Jean Scott's Frugal Vegas

6/2/2006

“Here I go again – writing a book I never planned on writing and certainly never wanted to write. Why would I, a 67-year-old grandma who is trying to retire, take on a job that is extremely complex and continually frustrating, that involves thousands of hours staring at a computer until the eyes glaze over and the brain shuts down, and that when you think you’re almost finished you feel the need to revise and rewrite at least a dozen more times?”

Yes, that’s the introduction to my new book, Frugal Video Poker, and I wanted you, my faithful Frugal Fridays readers, to have the first official announcement.

As I continued in the Introduction to this book: “…I always hoped that someone would write a VP how-to book that, one step at a time, detailed the way that the beginner could learn to play video poker and slowly but surely work up to becoming a knowledgeable player. I thought perhaps one of the well-known VP gurus and/or a mathematician would bring out this book. But although many of these writers provide us with extensive writings on various general and specialized VP subjects – and I’m grateful for every bit of information they give us – there’s no one book that the average gambler can go to for a comprehensive look at the video poker situation in casinos today and learn how to play skillfully.”

“I guess it’s both the writer and teacher in me that refuse to let me retire. If no one else will write a book that I can recommend to all those who beg me for down-to-earth practical light-on-the-math help, well, I’ll have to do it myself. Not being strong in math – remember I taught English not math – I identify strongly with these players. But the one thing my husband Brad and I have learned from 22 years of gambling in casinos, the last 16 playing VP with great financial success, is that you don’t have to be an egghead mathematician to be a knowledgeable gambler. Not that you don’t have to understand some basic math principles – you do. And the more math you can understand, the easier and quicker will be your walk up the VP path. However, so many resources today have figured out the math for you that all you have to do is study and apply the existing tools. This book shows you how to do that.”

I’ve been working on this book for almost 4 years, from the time I realized I had many more video poker notes than would fit into More Frugal Gambling. But the most important fact is that I had lots of help along the way. Viktor Nacht, skilled gambler and proprietor of RGE Publishing, came onboard the project over a year ago and gave me considerable help, especially when I was stuck on the technical computer aspects. However, there are literally thousands of “helpers,” some named and many more unnamed, whose footprints appear throughout the book. These include the writer-experts whose resources I followed all these years, the knowledgeable posters who contributed information on many Internet forums, and the multitude of frugal friends who shared their expertise in person and in e-mails – and that includes many of you valued readers.

The book is now in the hands of Huntington Press and should be off to the printer within the month. The distribution process is a very complex and lengthy one so it will be several months before it’s on the shelves of your local bookstore. However, I’ll alert you here when you’ll be able to order it online. There will be pre-pub discounts both at www.shoplva.com/ (for LVA subscribers) and at www.frugalgambler.biz/ (where you can order personally autographed copies).

6/8/2006

This week we again visit the subject of comps, with a guest column from a friend who wants to stay anonymous. He corrobarates the warning I’ve been issuing for years: Be very careful that you can afford any comp you earn.

PLAYING FOR COMPS

Playing for comps is a touchy subject among experts and smart VP players. It usually involves heavy play on a slightly negative game in order to earn certain premium comps, such as gourmet dining, nice hotel rooms, VIP tournament invitations, etc. There are many things to consider when deciding if this is for you.

1) Your honest evaluation of the value of the comp. For a tournament, just divide the total prize fund by the number of players to get the equity. For gourmet meals, you have to decide what you’d be willing to actually pay, out of your own pocket, for the meal, and use that figure. And don’t forget to include the tip, which must be paid with real money. For rooms, timing is important. A room at a Strip casino over a holiday weekend might cost $400 a night, while a similar room at a local casino on a weekday might cost $40. And the local casino will almost always have better VP to play for the room comp. As with the meal, you must decide what you’d be willing to pay for the room, in real money.

2) Your expected loss on the game. This is simply your disadvantage times your coin-in. For example, at 9/6 JoB, playing $20,000 through a 99.54% game (assuming you play accurately) gives you an expected loss of about $100. If this play earns a comp worth $200, you might consider it a good deal, at least from a monetary standpoint. You should also add in any cashback or bounce-back offered by that casino for your play. In this example, if the casino has .2% cash back, your expected loss drops to $60.

3) Your time. How much time will you invest to earn your comp? In the above example, you might play dollar JoB for five hours to earn your $200 comp. Subtracting your expected loss (not counting cash back) leaves a $100 “”profit”” for your five-hour investment, or about $20 per hour. Not bad, but you might be better off playing a better game at another casino — only you can decide what is best for you.

4) Your risk. This is the part that the experts have trouble agreeing on. It’s essential that your worst possible loss will not be an amount that will significantly impact your bankroll. If you usually play quarters, with a bankroll of $5,000, you should not attempt to earn RFB at Bellagio. In the above JoB example, you could easily see a loss of $1,000+ on a bad day. If that were to occur, how would you feel? If the worst-case scenario is not an acceptable outcome for you, then you might want to pass on that particular comp. As a general guideline, if you might lose more than 1% of your total bankroll in pursuit of the comp, you ought to think twice about it, no matter how desirable the comp might be. Most people will not enjoy their steak dinner if they lose $5,000 earning it!

Many gambling experts simply say, “”Don’t play for comps!”” While this might be good advice for many players, there can be lots of exceptions. Like in anything else, evaluating risk versus reward is crucial. If you know all the facts and can do a bit of easy math, you might decide that the reward is worth the risk. But you must decide for yourself.

6/15/2006

Editor’s Note: Jean Scott contributed a column, as usual, for this week’s Frugal Fridays. But this is the rare occasion when her faithful and dutiful editors overruled her, in favor of something different. Jean is much too modest to submit the following herself, so it was pieced together from a phone call and three emails starting last Saturday evening, after a major event occurred in her and Brad’s lives. Here’s the story.

“Another couple, our very close friends, went in with Brad and me to enter the million-dollar Fortunes of Rome slot tournament at Caesars Palace last weekend. The entry fee was $10,000, but if you accrued 135,000 players club points (Harrah’s basic Reward Credits) in a three-day period during the tournament, Caesars would give you back the $10K (135,000 players club points equates to $1.35 million coin-in).

“The tournament invitation came in Brad’s name and we had the bankroll to go it alone, but neither of us relished playing long hours for three days straight. So the four of us pounded away at $5 Five Play 9/6 JoB, fulfilled the requirement in about 30 hours of play, and got back our $10,000 entry fee.

“We and the other couple were kittying our win/loss on the floor as well as in the tournament and sharing all extra benefits. We got two royals and had good luck pretty much the whole time, so depending on the bounce-back cash we’ll receive in the mail later, Brad and I and the other couple will split about $40,000 for the play. We were happy before the tournament even started, so it didn’t really matter how little we won from the tournament’s million-dollar prize pool.

”The rest of us were busy on Saturday, so Brad played in all four of the 15-minute slot-tournament rounds. Since we’d never been in a tournament with only 75 entrants, we didn’t really know what a good score might be, but we guessed (hoped?) his final tally was good enough to end up in the top ten, maybe even the top five. It was a long suspenseful day, but at about 7 p.m. at the awards banquet Saturday night, Brad’s name was the last one called — meaning he took first place and a grand prize of $500,000!!

“Needless to say, all four of us were so excited we could hardly breathe.

“Our senses returned when we were given a choice of getting the half-million dollars in cash or a check. I joked with the cashier, saying we wanted it in one-dollar bills. He never blinked an eye; he just said he’d send for a forklift!

“Obviously, we took the winnings in a check. Neither couple wanted to carry around $250,000 in cash — which would’ve been 50 stacks containing 50 hundred-dollar bills each!”

Jean added this footnote last Monday. “We’ve all been in a state of shock for two days now. Well, maybe not Brad. He’s still carrying the original check around, showing it to all of our friends to see the expression on their faces. I’ve never seen him so animated!”” And this came on Tuesday. “”I finally made a copy of the check he could keep in his pocket –- so he’s off to the bank to deposit the original!”

6/22/2006

First, I want to thank everyone who e-mailed us personally or posted congratulatory messages on Internet forums, especially on the LVA board and vpFree. It’s a wonderful feeling to have so many friends who are generous in their joy for us, even though they’d love to have such an event in their own lives.

However, I guess I didn’t give Deke enough details to put into last week’s column, because everyone had so many questions. One person said he didn’t want to pry into our personal lives, but he still wanted to know all about this tournament experience, because he didn’t think he’d ever win this much money, so he was anxious to vicariously live the adventure. So, I’ll be using this column for the next few weeks to give you answers to your questions. They’ll be straightforward; our life has always been pretty much an open book.

“What are you going to do with all that money?”

“Are you going to buy a bigger house? A bigger fancier car?”

“I hope you and Brad take a nice long vacation.”

No, we aren’t going to buy a bigger house. We’ve had big houses; we deliberately downsized and simplified when we moved to Vegas. Our little condo suits us fine. Someone else takes care of the green grass and shrubs and trees around it. We can walk just a few steps to the heated swimming pool year round. If friends and relatives visit, they much prefer to stay in a free luxurious hotel room that we get for them rather than a guest bedroom if we had one.

We wouldn’t think of replacing our little PT Cruiser in which we tool around town. We love the Frugal Plum.

And as for taking a vacation, one person got it right, “What a wonderful fairy-tale retirement you and Brad have had since you first moved here.” We feel like we’re on vacation every day!

Now, as for how we’ll spend the money, Brad and I have talked about this at length, but we still can’t think of anything we want that we haven’t already been able to afford. The casinos provide us with almost all of our needs: food, gas, and gift cards that cover most of the necessities of life; and more entertainment and vacation options than we have the strength to pursue.

We did think of one valuable thing this windfall might give us: less anxiety when we’re in a long losing stretch of video poker. We never play beyond our bankroll, but losing is never the most mentally calming event. A bigger bankroll cushion will definitely make us more relaxed!

In a similar vein, someone suggested I take a part of this win and put it in a metaphoric To-Heck-With-It fund. I can give myself permission not to pick up bounce-back coupons if we’re not in the mood to drive across town and, more important, not feel a twinge of regret later over that loss of fifty “easy” dollars. To heck with it! When I feel we’re overscheduled, I can suggest we skip a 2x-bonus-point casino promotion with no guilt. To heck with it. I don’t know if I can stop taking the toothpaste tube out of the wastebasket in Brad’s bathroom and see how many more brushings I can get out of it, but I might try it soon and see how I feel. Sure, I’ll have to take tiny steps here; I have 67 years of habits to break. But already I’ve found it a wonderful way to begin easing up on my “nutty frugalness,” as Brad calls it.

Don’t worry about all that money getting moldy in a bank somewhere. We have some worthy causes that we’ve supported in the past and will be able to be even more generous with in the future. Plus, we have children and grandchildren who are never out of ideas for spending money!

More Q+A’s next week.

6/29/2006

As I promised last week, this week I’ll tackle more questions and comments arising from our first-place win in Caesars’ million-dollar slot tournament.

“It’s got to be nice to share a hit like that with another couple who you’re good friend with.”

“You really must trust your friends. Did you guys have a written agreement?”

Yes, it was fun to be with friends in this endeavor, from beginning to end. But we didn’t give them a check for a quarter of a million dollars just because they’re nice (even though they are) or because we’re generous. We had an agreement from the beginning: to share, equally, both the risks and the rewards. We trusted each other enough that it didn’t have to be in writing, but we discussed all aspects of it thoroughly in advance.

A note here: Before you make such an arrangement, be sure you’re very good friends and trust each other 100%. Even though we thought we’d covered every eventuality ahead of time, we did have to have some serious discussion when our play for the $10,000 rebate was only half-completed and we found ourselves ahead. We had to consider the option to quit and forget getting the $10,000 entry fee returned, since we knew about others who were losing big-time, as much as $60,000+. The four of us weren’t in total agreement at first and it took a few hours of crunching numbers and batting options back and forth to come to a final decision. Throughout the discussion, the main concern was that one couple would put pressure on the other to continue, which would leave a sour taste in everyone’s mouths if we did continue with the last half of play, then suffer a big loss. Our friendship was more important than any “good play.” However, we all decided we were willing to take the risk — and win or lose, our relationship could weather the storm.

“Did Caesars give a nice tournament gift? I’d think so at this high level.”

Yes. Caesars gave the participants a huge Faberge crystal bowl (that retails for more than $200). However, as with so many of our casino gifts, it didn’t fit in our small condo, so it’s sitting in the Comp Museum in our garage, waiting for someone to come visit us and take a fancy to it.

“The four of you seem rather matter-of-fact about the size of this win. If I won this much money, I’d consider it a life-changing event.”

Well, this has a lot to do with one’s age and circumstances. We can all remember a time when we were young and had children to raise and educate that a quarter of million dollars would’ve seemed like all the money in the world. It would’ve made a major impact on our lifestyle. When you’re older and have fewer financial responsibilities and, at last, have accumulated a nest egg for your golden years, the impact on your lifestyle isn’t as dramatic. Now, if someone gave us a promise of good health for 20 or more years –- that would be dramatic.

Tune in next week when I’ll talk about the issue here of luck vs. skill.

5/5/2006

Now that my last big writing project is done and in the hands of my editor, I have more time for one of my favorite pastimes, reading.

Of course, there are some things I read no matter how busy I get. I thoroughly scour the local Las Vegas newspaper, the Review-Journal, because I like to keep up on the local, national, and international news on both gambling and non-gambling subjects. I also keep up with the postings on several gambling Internet forums, so I have up-to-the-minute information on the best playing opportunities.

But stacks of books and magazines await my attention. Thank goodness I speed read! In today’s column and periodically in future columns, I’ll take off my teacher’s hat and write book reports instead of grading them, as I did for so many years when I taught high-school English.

Golden Touch Dice Control Revolution! is by Frank Scoblete and Dominator. I’ll be honest. I’d been a skeptic of dice systems since 1984 when I became a knowledgeable casino gambler. About three years ago I saw the Golden Touch dice-control technique in action in a casino. I squeezed into a crowded dice table where Scoblete and the Dominator, plus many of the GTC instructors, were playing. Although I’d heard glowing testimonials about Golden Touch, even from other one-time skeptics, I was still dubious. So I cautiously made small $5 bets while I watched the controlled shooters roll the dice.

No, not every one of these experts had long “miracle” rolls, although I recollect a few had some decent long rolls without the seven showing. And yes, some of these “experts” sevened out before I made a dollar on them. But at the end of the two-hour session, I was up almost $300, even though I never made a bet over $5 (just think of what I would have won if I bet a little more!). What I saw was a textbook lesson of the Golden Touch (GT) technique of dice control. You’re not going to hit every number, even if you’re a skilled dice controller, but if you’re successful in controlling the dice at least some of the time, you’ll be able to gain an edge over the casino. The really good dice-control shooters can have edges greater than blackjack card counters or skilled video poker players.

In More Frugal Gambling I wrote about charlatan gambling systems, saying that the first characteristic to look for in a bogus system is the boast that it’s easy. Fact is, there’s no way to beat casinos that’s easy –- never has been, never will be. If you read Scoblete’s and Dominator’s book, you’ll see that dice control isn’t instant oats, but the old-fashioned slow-cooked variety. In Chapter 16, GTC instructors answer the question: “What’s the average learning curve of someone trying to learn how to control the dice?” Answers range from six to 18 months, depending on your natural skill, but all stress that you must practice almost every day. That means just reading this book and knowing all the theory won’t cut it. You’ve got to practice the physical skill of setting, gripping, and tossing the dice in a certain manner. The book helps you understand these physical skills with 95 photographs, but when it’s all said and done, you’ve got to buy or build a small practice table and religiously practice your throws. Unlike card counting in blackjack or playing strategy for video poker, which are mental skills, dice control is a physical skill that you must master by steady practice.

Golden Touch Dice Control Revolution! covers all the information you need to get started learning about dice control: the physical elements of how to set, grip, and throw the dice; betting strategies for a controlled shooter and for a random shooter; money management; comps; team play; and tips from the GTC instructors, including the legendary Captain. The appendix is full of resources, including personal instruction that’s available in the Golden Touch Craps course and how to purchase a practice throwing table.

5/11/2006

It looks like I need to write again about losing at video poker. Here’s the post that was the catalyst this time.

Jean —

I’m in dire need of your sage advice and counsel. I’m about to throw in the tear-soaked towel on my video poker play out of utter frustration with my inability to see any monetary gains. And to add insult to injury, my good friends, who refuse to believe that “perfect play” is real and who pay no heed to the pay tables posted on the machines because that’s just “hogwash,” keep winning, and winning, and winning. While I, who have read cover-to-cover your and Bob Dancer’s books, religiously follow the advice therein and have spent countless hours perfecting my play on my games of choice (9/6 JoB and 8/5 Bonus Poker) through computer training, I CAN’T WIN.

In the past two years – I have yet to come out ahead. Yet my friends’ slapdash playing style nets them thousands of dollars. OK, I know there’s still the element of luck. But come on! Doesn’t skill count for anything?

And don’t get me wrong. I’m happy for my friends (sob, choke), but holy cow, can’t I get just a little break in two years of video poker play?

(Come to think of it, a black cat did cross my path a couple years ago. Do you think that’s it?)

So, any words of wisdom for this big loser? Or maybe I should just find a new hobby. I hear knitting is popular.

Cindy

I feel your pain, Cindy. Right now Brad and I are suffering in a long losing spell ourselves — and it’s not easy!

So I started thinking about what we’ve done over the 16 years we’ve been playing VP to cope with losing streaks, whether we’re playing quarters, as we did for many of our early years, or whether we’re attacking the “big nickels,” the $5 machines where we’re most often found these days. I realized that whether you’re a low roller or a high roller, many of the basic concepts of successful skilled play are the same.

Most important is that you must accept the fact that to win in the long run at VP, you must be an advantage player, which means simply that you must ALWAYS be playing when you have the advantage, the mathematical edge, over the casino. If you’re playing 9/6 JoB or 8/5 Bonus Poker, you must also have lots of benefits — like cashback, bounce-back, tournament and drawings equity — to get an edge over the casino. If you don’t have extra value benefits, you’re playing a negative game and shouldn’t expect to win.

You must understand and accept the difference between the short term and the long term. Your skill will only show up in the long term. Luck is the boss in the short term, mainly because so much of the value in a VP game is in the rare royal hand and you can get a royal on a good or a bad game. The long term isn’t an exact number of hours. However, the longer you play in a negative situation, the more you’ll lose in the long term; the more you play in a positive situation, the more you’ll move toward the theoretical 100+% return and winning.

You must have an adequate bankroll so you can ride out the bad times. Even the most expert VP player will average losing two sessions out of three, and those losing sessions may clump together for a long stretch even though the fewer, but bigger winning sessions will eventually win out.

Playing winning VP takes lots of discipline, patience, and continued study.

I may lose some of you right here. Maybe you don’t play very much, a few hours here and there. Maybe you don’t have the means to gather up an adequate bankroll, so you limit yourself to what you can take out of your budget for recreation. Maybe you don’t really want to study and practice. That’s fine; not everyone wants to be an advantage player. Having fun and hoping to get lucky satisfies many people completely.

But many of you, including Cindy, are really serious about being an advantage VP player. You’re willing to study and practice. So stayed tuned, because next week I’m going to get down to the nitty-gritty

5/18/2006

Last week I shared with you a letter from Cindy, a frugal follower frustrated because her friends seemed to win so much more than she did, although they ignored all the “rules” to which she so religiously adhered.

The first thing I want to tell you, Cindy, is that I never take much stock in what most gamblers tell me about their gambling results. I don’t say they’re lying, but most gamblers have the common disease called “selective memory.” They remember their winning sessions so much more clearly than their losing ones. One thing that marks most advantage players is that they’re more likely to complain about their long losing streaks. I guess it’s natural to be in shock when this happens to us, even though we’re skilled. We know that this isn’t unusual –- and if we’ve been playing for a long time, we’ve had plenty of “practice” at dealing with losing streaks. But no matter how many times we’ve survived them and come out on top in the long run, it seems that when you’re in a big hole, you feel like you might never again see the light of day.

So here are some things Brad and I do when we’re waiting for the winning light at the end of the long dark tunnel of losing.

We check every play we’re making to ensure it meets our standards. When you’re in a winning streak, it’s easy to rationalize lower-EV (expected value) plays. I know this, because we — who should know better — have fallen into this trap more than once. The greater your edge, the sooner you get to the long term and your bankroll will be better protected. I like to use an Old Testament story here about Joseph’s dream: You must store up the riches from seven fat years so you won’t starve in the seven lean ones. You need all the profit you can get when you’re winning to make up for the losing streaks that are bound to come.

We also check our plays in relationship to our bankroll. In terms of our financial bankroll, we ask ourselves, How much money can we afford to lose and not impact our lifestyle negatively? In terms of our psychological bankroll, the question is, How much can we lose until we want to quit because it isn’t fun anymore? One is always more brutally honest during a losing spell!

I think the concept of per-hour profit is one of the most dangerous traps for skilled players, especially at the higher denominations. I see people playing at high denominations with a tiny edge, maybe just .2%, where you need a half-million-dollar bankroll or more to have any reasonable confidence of not going broke. Maybe they have that big of a bankroll. But I’m afraid many skilled players, at all levels, haven’t figured out the bankroll requirements of the plays they’re making. Or if they have, they’re hoping that they get lucky and never fall down the wrong side of the bell curve for too long. Many an advantage player has gone broke, not because of a lack of skill, but because of playing above his bankroll. The “ruin” in “risk of ruin” means going broke!

We like to play way beneath our bankroll. Are we conservative? Yep, and that’s the way we plan to stay. We like to be able to sleep soundly at night and be worry-free in the daytime!

Next week: “The Comp Trap.”

5/25/2006

This week we’re continuing our series about things we’ve done to cope during VP losing streaks.

We evaluate our play to see that we aren’t falling into the comp trap, especially now that most of us skilled players are playing negative games (in Las Vegas). The truth is that it’s tempting to count the value of comps (airfare, gift cards, show tickets, etc.) when figuring the total EV of a play. Now, if we use comp items for things we would be buying for the same price anyway, this method works great. But there’s always the temptation to use comps to raise our standard of living.

I wrote this in a Strictly Slots article five years ago: “”Decide whether you want to count comps in the total return of your play. Brad and I did count comps when we first started and many casual recreational gamblers may want to always do this. And if you were going to take money out of your pocket in the same amount for the rooms, food, shows, and other non-cash
perks you get comped, it’s quite correct to count them in your total return. I know many gamblers who stay in the big Las Vegas Strip resorts where the best game with the cashback still don’t quite come to 100%. But with all the non-cash perks and comps, they’re playing well over 100%.

”However, you must be careful in your calculations here. We didn’t count comps in our total return for very long, because we were soon getting so many comps that we were increasing the number of our casino vacations and the luxury of our casino lifestyle to a level that we could never have afforded on our own budget. So we started counting comps as gravy and chose playing opportunities that were over 100% in cash (or cash equivalents) return. If you want to count comps, figure the average amount you’ll lose over the long term by playing at a percentage below 100% in actual cash return. If you can’t
afford that loss, you can’t ‘afford’ all those luxury freebies.””

Some people plan to use the profit they make by playing skillfully at lower-denomination casino games like BJ or VP to go up in denomination and make bigger profits. However, you can’t build your gambling bankroll with shows, airline tickets, cruises, gourmet meals, spa visits, or fancy hotel suites. The casino won’t let you use any of them as legal tender for betting.

Unless you have a bankroll that’s way more than adequate for the level at which you’re playing or want to play, you should be very careful how you figure the EV of a play. To be safe, we count only the base EV of the game and the added cash and cash equivalents. If we count gift cards, we value them only for the amount that we would actually spend on the same items; we don’t think: “”we can buy this because it’s free.”” If it’s a food or room comp, we value them only for the amount we would actually spend for the same hotel stay or meal if we were paying for it out of our pocket. If it’s a cruise or some other vacation trip, we wouldn’t count it in the EV of the play if we wouldn’t spend “”real money”” for it.

Adhering to these strict rules through the years have allowed us to build up our bankroll so we can play at higher levels — and thus get even more lavish comps. Casino comps are great. They’ve made our life more luxurious than we could have ever dreamed. But we still have to watch that we can continue to “”afford”” this wonderful life and that means being brutally honest to ourselves about the real EV of any gambling we do.

4/6/2006

Six years ago today, the first Frugal Fridays hit this space. This is my 312th deadline – and I’m exhausted from so many 12-hour days at my computer recently trying to finish up my next big writing project. Why do my books keep getting longer and longer?

Since my brain is tired today and it’s an anniversary date, it seems like a good time to look back at the past. I decided to pull up that very first column and see how much has changed in six years. You might find it interesting to do this too, at http://lasvegasadvisor.com/frugalfridays.cfm?FrugalFridayID=1.

I’m amazed in two diametrically opposite ways: So much has changed and so much hasn’t changed.

What has changed? When I look at the names of the casinos, I realize that we still play at only one of them, the Hard Rock. The others are no longer with us, or they’ve been sold to another company and changed their name, or we now choose different casinos because of different promotions and/or machine inventory. Having sold our home in Indiana, we now live in Vegas the whole year, with only a short trip back once a year. Some may point out that there aren’t nearly as many juicy playing opportunities as there used to be. It’s true that the inventory of good VP games has been shrinking, but a savvy gambler willing to stay flexible and chase promotions aggressively can find enough to keep him busy. We still find enough to sort through and choose the best.

So much more hasn’t changed. Being organized is still the key to successful gambling. We still like sleeping in our own bed rather than a hotel’s, even if it’s free. Brad still collects casino jackets by the dozens, but wears only a few of his favorites. We’re still trying to share food comps, but our comp balances all over town keep climbing.

I’m not making any specific promises about the future, but I plan to continue what I started six years ago, to “range all over the gambling layout: funny and weird casino happenings, last-minute promos, comp secrets, hidden slot club benefits, and video poker tips.”

As long as it stays fun!

4/13/2006

Every so often I hear the story of a gambler that tickles my fancy.
There are as many angles on this business of gambling as there are individuals who come at it. But some are, shall we say, more individual than others. Mickey Crimm is one of those. This appeared in a post on one of the Internet forums I belong to and Mickey granted me generous permission to share his story with you. This is a two-parter; tune in for the exciting conclusion next week.

Hitchhiking Along the Poker Circuit
My name is Mickey Crimm. I’m 53 years old this month. I was born in North Dakota, grew up in Mississippi, Louisiana and California. I joined the Merchant Marines at 16, the Army at 18, and went to Alaska at 21, then proceeded to gallivant all around that state off and on for 18 years. My folks have lived in Juneau, Alaska since 1970.

I never had a career. I was a drifter and a job skipper. I held a job for 13 months once, back in the seventies — my civilian record. I always wanted to see what was on the other side of the hill and I didn’t care much how I got there. Drive, fly, walk, bus, hitchhike, freight train. Whatever. From the Aleutians to Las Vegas. I’ve drifted through a lot of places. Mostly thumbing the interstates or riding freight trains. I lost my driver’s license a long time ago and never cared to get it back. I took regular jobs in some of those spots but mostly worked day labor, living out of a small backpack and a sleeping bag.

I’m the King of the Hitchhikers. Well over a hundred thousand miles, mostly west of the Mississippi. Don’t like it much back east. I don’t think there’s one stretch of interstate west of the river I haven’t thumbed. My longest hitchhike was from Meridian, Mississippi, to Skagway, Alaska: 5,000 miles in seven days almost to the minute.

I was in Dutch Harbor, Alaska, in April 1992, working as a stevedore, when my real father fell dead of a heart attack in Tupelo, Mississippi. I had $1,500 to my name, but laid down $1,100 on a one-way flight to Tupelo. There hadn’t been a plane in or out of Dutch in three days (great weather in Dutch), but a little hole opened in the sky and we shot through it. When I got my dad buried, my Mississippi relatives asked me how I was gonna get back to Alaska. “”I’ll show you how. Drop me off on the highway and get lost.””

I hitchhiked to Las Vegas with $300 and change, looking to parlay it up. I needed to be standing in Seattle with $550 to fly back to Dutch. I went broke on the first day (nothing new to me). I was on the street (nothing new to me). I had no job (nothing new to me).

I met a casino hustler named Black Bart who taught me how to “buffalo hunt,” cruising the slots looking for credits on abandoned machines. I got really good at it. One time, another hustler and I were lying to each other about how good we were. I told him, “”Once I was walking down the street in front of the Golden Nugget and spied a machine flashing in the Horseshoe, so I walked across the street and picked up the credits.””

He said, “”That’s nothing. I was riding the bus down the Strip, spied a machine flashing in the Riviera, got off at the next stop, walked back to the Riviera, and picked up the credits.””

One day I walked into the Horseshoe just after the final event of the World Series of Poker had started. I watched the whole thing for the next three days. The proverbial light bulb went off in my head. If these hillbillies can do it, so can I. I left no stone uncovered in my research. The Special Collections section of the North Las Vegas Library has the best collection of poker books I’ve ever seen in a library anywhere. I had a couple of logistical problems, though. I didn’t have a bankroll and it was hotter than hell in Las Vegas. I’d have to put Las Vegas on hold.

I hitchhiked north, had a change of heart, and wound up in Seattle, looking to make the money to get back to Dutch. Coming up with $550 working day labor for minimum wage was going to”

4/21/2006

Last week, we met Mickey Crimm, one of the true gambling individuals I’ve run across in my years in the business. This is the second and final part of his series. If you missed the first part, scroll down to the link to the Frugal Fridays archives and read it first.

Once a Drifter …
So I took off hitchhiking around the world looking for another stud hi-lo game. I thumbed and thumbed and thumbed. Went back to Iowa and even Michigan. Couldn’t find one. I finally rolled into Laughlin, Nevada, in October 1996, with 99 cents and some rolling tobacco in my pocket. I stashed my gear in the desert on a hill overlooking Harrah’s. There was one thing I was qualified to do at that point: buffalo hunt.

I went into Harrah’s and was picking up some change when I noticed another buffalo hunter and struck up a conversation. “”This is great,”” he says. “”I’m from Atlanta and went broke playing blackjack. I got a couple of days before my flight back and some local showed me how to do this.” He also showed me the pigs.

“”The pigs,”” I said. “”What are the pigs?”

“”Some slot machines the locals are beating,”” he said.

“”Show them to me.””

Harrah’s had a bank of six quarter Piggy Bankin’ machines. They were bonusing slots. In between slot cruises, I stood there and watched. A tourist would put in a twenty-dollar bill and bang two coins. A computer screen up top had a piggy bank that started with ten coins in it. Every time the machine caught three blanks, two coins went into the piggy bank. On the third reel was a symbol called “Break the Bank” and the bank kept rising until that symbol landed on the line. Then the piggy bank broke and the tourist got all the coins in it. It was what I now know to be a rapid progressive.

But there was something else going on. Many tourists ran up the bank, ran out of credits, and walked off. Someone hovering around could play the machine, betting one coin, until he broke the bank. He could then cash out and go back to hovering around. I didn’t know what the savvy locals considered a good play, but they didn’t seem to be interested in any bank with less than 35 credits. I see, said the blind man. I didn’t know what it took for bankroll either. I just knew I didn’t have one.

So I took off upriver. Not good for a buffalo hunter to hang around one casino too long. I went through Gold River, then the Nugget, and into the Pioneer. While credit hunting I noticed a guy I knew from the streets of Las Vegas. He’d been playing a game called Flush Attack and was cashing out. He had three big buckets of quarters sitting on the machine. I walked up and asked what he was doing. He started bragging about all the money he had. Even pulled out a big wad of bills and waved them around. I asked him to give me a clue. He said, “”If something comes up, I’ll let you know,”” and walked off. That might have been what he said, but what he was thinking was, “”Go to hell.””

By the time I got to the Edgewater I had $21. A lady playing a pig walked off on 65. What to do? What to do? Oh well, if I go broke I just start over. Something has to give. I dropped a quarter in and broke the bank on the first spin of the first pig I ever played. That’s when I fell in love with that “”Break the Bank”” symbol. I continued to buffalo hunt for two days, but played any pig at 50 or higher. Those machines were all up and down the river. At $300 in bankroll I started playing the dollars. Somehow I got through the window. Once my bankroll was safe, I started creeping down the number. I knocked off the credit hunting. Didn’t want to lose any casinos with those machines in them.

Two days later I checked into Gold River and haven’t been without a roof over my head since. October of this year will be 10 years. Somehow or another the whole thing came together for me: the money-making opportunity on the pigs, the money-management skills (I finally realized the more money I had, the more money I could make), more available bonus mach

4/27/2006

One of Brad’s and my biggest problem in casinos is the smoky atmosphere. Brad’s heart and arteries don’t need it and my allergies don’t like it at all. In fact, this issue is one of the main reasons we’ve cut down the amount of our video poker play in the last few years. We don’t go to a casino every day and, when we do, we usually limit our play to no more than two hours.

If you’re concerned about this health problem, here are some of the things you might find helpful in planning your casino gambling:

Choose casinos that have a better ventilation system. Some casinos do a good job here and others are downright health hazards. You’d think that a newer casino or one with high ceilings would be the best choice, but this doesn’t always hold true, and a casino that has a lot of fabric décor is asking for stinky air quality.

Play early in the morning. I’m always amazed at how empty even the most popular casinos are from 4 or 5 to 10 a.m. Fewer patrons equals fewer smokers.

Avoid Friday and Saturday evenings when the casinos are most crowded and the smoke is the thickest. Also, weekdays are usually better than weekends.

Take fresh-air breaks during your play. Go for a walk outside every hour or so. In a recent column I asked for suggestions about using your players club points for health benefits. One of my readers, RecVPplayer, suggested that using the casino spa and/or fitness center could improve a person’s health and well-being. That would be a perfect break from a smoky casino floor.

Try a battery-operated personal air purifier. Various types are available, most of which hang around the neck. I’ve heard mixed reports on how effective they are, but some players say they help when you have a smoker very near you. Of course, I’ve seen players who take more direct action in this situation, pointing a small fan in the smoker’s direction!

If the issue of smoky casinos is of concern to you, you might want to check out the “”No-Smoke”” Yahoo Group, which is dedicated to the promotion of non-smoking areas in casinos. Go to
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/No-Smoke/. The goal of this group is to actively lobby for decent non-smoking areas in casinos, not to merely complain about conditions as they exist now. To this end, members are encouraged to post the name of a casino that they would like to see create a decent non-smoking area, supplying contact information with which other members can assist in lobbying for this.

And now a frugal coupon for non-smokers: “Take A Bite Out of Smoking Campaign” is a tobacco-control program sponsored by the Southern Nevada Health District. Go to http://www.gethealthyclarkcounty.org/tobacco/restaurant.html for a list of non-smoking restaurants in Clark County. They’re also offering a free buy-one-get-one-free coupon book for some of these, including fast-food places like Port of Subs and Dairy Queen, and a variety of non-casino traditional restaurants all over town.

As an Internet list member posted on the subject of casino comps: “Smoke-free playing conditions may be the best ‘comp’ a casino could offer!”

3/3/2006

The recent opening of Wynn casino provided a perfect occasion to try out some comp techniques that I’ve discussed over the years.

Brad and I wondered if Steve Wynn would market to locals, especially if they looked like they’d give some high play. So as soon as we heard of a good sign-up bonus (two meals at the wonderful buffet), I got my players card and we played our fingers to the bone, putting through $91,000 coin-in that same day. About a month later, the Wynn put in some better VP machines, so Brad signed up (getting two more free buffets) and we put through $36,000 on his card.

Then we sat back and waited. No Wynn goodies came to us in the mail and after two months I was getting restless. Still, I knew there’s often a lag between one’s play and resulting marketing offers.

Then Brad started getting offers for free play, four times a month. I wasn’t getting any mail, although I’d played first and much bigger to boot. So I finally cold-called a host (I didn’t have any recommendations from friends, which I usually look for in choosing a host) and told her that I heard there was a slot tournament coming up and I wondered if I qualified. The good ol’ Just Ask technique! She said I did and reserved a room for us. We stayed in it during the tournament, soaking up the luxury, when we weren’t playing in a tournament session or putting in play on the floor.

The next month I received a three-day room offer that included a large amount of free play. Brad received the same room offer, but with less free play. This made sense, because the daily average on my card was higher than on his. We often do this to compare the different offers we get.

The fine print for both offers stated that we must be a registered guest to receive the free play. I asked the host if that was a necessary requirement for locals. (We like their rooms, but they take a big amount out of your comp bank to cover them, and we prefer to use our comp money for taking our friends to eat there frequently.) She said she had to check with her boss, but called later and said they okayed the free play without the room stay.

Since that time we’ve both received free play four times a month. We “regulate” our play, depending on how much bounce-back they send us. When they send us each $1,200 a month, we play more than when they send us $400. I guess I’m hoping to get the message to them that the more they send, the more we’ll play. However, I find casinos very hard to train. Besides, most casinos up their bounce-back mailings at slower times for visitors, so when their hotel is well-booked, they don’t need to send out their juicer offers.

At this point you may be saying, “Well, you’re playing a lot higher than my bankroll can stand.”

Okay, you have a point there. But tune in next week, all you low rollers, when I’ll give you some strong evidence that you should never shun fancy Vegas Strip resorts just because you figure they cater only to high rollers.

3/9/2006

Last week I talked about the savvy comp techniques Brad and I used to try to get established at Wynn casino when it opened and perhaps snag some high-level marketing offers. We used the common practice anyone can use: Be nice and undemanding, but don’t be afraid to ask.

However, we did play at a higher level than is comfortable for most players. So does that mean that low rollers don’t have a chance for comps at the luxurious Vegas Strip resorts?

I submit the following posts from Internet gambling forums, just a sample of many I’ve read over the years, that support the fact that low rollers can go for the gold if they learn to be comp savvy.

“My wife and I will be staying at Wynn next week [in December]. We did get an offer in the mail last summer for a couple of free nights, the same one that a lot of other people got. On a whim, I called and asked to speak with a slot host. I explained we were not able to take advantage of the offer, but would be in LV in a couple weeks. She didn’t hesitate to offer three comped nights Sunday–Thursday. We took two.

“I mentioned they must have kept a database of customers from previous Wynn properties — Bellagio, TI, etc. — but she said the only customer list they had was from the Desert Inn. We were only there once and that was to get a slot card for our collection before they closed. I was surprised the slot host gave us comped rooms with no play history.”

Here’s another post on a forum, from my friend Scout’n Martin, who is very comp savvy:

“I can’t believe this one, folks – from Wynn!

2 Free Nights in our RESORT Rooms,
Sun.-Thurs. Nov. 20 to Dec. 15

“This is the best offer I’ve ever received for piddly penny video slots play – the only game I played this past summer to earn ‘a few points.’ I think I may have lost $20-$40 in doing so.

“Maybe the Queen of Comps can use this example:
Penny video slot points for comped rooms at Wynn.
Who’d have thought that would ever take place!”

Yes Martin, even I was surprised at the news that many low rollers, some with very small play at Wynn when it first opened, were getting free room offers for such a luxurious resort.

Here are some things the Wynn examples in the last two columns confirm:

1. Watch for players club sign-up offers at new casinos.
2. New casinos are looking to fill their rooms and build up their databases fast, so play at one when it first opens and you’re likely to receive some offers.
3. Slow times, especially in December, often bring room offers for low rollers, even from the swankiest resort for minimal play.
4. Sometimes it pays to wait to join a slot club until they offer a juicy signing bonus, but if your main need is to get free comped rooms, the most productive technique, after choosing a core casino, is to join as many slot clubs as you can and then start putting on each a one-day minimal amount of play.
5. Be nice and just ask.

3/16/2006

When I started talking about comps six weeks ago, I didn’t think the subject would go on so long. My “Comp” file is fatter than I thought! Here are some miscellaneous items that will, with luck, completely empty it and end this series of columns, at least for the time being.

One way to get comps is through marketing offers. But one forum member discovered he hadn’t been getting any mail from one casino, because his account was marked “No Mail.” He didn’t know why it was that way, but was glad he found out and could correct the problem.

Another forum member wrote this caution: “This is not uncommon. I was told that No Mail is the default option in many slot club systems, so if you don’t get any mail after signing up (one to two months tops) or mail suddenly stops (perhaps when a new system is installed), call the club and ask them to check your account for mail preference.

“Unfortunately, setting some players’ accounts to No Mail is sometimes done deliberately by casino management. I know of cases at several casinos where advantage players (or those players that seemed too smart in the casino’s eyes) were removed from the mailing list so they’d no longer receive offers. Trying to discover in these cases why you no longer receive mail can be frustrating, as management is sometimes not forthcoming with the actual reason.

”Still, it’s always good to politely inquire, as in most cases it is an error or computer glitch.”

———-

Yes, to answer a frequent question I’m asked, you can change hosts if you don’t like the one you have. However, this can be an uncomfortable task and difficult if you’re in a casino that has a highly organized host department and each player is “coded” to a specific host. I talked at length about this in a chapter in More Frugal called “Divorcing Your Host.” One player solved her dilemma by calling her old host when she knew she would be off, then asking to speak to another host. She just continued to use that new host even though she was coded to another.

————

In More Frugal Gambling I mentioned that sometimes casinos sponsor blood drives and give slot club point bonuses to people who donate. Recently I’ve seen some offering comped meals and T-shirts. I’ve talked about drugstore gift cards that we’ve earned at a casino and used for medical supplies and prescription co-pays. But I read on a forum that Mohegan Sun casino in Connecticut offered a clinic giving flu and pneumonia shots and you could use your comp points to pay for them.

This poster wrote: “I can’t think of a better use of casino comp points for those in need of such a service. Does anyone know of another situation where you could use casino comps for health reasons? (Ok, OK, getting a comped brandy when you have a cold doesn’t count.)”

Email me if you’ve gotten an unusual comp, medically related or not. Even though this is the end of this comp series, I can write an update column anytime.

3/24/2006

This week a guest columnist (who wishes to remain anonymous) tells us everything we’ve wanted to know about the Turbo function we’ve seen on a VP machine, but were afraid to ask.

Fun at Fifty (and Hundred Play)!

There are many types of video poker players. Some play just for fun. Some play just to make money. Some are a combination of these: They play for profit, but want to have fun too!

I’m a “”combination”” player. Video poker has been profitable for me, but I wouldn’t play if I didn’t enjoy the game itself. I’ll be turning fifty this year, so that gave me the idea for a title for this piece.

Fifty Play and Hundred Play machines are lots of fun to play. One of the nice things about them is the “”Turbo”” button, at the lower left on the touch screen. When the Turbo isn’t lit (dark red), the hands fill in very slowly, Plink! Plink! Plink! It takes several long seconds to draw to a hand and you probably can’t play more than 100 hands per hour, with the Turbo off.

Touch the Turbo button, and the game comes to life! When in Turbo mode (bright red), the hands fill in very fast, maybe two seconds at Fifty Play and four seconds at Hundred Play. In Turbo mode, you can play more than 500 hands per hour at Fifty Play, and nearly 400 hph at Hundred Play. The hands fill in so fast that you can’t see it happening, so you might as well just watch the Hand Summary at the lower left (and lower right, if more than three types of hands are hit) of the screen.

Here’s the really good part about the Turbo button. You can change modes at any time — in the middle of a hand or even when the hands are actually filling in. Most “”serious”” players like to play with the Turbo lit all the time, so they can play more hands, and not wait for the hands to fill in very slowly. Personally, I play in Turbo mode well over 99% of the time.

However, in keeping with the “”fun”” theme of this article, let’s say you’re dealt four to the royal. This is a fun hand at Fifty Play and Hundred Play, because you have a really good chance to not only hit a royal, but to possibly hit several. So, when I’m dealt a RF4, I carefully hold the royal cards, then switch off the Turbo. Now, when I hit Draw, the hands fill in slowly (Plink! Plink! Plink!), so I can watch, thus savoring any royal(s) I might hit. Fun, fun, fun! Of course, you can also do the same thing when dealt three-of-a-kind, or four to the straight flush, or when dealt a kicker quad (Aces, 2s, 3s, 4s) at Double Double Bonus or Triple Double Bonus, so you can root in those kickers, one by one, on the draw.

At most video poker games, you’ve hit a good hand almost before you know it, and have little chance to savor the moment as it happens. At Fifty Play and Hundred Play, with the Turbo switched off, you can enjoy the good hits as they actually occur. Tons of fun!

Note from Jean: We like to do this too when playing Spin Poker.

3/31/2006

Editor’s Note: Jean is spending every feverish spare minute this week finishing her next book, the subject of which will be revealed shortly. So she’s taken a shortcut this week and submitted the following amusingly frugal story.

Recently, a thread on the vpFree forum discussed taking shortcuts in Las Vegas. Discussed was the danger of jaywalking mid-block across busy Valley View Blvd. where it runs between the Gold Coast and the Rio. Someone pointed out that, thanks to cuts in the fences on both sides of the interstate, you can live even more dangerously by walking from Caesars to the Rio across 10 lanes of traffic on I-15, rather than doing the smart thing and using the protected pedestrian sidewalk.

This brought back memories of the time Brad and I were much younger and more agile — and more foolishly frugal. The Flamingo ramps to and from I-15 weren’t finished yet and there wasn’t a good sidewalk from Caesars to the Rio. We were too frugal to take a cab and thought it “”adventurous”” and good exercise to walk from our Strip hotel (I forget which one) to the Gold Coast for some free ballroom dancing. We dressed up nice: I had on a full twirly skirt for dancing; Brad had on a sport coat. We did put on tennis shoes and had our dancing shoes in a bag.

After a short distance, we saw a way where it looked like we could cut through a construction area to get from Caesars to the Rio and it would be shorter and avoid the dangerous Flamingo traffic. So we started trekking though the part-concrete part-dirt trail. And we got pretty far before we were stopped in our tracks by what we hadn’t seen before in the dark. Although the roadway wasn’t completed, the freeway fencing was!

We were already exhausted and couldn’t bear to retrace our steps all the way back to take a more proper route. Plus, we were freezing to death because the wind had picked up. So, Brad tried to hoist me over that tall fence (I didn’t weigh as much then), but the first couple tries were not successful. My full skirt kept flying up over my head and Brad was so weak with laughter he could hardly sputter out his thought that it was a good thing it was dark and this area wasn’t lighted or there would have been a traffic jam on I-15 watching a pair of pink panties trying to jump the fence.

Finally, he got himself under control and gave me one final push that successfully got me to the other side. Then he threw the shoe bag over the fence and scaled it himself fairly easily.

When we eventually arrived at the Gold Coast, we had to sit out the whole first set to recover our breath. I can’t remember how we got back to our Strip hotel when the dance was over. Did we catch the free shuttle to the Barbary Coast? Did we break down and pay the taxi fare? Catch a ride with a friend? All I’m sure of is this: We didn’t walk back — the long way or the shortcut

2/2/2006

Don’t you just love the Question of the Day feature on the LVA homepage? If you’re not familiar with it, anyone can submit a question about Las Vegas, one of which is answered on a daily basis at this Web site. After visiting Vegas frequently for 16 years and living here the last five, I thought I knew most everything there was to know about our fair city. But this feature shows that there’s always something new to learn.

I was especially interested in the January 21st question: “My friend loves Las Vegas. When he passes away, he would like his ashes spread over the Strip (perhaps from one of the hot-air balloons or helicopters that go over it). Is this possible?”

The extensive research was amazing and the official answer to this question was interesting, to say the least: The disposal of human remains on public property is illegal in Nevada and, before disposing of them on private property, you must have permission from the property owner.

However, in a recent conversation with a Vegas mortician, I found out that people often scatter ashes in some unusual places and don’t bother to check for the legality of their actions or get permission from anyone. He told the story of a man who wanted to carry out the wishes of his recently deceased wife, an avid gambler who always played at one particular Vegas casino. She wanted her ashes spread around the floor of that casino so she would always be near her beloved slot machines.

The man tried to do the right thing and asked the casino if he could carry out his wife’s last wishes. Of course, they were sympathetic, but said that it just wouldn’t be possible as they had a policy against this.

Now the man was in a quandary. He had promised his wife he would do this. He couldn’t bear going against her wishes. Finally, personal loyalty won out over casino policy. He filled his two pants pockets with the ashes of his beloved, drove to her favorite casino, sauntered into the rest room, and cut a tiny hole in the bottom of each pocket. Then he slowly sauntered around the large casino with his hands in his pocket, shaking them periodically to keep the ashes trickling to the floor.

For the first time, he left a casino with empty pockets, but full of happiness.

The mortician said that this was a true story and I don’t doubt it. Fanatical gamblers can be … well, fanatical!

As a passing thought, I wondered if this husband got his idea from the movie, The Great Escape, where prisoners building a tunnel to escape from a German prison camp used this method to dispose of tunnel dirt onto the baseball field.

Brad and I came across this story when we were doing research about advance planning for our eventual deaths. We want to be as “useful” in death as we try to be while we’re alive. When we lived in Indianapolis, we made arrangements to donate our bodies for medical research at the Indiana University med school. We weren’t able to find a substitute for this in Las Vegas, although we were happy with the arrangements we made to be organ donors. We feel this is a very worthy cause.

Recently we did come across a local facility that takes bodies for medical research: The Touro University College of Osteopathic Medicine in Henderson. You can call their agent, the Medical Education and Research Institute of Nevada, at 702/933-5627.

For those who are always looking for frugal options, before and after they die: Although all funeral homes in Vegas can arrange for cremation and other lower-cost options, the Yellow Pages has several listings for companies/societies that specialize in low-cost cremations and funerals, including pre-planning.

Here’s to frugal advance planning –- and when that’s done, hopefully there will be a long time thereafter when all you have to do is plan for the frugal present!

2/10/2006

Some readers have remarked that I don’t talk about comps much any more. No, I haven’t abdicated the Queen of Comps throne, but I wrote so much about comps in The Frugal Gambler and More Frugal Gambling that I felt I’d covered the subject quite thoroughly. However, casino policies do change, plus some comp techniques are so strong that I like to remind players about them. So I thought I’d revisit the subject for the next few weeks.

Casinos Play the Averages Game
When I want to snag good offers from a casino (or want to establish myself at a new casino), I usually play big on only one day, but give as much play on that day as I usually would for a two- or three-night stay. This often works even if you actually stay more than one night. You often don’t know whether a casino is looking at daily average or trip average. Still, playing big on one day makes you look good if they go by trip average, but you’re still maximizing your daily average if that’s what they use to decide on future marketing offers.

Vegas Strip Marketing Offers for Locals
As locals, Brad and I often don’t take a room when we get an offer from a Strip hotel, for example, for a tournament. Or we might take a room for only one night, even if we have a 2-night offer (or take only two nights if it’s a 3-night offer). Of course, I always read the fine print since sometimes you’re required to stay a specific number of nights for some offers. Even then, using the “just-ask” technique, I’ve sometimes asked the host if a local must take a room when the fine print states it. I’ve found that locals can sometimes be an exception, despite what it says on the invitation. (Often locals and out-of-towners get the same mailed offers, but the rules may differ.) If you must take a room, there’s no law that says you have to sleep in it. We like hotel rooms for naps, but usually prefer to go back at night to our own bed just a couple of miles from the Strip.

Hard Comps
The following advice comes from Pesach Kremen, a member of a Yahoo Group that zeroes in on comp information. (Subscribe at
[email protected].) The thread was discussing how to get expensive popular show tickets comped.

”First of all, staying at the hotel where the show is playing will help, since you’re both a hotel guest and a present or prospective player. Then, be the type of individual who only asks of their host when they really need something, and try not to ask for what you haven’t really earned. For example, if you have a 2-for-1 coupon to a minor show where your seat location isn’t important, don’t bother the host with a request for a comp. Same thing goes with a restaurant where you plan to order something that isn’t very expensive anyway. Just use your slot points or table-game points at the booth to get your meals, use a coupon, or pay the small bill yourself. On top of this, when you do get a restaurant comp, just order what you intend to eat and don’t go wild with the expensive booze. If your host knows that you always turn an ordinary $50 meal into $200, your future requests are in jeopardy.

”Using these hints, when you really need something, the host will see that you’re sincere, not a pig, and will try to help. If your play isn’t high enough for free tickets, perhaps she can get you a free upgrade in location for purchased tickets; and/or a line pass; and, for sold-out shows, at least give you a chance to purchase tickets from those seats saved back for good customers.”

More on comps next week.

2/16/2006

This week I’m continuing on the subject of comps, with some samples of good advice I read on Internet forums. Here are Web sites where I read and contribute to the boards that include discussions on comps:

http://forums.lasvegasadvisor.com – Some subject forums are free; others, including one specifically on comps, requires an LVA subscription.

vpFree – This site emphasizes video poker but welcomes discussions on other subjects, including comps, that are germane to the whole casino experience. Subscribe at [email protected]

Skip’s List – http://www.vphomepage.com. On this long-standing VP site you can discuss video poker or any subject connected with casino gambling.

Casino_comps – The name says it all. Subscribe at [email protected]

1. “”Your RFB (room, food, beverage) or RFL (room and limited food) comp status always has rules attached. Find out what they are to get the most out of your “”perks””. There may be dollar limits. Sometimes, however, there are “”people”” limits.

“”Example: Paris offers me RFL. It is based on TWO people. So, when I go into the Boulangerie and buy my $75 worth of pastries, breads, etc. to take home I make sure the cashier rings it up as either 1 or 2 guests. Their system doesn’t care how much I’ve spent; it tracks by number of guests. Believe it or not, you can walk in with two friends, order three coffees, spending $10, and if it is rung up as 3 guests, the computer will only take off 2/3 of it, putting $3.33 on your bill. Yes, you can spend 15 minutes finding a host to take it off, but why go through all that? Spend $80, ring it up as 1 guest, and you’re fine.””

2. “”ALWAYS find out at check-in what applies to your RFL/RFB status and how it is posted. And do this every trip; don’t assume it will be the same as last time.””

3. “”If you suspect your comp account may be reduced by the cost of your room, as happens at Mandalay Bay properties and others, try this: Before you check into your room, check your comp account and get a comp for a meal then. Then go ahead and check in. I did this at Luxor and got a free buffet, which was a good thing, because they then charged the cost of the room to my comp account, wiping out the rest of the comps and leaving nothing for meals. This is one reason why it might be good to book in at a RFB or Limited RFB status through a host if possible. This way you are guaranteed at least some meals with your stay.

“”Also the amount of comps deducted will depend on the type of room you have. One of my friends accepted an offer for a suite at one Strip resort and, although he played a lot, ended up without enough comps for a show because they took out so much for a room. The next time he checked in, he asked for the cheapest room they had. Then he ended up with enough comps for his show and meals.””

3. No matter how many times we’ve been to a particular restaurant, before ordering we confirm with our server what the comp covers. Usually, the server goes and asks a manager, and we know what we’re entitled to before we order. I know you might feel a little uncomfortable doing this in a nice restaurant, but we don’t want to be stuck with a large tab at a restaurant that we wouldn’t go to if we were paying with our own money.

4. “”Comp systems at Las Vegas locals casinos and on the Strip are like night and day. The Strip’s bread-and-butter is out-of-towners. Off Strip, their bread-and-butter is locals.””

More on comps next week.

2/24/2006

This week we have a guest columnist, writing under the name of MissCraps. She’s an experienced gambler and knowledgeable about the comp system in many casinos. She has some good advice to share.

Random Thoughts about Las Vegas Resort Comps
By MissCraps

I think most casinos still have lock boxes at the cage for free, but it’s annoying that many hotels now charge a fee for using a hotel safe, even if everything else on your bill is comped.

To avoid mini-bar charges, just don’t touch anything; don’t even open the door. You can also call room service when you get to the room and request that they remove all the items.

Watch out for inviting-looking bottles of water in your room. They often aren’t free, and the high price will shock you. Don’t take the robes or slippers in the closet home with you either, unless you’ve checked to determine that they’re free (robes probably aren’t; slippers may be).

You can no longer “sample” pay-movies in most hotels. So don’t try to watch them for even five minutes the way you used to be able to do.

Check with hosts, while you play if possible, to see if you’re accumulating enough comps for the offer under which you came in. If a casino employee promises you something, get his/her name. Always verify on the day before you’re checking out that all charges against your room have been removed, so that you aren’t running around trying to find a host when you need to run for a plane.

Hosts often have more flexibility to comp food than shows or spa
treatments. Meals at restaurants owned by the casino are more likely to be comped than non-owned. Meals at adjacent properties, such as the Forum Shops when you’re staying at Caesars, are usually not available for comping.

If you come in on some sort of RFB (comped room, food, beverage), find out in advance (or immediately on arrival) exactly what’s covered. Are you actually Limited RFB, where you can eat only at coffee shops and buffets, or Full RFB, which can mean all casino restaurants or are certain ones excluded? Can you order from room service and are you limited to a certain amount of money per day? If you reach the full RFB level, check to see what else you may be able to get, or not, such as spa and show comps.

Check in advance if you qualify for VIP check-in. This might keep you from waiting in long lines in the regular registration area. Some VIP centers also have snacks and/or drinks. Usually, once you’ve checked into the VIP area, you can keep going back and snagging a beverage while you’re a hotel guest. Sometimes you may have to show your special VIP ID every time you pop in, sometimes not.

I’ve found that when you start playing at higher levels ($1 and up), you’ll often be eligible for VIP check-in and even limited RFB, but you normally won’t know it from the mailed offer. To find out, call and ask for a host to book your invitation, then ask, “Do I qualify for meals? For a VIP check in?” Your host is usually able to book it for you. VIP check-in is a nice perk.

Similarly, it seems that hosts don’t regularly book you into suites that you may be entitled to, unless you ask for them. Even if you’re up to the full RFB level, you may not be automatically booked in that way. So when you talk to the host, ask if you’re eligible for a suite.

1/5/2006

We’ve just finished closing out our gambling figures for 2005 and, as usual, it was a roller-coaster ride. We spent a lot of time riding around in deep valleys, losing seven months out of 12. After being nice winners in January and February, we lost six months straight in the middle of the year. However, the hilltops made up for the valleys, with an exhilarating ride into the clouds in November and December and a healthy profit figure at the end of the year.

I guess I could talk about VP volatility every month from one angle or another. It’s the main cause of most of the whining and crying by VP players and the basis for many of the questions I get from my readers. One of these frequent questions is about moving up in denomination. I always tell people to be VERY VERY careful if/when they do this, because they might not be prepared for the steep roller-coaster ride that volatility will give them. Recently, the following discussion on this subject was posted on Skip’s VP Forum (subscribe at www.vpinsider.com) and I thought that these “raw” figures might be more meaningful than any complex math I could give you. The poster who shared these personal results wishes to remain anonymous, but I can tell you that he is a very reliable source!

————-
Volatility
by a long-time full-time VP player

The bottom line is that NOTHING can really prepare you for the extremes that
video poker has to offer. Experience helps, but even I am sometimes
amazed at the streakiness. I guess that’s one of the things that makes
it fun for me, even after years of full-time play.

The following list might prepare those of you out there who might be thinking about moving up in denomination or to a more volatile game. I have listed my worst hour and day ever on that game/denomination/platform.

FPDW or full-pay Deuces Wild: 1-2-2-3-5-09-15-25-200-800 … 100.76%
DB or full-pay Double Bonus: 1-1-3-5-7-10-50.0-80-160-50.0-800 … 100.17%
JoB or 9/6 JoB: 1-2-3-4-6-9-25-50-800 … 99.54%
NSUD or Not-So-Ugly Ducks (Deuces): 1-2-3-4-4-10-16-25-200-800 … 99.73%

Loss figures

25-cent FPDW: one hour $400; one day $1,100
$1 10/7 DB: one hour $1,300; one day $5,000
$2 10/7 DB: one hour $,3000; one day $10,200
$1 3-Play 10/7 DB: one hour $3,000; one day $8,800
$1 5-Play 10/7 DB: one hour $4,000; one day $10,000
$1 5-play NSUD: one hour $3,000; one (long!) day $11,000
$2 5-play NSUD: one hour $5,000; one day $14,000
$1 9/6 JOB: one hour $900; one day $2,200
$2 5-Play 9/6 JOB: one hour $3,000; one day $10,000
$5 9/6 JOB: one hour $2,500; one day $10,000

In eight years, I’ve been dealt about 14 million hands and have
played about 40 million, if you count all the hands in multi-line. I’ve
listed the games/denoms/platforms that I’ve played enough to be
confident that the figures are pretty close to “”as bad as it gets.””

In particular, moving from 25-cent FPDW to $1 10/7 DB was quite a shock. A
bad hour at dollar DB is worse than a bad DAY at quarter Deuces!
————-

Makes you think, doesn’t it?

1/14/2006

There are some interesting facts from Fantini’s Gaming Morning Report. You can get this very valuable e-mail report free for 30 days at the following Web site:

http://gaminginvestments.com.

“NEVADA casinos poured $1.1 billion of liquor last year, according to state figures. Strip casinos served $701.1 million worth, of which 36 percent was comped. Meanwhile, the megaresort trend toward non-gaming profit centers is revealed in the revenue figures. Just 40.9 percent of Strip revenue came from gaming. Hotel rooms provided 26.1 percent, food 14.1 percent, drinks 5.4 percent and 13.5 percent from elsewhere.”

(I never thought I’d live to see the day that people would come to Vegas more to eat, drink, party, and shop than to gamble!)

Continuing on the subject of drinking, from the same Fantini report:

“HARRAH’S has a new use for radio frequency identification chips, and it isn’t to track table game play. They have tagged cocktail waitresses at the Rio with the RFID chips in an effort to track speed of cocktail delivery.”

(Brad and I rarely drank alcohol, at least after we were sensible adults, but we totally miss out on this casino comp these days for medical reasons. But I report these things for those of you for whom this is an important Vegas subject!)

… an article by Len Butcher, from the eNeon, a product of reviewjournal.com. You can subscribe there to their free weekly e-mail newsletter.

“A 120-year-old banyan tree that has been a Palm Beach, Fla., landmark for more than 100 years will be on display at Bellagio’s Conservatory & Botanical Gardens, Jan. 15 through Feb. 25, in celebration of Chinese New Year, then remain on display until Nov. 25. The tree is 100 feet tall, 40 feet in diameter at the base of the trunk, and weighs 200,000 pounds. It took 12 50-foot trailers to transport it to Las Vegas from Florida.

“This all came about when Audra Danzak, Bellagio’s director of horticulture, heard that the tree was suffering from a fatal fungus and was going to be destroyed. She believed it would make a unique display and quickly made plans to preserve it. But this was not going to be an easy feat. The tree had to be disassembled branch by branch during a week-long process in Palm Beach. Danzak and her professional horticulture staff of 140 then had to spend a month directing the re-assembly process and preparing the tree for its January debut.

“And what a display it will be. Visitors to Bellagio’s Conservatory will be able to walk through the banyan tree, with orchids and Spanish moss woven throughout its branches.

“A state-of-the-art sound system playing Bellagio’s own music composed by Cirque du Soleil musicians, along with light and water features, will help bring the floral artistry to life.

“For the Spring, Summer, and Fall shows, this tree-gardening technique once again will be used and the tree will be reconfigured for each show to serve as the Conservatory’s centerpiece. Bellagio’s Conservatory is transformed five times a year — winter, spring, summer, fall and Chinese New Year, with exquisite floral displays, cascading fountains and theatrical affects. Dates for the individual displays are: Chinese New Year Exhibit: Jan. 15 – Feb. 25; Spring Celebration: March 5 – May 13; Summer Garden Party: May 21 – Sept. 9; Harvest Show: Sept. 17 – Nov. 25, 2006; Winter Wonderland Dec. 1-31.”

(Sounds like a must-see for 2006.)

…an amazingly long list of free things to do in Las Vegas: shows, tours, attractions, and exhibits. Enough to keep anyone busy when they get tired of gambling – or lose all their money! Go to http://www.vegas4locals.com/index.html for this list and many other valuable freebies for the value-conscious Vegas visitor.

1/19/2006

Although video poker has been my main squeeze for 15 years, I’ve messed around a bit with live poker through the years. But now that it’s so big on TV and online, I must confess that I’m greatly tempted to stray big time from my true love, video poker! I spent hours and hours during our Christmas vacation with the Frugal Princess and her family, playing the World Series of Poker game on their PlayStation. (The grandkids were very amused as they taught this don’t-play-any-game-except-in-a-casino-for-real-money grandma how to use the remote control.)

As long as I’m writing books, I’ll probably resist the siren call of regular poker. Although online games and non-smoking casino poker rooms have taken away one of my major reasons for shunning the game – a severe allergy to smoke — there’s still one big problem left for me. Poker would be very time-consuming, especially if I jumped into it like I do most things in my life, with great intensity. I’ve learned how to cut down my time and still be successful in video poker. On the other hand, I’d have a long learning curve with regular poker and would need to concentrate on it fully during the early stages. In addition, while I’m busy with writing projects, I’m already staring at a computer screen for far too many hours a day without taking up another activity online.

However, I’d been thinking that I needed to discuss the new poker rage, in order to give this column a well-rounded coverage of many gambling activities, but I really didn’t have enough experience to write about it myself. I write best about what I know best. So when John Kelly sent me this article, I was delighted; it was the exact thing I had been looking for. John had already established himself as a gambling guru with his Lodestone VP Web site and forum, when I took up the game 15 years ago. So I knew that if he was beginning to dabble in poker, his advice would be worth listening to.

Here’s the article.

Video Poker to Texas Hold ’Em
by John (Lodestone) Kelly

With video poker plays of great value drying up faster than kegs at Octoberfest, many players are looking for greener pastures. Like many, I’ve found my new frontier in the parent game of VP: table poker – specifically, low-limit Texas Hold ’em. For those of you pondering this path, be wary. Contrary to what you’d think, the two games are opposites in almost every respect. Switching to table poker, while possibly preferable, is perilous and peppered with pitfalls.

THE VICTIM
A stark contrast here. With video poker, you’re preying on casino managers’ inadequate math skills. With live poker, you’re preying on your fellow gambler, primarily young foolish gamblers who watched a little too much World Series of Poker on ESPN-2 and thought it looked like a fun way to make easy money. I have a teeny bit of a moral qualm about this; while I take a certain glee in outfoxing enormous corporations, beating up post-adolescents for their lunch money seems a bit cruel. I rationalize it quite nicely by keeping in mind how much I suffer at the hands of the young and stupid, especially every time a rap-booming skinhead cuts me off in traffic, with his intentionally non-functional muffler rumbling as he tailgates his next victim. When embracing that perspective, taking their spare money doesn’t seem quite so heartless.

THE VARIANCE
While dollar video poker is a hell-ride of thousand-dollar swings (often in the same session), $1-$2 low-limit hold ‘em is a gentle journey, where losing so much as fifty bucks constitutes a bad day. Personally, I prefer the latter, but many will miss the adrenaline rush of the $4,000 jackpot. Nothing of the sort exists in low-limit poker: A big hand is worth, maybe, $40. However, bankroll and morale-crushing slides are gone as well. Playing VP, even at the most skilled level, you have more losing days than winning days. With live poker, if you’re the better player you will win, period. You may have a losing day, or a losing

1/27/2006

Last week John Kelly, our guest columnist, started talking about the difference between playing video poker and regular poker. His first two differences were “The Victim” and “The Variance.” Now he continues.

THE VENUE
With video poker, you endure traffic, smoke, drunks, and idiots. With live poker, you have an option: You can go to the casino or play online. Playing in the casino has the advantage of weaker players, especially on the Strip. The most common mistake of bad players is playing hands that they should throw away. The vast majority of hands should be tossed; you often trash a dozen or so hands between keepers, only to promptly toss that hand after an unfavorable flop. Your basic tourist did not fly 2,000 miles to sit around, folding hands. He wants to play, badly. And play badly he shall.

The downsides for the aspiring advantage player are numerous: You can’t readily check your list of hand fold/call/raise decisions; you’re likely to display “tells” that allow expert players to read your hand; the tedium of folding over and over can cause you to play hands that you shouldn’t; and tableside banter is likely to distract you and louse up your learning curve. Better to start off playing online, where you can play super-low stakes (everything down to pennies is available), without distractions, until your understanding of the game is reasonably complete.

The added attraction of playing at home is that you can readily multitask. Most of the time spent “playing” poker is actually spent waiting for others to decide what they’re going to do, so beside keeping track of who tends to bluff and who raises without reason, you can watch TV, read, catch up on your email, surf the Web, eat, do your taxes, whatever. This is enormously different from video poker, which tends to be all-consuming. Playing on the Web is “gambling lite.”

Alternately, most online sites allow you to play in multiple games at the same time, which allows you to make money faster. The downside is that it can get aggravating, if not downright confusing, when you’re actively involved in three or four hands at the same time!

THE VEX
Learning video poker is a straightforward process: If you read the books, memorize the strategy cards, and get a perfect score on your software, you play as well as anybody on the planet. Learning live poker is a completely different creature. It’s more like learning chess, and reading a tutorial by Bobby Fisher does not enable you to beat Bobby Fisher. This was a major adjustment for me. My mindset was that I was playing as per my “strategy card”; ergo, the winning would commence shortly. Not so fast, my friend! A good book on poker can tell you which hands to fold before the flop and give you some general guidelines for what to do afterward, but that’s about it. You’re on your own after that, as the endless combinations of player personalities, size of the pot, your drawing position, and the number and personalities of players in the pot all conspire to render decision-making too complicated to be handled by any sort of flow chart. And this usually results in novice players staying in way too many hands, especially those weaned on video poker, where the whole concept of “folding” is foreign. You’ve got to break the habit of drawing out every hand. It’s fatal. Curiosity will kill the cat and you along with it. Fold, fold, fold. Get the hell out. Patience is your virtue.

THE VITTLES
Looking at the numbers alone, video poker would seem to be the game to play. I play primarily dollar video poker. Historically, I’ve made about $25 an hour, plus at least another $10 an hour in free food, show tickets, and merchandise. Playing $1-$2 and $2-$4 Hold ‘em, I average about $10/hour (playing at higher denominations does not equate to winning more money, as the skill level of your opposition rises sharply at higher stakes). But we’re comparing apples and oranges here.

When I’m “playing” poke”

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