7/5/2002
ADVICE BRIEFS
Keep track of your slot club points carefully, recording numbers at the beginning and end of each session. A rash of casino computer problems has been reported lately, with players losing substantial numbers of points. Most have been able to straighten out the problem by talking to casino personnel. However, valuable benefits, including cashback, would have been lost if the players hadn’t been keeping track of the numbers and couldn’t have shown good records for proof.
Watch for hidden charges when you stay in a hotel-casino (or any hotel, for that matter). There are ways to avoid many of them. Read the eye-opening article at www.msnbc.com/news/597206.asp about the way hotels can nickel-and-dime you — and with inflation, this can add up to many dollars!
Do you have a lot of points accumulated at a casino where they cannot be redeemed for cashback, but only for merchandise, comps, and services? Are you finding that you have a hard time using them up for your own personal needs and wants, but they’re not directly transferable to another person? Investigate whether you can use them to get gift certificates, which you then could give to someone else. I have used such certificates — from restaurants, hair salons, and spas, for example — as gifts for friends, family, and hosts.
You might want to consider the air quality if you’re planning to move to Las Vegas. Brad was just diagnosed with asthma, a surprise to us because we thought of asthma as a problem of young people. His doctor says that it’s quite common for older people to develop it when they move to Las Vegas. Air pollution, caused by a concentration of heavy auto fumes in the valley, and the dust of the desert stirred up by constant construction are the culprits. Fortunately, daily bronchial-dialator medication is controlling Brad’s problem. He has also been diagnosed with severe osteoarthritis of the lower back, sometimes causing severe leg and hip pain, but we can’t blame that on Las Vegas — just the consequences of getting older!
Mark July 16 (and the third Tuesday of every month) on your calendar if you will be in Las Vegas and you’re one of these “”heroes”” that the Station Casinos would like to honor: firemen, police, nurses, EMT workers, medical technicians, teachers, and veterans. You can eat free at any Station casino on that day. The fine print: You must present valid proof of occupation prior to ordering. Hero offer good for one complimentary meal per person, per day. Does not apply to more than one individual unless qualified. Independent security personnel and military dependents are not included in this offer. Gratuity not included. My fine print: plan for a long wait. Brad and I were there at an off time, and the line was extremely long.
If you haven’t got a new player’s card since the Barbary Coast went to a new slot club system (like the one at the other Coast properties), be sure to do so before you start playing. The old cards will not work. Also comp dollars leftover from the old system will expire at the end of this year — so use before you lose!
A final brief — and pardon the pun! At Caesars Palace, European-style topless sunbathing is allowed at the Venus Pool.
7/12/2002
Back when we lived in Indiana, Brad would say he’d never want to move to Las Vegas, because then where would we go on vacation? Now — would you believe it? We actually look forward to LEAVING Las Vegas once in awhile. No, we haven’t stopped loving our life here, but a vacation to us means a change. And we occasionally like a change — in the weather, in our daily schedule, in the scenery. Brad enjoys not having to compete with the computer for my attention and I enjoy a brief escape from a heavy e-mail load. We even enjoy the “freedom” from having to run around town collecting bounce-back cash. (I never thought I would ever type THAT sentence!)
As you read this, we’re on vacation — on a cruise ship in the Pacific Ocean, the Carnival Elation, stopping at some Mexican ports before we return to L.A. on July 13 and drive back to Las Vegas. With Brad and me are my daughter, Angela, the Frugal Princess, and her Army Ranger hubby, Steve, just back from Kosovo, safe and sound. And to make my life complete, my two much-beloved grandchildren are on board too — Zachary, now a grown-up nine, and Kaitlynn, seven, going on 17. How can they be this old? They were just babies a short time ago! The worst thing about aging — even worse than all the aches and pains — is that time is flying past so very very quickly.
ANSWERING YOUR QUESTIONS
Question: My husband plays 10-quarter Deuces Wild every chance he gets. I only play 5-quarter machines. Though he spends more than twice the dollars I do, he’s hit no royals on those machines this year and only a few quad deuces. I’m trying to convince him he would be better off playing the 5-quarter machines, because he has twice the chance of scoring. Also, a $2K royal means a W-2G. I’ve had 5 royals this year. What are your thoughts?
Answer: There’s no one simple answer here; a lot of factors must be considered. First, I must state the legality issue — all wins are SUPPOSED to be reported to the IRS, so the W-2G factor shouldn’t matter. However, in practice, most recreational gamblers do not report wins unless they do get a W-2G. Therefore, if you’re going to report only W-2G wins and don’t keep the required log to also record losses, your royals on the 10-quarter machines will, depending on your tax bracket, not help your bottom line nearly as much because of the tax bite.
Leaving tax considerations out, your husband playing twice the coin-in on the same over-100% pay schedule at the same accurate skill level will IN THE LONG TERM have an expected return that will be twice as much as yours. However, in the short term, as you can see from your experience so far, it can be very choppy, since royals and other jackpots come in no regular fashion. If they come more often at the higher denomination, you’ll be in a nice winning streak; however, the opposite is just as likely to happen. The long term might be a very LONG time away! In the meantime, you and he have to decide whether you have the bankroll AND the temperament to ride out the possibly longer losing periods, while you’re on the way to that more profitable long term.
Smile of the Week, from CasinoWire (www.casinowire.com/newsletter/). A man coming out of a Las Vegas post office warned another just entering, “”Don’t play their slots. They’re loose, but they only pay off in stamps.”
7/19/2002
We’re home from a Mexican cruise that Brad and I took with my daughter and her family. They’re now back at their home at Fort Drum in upstate New York, where they hope they can ALL stay awhile. The Army has promised that Steve will not be deployed overseas the rest of this year, but after that there are no guarantees — it depends on the world situation. I pray for world peace all the time, but in my heart I’m afraid there’s no real hope for it.
Before I left on vacation, the news was that the Western casino on the edge of downtown Las Vegas would close, unable to meet the demands of the Culinary Union. An interesting “requiem” for the casino was written on an Internet bulletin board and I asked the author, Stuart Resnick, for permission to quote it here in this column. However, when I got back home, I found out that the owner had decided not to close the casino after all. But I decided this piece was so interesting that I would still include it. The Western WILL close someday and it never hurts to have a requiem on file! Here it is.
“When I worked in Vegas in 1990, my ‘break-in’ job was dealing blackjack & roulette at the Western. It was also the site of my first jackpot: hitting 4 deuces on the FPDW quarter machine.
“They had penny slot machines; if you played 5 pennies, you could win a car as the jackpot. There were occasionally stories of people who’d hit the jackpot but with less than 5 pennies played, so the payoff was something less than $100. When someone actually did hit the jackpot, I remember the casino manager appeared in the publicity photo, but had a look on his face like his dog just died.
“Roulette was played with 10-cent chips, so it was very challenging to deal. Low-level gamblers would buy 400 chips or whatever and spread them in stacks around the board, feeling like high rollers.
“Blackjack was a $1 minimum, so many of our customers were just there to get their free beer with an absolute minimum of risk.
“The drug dealers were among my favorite customers. Not only did they tip OK, but if they lost a few hundred dollars, they just shrugged and left, without bitching & moaning like our usual clientelle.
“Because of that one jackpot I hit, the Western for years sent me deals for 3-night stays with food (such as it was) for $16 total. I took advantage of it once or twice, till I got old enough to want something just a LITTLE classier.
“My favorite factoid to share with people to give them a sense for what it was like to work at the Western: It wasn’t uncommon for players to sit down at the blackjack tables with the band-aids still on their forearms from the plasma they’d donated to get their bankroll.”