Biloxi, especially since that area is still far from recovered from hurricane Katrina and all the casinos remain in a rebuilding stage. We look forward to going back in a few years when Harrah’s has its new big “”grand”” Grand resort built. But we hope even with increased amenities and luxury, they won’t lose the warm friendly atmosphere we found there this summer.

7/26/2007

When Brad and I came home after two weeks in Georgia, we walked into what I consider an emergency in my life, one that could only be met by suicide – or at least a major nervous breakdown. My computer crashed. The screen was black and no amount of button pushing would revive this dead animal. I had never had a computer crash since I jumped into cyberspace 10 years or so ago. I hear I’ve been terribly lucky that it hadn’t happened before.

Fortunately, I’d backed up almost everything on a flash drive that I took on vacation with me because I thought I might have some time to work on some writing projects. (Silly me, thinking I would have time to work when I could loaf with my grandchildren!) However, that early crazy thought and a flash drive saved the day – and I had only a temporary mental meltdown while my desktop monster was in the shop.

So now I have another Vegas business to add to the ones I recommended in my May 25th column: A Computer Repair, at 3301 Spring Mountain Road #9. The phone number is 702/506-3700. Abi, a computer expert, came to our condo at my frantic request on the 4th of July, when most businesses were closed. My computer was rebuilt, with a new mainboard and power supply, then delivered back to me and hooked up, and many of my old software programs updated and/or reinstalled. I can’t praise this business enough – after all they saved my life, or at least my mental health!

Speaking of recommendations for Vegas businesses, in that same column I had asked for help in finding someone to do electrical work. However, I just ran across a company that not only does electrical work, but almost any other kind of household repair or renovations. Angelo, a truly nice guy from Nice Guys Service, did several handyman jobs for us a few weeks ago and his fee was very reasonable. He said their guys had 25 years experience in plumbing and they did indoor and outdoor painting, carpentry, masonry, tile work – skilled labor in all phases of construction. You can call them for a free estimate at 702/237-2696.

For another place that offers free or heavily discounted Vegas shows, you can add to the Web sites I gave in the June 14th column this one: http://www.vegasseatfillers.com/.

At http://www.cardplayer.com/magazine/article/14697 is an interesting article about some of the new poker lingo that is showing up in the card world.

An article with some new (at least to me) information about advantage play appeared a couple of years ago in Mercury, a Vegas alternative newsweekly that is no longer in print.
http://www.lasvegasmercury.com/2005/MERC-Feb-17-Thu-2005/25792484.html
Mercury was replaced by CityLife, which you can pick up free at the Palms and many other places in town. Or, you can read its quirky and offbeat material at http://www.lasvegascitylife.com/.

Due to my computer crash, I have lost some of my files that contained column material I planned to use in future Frugal Friday columns. If I’ve promised anyone that I would write about a specific subject or would review a product, please e-mail me with the details and I’ll try to get to it soon.