12/1/2005

Last month I wrote a couple of columns about gift cards. This week I want to talk about one of my favorites. You can have Starbucks –- I’ll take the Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf any time. Why? For one thing, having a nice choice of drinks that are fat-free and with no sugar added is a real luxury. And since I have a never-ending number of their gift cards from my play at the Palms, it’s also a very frugal luxury for me!

If you have many more Palms points than you can use up in the usual Palms outlets, you might be interested in finding various ways you can use them at the Bean (as it’s affectionately known by its fans). You can buy drinks and fancy pastries and bulk coffee and tea with comps for the Bean you’ve obtained at the slot club desk, using your points. A handy idea is to get a comp to buy gift cards in larger amounts (you can get a food court comp for up to $100 in one day), then you don’t have to waste time going to the slot club desk and getting a comp every time you want a drink. Plus, you can use these gift cards in most other Bean stores and give them as gifts to others.

Go to www.coffeebean.com/locator to find the Bean outlets in California (123), Nevada (12), and Arizona (9). Click on “International Outlets” and you’ll find them in many other countries as well.

One new outlet in Vegas not yet listed on the Web site is at the corner of Flamingo and Rainbow, in a freestanding building in the Albertsons strip mall. Notice on the Internet list that there are two in the Venetian and one in both Green Valley Ranch Casino and the District nearby. There’s also one in the Desert Passage Mall at the Aladdin that’s not listed. The only ones that I know for sure that don’t take the gift cards are the ones at the Rio and at the airport, the latter a major disappointment since I always like “one for the air.” (I’ve been known to actually use real money at the airport outlet to buy my favorite drink, a frosty orange-juice mixture called a Sunrise, but don’t tell anyone; I don’t want to ruin my frugal reputation.) I’d appreciate an e-mail if you find others that aren’t company stores and don’t take the gift cards.

A California friend, David, informed me that all the Beans serve kosher food. He sent me this interesting article, at http://tinyurl.com/e2agk, about the history of this chain.

There are also other ways you can use your points at the Palms as gifts besides Bean gift cards. Obviously, if you take someone to dinner, whether at the food court or one of the Palms restaurants, you can use your points to pay the whole bill. But sometimes you’d like to share your points with someone else so they can use them when they aren’t with you. One way is to get a comp to the movie theater where you can buy gift certificates (in $5 denominations) that can be used both for movie tickets and for food at the movie concession stand in all Brenden Theaters, in or out of Vegas.

The most versatile Palms gift card can be “bought” at the gift shop with your points. There’s a daily limit: You can use your points to buy no more than a total of $100 in gift cards in any one day. This card can be given to another person, who can use it in any Palms outlet that takes the Discover credit card, which includes all the restaurants (except in the food court), the spa and salon, and the gift shop. It can also be used to pay for a hotel bill.

12/8/2005

• Did you know that NY-NY has little red apples instead of hearts on their playing cards? (Get it? The Big Apple.)

• Why do so many casinos keep the temperature at a “freezing” level in the summer, then complain about their electric bills. The hotter it gets outside in triple-digit Vegas, the more likely you should bring a parka and gloves in order to play in comfort.

• I don’t know how I got along before I could surf the Internet to find good video poker playing opportunities and keep up on all the current slot club promotions.

• Good sign I saw in NY-NY, advertising their ESPN Zone restaurant: “Food so good you’ll pray for overtime.”

• I like the newest made-up word in the gambling field, “racino.” I wonder who gets the credit for this neat name for a casino at a racetrack.

• The best-named road I’ve ever been on is in Colorado, a back way out of the little gambling town of Central City. Its official name is Virginia Canyon Road, but it’s usually referred to as “Ohmygawd Road.” It was recommended to us by someone (whose health is in danger if I ever see him again), who described it as “scenic.” If a narrow curvy gravel road with steep rock walls on one side and plunging canyons on the other –- with no guardrails –- is your idea of scenic, well, you’ll be a happy traveler. I don’t think I ever prayed harder and promised God more perfect future behavior.

• Do you know what the Golden Gate Hotel & Casino was called immediately prior to it being re-named the Golden Gate? The answer is Sal Sagev (Las Vegas spelled backwards!).

• The Bellagio Fountains, largest water fountain in the world, has 1,198 water devices submerged in the lake. When the fountains are in action, some jets of water race across the lake approaching speeds of 600 miles per hour.

• From an Internet friend: The Four Queens not only still has coin machines, they still have a “”change cart”” being pushed around the casino by a “”change girl.” When I play there and she walks by pushing her cart asking, “”Change? Change?”” I want to say, “”Hell yes, make me thirty years younger and forty pounds lighter with hair.”” That would be a nice change.

• From www.thedealersnews.com: The term “Helldorado” was conceived in 1881 when miners wrote that instead of finding their “Eldorado” of riches, they ended up washing dishes or doing menial jobs, finding their “Helldorado” instead.

• The king of hearts is the only king without a mustache.

• I collect gambling/casino/Vegas quotes; here are some I like:

By Mike Caro, poker expert: “In the beginning, everything was even money.”

Reported in Casino Player by a Missouri gambler, on the state’s debate over whether riverboat casinos should still be required by law to leave the dock. “Baby, I ain’t here for a boat ride.”

By the president of the Hard Rock, when asked whether the room where John Entwistle of The Who died would be set aside and marked in any way, “I think a room a guy dies in is not a positive marketing opportunity.””

12/16/2005

Do You Need to be Perfect?

I get a lot of questions about whether it’s really necessary to try to learn computer perfect strategy, including all penalty-card situations, for every video poker game you ever play. These days I answer that question somewhat differently than I used to.

When Brad and I started playing VP 15 years ago, we learned JoB from Lenny Frome’s simplified strategy charts, which had no penalty cards. But then we switched to full-pay Deuces Wild and gradually learned the penalty-card situations, because we played almost no other game for many years. When we went up to dollars, we switched our core game to Double Bonus. We played it so much for so many years at the higher denominations that we learned Dancer’s professional strategy, which included the penalty cards.

However, the VP world is different now. If you play often, and if you’re trying to look for the very best plays, you probably need to branch out from your core game and learn to play others. I still recommend that you learn to play one game at a time and then, very slowly, add others – and keep practicing with the software as you switch back and forth. But I recommend that most people stick to simplified strategies.

More and more VP players, even frequent and skilled players, are choosing the Frugal Strategy Cards by Skip Hughes and the Frugal Video Poker software. Both give simplified strategies (Skip’s cards are based on the ones in FVP) that don’t take penalty cards into consideration, but cost you very little in EV (expected value, or the theoretical return of the game). Simplified strategies allow players to learn more games, a growing need for present-day advantage players.

Of course, you can practice in the Perfect mode with Frugal VP if you wish, instead of the simplified Strategy mode without penalty cards; you have that choice. Some players like the challenge of playing as “”perfectly”” as possible. And some high-denomination players are playing with such a small edge that they feel they need to squeeze out as much EV as possible. Personally, I’d rather limit my choices to plays with a high enough EV that I already have a pretty good edge without having to go to the 2nd or 3rd decimal place where knowing penalty-card situations might just barely make the play positive.

Here are a couple of hints for those who want to learn, for whatever reason, the Perfect strategy, especially for a very difficult game like DB. Get Dancer’s Winner’s Guide for that particular game, which contains all the details and explanations you need to master it at a “professional” level. Also, you might find it easier to study one penalty-card situation at a time, only picking up the next one when you have the first one down pat so it’s second nature. For a long time, when Brad and I first learned DB, we had a “Rule of the Day” on which we’d concentrate. (And we still use that same technique when we need to play a game we haven’t played for a while.)

However, I strongly believe that most people will play a simplified strategy more accurately than if they tried to learn a perfect one. And, more important in most cases, slot club and promotion benefits make up a good part of the EV of a total play. Therefore, you can probably play faster (without sacrificing accuracy) with a simplified strategy and gain a lot more with those extra benefits than you’re losing in ignoring penalty-card situations. As Skip Hughes says so often, your time is probably spent better in scouting for better playing opportunities than by trying to learn every little penalty card play.

Since Frugal Video Poker, the first to have both a tutor and a strategy-generating feature, came out, I’ve used it exclusively for a non-penalty-card strategy when learning a new game. I especially like it for generating a simplified strategy when I’m making up charts for Multi-Strike. That game, in which you constantly switch among four strategies, is already hard enough to play, so I don’t

12/22/2005

Brad and I are enjoying the holidays this week in Columbus, Georgia, with the Frugal Princess family – my daughter Angela and her Army Ranger husband Steve, and our beloved grandchildren, Zachary and Kaitlynn. It used to be that we couldn’t wait to get to Las Vegas and now we enjoy the opportunity to get out of town once in a while. But it’s still our favorite city in the whole world, so while we’re gone, here are some interesting quotes about it.

“”Las Vegas is the most honest fake city in the world.”” –Frank Scoblete

“”Vegas is becoming an adult pinball palace.”” –Mark Pilarski

“”To the devoted climber there is the lofty peak of Mt. Everest; for the avid golfer there is the wind-swept fairway at St. Andrews; and for the gaming devotee there is the neon-studded allure of Las Vegas.”” –Marvin Karling Ph.D

“”Las Vegas is operating on the lower levels of human need–money, sex, and power. –Ian Andersen

“”Las Vegas is loaded with all kinds of gambling devices. Dice tables, slot machines, and wedding chapels.”” –Joey Adams

“”It’s mathematically impossible to win (long term) at a game where the other side has the advantage. Vegas was built by players trying to disprove this fact.”” –Bob Dancer

“”Every now and then when your life gets complicated and the weasels start closing in, the only cure is to load up on heinous chemicals and drive like a bastard from Hollywood to Las Vegas … with the music at top volume and at least a pint of ether.””
–Hunter S. Thompson

“”I sometimes think of Las Vegas as the Jerusalem of chance. A holy city.”” –Frank Scoblete

“”There are only two sorts of people walking the streets of Las Vegas at 2 a.m. on a winter’s night: muggers and broken souls not worth mugging.”” –Anthony Holden

“”The one phrase you’ll never hear used to describe Las Vegas is ‘understated elegance.’”
–Barry Meadow

“”Las Vegas suffers from all those infrastructural maladies and offers every ounce of the promise. For the immigrant with no English, the autoworker with no assembly line, the desperate hunch player with a fatally flawed dice system, it is the place for fresh starts, second chances, and last stand.” –John L. Smith

“”Las Vegas is the only place in the world where you can get tanned and faded at the same time.”” –Sal Sagev (this is anonymous, Las Vegas spelled backwards)

“”More people miss more flights out of Las Vegas than anywhere else.”” –Andrés Martinez

“”Las Vegas is a magnet for the exploration of human darkness.”” –Adam Fine

And now an only-in-Vegas news report, from the Internet: “It seems that there was a robbery spree of convenience stores overnight and into the wee hours on Friday morning. One of the potential targets was a store in Green Valley, and the masked gunmen entered brandishing automatic weapons and demanding money. One of the perps approached a fellow who was playing video poker in the store and demanded his wallet. The VP player turned it over to the crook, who immediately saw that it contained no money. Apparently, around this time, a bread truck pulled into the lot to make an early-morning delivery, spooking the robbers, who fled the store. Our true trooper turns back to his machine and continues to play. He holds a T,K hearts and calmly draws the J,Q,A for a $1,000 royal. Only in Vegas.”

(My thanks to Terrence “”VP Pappy”” Murphy for providing me with many of these quotes, from his extensive collection of quotes about gambling and related topics.)

Happy holidays to all!

12/29/2005

I don’t have a regular column for this week and here are my TOP TEN excuses … er … reasons:

10. I’ve been spending some of the holidays with my grandchildren and they keep me pretty busy. (All grandparents will accept this excuse!)

9. I’ve been out of town and not near a casino part of the time – and that got me out of the gambling mode and mood. (Out of sight, out of mind.)

8. My computer was tired of writing about casino and gambling topics and went on strike and crashed.

7. I OD’d on comped holiday dinners and party food and need time to recover on a toast diet.

6. I’m having my usual end-of-the-year stress about throwing away all the expiring coupons that I didn’t have time or energy to redeem.

5. It’s about time to pull together my 2005 gambling records and figure out what I need to give to the IRS.

4. I need to take time to make a serious New Year’s resolution list about slowing down and not scheduling Brad so much to do – that one artery in his heart just can’t take a 7th stent – and I can’t take making one more 911 ambulance call.

3. This is a 5th Friday in the month and I dilute the EV of my monthly paycheck. (I wonder if this is a good time to ask Anthony for a raise?)

2. I would like to give my long-suffering editor, Deke Castleman, a week off from removing too many exclamation points! (Deke, you can leave that one in – it fits okay, I think.)

And the number-one excuse … er … reason why I don’t have a regular column for this week: I HAVE JUST FINISHED WRITING ANOTHER BOOK AND I’M SICK AND TIRED OF WRITING. (More news later about this new book and when you can see it on the shelves of your local bookstore.)

11/3/2005

Last week I started a trip report about our recent stay at Caesars Palace, participating in an invitational slot tournament. I promised the rest of the story for this week.

First, the scam about which I dangled a few clues at the end of Part 1. The person who should have known better was yours truly. The second day of the tournament, Brad was up in the Palace Tower tournament area playing one of our four sessions. I was down on the casino floor at the row of NSUD machines where we were camping out, working on getting in our required number of points to receive the rebate of our $5,000 entry fee. I had some cash tickets from the previous day’s play, so I put one for $625 in the aisle machine (first mistake). Then I partially turned my back (second mistake) for just long enough to feed another ticket into the adjacent machine to save it for Brad, who’d be coming down from the tournament area soon. I put in his slot card, placed a bottle of water on the flat-top machine, and hung a sweater on the back of the chair so no one would think it was a free machine. Then I turned back to “my” aisle machine, put in my slot card, and started to play. Shock! There were no credits on my machine.

Right then I knew I had lost $625 before I played my first hand of the day. Yes, I saw that $625 had been cashed out – it said so right on the monitor. But why hadn’t I heard the distinctive sound that is made when someone cashes out a ticket? And I had turned my back for less than 30 seconds – why didn’t I, out of the corner of my eye, see a hand hit the cash-out button, then take the ticket.

To make a long event into a short story: Yes, I called a supervisor right away. She checked the machine innards and it showed that the ticket had been cashed out less than a minute after I’d put it in; the machines keep records of everything. The cash-out ticket had a number that they checked, but it had already been cashed in at a kiosk. The supervisor put surveillance on watch, but that was like locking the barn door after the horse has been stolen. The crooks were long gone. I say crooks (plural) rather than crook.

The supervisor explained how they work in teams. Since the cash-out button and ticket dispenser are on the very edge of the machine near the aisle, at waist level, one person can casually saunter by and, barely moving his arm, hit the cash-out button, then continue walking without breaking stride. His partner in crime can wait a few seconds and follow the same routine, swooping up the ticket. Why didn’t I hear anything? Although the other machines in the bank made a loud sound when cashing out, this particular machine’s soundmaker wasn’t working (or was turned off).

So I was taken in by pretty smooth crooks. They were probably aware there was big-money play during this tournament time, had scouted out the machines, and knew the weak points they could exploit. That didn’t, however, make me feel any better than if they’d been dumb crooks!

Brad was philosophical about it, though. He said I could have lost that $625 after I started playing in less than 10 minutes, maybe even five minutes if I’d played fast. So we just added it to our regular play losses and I tried not to think about it. Fortunately, we continued to hit four-deuce jackpots right and left and that helped to erase the theft from my mind.

Bottom line: Even with many secondary jackpots (total $40,000), we pulled out a VP win of only $13,000. This gives you an idea of the severe drain that occurs in between jackpots, even when you’re hitting them regularly. However, we were very happy for this amount, since the game itself is negative and any win is a good one.

We came in 10th in the tournament (out of 100 entries) for $5,000. These tournaments are very top heavy in the prize structure and we felt lucky when we realized that we beat #11, who got only $2,000, by six points. Three thousand for six points shows you it surely pays to play as fast as you can

11/11/2005

It used to be that when we talked about casino benefits, we were referring mainly to cashback and comps. Comps were most often for food and rooms; if they also included shopping options, it was usually in the casino gift shop and other casino-owned in-house outlets. Today, many casinos, especially in Las Vegas, are expanding their benefit options to retail stores outside the casino.

This option can be in the form of gift cards or vouchers that players can earn, either in an ongoing or a short-term casino promotion. It might be in the form of shopping-spree invitations that casino marketing departments mail out periodically. Or, as during this time of year, it might be in the form of holiday shopping, using special points you’ve earned all year, besides your regular cashback points.

We’ve earned these “outside” benefits for grocery stores like Vons and Albertsons; Rite-Aid drugstores, where we could use it even for co-pay on prescriptions; gas stations; Wal-Mart and Target; hardware stores like Home Depot; and department stores, from good old Penney’s and Sears to the upscale Macy’s, Neiman-Marcus, and Saks.

The casinos offering holiday shopping usually set up a “mall” in a casino ballroom and you can use your points for a variety of merchandise, including jewelry, toys, clothing, appliances, and electronics. Occasionally, casinos offer merchandise for points, using a catalog. Harrah’s is one that does this.

Our favorite gift-card/voucher offers are those for big shopping malls (like the ones for the Outlet malls that the Cannery regularly offers on certain days) and debit cards from credit-card companies like Visa and American Express. These give us a big choice of where to shop, thus making the benefit even more valuable.

Often, shopping offers are in addition to cashback, comps that can be used only inside the casino, or other casino benefits. Many Strip casinos have sent out these shopping-spree invitations in the past, including the Hilton, Caesars, NY-NY, Bally’s, Paris, and Harrah’s. Sometimes players can take gift cards instead of cashback, like at the Cannery and the Rampart, with the gift cards worth more than the cash they’re replacing. Popular during this energy crisis are gas benefits. The Cannery, Rampart, and Terrible’s have run or are still running promotions for these, in which you have to earn a certain number of points to get the gas. This is often a double-dipper promotion, in that sometimes you don’t have to redeem the points, thus saving them for cashback too.

The fact that many Vegas casinos are turning to this kind of promotion is a positive trend for the frugal gambler. And my favorite frugal trick is, as much as possible, to wait to use my gift cards until I find a sale at that particular store. Gift cards also make wonderful gifts to almost anyone. My grandchildren love it when I slip in a Wal-Mart or Target gift card with a letter. And I use them extensively for gifts and tips for hosts or other casino employees who’ve given me extra service.

Although these shopping benefits from casinos can be extremely valuable, all of them aren’t uniformly good for all players. Next week I’ll discuss some of the issues, including pitfalls, you need to consider about these kinds of offers.

11/18/2005

Last week I talked about a growing trend in casino promotions — gift cards/vouchers and shopping sprees in retail outlets outside the casino — and how they could be a great benefit for casino gamblers. This week I want to talk about some of the things that you must consider when you’re deciding whether some of these shopping and gift-card offers have good value for you personally.

Brad and I don’t take advantage of every promotion we hear about or that’s sent to us. The first thing we do is analyze the promotion in the context of the whole play we’d be making in that casino. What video poker schedule would we be playing and what are the other benefits we’d be earning, like cashback, comps, bounce-back, etc.? After adding all those things together, plus counting the shopping promotion, the whole play has to have a positive expectation for us to be interested.

You may not have such strict requirements, but you might still want to do some figuring. You don’t want to play so much or on negative machines that your theoretical loss is greater than the value of the shopping. The math tells you to skip that promotion.

You also need to look at the value of the promotion realistically. Many of the shopping-spree invitations we get are from Strip casinos, usually for upscale stores. For example, Caesars sends us an invitation for a certain amount of shopping money, but only for designated shops in the casino or the Forum mall. Sometimes none of these shops have anything we’re interested in buying, so we don’t accept this offer; it has no value for us. Other times we can find things we want or like, but the prices are extremely high compared to what we could buy similar items for in other stores. Then we value this offer at about half, or even less than, the dollar amount on the shopping-spree certificate. Brad says he gets no thrill out of wearing a $300 shirt!

Gift cards have some specific hazards of their own. Many gift cards have an expiration date. And many start charging a non-use fee, often around $2 a month, after a certain length of time, often a year or even less. If you hold a $10 gift card for too long, such as five months after the free period, and you might find you now have a balance that is zero! The key here is to read the fine print on the back of the card or on any literature that comes with it. There’s usually a toll-free number, and sometimes a Web site, where you can check your balance. And when you’re figuring that “free” period, don’t make the mistake I made that caused me to lose some value on some gift cards. Sometimes the casino has obtained the cards several months before it actually gives them to you and the fee period may start sooner than you expected.

Another warning comes with general gift cards that are issued from credit card companies like Visa or American Express. If you have a specific store card, like Sears or Best Buy, you can give your card to a cashier, who can inform you of the value of the card, whether it’s fully loaded or partially used or expired. However, if you have a card issued by a credit card company, you can’t get the balance at a store. And stores can’t take the card for purchases unless you know exactly how much is on the card and they can key into the register that amount. This isn’t a problem if you have a full card, but if you have a couple of hundred cards from umpteen different sources, as we do, you need to be organized to keep track of balances on partially used cards.

11/25/2005

I’ve had some interesting input on the subject of gift cards, which I’ve written about in the last two Frugal Fridays.

About trying to keep gift cards organized and tracking the balances on each one, one reader wrote:

“I use mini post-it notes to solve this problem. Each time I get a gift card, I write the balance on a mini post-it note. As I use the card, I write down each use, and keep a running tally of the amount left. The mini post-its fit right on the card and don’t get lost. As Jean said, it’s not a big problem for individual store cards, but when you have generic gift cards (like the Visa ones we were getting through the Coast Casinos promotion), it really makes sense to keep track.”

Another reader gave a couple of Web sites that have information about the state law governing Nevada businesses that issue gift cards:

http://www.loeb.com/CM/news/news204.asp

http://www.lvchamber.com/government/2005_legislative_issues.htm

I would add here, however, you might get a gift card in Nevada that was issued by a company in another state, so this is a hazy area of law. Each state has its own laws to govern this, but the trend in state laws is to make gift cards more user-friendly. The bottom line: Always read the fine print on your cards or in the literature that comes with them.

I hope everyone had a happy Thanksgiving. And now the serious holiday shopping begins. Let’s see how many gifts the casinos will help us procure!

THE ALL-STAR GAMING EXPO HAS BEEN CANCELLED BUT HERE’S A FREEBIE!!!!

The All Star Gaming Expo, originally scheduled for Fiesta Rancho this coming weekend, has been cancelled, and all tickets purchased will be refunded. So that people planning on attending aren’t totally without classes, Bob Dancer will be teaching “”Secrets of a Video Poker Winner””, free, beginning at 11:00 a.m. in Club Tequila on Friday, December 2. All attendees will be invited to join Bob and Shirley for a complimentary Festival Buffet lunch afterwards.

10/7/2005

Several weeks ago we talked about keeping safe after you win a large jackpot. I got some good feedback from you readers:

“Occasionally a casino employee will refuse to pay you by check. Then what do you do?”

–JS answer: Brad and I have had that happen to us several times during the 21 years we have been gambling in casinos. First, we remained pleasant but very firm in our request and did not immediately take “No” for an answer. This usually worked; sometimes employees just don’t want to “bother” to take the time to get this done. If this tactic didn’t work, we asked to see the top executive on duty in the casino at the time. This usually proved successful. The only time I had to settle for taking the cash was once in a small casino late at night and they said there was no one working who was authorized to write a check. I took the cash, but we had security walk us to our car when we left later that night.

“Please warn readers to not think that you are being cautious if you take a big cash payoff straight to your hotel room. There have been many instances when big winners have been followed and robbed in the elevator, in the hallway, and even tricked to opening their hotel room to thieves. You can always deposit cash at the casino cage (or in a cage lockbox) to access later.”

–JS comment: And I guess it would be wiser not to whoop and holler so loud when you hit a big one. After 21 years of gambling and hundreds of big jackpots, I still find it hard not to be excitedly – and noisily – surprised when I hit a royal flush!

Then there was this response to my answer to the Question of the Day about tipping on Sept. 19:

“I love your book, and columns, especially being ‘frugal’ myself. However, I take exception to your answer on how to tip after a machine jackpot.

“I work security for a locals casino, and we DO in fact receive tips. We often escort performers from their room to our showroom’s dressing rooms (through the back of the house) as well as picking them up at the airport. We also do limo runs for our guests. We receive tips, and we pool the tips on the shift, usually 30-40 bucks/month for each officer.”

–JS: This is great – and I ALWAYS offer a tip to security when they do anything for us, e.g., walk us to the car or witness a jackpot payoff. It’s just that they aren’t always allowed to accept tips – that’s why I wrote the answer (below) the way I did, to cover any casino policy you might come across. (By the way, I’ve had a security guard tell me he can’t accept a tip, but that if I give it to the change girl who is giving me my jackpot payoff, she’ll see that he gets it!)

From my QOD answer: “Sharing of tips among employees is common, but you can’t always assume that. And who’s included in the share arrangement varies widely from casino to casino. Often, supervisors and security personnel aren’t included and sometimes aren’t even allowed to accept tips. You can always ask one of the employees. We use a spread-it-around method, especially if we don’t know the exact share arrangement. We keep the amount of the total tip we’ve decided on in small bills and give one to three bills to everyone who shows up (and is allowed to take a tip), including the porter tidying up nearby and the cocktail waitress walking by. This makes a lot of people happy — and makes us look more generous than if we gave the same amount to one person.”

10/13/2005

Brad and I just returned from our annual back-home trip to Indiana. We visited with long-time friends and relatives, including my 91-year-old preacher-father in a nursing home. He has Alzheimer’s and difficulty getting out his words, but he recognized us. And his bright eyes and loving touch communicated love as strong as any conversation would.

This trip always gives us a strong dose of reality. We had to actually pay for a room for six nights. That included a free breakfast, but we had to take real money out of our pockets to pay for our meals the rest of the time. And gas for the car — oh, our country does have an energy crisis!

We need an out-of-town trip once in a while to make us realize that we live a fairy-tale life in Vegas, where casinos provide us with almost all of our necessities, not to mention more luxurious extras than anyone would ever want.

Many of you have asked about the Frugal Princess and her family. They’re still loving it in Columbus, Georgia, and still reveling in the fact that they can live in their own home after 12 years in Army post housing. Sgt. Steve continues to train soldiers to become Rangers at the Fort Benning Ranger School. He’s just three years away from his Army 20-year mark and thinking about retirement plans. After 12 years as a stay-at-home Mom, Angela found a great part-time job as the administrative assistant to a local lawyer. She only works during school hours so she can continue to shuttle the two kids, now both in middle school, to myriad after-school activities.

Another thing many of you ask us about is how we’re doing at video poker. As you may remember, I’ve reported in the past that we’ve had only one losing year since we switched from BJ as our main game to VP 15 years ago — and the small monetary loss was overwhelmed by thousands of dollars of comps that year. We don’t count the value of comps in our win/loss reports, although their value would be very high. After all, when you eat out frequently on comps, you’re spending less at the grocery store. When you go to comped casino shows and events with luxurious hotel rooms, parties, and other fun activities, you spend less on non-comped entertainment options. We definitely augment our actual monetary wins with comps that keep us from spending so much of our non-gambling income.

Back to this year’s report, as usual our comp cup is overflowing. VP, however, has been more of a struggle than usual. The reason is not a mystery: We play within a large range of denominations and our royal flushes have come more often at the lower levels.

Each of the first two months of 2005 was a winner and we felt pretty good. Then in March, our record book was flooded with red ink: We had 16 losing sessions out of 21. April wasn’t much better: 14 losses out of 22 sessions. We know we’ll average losing two out of every three sessions, so we weren’t surprised at those numbers. But coupled with a dearth of royals, the bottom line for the year was very negative in spite of our good start. In May, June, and July, the royal drought continued and the bottom line got redder and redder. We’ve had bad streaks before, but this one was heading for the record books.

Much to our surprise, we got no royals in August, but managed to pull out a small profit for the month with a bunch of little wins. Our friends teased us that we were trying to dig ourselves out of a monumental hole with a teaspoon. September saw no royals, but Lady Luck must have felt sorry for us because Brad was dealt quad deuces for $10,000 on a $2 Five Play NSUD game.

Now we’re only in a little hole, one that could be filled up instantly with just one medium-denomination royal flush. We tell each other, “Just like you can’t get royal flushes all the time, you will get one if you play long enough.”

We’re playing and waiting!

10/20/2005

From Tanya, the “Happy Hawaiian”: “I followed your advice in The Frugal Gambler last December and signed up for many players club cards and played a bit in each casino. The Stardust sent me an offer of $49 for one night and the second night free, with two free buffets. I arrived very late (due to the wacko Hawaiian schedule … but the price was right), about midnight. No problem with holding the reservation, since I had called. Of course, they had given out all the rooms and, how nice for me, I’d be upgraded to a suite. When I walked in, I just started laughing and wandering around like an idiot…it was the most elegant condo-like suite I had ever seen…gorgeous. Oval bath with Jacuzzi jets, glass shower “”area”” with a shower that was the size of my bathroom at home, elegant fabrics, goose down pillows, 3 phones, and bathrobes. The rack rate on the door was $2,000 a night, but I’m guessing it’s used as a high-roller comped suite. Not bad for about $15 a night after deducting the value of the buffets.

The moral: Don’t try to figure out what the casinos are thinking. Just get in the system and take advantage of whatever comes your way — with a big grin on your face.”

————–

From Larry, commenting on the subject I’ve discussed in the past, whether to let your points build up in your slot club or comp accounts in case the casino brings out a more valuable cash-out option in the future. “It was mentioned that your points might expire in 2 to 3 years; however, it is likely to be a much shorter time than that, often in 18 months to as little as 3 months! A quick check of vpFREE’s Las Vegas database shows the following casinos where points might expire for someone after a shorter length of time: Bally’s, Caesars, Cannery, Flamingo, Hard Rock (3 months!), Harrah’s (6 months), Las Vegas Hilton, Luxor, Mandalay Bay, Monte Carlo, Orleans, Palms, Paris, Rio (6 months), Sahara, Sam’s Town, Slots-A-Fun, Suncoast, Venetian. (Subscribe to this VP site at [email protected].)”

My comments on this subject: It pays to know the expiration date of all your casino points. This can sometimes be found on the casino’s Web site. Sometimes it’s in a casino brochure. Or you can ask at the slot club booth. Some casinos do a good job of notifying you when your points are about to expire. We recently got a letter from Station Casinos informing us that our points would soon expire, but that we could keep them safe by putting at least one point on our card before the expiration date. Other casinos have much more rigid rules, for example, to the extent that your points expire a certain time after they’re earned even if you’re still playing regularly on your card.

There’s always a danger of leaving points in your account too long and losing them. Casinos are constantly changing owners, or changing their slot club and comp systems, or even unexpectedly going out of business. A recent example is the Gulf Coast casinos destroyed by hurricanes. Perhaps some will be able to retrieve their database information, but probably not all of them will. In fact, some of the casinos have said they’re not going to reopen at all.

———-

One last comment, about our struggles in pulling out of a VP losing streak. I ended up last week’s column on the subject by saying: “Just like you can’t get royal flushes all the time, you will get one if you play long enough. We’re playing and waiting!”

Well, the day before that column actually appeared, we played patiently and continued waiting, even while we were going down $8,000 deeper into our hole -– but the royal did finally come. It was a nice big one, for $20,000, which not only got us out of the hole for the day, but for the year.

Now, if we can just keep out of the hole for the last few months of the year… But we know VP is always a roller-coaster ride!

10/27/2005

I haven’t written a casino trip report for a long time, maybe not since we moved permanently to Las Vegas, so I thought I would write one about our stay last weekend at Caesars Palace.

As has been happening for 21 years now, the mail brought us an offer for a great casino event, this time an invitational slot tournament.

Most of the tournaments we’re in these days are fully comped affairs, with no entry fee. However, this one was a little different: You had to pay an entry fee, but Caesars would rebate the full amount back to you if you earned a certain required number of points. So first, we had to figure out the equity — the total prize package divided by the number of entrants minus the theoretical expected loss in getting the required number of points, plus cashback and other benefits. As soon as we found that it had a much larger equity (value) than most of the tournaments we do, we cleared our calendar for that weekend.

Almost all of the invitational tournaments we take advantage of include three free room nights. For 16 years we lived out of a suitcase when we were staying in casino-hotels, which is why, these days, we prefer to sleep in our own bed, which is only a few-minute’s drive from the Strip. Therefore, we usually don’t reserve a room and if an offer requires that you be a registered guest (as it sometimes does), the room only serves as a daytime napping station. However, this time we decided to make the weekend a mini-vacation away from my computer, so we actually packed a suitcase and stayed for two of the three nights.

We were given a mini-suite high in the new Augustus Tower, beautifully decorated, with a Jacuzzi and a perfect view of the Bellagio dancing waters. However, we’ll not stay there again; the walk from our room to our car in the garage took longer than it took us to drive home! These huge casinos that are being built and expanded need to think about the logistics of getting around in them – maybe adding little trams to carry oldsters from one end to the other or having a fleet of electric scooters at our disposal!

It was a fun weekend. The thought of a $250,000 first prize kept the excitement high during tournament play. But achieving the point requirement to get our $5,000 entry fee back was a fairly strenuous task. Brad and I are no longer used to playing so many hours in one day – let alone doing it for three days straight. However, we were playing our favorite video poker game, NSUD (Not So Ugly Ducks), and we were “hot.” (Do you notice you get more tired when you’re losing?) In the 13 hours we each played this game on $5 single-line, we hit eight sets of quad deuces. This was way out on the positive side of the bell curve! We didn’t hit any royals, but $40,000 in secondary jackpots is the same amount that we’d have received for two royals and probably a little more fun, because the winnings were more spread out and kept the losing periods in between shorter and less severe.

Next week I’ll tell you how we did in the tournament and how we came out on our play to get back our rebate. I’ll also tell you how someone who should know better was taken in by a scam pulled by a couple of crooks — one that cost that person $625.

9/2/2005

Last week I wrote about frugality, including a quote from the “Cheapskate” about the word, in which she conjured up images of the homeless digging in dumpsters for food. The very next day I came across a related item in “The Buzz,” an odds-and-ends section I always read in our newspaper, the Las Vegas Review- Journal:

“Dumpster diving is not just for the homeless. Professionals earning six-figure salaries also are doing it.” The item goes on to describe the experiences of Don Gabor, who says many Dumpster divers have regular full-time jobs and do it as a hobby, not for just survival. He says there’s a large community of these people developing across the country.

Well! I guess Brad and I can come out of the closet –- and do our tour of dumpsters in the light of day now that it’s a respected hobby!

Anyway, last week I promised I’d talk about how our frugalness has contributed to our success in casinos. I usually don’t get writer’s block, but I had it at this point, not because I didn’t have any material to write about, but because I had too much! After all, I’ve written three books with “frugal” in the title, with two more in the pipeline. What does a writer do when she reaches this point, besides sharpen all her pencils? She pulls out her ever-present trusty Thesaurus. Hey, I haven’t looked up “frugal” in my Thesaurus for a long time.

Thrifty
After I came out with The Frugal Gambler, someone decided it was a good idea and wrote The Thrifty Gambler. I wasn’t upset; imitation is the best form of admiration. (Besides, it didn’t sell very well.)

Spartan
Okay, some of the casino rooms we stayed in during the first years of our gambling life weren’t fancy. But they were clean–and more important, they were free–which allowed us to build our bankroll to play at the higher levels where we could be comped to fancy digs.

Careful
We keep careful daily records of our gambling. Not only do we need them for the good ol’ IRS, but when we’re in a losing streak, we can also go back and see our long-term overall financial success and realize that “this too shall pass.” And when we’re winning, we can keep from getting a big head by looking back at our humbling long dry spells.

Chary
We’ve always been very catious not to play beyond our bankroll. In fact, we mostly play at a lower level than we have the bankroll for. Then, when we lose, it isn’t quite so painful.

Economical
I’ve had to learn that saving time can be more economical than saving money. For many years, we didn’t rent a car while we were staying in Vegas hotels for weeks at a time. We used free shuttles or the city bus system when we found a good play that was too far for us to walk to. Eventually, I figured out that the profits we made by taking advantage of more promotions all over town more than paid for a rental car.

Hey, I’m on a Thesaurus roll here! How long can I stay on it? Tune in next week.

9/9/2005

Continuing the Thesaurus roll with “frugal.”

Economical –- I’ve had to learn that saving time can be more economical in the long term than saving money in the short. For many years we didn’t rent a car while we were staying in Vegas hotels for weeks at a time. We used free shuttles or the city bus system when we found a good play that wasn’t within walking distance. Eventually, I figured out that the profits we made by taking advantage of more promotions all over town more than paid for a rental car.

Conservative –- as in “a conservative estimate.” I’m big on underestimating the potential profit of a certain play. Overestimating your advantage in gambling puts you in dangerous territory.

Cost-conscious -– A frugal person is always aware there’s a price tag, visible or invisible, on any item or activity. Most casino games exact a “fee” (the house edge) for playing. A wise gambler studies the alternatives and chooses the game he can afford. Some gamblers choose to play poker in a non-smoking atmosphere, because they know that long hours in a smoked-filled poker room may have a health price they aren’t willing to pay. An addicted gambler takes money earmarked for the family’s necessities and loses it all, then realizes that losing relationships is a bitterly high price to pay.

Provident –- as in “providing for future needs or events.” I love this one. I’ve been accused of planning so much for the future that I don’t enjoy the present. And this is a danger. But my monthly planner would be a good illustration that a teacher could use in a class on “How To Be a Successful Casino Gambler.”

Saving –- as in “a reduction in expenditure or cost.” I always look to find an equivalent value (a room, meal, show, whatever) at a lower cost.

The Negative Look at Frugal
The Thesaurus also covers the negative connotations of the word “frugal,” the only side many people see, and wrongly so, when they look down on frugal people.

Parsimonious -– as in “stingy.” Brad and I always tip appropriately under conventional circumstances. We’ve always been generous in our charity giving. We never want to feel that our gain will work a hardship on another person, either in our personal relationships or our business dealings.

Avaricious -– as in “immoderately desirous of wealth or gain; greedy.” Brad and I are still in shock that gambling has been so successful for us. All we ever planned to do was be able to enjoy free vacations in Las Vegas. In fact, the last chapter in The Frugal Gambler is titled “Breaking Even Is a Terrific Thing.”

Penurious -– as in “unwilling to spend money.” The old saw is true, especially in gambling: It does take money to make money. Many skilled gamblers have failed, because they just didn’t have an adequate bankroll to withstand the normal ups and downs.

Poor -– Even when we didn’t have much money, we’ve never considered ourselves poor. Brad and I were frugal during our early casino vacations, because although we lived a quite comfortable life, we didn’t have a large amount of discretionary income. Why are we frugal now? I guess we just never got out of the habit!

Cheap — I’ve always said that being frugal doesn’t mean being cheap. Instead, it means always getting good value for your money at any level.

9/16/2005

In light of a recent shooting death during a robbery in the parking lot of the Suncoast, I thought it appropriate to return to the subject of casino security. Here’s some good advice from a friend of mine who’s in a casino somewhere almost every day of the year –- and collects a lot of big jackpots.

Play Safe

So you’ve just hit a jackpot. Let’s say it’s a $1 royal flush for $4,000. Congratulations!

It’s easy to get lost in the moment. The slot attendant comes over, says something nice, and asks for your ID. As you hand it over, a few things should be going through your mind.

Do I want cash or a check? If you don’t wish to carry this much cash, now is the time you must request to be paid by check. Once they come back with the $4K in cash, it’s usually too late. You can try explaining that you were too excited to ask for a check, but you really wanted to be paid with one, and they might still accommodate you — but they won’t be happy about the extra work. Once they actually hand you the cash, it’s definitely too late.

I don’t mind carrying this much cash, but do I want everyone in the area to see me receiving it? There are two ways to minimize your exposure. To get the payment over quickly, you can say, “”Please don’t count it, just hand it to me.”” Most casinos have had the money verified by at least two people, and they usually run it through a counting machine. If you believe that the casino isn’t out to cheat you, this option is better than having them count out 40 hundred-dollar bills.

A second option, even better as far as security goes, is to ask to be paid in a more secluded location. One attendant can watch your machine, while you walk into (for example) the High Limit room to be paid there. The good folks playing in there are much less likely to want to steal your $4,000.

Finally, once you’ve been paid, don’t flash the cash around.

So you’ve been paid in cash and you still have a good portion of it in your pocket or purse. Time to go home and savor the win! Did you valet park your car? This is a relatively safe choice, as valet parking is usually right in front of the casino, is well lighted, and many people are around. If you self-parked, did you get a spot right near the casino door? If not, you might ask for a casino security guard to walk you to your car. It’s part of their job, so don’t hesitate to ask.

At the very least, be aware of who’s around you as you proceed to your vehicle. If someone is following you out of the casino, you might spot this as you approach the door. If you do see someone suspicious, just stay inside the casino. If the suspicious person remains in the vicinity, it might be prudent now to request a security escort. Better to err on the side of caution.

It’s a sad fact that casinos attract some desperate people. Some are so desperate as to steal your money and/or cause you harm. Hitting a jackpot should be a happy occasion, but the smart player keeps in mind that it might attract the attention of one of these desperate people. Always be aware of your surroundings, and stay safe!

9/22/2005

The Fiesta Rancho, in North Las Vegas, will host the ALL-STAR GAMING EXPO on December 2 and 3, featuring many of the leading authorities on gaming and well-known gaming writers. The impressive line-up of guest speakers includes Steve Bourie, Jeffrey Compton, Anthony Curtis, Bob Dancer, Larry Edell, Steve Fezzik, Angel Largay, Blair Rodman, and yours truly.

Topics in the two-day seminar series include: playing the comp game, couponing, introduction to playing Texas hold ’em and playing in poker tournaments, blackjack strategies and tournament tips, craps for beginners and advanced craps, sports betting and handicapping, and video poker instruction and tips.

Tickets are $10 for each day, allowing access to all seminars for that day, or a two-day pass in advance is $15. A hotel package is also available for a casino rate of $65 per night that includes admission to all seminars. Individual tickets or the hotel package also include some gaming perks and discount food offers, plus drawing tickets for prizes at the conclusion of the Expo.

An exhibit hall will be open both days (free, even if you don’t attend any seminars) to meet with the speakers, gather the latest casino information, and browse the books, software, and other resources to help improve your gaming results. For more information or tickets, call the Fiesta Rancho at 800/731-7333 and ask about the “All-Star Gaming Expo.”

More details will follow as they become available. Updates will be included on the calendar page of my Web site, www.FrugalGambler.biz. Brad and I hope to see many of you Frugal readers there!

A FREE event this weekend — Super Run 2005, a classic-car experience, will be held September 22-25, 2005. This automotive event is open to all years, makes, and models of classic vehicles: cars, trucks, motorcycles, and special-interest vehicles, including vintage, classics, street, hot rods, muscle cars, street rods, competition vehicles, and customs. Super Run 2005 is being held on a tree-lined median with cruise lanes on Water Street in downtown Henderson, just down the road from Las Vegas.

For more information, go to www.SuperRun.com.

Now for a frugal recommendation: an alternative to buying expensive new printer cartridges. This isn’t specifically gaming related, although most of you print out gambling information at one time or another.

If you’re like me, you hate the high prices of printer cartridges and are always trying to find a cheaper way to keep your printer printing. Some VP-playing friends of ours have started a business in Vegas that can help people with this problem. It’s called Cartridge World and it’s located in the strip mall at the southeast corner of Flamingo and Decatur (where you see the Marie Callender’s restaurant).

The frugal feature of their business is that they refill laser and ink cartridges for printers, copiers, and fax machines for up to 50% less than the cost of a new cartridge. But for you Frugal Friday readers, because the owners are so grateful for all the help they’ve received through the LVA, there’s a frugal bonus — an extra 15% discount on the already-low price of their refilled cartridges. To get this discount, just mention the magic phrase — “Frugal Fridays”! Since Cartridge World is only a couple of blocks west of the Palms, this can be convenient for both locals and tourists to either bring in their own used cartridges to be filled while you wait or to purchase already refilled ones.

A disclaimer here — I have no financial interest in this business; I just like to share frugal tips I have discovered. Plus, I applaud any activity that is environmentally friendly. Did you know that a printer cartridge thrown into a landfill can take up to 450 years to decompose?

9/30/2005

I always like to attend the Global Gaming Expo each fall and see what new games and gimmicks the manufacturers are thinking up to make the casino floor more interesting. Some of the new table games and slots catch a quick glance from me, but I look closely at the new video poker offerings.

This year I found some extremely creative games, many of which I would really be interested in playing in a casino — if they become available with decent paytables. Again this year, as we do each year, Ernie Moody, the creator of multi-line video poker, and I commiserated with each other on the failure of casino executives to understand that new games won’t last on the floor, no matter how interesting they are to play, if the paytables are so bad that people lose their money too fast. Players don’t expect to win all the time, but they soon learn what machines allow them to play longer on their gambling bankroll.

You might say that 2005 was the Year of the Combo in the video poker arena. One game combined two of my favorite games, Super Times Pay and Spin Poker. And then there was the Multi-Strike/Super Times Pay hybrid, again joining together two of my favorites. The problem with both of these is that they’re combining two games that already have high volatility. These probably will be more successful on the 1-cent and 2-cent levels, because the increased volatility of the combos may even scare me away at the higher levels, no matter how good the paytables!

However, the Multi-Strike World Poker Tour machine, offering hold ’em in a Multi-Strike format, might be the biggest winner — since 2005 is also the year of hold ’em poker all over the world. I found this game very easy to play, with an intuitive strategy, even though I rarely play live poker. I’ll be interested to see what the overall return of this game turns out to be with various paytables. I’ll have to leave those computations to the math experts.

One new machine that really impressed me was All-Star Poker, a new Game King choice for multi-hand poker games. This isn’t a new game, but a new multi-game machine, with a choice of Triple Play, Five Play, and Ten Play formats. You then choose from a number of games, including some of the new and old “specialty” favorites to which the casino might not want to dedicate a whole bank. The model I saw at the show included Chase the Royal, Double Pay, Super Times Pay, and Five Aces. This gives players a big choice in one machine of what I call “oddball” games, and perhaps will keep some of these “greatest hits” alive on an increasingly crowded casino floor.

Speaking of “oddball” games, I saw that WMS Gaming has brought back the once-popular Multi-Pay game, both in a stand-alone game and one of the games in Multi-Pay Poker Plus. The latter is a multi-game also containing Jacks or Better, Bonus Poker, Double Bonus Poker, Deuces Wild, Joker Poker, and Flush Fortune.

Multi-pay has an interesting concept: You’re paid for all paying hands in one draw. For example, if you end up with a full house made up of KK333, you’re paid for the full house, the high pair and the trip 3s. The Frugal VP software has three paytables for Multi-Pay in its default list of games, so you can find the EV and the strategy of any schedule and then practice playing it on your computer.

My absolute favorite game at the show, however, was the new video poker game with attitude, Opponent Video Poker. It’s regular VP, with the addition of a “skins” game played on a poker table, where you’re playing against two animated characters. Their emotional reactions when they win a big pot or lose a hand make you feel like you’re playing with your crazy friends around the kitchen table.

The good news is that the basic video poker game is unchanged, so there’s no change in strategy on the regular VP hand. However, since your electronic opponents always play perfect strategy, at times the skins pot is large enough that you’ll go against regular strategy

8/4/2005

Math experts find it easy to figure what percentage a casino slot club gives as benefits. They start assigning x’s and y’s to unknown elements of an algebraic equation, then they take it from there. I don’t know about you, but I never used much algebra once I went out and got a job in the real world. My career choice was one that demanded more principles of psychology than formulas of mathematics — teaching English to high school boys (mostly) who hated to read. I struggled through a couple of algebra courses in college, but even that knowledge, rarely used, is about as rusty as it gets. I know there are many players in this same boat, because I get so many e-mail and personal questions about how to figure out the value of slot club benefits.

So many people ask me how to figure this without using algebra that several years ago I created a six-step “”easy” method. Sorry, but this does involve arithmetic — there’s simply no way around it — so make nice neat columns and keep your decimal points in the right place.

1) Determine how many dollars (A) you have to put through a machine to get one point.

2) Determine how many points (B) you have to earn to get $1 in benefits.

3) Multiply A times B. That number (C) is how much you have to put through the machine to earn $1 in benefits.

4) Now divide $1.0000 by C. That number (D) will have four decimal places.

5) Move the decimal point to the right two places (E).

6) Add a percent (%) sign to E and — hooray! — you have your slot club benefit percentage.

Here’s an example using this “”easy”” method and the simplest slot club point system at — let’s call it — Casino Easy.

The club brochure tells you that you earn 1 point for every dollar you put in the machine. That’s easy: $1 coin-in equals 1 point earned. Okay, you have this first figure: $1 (A).

Now you have to find out how many points you must earn to get $1 cashback. Fortunately, you see a sign at the slot club desk that says they give you $10 for 4,000 points. Also fortunately, you remember the math trick you learned in grade school that if you want to divide by 10 in your head, you just cut off a zero at the end of a number. So you do that and you have your second number. To get $1 you have to earn 400 points (B).
Now you multiply $1 (A — the number you arrived at in number 1) times 400 (B — the number you arrived at in number 2) and come up with $400 (C).

Divide 1.0000 by 400 and you get .0025 (D).

Move the decimal point two places and you have .25 (E)

Add the % sign and — hooray! — you’ve now figured out that this slot club pays .25% (or one-quarter of 1%, to state it another way), which means 25¢ for every $100 coin in.

What’s that? You say that this still isn’t very easy? Well, you’re right.

Most of us were floundering in this ocean of math confusion until Jim Wolf’s Frugal Video Poker software came out in 2002. When he originally showed me the beta version of this software, I asked him if there was anything he could do to help all of us players who were not mathematically inclined to be able to figure slot club benefit percentages faster and easier. Expert computer programmer that he was, he replied, “Piece of cake!”

And so today, if you have the FVP software, you can cut this cake fast and truly easy by using the Slot Club Cashback Calculator. It figures the percentage value of cashback (or comps) and adds it to the VP game you’ve chosen, so you can quickly come up with the total value of this play.

People ask me why I gave Jim permission to put “Frugal” in the name of this software. With this slot club calculator feature (and many others that are unique) added to the basic functions of analyzing almost any game return, tutoring you as you play, and letting you generate strategy charts that you can print out, I feel that this is the one best resource available today to help you become a more skilled VP player.

8/12/2005

I thought you all might like the trip report filed by my grandchildren. Read it and decide for yourself if Vegas is still family friendly!

Our July Las Vegas Vacation
by Kaitlynn Starr, age 10,
with additional notes by Zachary, age 12

This has been the best summer ever! What made it really fun was going to Las Vegas to visit my Grandma Jean and Grandpa Brad.

The trip to Nevada from Georgia was a long process. First we drove three hours from Columbus to Birmingham, Alabama. We stayed at a hotel so we could “park and fly.” The next morning we got up early and took a shuttle van to the airport. We got on a Southwest airplane, for free using my grandma’s frequent-flyer certificates. The non-stop flight to Las Vegas took a little over three hours, and then we were finally in Las Vegas.

We met Grandma and Grandpa in the airport, got our luggage, and went to pick up the rental car at New York-New York. Then all of us went to the Palms to eat at the coffee shop, because after that long trip on the plane, we were really hungry. Since Grandma had broken her foot just before we came, we had to push her in a wheelchair all over creation! (Zachary: It was fun pushing her downhill, but hard pushing her up hills.)

My brother and I stayed at our grandparent’s condo while Mom and Dad stayed at the condo of friends. That night we finally got to cool down when all of us went swimming in their condo pool, even Grandma with her broken foot!

The next morning my mom and I went to get manicures and pedicures at the Palms Salon using slot club points. When we came home, Grandma’s hairdresser, Cindy, showed up at the condo to cut everyone’s hair. Then all the girls dressed up and met Grandma’s friends for Afternoon Tea at Bellagio. I practiced my good manners while I was there. I wasn’t too fond of the food, but I guess my taste buds don’t like all that fancy stuff yet. That night we all six met friends and went to the Alize restaurant on top of the Palms for dinner and it was very fancy. It was hard for me to choose what I wanted to order, because I didn’t recognize some of the French food names! (Z: My food was all seafood that grossed some people out.)

The next day Grandma had to speak at a seminar at the Sunset Station casino. While she was doing that, Zach and I went to the Kids Quest. I was a little disappointed that our favorite Kids Quest at the Palms was closed, but I’m excited about playing at the new remodeled one next summer. (Z: I’m bummed, because I’ll be too old to go there any more. But maybe I’ll try to fake my age.)

That night Zach and I stayed at the Rio with my Mom and Dad in a comped suite. In the evening we walked over to the Gold Coast to see “Forever Plaid.” If you ask me, it was hilarious! It was a little dull at first, but it got a lot better and I enjoyed it. (Z: It was very funny and had some cool songs.) After swimming at the Rio’s sand-beach pool the next morning, we rode on one of the floats in “The Parade in the Sky.” It usually costs $9.95 per person, but, of course, it was paid with comps. (Z: It was fun. Everyone down below us looked like ants.) After such a long day, we relaxed in the room and got a good night’s rest.

On Friday morning we went back to Grandma’s condo to pack for Astro Camp, which Zach and I were going to attend in California for the next week. This would give the adults some time to do grown-up things without kids tagging along.

Saturday morning our parents took us to the airport and we flew by ourselves to California. Astro Camp is a science camp that is awesome! After a fun week, we flew back to Las Vegas. The plane was so full that we almost got bumped –- Zach and I volunteered! (Z: The turbulence was so bad I thought we would have to make an emergency landing.) We only had energy the rest of the day to take a swim.

Mom and Dad stayed in a Venetian suite for our last three days in Las Vegas and we got to stay over with them one night.

8/19/2005

This week I want to talk about some psychological aspects of gambling. No, I haven’t deserted arithmetic. Anyone who has read my gaming writings for the last seven years knows I’ve written continually about the wisdom of following proven math principles. I still believe that all short-term sessions add up to the long term. More important, no money-management plan can turn a negative game into a positive one, and increasing your bet when you’re losing is the surest way to end up broke.

However, most gamblers make short-term goals that have a strong psychological base. Even the skillful gambler who has complete faith in the math does not become a robot–and as human beings we bring our human weaknesses with us into a casino. Most gamblers, skilled or not, have said to themselves at one time or another, “Why didn’t I quit when I was ahead?” Or “Why didn’t I quit when I reached my pre-determined stop-loss figure?”

I’ve written a lot about when to quit a playing session: for comfort reasons, like when you’re tired or hungry or cold; or for math reasons, like when a promotion has ended and it’s no longer a good play. But emotional reasons are just as valid, and one of the strongest is when you win a jackpot. Take time to celebrate and savor your win!

In More Frugal Gambling I write about one gambler who pleaded, “Do you have any advice on money management in Las Vegas? My usual plan of losing every cent I can get my hands on is not very effective.” Gambling has a very strong pull and it takes a lot of self-discipline to resist the temptation to take leave of our common sense, to let greed guide our actions. Nowhere is this more evident than when you win big on a machine. At one point or another, we’ve all said to ourselves, “Well, I finally got lucky and hit a jackpot–and some of this money is going to go home with me!” But then you continue to sit there and feed it all back into the machine. Or you hit a lucky streak at the tables and think about the good feeling you’ll have going home with some winnings. But then you keep playing and lose it all back. When you finally do quit, do you feel miserable and play the “I Wish” game for days after?

I know many gamblers who’ve tried to lock up some of their winnings to take home: sealing it in an envelope, locking it in a suitcase, even giving it to the spouse. But the envelopes get ripped open, the suitcases get unlocked, and the spouse relents and gives you back the money after you beg and plead.

Recently, I was introduced to a product that addresses this problem and can give a little help to your self-control in a casino. In fact, I was so impressed with the Winners Bank200 that it’s now available to order at www.FrugalGambler.biz. It’s a small durable locked metal bank you can slip in your pocket or purse and take to the casino. It has a slot where you can insert bills, coins, or chips that you really want to take home with you. Once at home, where you’ve left the keys to the bank, you can open it and be happy you were able to bring back some winnings.

While you’re at our Web site, you might want to check out another handy gaming product, one that can help you get all your slot cards organized. The leather My Card-It wallet has a patented safety ring that allows you to easily slip in and out any plastic card as you need it. You can keep it strictly for casino slot cards, or add all the cards you carry, like identification and insurance cards and credit cards.

8/26/2005

Recently, a friend sent me a clipping from a small-town newspaper, the headline being “Find Positive New Definition for “F” Word — Frugality.” It was a syndicated Cheapskate feature by Mary Hunt. Here are excerpts from her column:

“Frugal! That word once repulsed me. Being thought of as cheap was to me the ultimate insult. I equated frugality with digging through dumpsters in search of food and who knows what else.

“To me, cheap people skipped out without leaving a tip. They were slovenly in appearance, lacking dignity and self-respect.

“I accepted the offers of freedom that credit-card companies offered to me. I could fix up the house, treat the kids, have new clothes, drive nice cars — just about anything I could think of. And it worked for a while.

“When I came to my senses, I wasn’t experiencing freedom. I sold myself into bondage one dollar at a time.

“Frugality doesn’t mean you have to become someone you aren’t. Frugality means doing whatever it takes to spend less than you earn. Frugality is understanding that if you say yes to one thing, you may need to say no to something else. Frugality is about deciding what really matters and not living to impress others.

“If you don’t start telling your money where to go, you’ll always wonder where it went.”

This article got me thinking about the use of the word “frugal” in my life. I’ve written that I’ve been known in the past, much to my daughter’s embarrassment, to look in a casino trash can and fish out a good coupon, even if I did have to wipe some ketchup off it. I’m not as bad at this as I used to be. But when a casino sends out valuable coupon books to everyone in our condo complex, you might see Brad and me doing some ginger dumpster diving. (We don’t lose our self-respect at these times, but perhaps our dignity does suffer a bit!)

I still love to shop at second-hand stores, on a quest for bargains for my grandchildren as I did twenty-five years ago for my children. With my experienced eye for quality, no one would know that they’re not dressed from a fancy store at the mall.

It probably won’t surprise you that I have a lot to say about frugality –- especially of its powerful influence through 21 years of casino gambling. Next week I’ll talk about some of the ways that being frugal has made this avocation so successful –- and so much fun.

In the meantime, you might go to http://tinyurl.com/2gbhh and find out if you’re a “demon customer.” I’m probably guilty as charged, in or out of a casino!

(And here’s a nifty little computer tip for you, non-gambling related, but very handy. The URL in the previous paragraph was originally 92 characters long, too long for one line. But I went to http://tinyurl.com/create.php where they quickly and easily cut it down for me to the 24-character one I gave above. That’s being thrifty with letters!)

7/1/2005

Although I’m on the outside of the casino business, that is, on the player’s side of the fence, I like to read about the inside of it. Some may quote the old adage about knowing your enemy, although I’ve always said I’m not fighting the casino; rather, I’m battling the casino edge. However, down through the years I’ve found that the more I know about the casino business, the more opportunities I can find to increase my own bottom line.

Below is an article written by my good friend Glenn Buxton, who’s been in the gaming business for more than 15 years. It was first published in the Global Gaming Business Weekly and clearly shows that casino executives aren’t perfect. This article might shed some light on the question of why some casino programs are so unorganized and so many policies puzzle the player.

WEIRD SCENES INSIDE THE FANTASY FACTORY
By Glenn Buxton

The Dilbert-ization of Marketing

The cliché “we have met the enemy and they are us” often rings true when it comes to casino marketing. Not many people truly understand the comprehensive tasks involved in effective casino marketing, but everyone certainly has an opinion on what “they” think it should be.

Company politics, turf battles, and the ever-familiar “too many chiefs and not enough Indians” are a far greater challenge to both seasoned and newly anointed marketing department heads than getting profitable customers to the property.

Governmental policies; regulatory considerations; company politics; corporate, vendor, friend, and family influence; not giving the marketing department the authority it needs to make the proper decisions, but then holding it accountable for the micromanagement of non-departmental influences — at the end of the day these are the greatest obstacles an effective marketing-department head needs to overcome to navigate successfully throughout the increasingly Dilbert-infested waters surrounding today’s casino-marketing functions.

Following are the top ten truths about the gaming business that “they” don’t want you to know . . .

It’s a Very Stressful Business
Not only is it a 24-hour-day 7-day-a-week business, but mix in people drinking and gambling and all the ingredients for a volatile situation are complete. The intensity of the gambler’s emotions is often directed directly at the front-line employees. To throw a little salt in the wound, management then schedules employees for awkward shifts, sections, and days off, making breakdowns in the “fantasy factory” façade even more likely. This usually manifests in high turnover rates in the gaming business, as well as frequent absenteeism and malicious obedience, which usually shows up in secret shopper reports where you learn “you get what you inspect, not what you expect” from your staff. Clichés such as “while the cat’s away, the mice will play” and “out of sight, out of mind” are closer to statements of fact in most gaming establishments. Supervisors and managers will “smoke and joke” and abuse their power for their own benefit at every opportunity –- resulting in a trickle-down effect that the customer experiences as long lines, rude, slow, and apathetic service, improper staffing and scheduling.

Highest Incidence of Gambling
Gaming-business employees have the highest incidence of gambling of any group. Being around people gambling day after day makes casino employees think they can win too. This causes even more problems for both work morale and, after being out gambling and losing money, the temptation to steal from/scam/cheat their casino employer

Nepotism, Favoritism and Worse
Friends and relatives of those with the power to schedule shifts, pay, days/time off and on, promotions, etc. are often treated more favorably than the rank-and-file hard-working employees, who then quickly become demoralized, resulting in not only increased turnover, but even more difficulty in getting consistent good customer service

7/8/2005

Sheesh! My files are overflowing with e-mails from readers who have commented on past Frugal Friday columns. So here goes! (If you want to read old columns I refer to, go to www.lasvegasadvisor.com/frugalfridays-archive.cfm.)

Another Southwest Airline tip: “Did you know that with Southwest you can now check in online at 12:01 a.m. on the day of travel and if you don’t have access to a printer, you can reprint your boarding pass at the airport and still maintain your A boarding group?”

———-

On the topic of Balance in a Gambler’s Life, I received this post from a former Southern California gal who wrote about switching from the losing slots to knowledgeable VP when she moved to Las Vegas.

“July 2003 — Time to get serious!! Set up a $3,000 bankroll in a separate account for full-pay Deuces Wild. Have earned 27 comped nights, countless free meals, 3 or 4 tanks of gas, and approximately $100 in gift certificates to the mall and other stores. Hit 4 deuces countless times and just hit my third royal two weeks ago.

“I’ve lived here for 2 months as of today. Where am I now? At $2,707 of my original bankroll, with another $40 in cashback floating around town, as well as about $50 in comps. If I so wished, I could eat free for half my meals this month (assuming 3 meals per day). Las Vegas rocks!

“I don’t have time to participate in drawings or raffles. The above is merely by joining slot clubs, playing only VP, and sometimes going on multiple-point days. I go when I have time, but try to stay balanced with a life outside the casino that includes a full time job. It’s all about balance and discipline.”

[Our correspondent is too modest to mention this, but I happen to know that she’s a full-time teacher of hearing-impaired elementary students in a very poor part of town.]

——

Here’s a post from someone else on the same general subject:

“I enjoyed reading The Frugal Gambler long ago and have recommended it often since. But I’m curious about your perspective on advantage play versus work. This may even be interesting for a column. As a minister’s daughter, your approach emphasized values like honesty and frugality. But an advantage player doesn’t actually produce anything and instead merely transfers value from other people. Perhaps a poker pro keeps the game alive to provide recreation for amateur ‘fish.’ But blackjack and video poker players exploit casino weaknesses to enrich themselves at the expense of casino shareholders.

“It’s not immoral to play fair and win, especially since casinos are always begging people to play. But it seemed like you were pre-retirement when you started devoting serious time to video poker and advantage-play exploits. At one time you were playing dollar machines, so the EV was not astronomical. It was probably more flexible, but not better paying than a teaching job. Since Vegas had a terrible shortage of teachers, it seemed like a real shame to waste your talent playing video poker instead of educating children. Your clear books prove you are a great teacher!

“Of course, you have no obligation to teach, and many others have left the profession. To your credit you have shared your knowledge of video poker and enriched the lives of many recreational players. As a fellow educator, I wonder whether you considered the social impact of quitting teaching for advantage play? Maybe these decisions were unconnected. You might have family reasons for quitting work or moving to Vegas. Do you have any thoughts on the tradeoff between the social contribution through work and advantage play?”

My answer to this reader:

We only took vacation trips to Vegas from Indy when we were both still working. We didn’t play as much then as after we retired. We never really planned to get this involved in casino stuff. We were just looking for reasonable vacations. It sort of grew on us.

7/14/2005

About the positive side of gambling: “I understand the negative connotations associated with ‘gambling’; I hear the note of disapproval in the comments from friends when I admit to studying video poker books or confess I’m heading to Las Vegas yet again. It’s the same tone I hear from my doctor when I admit I like to have a glass of wine (or two…) with my dinner, but that’s another story.

“The point is that gambling can be tremendous recreational fun. My parents have become quite the gamblers. Because they live in Tennessee, they have to plan a trip to pursue their gambling, and as they’ve gotten older, the number of trips they’re taking has increased. I have other family members who see this as problematic. I, however, think it’s great they’ve found something to do in their ‘senior years’ that gives them great pleasure. It’s a heck of a lot better than sitting at home watching TV every day. And for them, I think they feel secure in the controlled environment of a casino. Let’s face it. You can take care of a lot of needs in one place when you’re in a casino — food, entertainment, and in many cases, a place to sleep and shop. All without expending a lot of effort.

“Obviously, gambling presents a problem for some people. But for others, it’s entertainment, pure and simple. And anything that provides a little fun and diversion in this scary day and age can’t be all bad.”

About TITO (ticket-in-ticket-out): “I’m still surprised (and a little annoyed) to see people bringing numerous tickets up to the cashier. The cashier then has to total them all up with a calculator or adding machine, then do the payout. Jeez, how long will it take for people to realize they can run them all through a machine and bring one ticket to the cashier?”

Responding to the “Dealing with the Heat” guest column (May 6), a friend whose husband worked in the tire business for 19 years wrote: “My husband was upset to see Brian recommending that people use those cans of flat-tire repair stuff. He said it can destroy your tires, and it’s extremely dangerous to the person to whom you ultimately bring the tire for repair. He said the better suggestion is just to be sure you have a good inflated spare tire.”

About personal safety for gamblers: “Be careful letting others see your address in casinos. One of the home invasions in Las Vegas happened on the same street as a local Las Vegas video poker player. Considering this was a gated street and the home invasion happened at 10:30 in the morning, no one is safe.

”There’s been a sizable increase in home invasions in Las Vegas in recent years. Maybe it’s happening due to the influx of population. Whatever the reason, these thugs are breaking in armed to the teeth. One way to keep a low profile is always refuse publicity shots or the posting of your name if you win a jackpot, prize or drawing in a casino. Even if it says in the rules that you must allow publicity, should you win still say no. Some years ago Gaming Today( back then it was called the Sports Form) posted the picture and name of a local couple who won a $68,000 slot jackpot. They were robbed at gunpoint in their home a couple of days later.”

More reader input next week!

7/22/2005

Still cleaning out my files. Here’s a message I got after my two-parter last February about how we love the casino bounce-back money we get in Las Vegas and how we don’t love the process of picking it up. (If you want to go back and read old columns, go to www.lasvegasadvisor.com/frugalfridays-archive.cfm.)

“Hi, Jean,
“I really enjoyed your last 2 columns on bounce-back cash, because I can relate. The problem of deciding whether or not to pick up bounce-back is not just one for Vegas locals. We have it, too, here in Illinois. We play at Harrah’s in Joliet, an hour’s drive from our home, depending on traffic. And we have no other reasons to go to Joliet (the grandkids live north, while Joliet is south, etc.).

“My husband and I have separate accounts at this casino and normally we each have about $35 in coupons when we go there. But recently, we somehow managed to amass a total between us of $155 — cashback from previous play, as well as bounce-back cash. For us quarter players, that’s a huge amount to have at any one time. Some of the coupons were good only on specified dates, but we found one date when all of them were good, and made the decision to go there that day. We wouldn’t have done this for $20 or $30, so we’ve thrown away many cash coupons we could not use.

“But since we have to drive so far, we don’t go unless we can clear a day when we don’t have to do ‘just-life’ things, as you call them. It takes planning and deciding how much bounce-back cash is worth it.

“Thanks for talking about this subject from the point of view of a Vegas local. Since we’ll be locals there one of these days, it helps to know ahead of time what it’s like.”

—-

Some time ago, I forget exactly when it was, I mentioned in one of my columns that Brad and I don’t consider ourselves high rollers, even though sometimes we play $25-$50 a hand, because we went up in denomination so slowly. A friend took me to task, writing:

“Yeah, me too. I have a little trouble accepting the fact that I’m a high roller, at least in the casinos’ eyes. I don’t ‘feel’ like one! But I’ve accepted the fact, and you should too!

“I accepted it when I went from quarters to dollars. And even when I played just quarters, I was playing ten hours a day, so I was never really a low roller. Plus the fact that I played mostly at lower level casinos where quarter players who play lots of hours are really high rollers!

“I consider penny/nickel players (single-line) plus quarter players who only play an hour at a time or less to be true low rollers. Of course, none of this is written in stone, but you can’t call someone who plays mostly dollars and higher to be low rollers. I might give you ‘mid rollers’ if you only play dollars for an hour or two at a time. And of course, a high roller at one property could easily be considered a mid roller at another.”

I wrote back: But Brad does play quarter deuces 6-7 times a month for several hours each time when he’s just messing around. That counts!

My friend wrote back: “Okay, fine. But even playing quarters for several hours at a time qualifies you as a mid roller. I’ll let you slide if you say you and Brad are mid/high-rollers. But even that’s a downside stretch!”

My final word: Okay, it’s a word game with no rules!!

7/28/2005

Between now and Aug. 31, you can donate your used cellular devices, with batteries and chargers, to the Body Shop at the Desert Passage at the Aladdin. Donations will be refurbished, recycled, or sold to help raise money in the fight against domestic violence. Call 733-7350 for more details.

——–

I love this item I read in Norm’s column (which I never miss), Vegas Confidential in the Review-Journal. He titles it, appropriately, “Money Management 101.”

“Celine Dion acknowledges she’s keeping tight purse strings on the gambling habits of her husband, Rene Angelil. Amid persistent buzz that Angelil has a gambling problem (one tabloid report claims he’s lost more than $10 million gambling), Dion admits she controls the spending by setting a daily allowance.

“Angelil, who has a high-roller reputation in LV, has to stick to her budget, she told Swedish journalists. ‘The best way is divide the money into equal amounts and put it in an envelope for each day of the week,’ she says, noting that she puts limits on herself as well, because of her compulsive shopping. ‘When the money is gone, we are not allowed to spend any more that day.” And when that happens, ‘He doesn’t get any money the next day,’ Dion said.””

Wow, for someone who is worth boo-koodul millions, I’m surprised she thinks about bankroll considerations. But then maybe she has read my money-management tips in Frugal I and Frugal II!

—–

From the Internet, about the $5 match-play coupon that comes with any meal purchased (or comped) in the great little Ellis Island coffee shop: “Recently, I’ve been hearing that they’ve been printing those on the placemats now, so you can now place your $5 bet with a coupon and a side of ketchup on top…! :)”

———

Good-for-the-soul post from a frugal fan:

“Hi Jean:
“I have a confession of sorts. When I read The Frugal Gambler for the first time, I skimmed the coupon section and didn’t even read the ‘Bump’ chapter. I never bothered with coupons and figured I’d never be bumped off a flight since I live so close (Albuquerque).

“I joined LVA this year and decided to do a couple of coupon runs with the matchplays just to see what happened. So far, I’ve hit on 11 and lost on 4 for a nice net win. The best was being dealt a blackjack on the $25 matchplay! Now I’m hooked and always looking for coupons.

“Fast forward to last (Memorial Day) weekend. My partner and I came home with a bundle in flight vouchers! We went very last minute, paying full fare on SW. I read the bump chapter the night before we left. We were bumped from two flights, receiving almost twice what we paid originally. I say it’s truly a winning trip if you can get the airlines to pay off.””

Teacher assignment: Everyone go back and read those chapters you skipped –- you might make some extra money!!

6/3/2005

TAKING MY OWN ADVICE

“Just ask.”
I keep all the material for each casino where we play in its own Ziplock bag — slot cards, coupons, information about hosts and comps, mailers, requirements for bounce-back, whatever. Although I try to be careful with these, I somehow lost my Harrah’s baggie. I could replace the slot cards easy enough, but there were some valuable cash coupons that I figured were gone forever. Most of these have all sorts of warnings on them that they cannot be replaced, so I just kissed that money goodbye.

However, the next time I stopped at the Rio slot club desk for another reason, I told the boothling about our loss, then asked, “I don’t suppose there’s anything you can do about this?” She went to a computer in a back room and, after some time, came back with five slips of paper –- three for Brad and two for me. We took them to the cashier and walked out with an extra $136 in our pockets!

“Always read casino mail carefully.”
I’d pretty well washed my hands of the XXX Casino. They’d taken out the good VP games we had been playing — $1 NSUD (Not-So-Ugly Deuces) –- and replaced them with a lower pay schedule. Plus, they’d been cutting down the amount of our “welfare checks” – the bounce-back bonuses we Vegas locals love so much. And then our monthly mailers arrived with four anemic coupons attached, ones that wouldn’t pay for us to brave the traffic crossing the Strip to collect. I almost pitched both into the trash without reading them, but at the last moment scanned one. Hmmm… they’re giving 3x points one day a week. Let me figure what the total play would be worth with three times the cashback, even on fairly ugly ducks. I crunched the numbers and found a good percentage play for the month, even with just a weak bounce-back bonus.

“Talk to other experienced scrambling players to get information that will help you find better plays, learn to use the slot club and comp system better, and increase your chances of leaving the casinos with more money in your pocket.”
I don’t publicize good plays in my public writing as much as I used to. 1) They’re too likely to get burned out by those players who do not use good judgment and aren’t interested in moderation tactics to make them last longer. And 2) Too many casino executives read my stuff and will pull any good play I recommend.

However, if you talk to me personally, I’m always happy to answer questions and give advice. And I’m grateful for all the expert players who share their scouting secrets with me. It’s hard for one person or couple living in Vegas to keep up on all the ins and outs of smart gambling. Networking –- in person and on the Internet –- is one of the most important keys to success. That’s why I’m at my computer many many hours a week!

6/10/2005

Casinos are determined to make me eat my words!

“”So, there’s simply no reason I can think of why you would want to leave any cashback in a slot club account beyond your current trip.””

That’s part of the answer I wrote for the June 5th Question of the Day — for which I’m called an Expert Contributor — on the homepage of this Web site. I’d been given this question some time before that date – and glibly wrote out that answer, just like I WAS an “expert.”

In case you missed it, here was the question:

Q: Is it better to cash in our cashback dollars at the end of each trip or to let them build up over time at the casino? We know that if we don’t return in 18 months, our player’s account will go dead and we’ll lose our cashback money.

After I wrote and submitted this answer, the Coast properties came out with a June promo that pays you $50 in a Visa shopping card for $40 worth of cashback points – and you can redeem your old points for this as well as currently earned ones in June!!! Murphy’s Law is alive and well in casino matters. Guess who just cashed in a bunch of stored up Coast points in March?

It’s a fact that a lot of casinos wipe out cash and/or comp points in a certain length of time, varying from the end of an out-of-town trip to perhaps two or three years. This is not always published in the slot club literature; it can happen whether you frequently play in that casino or not at all, and you’re usually not sent a letter warning you of this ominous event. Your slot club account can disappear when casinos go bankrupt, get sold, are imploded, or simply change to a new system.

All that being said, it’s usually wiser to keep your slot club account cleaned out, especially if you don’t live near the casino and/or aren’t able to get to it at short notice. If the casino is one where you play frequently and if you make an effort to keep very alert for slot club news and changes, you might be safe in letting your points accumulate just in case a juicy promotion comes up where you can take advantage of a lot of stored points.

Although I’ve now been told that these promotions do pop up now and then, we’ve belonged to casino slot clubs for 17 years and this is the first one we’ve ever come across where we wished we hadn’t cashed in our points so often. However, considering all the interest we’ve earned by banking cashback, we might still be ahead anyway. So we collect our cashback fairly often. Hey, we’re getting to the age that we don’t even like to buy too many green bananas!

On a side note, I should mention Question of the Day (QoD), which, again, is found here at LasVegasAdvisor.com. This is by far the best question-and-answer format on Las Vegas that I know of — in print, online, anywhere. I can tell you that Huntington Press has hired an employee who’s dedicated to doing nothing but QoD, and the research that goes into these answers is nothing less than awesome.

Note that the day the question is posted, anyone can come and read it. But as soon as it moves into the archive at 12:01 the next day, it’s available only to members of the Las Vegas Advisor. So I highly recommend that everyone return to the homepage here every day to check out the question and answer. The range of subject matter and the depth of information posted are well worth the few minutes it takes.

6/17/2005

By Guest Columnist, John (Lodestone) Kelly

Casinos don’t care about you and me, and with good reason. We’re low rollers. Small fry. Peasants. Pond scum. So I tend not to waste my worries on the whys and what-fors concerning their indifferent treatment of most customers. But surely they take pains to lavish their $100 players with soothing, tranquil, elegant surroundings. Right? Wrong! My pursuit of the best possible play sometimes takes me into the home of the high and mighty, and I’m appalled to find out that the other half lives much the same as you and me. My least-loved high-roller areas:

NEW YORK-NEW YORK
Located near the front entrance of the casino, the layout funnels the confused and the drunk into what appears to be the most direct route into the casino. In reality, they are wandering into the high-roller salon, and a dead end. Thus, the following scenario is repeated about once every 30 seconds:

“It’s THIS way guys! THIS way!!!” says the lead drunk, typically resembling “Cousin Eddie” from the movie Vegas Vacation. At least one member of his entourage will elbow every high roller in the head on the way in.

“NO. WAIT. IT’S A DEAD END!!! $#!+!”. The party now stumbles to a halt, confused. They mill and gawk.

“HEY! THIS FELLER’S PLAYING A DOLLAR MACHINE!” They gather to watch me play and root loudly.

“HEY THIS FELLER’S PLAYING A HUNDRED DOLLAR MACHINE!!” They lose interest in me, much to my relief. They elbow me in the head on their way to disturb a whale.

While this layout is unfortunate, it’s readily remedied. Any sort of red velvet rope would gently guide all but the most navigationally challenged customer into the main casino. I, and many other patrons, have suggested something of the sort to the slot attendants, who all shrug and reply that management likes it this way. Why? I can only guess that they believe that displaying $100 machines to newbies will embolden them to bet more than they had planned. A possibility, I suppose. But consider some of my more intimate encounters with the masses as a result of this phenomenon:
1) “I sense an aura of good fortune that SURROUNDS you!” declared one crystal-waving young woman and her bearded robed boyfriend. I was about $800 down at that point and decided to call it a day.
2) “Watcha doing? You wanna party?” said a provocatively dressed gum-chewing young woman. I went to go play quarters with the wife.
3) “Excuse me sir. Where’s the latrine?” The clothing and hairstyle of the young man strongly suggested that he was no longer in the service. I directed the vet to the nearest men’s room and departed.

PALMS
Off-the-beaten path and nicely appointed, but marred by the favorite pastime of Palms employees, gossiping about other Palms employees. I know way too much about the personal lives of the Palms staff.

RAMPART
Luxurious and reasonably isolated, but they plopped the only cashier on that entire side of the casino right in the middle of it. So every coupon-bearing looky-loo passes time in line commenting on your play.

SUNCOAST
Location, location, location. Its location, right in the middle of the casino, in front of the cashier’s cage, ensures plenty of foot traffic. Its cul-de-sac layout ensures that none of this foot traffic will readily reach their destination.

FIESTA
Again, right in the middle of everything. At least there are no dead ends, so there are fewer elbows and naughty words.

So who gets it right? The best high-roller area that I can think of is the Venetian’s. Secluded, roomy, featuring its own restrooms and a break-room with free munchies and refreshments. Sure, the free munchies cost them an extra $100 a day, but some of the whales they land bet $500 per hand. Frankly, if I were running a casino, that sort of player would be receiving a steady supply of champagne, peeled grapes, massages, dancing girls, and any and all sexual favors upon demand, as long as they remained s”
6/24/2005 “If you’re planning a trip to Vegas sometime in 2005, or if you live here, and don’t earn comps for every penny you spend in a casino, you still might find good value in the 2005 editions of the following coupon books. Each of the Web sites given contains a descriptive list of the coupons, so you can evaluate the total worth to you before you order.

Entertainment
This is a coupon book for Las Vegas and more than 150 other major metro areas, including Reno-Tahoe. The 2005 book is free when you order the 2006 book – or you can buy it alone for $10 plus shipping at http://www.entertainment.com. The coupons in the 2005 book don’t expire until November 1. (My thanks for this tip to the friendly posters at http://www.vegas4locals.com, another good place to look for coupons and useful information about Vegas. I especially like their huge collection of the best free things to do when you’re in town.)

The American Casino Guide 2005 Edition
This guidebook provides gobs of good gambling information as well as coupons. Go to http://www.americancasinoguide.com.

The Pocketbook of Values (POV)
This coupon package, which comes with a one-year membership to the Las Vegas Advisor, is worth more than $3,434 with optimal use. An online subscription is $37; if you want the hard-copy newsletter mailed to you, the subscription costs $50. Order at http://www.lasvegasadvisor.com.

All three of these books contain at least one coupon that could recoup your total initial cost; everything else can be gravy. (I never use every single coupon I get!) And the first two now provide you with a single card you need to present to show that you own the book, so you no longer need to lug the entire book along, and can just bring the coupons you want. You do need to bring the entire POV book with you, but it’s small enough to tuck in a purse or pocket.

And here are a couple of the books about Vegas I’ve been reading lately — when I take a few spare minutes from writing my own!

1,000 Naked Truths by Norm Clarke, Sin City’s ace insider and Las Vegas Review-Journal gossip columnist. 1,000 Naked Truths gives you more interesting–and unknown–Vegas facts per square inch than any other book about Vegas I’ve ever read. I thought I knew a lot about Vegas, until I read this book. Norm covers the clever, the culinary, the classy, and the kinky. It’s a great book to keep beside the “”throne”” in the “”reading room”” in your house. Order at http://www.stephenspress.com/booklist.html.

Neon Nuptials, The Complete Guide to Las Vegas Weddings by Ken Van Vechten. I love to pick up this book and read a page or two when I have just a few minutes and need a smile–or a big belly laugh–although I really don’t actually need the information for any upcoming weddings. Put it with the above book in your “”reading room””–and find out more unusual and fascinating facts about the most weird and wonderful city in the world.

And now, I’d like to continue on a subject I talk about periodically: balance in one’s life, even for a gambler who lives in Las Vegas. For us, this is home, not Sin City, which carries over to my reading material. I have to read about Vegas to write about Vegas, but I have an entirely different book list for my inner spiritual self. At the top of that list, and a book I always have by my bedside, is How to Know God by Deepak Chopra. Deepak is my favorite author. For one thing, he’s a model for me as a writer: I can only dream of packing so much meaning into one sentence. But I admire him most of all for his words that strike my heart so forcibly, about a God who is not bound by rigid denominational

5/6/2005

The following is a guest column by Brian G.

Summer in Las Vegas can be brutal — hard on your body, hard on your vehicle. And these days, having to drive all over the place to pick up bounce-back cash from casinos, it’s good to know how to avoid the worst of the heat. Here are my top-ten tips for keeping (relatively) cool June through September.

10) Leave early; come back late. Pretty obvious, but you can usually do one or the other. Keep in mind that summer days are usually at their hottest around 4 pm.

9) Drink lots of water! Purified is better than tap. Keep a big container of drinking water in your car for emergencies.

8) If you must exercise outside, do it early or late. Keep your hair cut shorter. Walk in the shade. Carry water with you. Use sunscreen. Wear sunglasses. Wear lightweight cotton light-colored clothing.

7) Properly maintain your vehicle. Make sure the battery, cooling system, and a/c are in good shape, you have your oil, oil filter, and air filter changed regularly, and your tires are in good shape and properly inflated. Have your belts and hoses checked or replaced before the summer heat begins. Having your car break down when it’s 110 out is no fun! Keep a can of flat fixer in your trunk, maybe a roll of duct tape, too!

6) Always keep your cell phone with you for emergencies. Make sure its battery is charged! Subscribe to some sort of 24-hour roadside service, and have its number programmed into your cell phone.

5) If the cooling system in your car is in good shape, and if your a/c starts blowing warm air when you are stopped in traffic, slipping it into neutral and raising the engine speed a bit will turn the compressor faster and cool down the air blowing into your car. Do not do this if your temperature gauge is close to “”hot,”” or if it heads that way rapidly when you raise the engine revs! Make sure your a/c is set on “”re-circulate.””

4) Park in the shade, or in a covered parking lot or garage! Getting into a 160-degree car is a terrible thing to have to do! Not only is it extremely uncomfortable, but your a/c will take forever to cool the car down. Better to park in the shade and have to walk a bit than to park in the sun right by the door. You will cool down quickly once you get indoors; your poor car is stuck outside.

3) If you must park your car in the sun, use sunshades, reflectors, or anything that blocks out the sun from shining onto the interior of the car. At the very least, put a white towel or cloth over your steering wheel and shifter knob so you don’t burn your hands on them!

2) If you must park in the sun on a regular basis, when you buy a new car (or get the one you have repainted) get a light color with a light interior. Everything else being equal, the interior of a white car can stay as much as 20 degrees cooler than that of a black car. Also, a dull finish absorbs more heat than a shiny finish, so keep your car clean and waxed.

1) Use good judgment. Walking a couple of miles might be easy for you in November; in July it could kill you. Always keep in mind the dangers of really hot days.

5/13/2005

This just in from a Rio insider: “Yes, we know paying only even money on blackjacks in our bikini-dealer pit is a terrible deal for the customer. We decided to try it as an experiment, and if there were many complaints or business dropped off, we were planning to quickly put it back up to 6/5. But business is still booming at even money – so why change?” Hey, what if everyone in casinos all over the world would stop playing 6/5 for just one week?

From an Internet bulletin board, discussing the super new-member slot club promotion the Westin Casuarina Casino ran awhile back, giving $600 in free play for a buy-in of $300: “Some pros recruited players from a pool hall to go in and sign up. The pros took the bonus and gave the players beer and cigarette money. Another player went in with what looked liked a 35-year family reunion. They had enough relatives to play ‘Family Feud.’ Hey, where was Richard Dawson?” Some people with “insider friends” were throwing around huge figures (like a half-million, several million) for the loss sustained by the casino during this two-day disaster for them.

My sister was in town at the time I heard about this promotion and I figured we’d take her there to join up. But I, of all people who know better, procrastinated and she got shut out. I need to re-read my own books!

Headline: “IGT launches 1-cent Megabucks.” I don’t get it – the max bet to get the top jackpot of this “penny” progressive, beginning at $10 million, is 300 pennies. The original Megabucks is a dollar machine with a max bet needed of $3. DUH!!! Do they think we’re too dumb to figure out that 300 pennies is $3? And speaking of dumb and dumber, my friend Deke Castleman, senior editor of Huntington Press who checked out the new machines, says, “”The max bet’s the same as regular Megabucks, but there’s a million ways to play short coin.””

Brad always did believe that casinos pumped something –- maybe more oxygen? — into the air in casinos that kept customers playing longer. I was dubious. But recently I read about a company that since 1991 has been installing environmental-aroma systems in the air-conditioning ductwork of casinos, more than 30 of them in Las Vegas and Reno. They call their fragrance blends Aromatic Symphonies –- kind of like the Bellagio Fountains without the water.

And now here are a couple of stories of which I’d like to know the rest.

I just read one of the strangest gambling items I have ever heard tell of, in Casino Player: “In Weston, West Virginia, population 4,300, Mayor Jon Tucci wants to convert a former insane asylum into a $300 million hotel-casino.” I’m still deciding whether to laugh or ponder deeply about whether this just might be appropriate!

And from Fantini’s Gaming Morning Report: “Vandals glued shut the doors to 25 betting shops in Australia prior to the running of the Melbourne Cup, the nation’s biggest horse race, Reuters reported. They used quick-drying glue. Seems appropriate, given the proverbial fate of old horses.”

5/20/2005

Brad is always looking for subject material for me to use in this column, especially about “real life” in Las Vegas. But this time he outdid himself. Actually, he wasn’t looking for this particular story; rather, it came to him, abruptly, as he was cruising in the Frugal Silver Bullet down the same quiet neighborhood street he travels almost daily to the post office, just a few blocks from our condo. He was driving slowly, as he often sees police cars lurking about in this area on the lookout for speeders.

Suddenly, in a where-are-the-police-when-you-need-them second, he heard a loud boom and felt intense pressure against his chest. It took a few seconds for him to realize that his airbag had inflated and the van was sliding across the intersection. After the vehicle stopped moving, it took him a few more seconds to figure out what happened. His first major clue was the badly damaged car sitting some yards down the street from him. All he could think was: “Where did that car come from? I’d looked both ways before entering the intersection!”

Then it dawned on him: He’d entered the twilight zone inhabited by Vegas drivers who think stop signs and red lights are just suggestions. The other driver had barreled down the cross street so fast, not seeing (or ignoring) his stop sign, that he was never in sight when Brad, who had no stop sign, approached and started through the intersection.

Fortunately, Brad was broadsided on the passenger side rather than the driver side of the van, and he suffered no injuries, except some chest bruises where the airbag and seatbelt left their marks. The two people in the other vehicle were lucky. In spite of two big curved recesses in the shatterproof windshield where their heads had bumped (no seat belts on), they had relatively minor injuries, although they were taken to the hospital by ambulance. Neither vehicle came out so well, though. Both totaled.

We can now tell you about Vegas police reports (lengthy), Vegas towing companies (complex details), Vegas car-repair companies (highly complex details), and Vegas insurance adjusters, who aren’t simple to deal with either.

I was already drowning in the above paperwork when insult was added to injury a few days later. The rental car our insurance company had arranged for us was stolen right out of our parking slot in the condo parking area! More lengthy police reports and notary visits and the complexities of a second insurance claim in five days!

We finally went out and bought another vehicle after continuing our Vegas real-life research project at car dealers and the DMV, plodding through more official red tape to make our little plum-colored PT Cruiser street legal.

Now, after almost a month since the accident, we’re finally crawling out from under the stacks of documents the whole affair generated. We’re more knowledgeable about business in Las Vegas than we ever cared to be. But all’s well that ends well. We got to keep our FRUGAL license plate. And we drive the Frugal Plum with a fairly secure feeling — we’ve got extra turbo power to get out of the way of reckless drivers, plus side airbags. But we trust Vegas drivers even less than we ever did, which wasn’t much, and I notice Brad slows down a bit at every intersection.

We’re looking forward to a vacation away from Vegas traffic this weekend, when we will be in Canada, at Casino Windsor, where I’m speaking at seminars during a Gambler’s Jamboree. Hope to see some of you fellow frugal gamblers there!

5/27/2005

We’re home from the Gambler’s Jamboree at Casino Windsor, having flown free round-trip Vegas-Detroit on Northwest tickets bought with travel vouchers for $600 earned from a bump on a flight in January. Northwest is becoming a favorite airline of ours: We were bumped twice on this trip to Detroit, for a total of $1,200 in travel vouchers. We were offered a choice of vouchers or two sets of round-trip tickets to any U.S. city to which Northwest has service. We were advised by the agent not to take the free tickets because of many restrictions in their use. We’d already decided to take the vouchers anyway, since we can usually find a fare for less than $300 for a round-trip ticket to any city where we might want to fly, and we’d also earn frequent-flyer miles with the tickets bought with the vouchers. You don’t earn FF miles on free tickets.

We were bumped both times at the start of our trip in Vegas. The first time there were no seats on any flights the rest of the day, so we were able to go back to the condo and sleep in our own bed and return to the airport the next morning, scheduled on the same flight as the day before. Fortunately, we’d planned to arrive a day early for the Jamboree anyway, so we were able to adapt to this delay.

The second morning when we arrived for our rescheduled flight, we volunteered again when the gate agent called for volunteers. This time we could get out in the afternoon, although this meant a late arrival in Detroit and an even later arrival at Casino Windsor. I had to speak at a seminar the next morning at 10:30 a.m. But for $600 we figured we could catch some zzzz’s on the plane and take a nap in the afternoon the next day to catch up on our sleep.

We had about a five-hour wait until our afternoon flight. We thought about popping down to Ellis Island, which is not far from the airport. It was a 5x-points day and we can always get a comped meal there. In addition, we were planning to play there at least one Friday this month anyway to keep up our level of play to get our usual bounce-back checks. However, we would’ve had to get our car out of the garage, then come back to the airport early enough to go through security again, with the lines being extremely long that day. It was going to be a very busy and tiring proposition.

But to be totally honest with you, my dear readers, there was an even more important reason why we decided against this plan: We just didn’t have the stomach to risk losing what might be even much more than the $1,200 we’d just scored with Northwest. Now, you may think this was silly of us. If you know us at all, you might tell us that you know that we often lose much more than $1,200 many days that we play video poker. I know that –- and it’s quite possible that we’ll lose that much or more playing at Ellis Island this week. However, that won’t bother us. You say this doesn’t make sense.

Yes, we are skilled. Yes, we are experienced. Yes, we have an adequate bankroll to play at the levels we do. But we are only human –- and our feelings don’t always follow our logical minds!

So I asked the gate agent for a food comp, which he was glad to give us, and we had a nice leisurely meal in the airport. Then I got out my laptop and worked on my current writing project. Brad read the newspaper and some magazines and snoozed a bit. It was a relaxing afternoon. And when we finally got on a plane, we had a nice relaxing flight in first class, an extra perk from a grateful airline and one of our favorite comps!

4/1/2005

Nope, we don’t quit at 2:30 p.m., even if we are now winners.

2:46 p.m. Brad is dealt 4-of-a-kind. “”It seems like I just can’t improve these hands.”” I remind him of something he already knows — that you only improve one time in 12 hands even if you get them on average — which you rarely do. Streakiness is the name of the game in everything about video poker.

2:50 p.m. The tiny timer in my purse buzzes. I remind Brad it’s time to take his cholesterol-lowering medication.

2:56 p.m. Someone in our row gets a royal. We’re happy for him, of course, but it’s hard not to be a little jealous.

3:00 p.m. Brad throws away a trash hand — and gets a dirty royal (one “”ruined”” by a deuce) on one hand on the redeal. He gripes, “”Why couldn’t this darn machine have given me one on the first deal?”” He’s getting a little cranky, since he’s now lost all of his deuce-jackpot credits and half of his stake.

3:30 p.m. We put on jackets; the Arctic wind has started. And we trade machines so I can get away from a smoker beside me. Smoke doesn’t bother Brad as much as it does me. We’re now down $700.

3:35 p.m. I hit 4 deuces on “”Brad’s”” machine and we’re now up $400.

3:45 p.m. Brad hits 4 deuces on “”my”” machine. We’re up $895.

4:30 p.m. I decide to take a break and go outside to get some fresh air. When I come back in a half-hour, I find we’re now down $500. So what’s new? It’s always a roller-coaster ride.

5:30 p.m. Brad takes a break, going to the race and sports book to look up some scores and watch a couple of horse races. He was a frequent visitor to Kentucky racetracks before he discovered casinos. He rarely puts any money on a horse anymore, but he likes to watch them run!

5:50 p.m. Brad returns and gets dealt four to a royal, always a hopeful time for us. But as mostly happens, the magic card does not show. One always expects too much “”luck”” when playing multi-line. We’re down $600.

6:05 p.m. Brad holds 3 cards to a royal. He’s hoping for at least a dirty royal. And wonder of wonders, a “”real”” royal appears on one line. Immediately, the machine so kindly pops up with a do-you-want-to-double-your win notice. Brad quickly looks for the I-don’t-think-so button! We’re $3,200 up — and life is good. Now’s the time to take a break and have dinner and celebrate. We ask for a comp to the buffet, which our host gives to us cheerfully.

7:00 p.m. Back from dinner, feeling refreshed, we go back to “”work.”” We start feeding our profits into the machine, which suddenly has a ravenous appetite.

8:30 p.m. We’re now up only $2,200. One always hates to lose profit, but we look at the long term and this is still a good play and we aren’t tired. So we plod on.

9:20 p.m. Brad holds 2 deuces and catches 2 more on one line.

9:35 p.m. Brad is on a roll: He holds one deuce and surprises himself with 3 more on one line.

9:50 p.m. He does it again — turns one deuce into 4.

10:00 p.m. We’re getting tired, although we’re feeling heady from Brad’s jackpot streak. We count the profit in our pocket and the credits on our machines and find we’re exactly $4,000 ahead. Plus, we’ll collect $1,200 in slot club cashback. It’s time for us to quit. The promotion lasts two more hours and we want to play longer, but the quit messages from our tired brains and weary bodies are too strong. When you’re risking $25 a hand, you want to be at your best physically and mentally so you can play accurately.

So we cash out and drive home, two tired but happy promotion puppies.

Next week I’ll talk about how we would do things differently if this same promotion were this week. You can test yourself to see how many differences you found.

4/8/2005

For the last two weeks, I’ve talked about a promotion we did several years ago. I stated that our playing routine was quite a bit different then than it is now.

Some concepts haven’t changed. We still make a special effort to play a promotion like this with a good EV, especially since there aren’t quite as many opportunities as there used to be. We still bunch activities when we’re out driving around town — doing personal chores, eating out, picking up bounce-back cash, and playing video poker. We rarely go out to do only one thing. And I still enjoy using coupons, although I’m more selective and coupon only when it’s easy.

It’s also still cold and drafty in the majority of casinos, so we take sweaters or jackets with us no matter the temperature outside. We continue to take short breaks to go outside and get some fresh air (or warm up). We often break up a session with a long break to eat a meal. And video poker is still a roller coaster, emotionally and financially!

Now for the differences. I’ve finally developed some sense and do not stay up at my computer until two in the morning. I’m usually in bed by 11:30 p.m., so I can get up earlier in the morning to process my still-heavy e-mail load. That never seems to decrease!

The biggest difference is that we no longer play such long sessions. Even with frequent short breaks outside in the fresh air and longer breaks to enjoy a meal, our usual limit is about three hours of play in one day. We just don’t have the energy we used to have, and no stamina for marathon playing sessions. Plus, especially since Brad’s heart attack, neither of us can take the smoke for long periods. So we probably would not have gone back to playing after dinner. Savoring the sweet taste from Brad’s royal, we would have enjoyed a relaxing and smoke-free evening in our own living room.

One characteristic of a wise gambler is that he/she needs to be flexible. We’ve had to make adjustments as we grow older, particularly because of health factors. And many of our friends are thinking about the health factor too, even though they’re younger. But there are other areas where adjustments will have to be made. Video poker players may have to learn new games, when their old favorites disappear. We never visit some casinos where we used to spend a lot of time playing, because of changes in game inventory or slot club benefits. Out-of-towners may have to change casinos to find one that will comp their rooms easier.

The name of the casino game is “change.”

4/15/2005

Last October, I wrote a couple of columns discussing the importance of a balanced life for a gambler. Most professional players, gaming writers, or anyone who spends a lot of time in casinos will tell you that they have (or want to have) many meaningful interests and relationships that are totally separate from the casino world.

I’ve been thinking about this a lot during the last few months, as Brad’s and my casino activity has taken a backseat in importance to “real-life” issues, regrettably a lot of them medical-related. My false-alarm “heart attack” I told you about a few months ago was finally diagnosed as an esophagus problem. An endoscopy found that a web-like growth was causing a major blockage. At that time a stretching procedure was done to try to rectify this. Time will tell if more will have to be done. The best news was that all tests came back negative for malignancy.

I’ve also been concerned with medical problems in my family. My younger sister, Starr, has developed some medical problems serious enough that she had to give up her law practice. She recently spent two weeks in Vegas with us and we were so happy to give her a chance for some much needed R+R. My 90-year-old father has been going downhill for a couple of years with Alzheimer’s, but my stepmother had been able to keep him at home. Recently, however, he developed several medical problems, was hospitalized, and is now in an acute-care nursing facility. We three sisters are helping our stepmother make some difficult end-of-life decisions.

I’m not complaining here. I’m just trying to give you readers, whom I also consider my friends, an accurate picture of our life in Vegas. Because I mainly write about gambling and Vegas, some people think we have this carefree glamorous life, spending every day in exciting casinos doing exciting things. We do have a wonderful life and sometimes it has a fairy-tale aura. But it’s still real life – with all that real life entails, the joy and the sorrow, whether you live in a big city of garish glitz or a small town of comfortable ordinariness.

One last personal note: How time flies! I can’t believe I started writing this column five years ago this month. I’ve often threatened to stop – and I did once! Lasted about two weeks, I think. I did take a four-week vacation another time. And periodically, friends have taken pity on me and provided guest columns.

How long will I continue? Who knows? I may be addicted and can’t stop until I no longer have a rational thought in my head and my fingers are no longer able to navigate around a keyboard.

4/22/2005

Typically, I run a guest column when Brad and I are out of town, entertaining out-of-town visitors, participating in a time-consuming promotion, feeling under the weather, or just too cranky to think of anything pithy. But this week, I can’t claim any of the usual excuses. I’m running this guest column simply because it’s so funny and true. Enjoy.

THE MOST COMMON CASINO MISTAKES

By John (Lodestone) Kelly

After reading what I usually write about casinos, you might get the idea that I think casinos are run by inbred imbeciles who only got their jobs because they happen to be a blood relative of some well-connected uncle. This is not true. Many of these relatives are in-laws who are not genetically related. But because I’m a compassionate person, I hereby offer some kind words of advice to lend a helping hand for the education and edification of these lost casino-management souls. I use small words when possible.

We’re Old, It’s Cold
Although the temperature maintained in most casinos is about right for winter-wear, summers in Las Vegas routinely reach 110 degrees or higher. That’s why we customers are inclined to show up wearing shorts and sandals. You, on the other hand, are dressed for work, wearing three-piece suits. You’re also running around a lot, yelling at your employees and sucking up to high rollers. This tends to keep you warm, so the temperature feels right to you. Furthermore, you’re young, and most of us are old. We prefer things a little warmer, especially when the only calorie-burning activity we’re performing is moving our fingers. It’s drafty in here, sonny. We’re not wearing your casino logo jackets in July to show our loyalty. There’s something seriously wrong when our reaction upon exiting the casino and entering the mid-day blast furnace of the great outdoors is “AHHHH!!!” Try saving a few hundred thousand dollars a month on your electric bill by edging up the thermostat a few degrees.

Ergonomics and Economics
I know your bean-counting cousin figured out that you could cram half-again as many upright machines into your casino as you can slant-tops, and your nephew cites some article on ergonomics that he saw in Tiger Beat that indicates sitting upright is the best way to play video games. But in reality, nobody likes uprights. The stress on our back, shoulders, wrists, and butt is considerable when playing for more than a couple of minutes. There’s something amiss when you spy prim and proper grandmas with their feet planted up on the counter and their legs splayed up and apart like they’re at the OB-GYN’s office, in a vain attempt to get comfortable. Also, while we realize that bolting the chairs to the machine keeps them neat and tidy in pretty rows, no person in his or her right mind designs seating like this. Your customers come in all shapes and sizes. Allow them to place the chair where they want it.

Lines: Our EV Is 100%; Our Enjoyment is Zero
While lines are somewhat inevitable in establishments that draw as many people as casinos and some casinos have made great strides in remedying this situation, long mind-numbing vacation-ruining family-fighting lines still abound. While long lines of bored patrons reassure your boss that you’re successfully packing your casino with customers, if you observe carefully, you’ll note that none of these customers are doing anything that profits the casino in any way. They’re not playing any machines. They’re not seeing any shows. They’re not buying anything in the stores. And when they finally get their starving carcasses into that *$!@&# buffet, they’re going to eat you out of kitchen and coffer. This ain’t Disneyland, where they’ve already got the customer’s money and could care less how they spend the rest of their day. You need these people busy and emptying their pockets, not bored and wondering why the hell they came. Do what ya gotta do: Create comp lines, hire more cashiers, raise prices, whatever. It’s sinful to keep cust”
4/29/2005 “How’s this for frugal? McDonald’s celebrated its 50th birthday a couple of weeks ago and we took advantage of a special they ran in the food court at a nearby mall: hamburger, fries, and milkshake combo at the price they charged in 1955 – a big 45 cents! Of course, we could have gotten it free at the Palms store, using points, but not bad for a non-comped meal!

A research project at Yale University finding that recreational gamblers 65 and older seem to be healthier than non-gamblers has received a lot of press. I have another take on this subject, thinking about all the wheelchairs, walkers, and oxygen tanks I see in casinos. We senior gamblers just don’t let medical problems keep us down.

Continuing on the subject of research, studies suggest food variety causes people to eat more. Hey, we Vegas locals have known that for a long time. Many people who move here gain weight the first year or so – until they learn that there will be another buffet, with just as much food, the next day!

I haven’t seen any of these in casinos yet, but I saw them advertised in a magazine for people in the casino industry. They’re bilingual (Spanish/English) video slot machines called Used Cars. Just my opinion, but doesn’t this seem politically incorrect?

Some tips for Southwest Airlines passengers:

* A new and very welcome change – multiple customers who are traveling on the same reservation can now check in online and request their boarding passes.
* Why should you get a boarding pass online in advance if you’re checking baggage and could get one at that time? You can check in online beginning at 12:01 a.m. local time on the day of departure and the earlier you check in, the more likely you will be assigned to the A boarding category and have a better choice of seats.
* Are you out of luck for checking in early online because you’re in a hotel room with no computer and printer? Try asking – sweetly, of course – at the hotel front desk if they can do this for you. Many have found this a successful technique, especially if you choose a slower time when there aren’t long lines.

Dear Abby tackles a knotty gambling problem: “If a gentleman asks a lady to accompany him to a casino and gives her money to gamble, is it proper for him to insist that she split her winnings with him?” Her sensible answer: “Considering the fact that your date advanced the money that brought you the windfall, I’d say you are 100% ahead of where you would be had he not been so generous. You may feel offended at his sense of entitlement, but a lady would have offered to share.”

One last reminder about the Gambler’s Jamboree at Casino Windsor, just across the border from Detroit, May 21 and 22. Go to http://www.FrugalGambler.biz and click on Calendar for all the details, including discounts if you mention when you register that the Frugal Gambler sent you. Brad and I are looking forward to being able to chat with fellow frugal fans.

3/4/2005

Last spring I wrote several ranting columns about too much gratuitous sex everywhere I look in Vegas — and now I feel myself getting wound up again. The Nevada Gaming Commission dismissed two of three counts of a complaint against the Hard Rock Hotel for a controversial advertising campaign. Then they gave them a slap-on-the-wrist fine — and blatantly sexy billboards spring up in more and more places. Read the frustrating details at http://www.lasvegassun.com/sunbin/stories/business/2004/oct/27/517730842.html.
However, I just don’t have the energy to rant and rage this week — so a good friend has stepped in to help me out.

But first, a World Series of Blackjack program note:
Tonight, Friday March 4 at 10 p.m. (Pacific Time) on GSN, the BJ contestants are Angie Moneytaker, Jimmy Pine, Ken Einiger, Rick Jensen, and yours truly. This show will repeat three hours later and on Saturday, Sunday, and Tuesday evenings. Check the time in your area that GSN (formerly the Game Show Network) will air the WSOB. Cox has the GSN on Channel 344 in Las Vegas.
(This show has been preempted and has been rescheduled for next week, at 10 p.m. on March 11 and then repeated on the evenings of 12, 13, and 15th)

Sex and The City
by Winnie

Las Vegas has gone through several makeovers in its short history. Although I don’t have all of the dates and haven’t made a historical study, several distinct periods stand out in my personal recollections. This is by no means a factual presentation, but more one person’s perspective.

First there was the “wide-open anything-goes” period during the very early days. There was open control by the mob, which oversaw not only the gambling, but also a variety of other activities, such as prostitution. This lawlessness was so flagrant and drew so much scrutiny that it eventually was replaced by the more respectable corporate America.

This more businesslike approach cleaned up the city and made it a respectable place to visit. These businesspeople knew that it wasn’t necessary to have a criminal element, as they made a huge profit without cheating. Good gambling was offered and the honesty of the games was promoted. There was still some nudity in the big production shows, but it was not risqué, only classy and elegant. The seamier side of Las Vegas was largely hidden from view.

During one of the slower periods, someone had the idea to promote Las Vegas as a family destination. An amusement park was built at MGM. and Treasure Island, Circus Circus, and Excalibur along with many other casinos marketed the family theme heavily. This new approach was popular with the families who wouldn’t have otherwise visited the city. The only problem was that this group of visitors seemed to spend more time entertaining their children than gambling in the casinos — and that was bad for business!

The next Las Vegas phase was all too short, in my opinion. This was a period when culture ruled in Las Vegas. Art galleries were found at Bellagio and Venetian, and major Broadway productions were offered at many of the larger hotels. Shopping was upgraded from the cheap tourist stores to stores with all of the major retailers represented along with designer names. “Class” was in and the Treasure Island pirate battle and Bellagio water show were the frosting on the cake. There were still plenty of activities for all the family, but a more affluent and sophisticated crowd was now attracted to Las Vegas.

Unfortunately, the casinos felt they had to offer something new to these new customers. The new phase in the city is epitomized by the ad slogan, “What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas!” In other words, anything goes in Sin City. Suddenly, this title of Sin City is springing up everywhere. Almost every major Strip casino is opening an after-hours club and plastering their walls with provocative posters. “Be”

3/10/2005

Brad and I are trying to recover from our third bout with the flu this winter, so I’m grateful for John Kelly’s willingness to do a guest column for me once in a while to give me a rest. This time he is discussing a problem that plagues us all!

But first, another World Series of Blackjack (WSOB) program note due to a preemption last week that caused a one-week postponement of the original schedule:

Tonight, Friday March 11 at 10 p.m. (Pacific Time) on GSN, the BJ contestants are Angie Moneytaker, Jimmy Pine, Ken Einiger, Rick Jensen, and yours truly. This show will repeat three hours later and on Saturday, Sunday, and Tuesday evenings. Check the time in your area that GSN (formerly the Game Show Network) will air the WSOB. Cox has the GSN on Channel 344 in Las Vegas.

HORRIBLE, PATHETIC, EXCRUTIATING LOSING
By John (Lodestone) Kelly

A great deal is written about how to win at video poker, but what no one likes to talk about is the fact that most sessions are no winners at all. The nature of the game is such that even with the best of games, most sessions don’t land you a jackpot, and without that, the edge is in the casino’s hands. And sometimes it turns from grim to downright ugly. Play long enough and you’ll experience god-awful streaks from hell — it’s almost guaranteed.

We experienced skilled players know this and console ourselves with the fact that it’s all part of the game and that in the long run we’ll almost certainly prevail. But use of this stoic logic ignores the fact that we’re emotional creatures and that this is an emotional game. You cannot robotically continue to try to do something over and over (fill a flush, catch a quad, etc.) and fail, time after time, without getting frustrated. And following frustration is the realization that you’re having a lousy time and this is supposed to be your vacation, dammit! Other fun thoughts:

This “”free”” buffet just cost me $300.
I’ve worked and saved all year … for this?
Gee, this is fun. Why don’t I just add to the excitement and hit the buttons with my forehead?

Even more aggravating is knowing that, as a skilled player, you’ve invested considerable time and energy into getting every edge you can, while next to you Mr. or Ms. Clueless has just gotten four aces and a kicker. If it’s really that kind of day, said person will start to offer you unsolicited advice, i.e.: “”Always hold sixes. That machine gets four-of-a-kind in sixes a lot.”” This is why casinos don’t allow patrons to carry weapons.

We’re all grown-ups and theoretically have enough sense to pick up and leave whenever we want. Why don’t we? First of all, the game is hypnotic in itself. But, as skilled players, we’re actually more susceptible than most to play ourselves into a state of misery. Our knowledge actually works against us here, because it provides rationalizations for continued play. Here are some of the more common ones and the pitfalls that come with them:

“”This is the best play in town and I’d be an idiot to leave.“” My wife once commented, “”It seems like whenever we get killed, it’s always when we’re playing with some big edge.” I had to agree that she was right. After giving it a little thought, I realized why: We only play when we have a huge edge. Duh. Regardless, that extra percentage point isn’t worth losing your temper over. If you’re playing angry, leave!

“”Losing streaks are purely a characteristic of random probability, and are an illusion. My chances are as good now as they ever were.”” Absolutely true. On any given hand, your chances are as good as they were during your hottest winning streak. But just try to convince your emotions of that! Personally, when I’m “”hot,”” my inner child is convinced that every lousy two-pair is “”half a quad.”” I’m excited by everything. I’m having a blast. I’m feeling immortal. On the other hand, when I’m losing, not even being dealt four-to-a-royal

3/18/2005

Well, my episode in this year’s World Series of Blackjack finally premiered — and now you know I didn’t advance. But neither did a lot of players, most who were certainly more experienced than I am in tournament BJ — so I’m not embarrassed about my performance. I made $2,500 for 3rd place at my table and they mentioned The Frugal Gambler several times, which is always good book publicity. I made some new friends and we had a lot fun during the filming.

Saying that we had fun filming does not mean it wasn’t stressful. I’ve been on TV many times and have never been nervous, with the exceptions of “To Tell the Truth” and this tournament. Even though neither show was actually live, they’re both taped under circumstances similar to live programming. “To Tell the Truth” was edited very little. The BJ tournament edited out some hands, but we couldn’t play a hand over if we did something dumb the first time. So I and many other players did make some boneheaded plays from the pressure. Don’t ask me why I did something in hand number whatever. When I watched it the first (and second) time on TV, I kept muttering, “Why in the heck did I do that?” Fortunately, I came out smelling like a rose on some dumb plays. Unfortunately, my inexperience was revealed on some other plays that did hurt me. But at least I didn’t surrender a twenty as one player did.

As I said, I was very nervous, especially at the beginning, and was pretty stiff. However, during the breaks in the filming, I was encouraged to be more “enthusiastic.” They were teasing me that I was chosen because I was supposed to be a “character.” Luckily, I started getting some hands that didn’t require acting. I got caught up in the joy of victory and the agony of defeat and started being myself. One time when I was extra enthusiastic, Max Rubin commented that this was the reason why I don’t play live poker. So true!

I was grateful for being asked to be in this tournament. I felt it was a real honor. But most of all, I’m grateful the shot angles didn’t make me look 10 pounds heavier!

Las Vegas Library Appearances: I’ll first give a talk, followed by a Q+A session and book signing. I’ll stick around as long as there are people with questions for me.

April 10: 2-4 p.m., Sahara West Library and Fine Arts Museum, 9600 W. Sahara Avenue.

April 21: 4:30-6 p.m., Downtown LV Library, 833 Las Vegas Blvd. North.

3/25/2005

This is an article I wrote several years ago, then stuck in a file. It might be interesting for some of you who have followed my writings to try to spot the differences in our playing style between now and then. This is definitely not the way we usually do things now!

10 a.m. — The first thing I think about when I wake up this morning is: Here it is — deadline day for a column, but a too-good-to-miss promotion at a casino. What to do?

Well, how about combining the two, with a blow-by-blow diary of Brad’s and my day?

Hmmmm. Could be a little risky. It might turn out to be a boring routine video poker session. Or we might lose a bundle, which would scare people and discourage them from ever studying video poker. Or we might hit three royals, which would give people the wrong impression that it’s always easy to win.

Hey, everything’s a gamble. I’ll take the risk.

10:05. I jump out of bed and start getting dressed. I wish I could get up earlier like most other folks do, but then I’d have to figure out a way to turn off my computer and get to bed before 2 a.m. My old body has to have eight hours of zzzzzz’s or it doesn’t operate well.

Noon. Brad has been ready to go for hours; men have it so easy. I just now am able to get out the door. But then, besides getting dressed and doing my hair, I’ve read 40 e-mails and answered 10, fielded four phone calls, and gathered up dry-cleaning.

Since the casino with the good promotion is clear across town, we do some errands on the way: drop off the dry cleaning, pick up bounce-back cash at a different casino, and stop at Office Max and Rite-Aid to pick up some items I have coupons for. Sometimes I wish I could make myself stop couponing — Brad says it isn’t time-efficient — but I still think it’s fun to get something for nothing. So I guess I’ll keep this one pleasure and count it as entertainment!

1:40 p.m. We pull into the parking lot of our target casino and I use my cell phone to call a friend who’s already playing there. Are there any seats open at the good machines? He says two are open and he’ll save them for us. We’re lucky today that this promotion has not been widely publicized and there are more seats than players. Thank goodness for our circle of friends who share such information.

1:50 p.m. We arrive at our machines, our favorite choice, $1 Five Play NSUDs (Not-So-Ugly-Ducks). We played classic Deuces Wild, with its 100.7% EV, for many years at the quarter level and missed it when we went up to playing $1. But now we can frequently find this newer Deuces version with a promotion that will take its 99.7% EV up nicely over 100%. Today, we’re getting triple slot club points, adding a fat .75% and making this a great play since we can put a lot of money through the machine at $25 a hand. Plus we’re doing the play for the regular bounce-back coupons this casino sends us monthly. We put our jackets on the back of the chairs (it’s 105 degrees outside, but we may feel Arctic air blowing on our shoulders any minute), feed five $100 bills into each of our machines, and wiggle around in our chairs to get comfortable.

1:55 p.m. The battle begins as we start to play.

2:00 p.m. Brad has to go into his pocket. Darn, $500 gone in five minutes. It takes nerves of steel to take this, even for old hands like us.

2:05 p.m. Yeah, baby! I get 4 deuces for $1,000. At least we won’t have to lose $3,000-$4,000 before we hit a jackpot, which can and does happen frequently.

2:15 p.m. Brad is dealt 3 deuces. Our hopes rise. Our hopes fall. Not one hand was improved on any of the five lines. You know your luck is bad when it takes 3 deuces to make 4-of-a-kind!

2:16 p.m. Brad is dealt 2 deuces and makes 4 on one line. We’re on Cloud 9 — and up $800. And Brad gets a nice polo shirt, thanks to a coupon. Right after logo jackets, shirts are on Brad’s favorite free things.

2:30 p.m. Brad is dealt 5-of-a-kind made up of three deuces.