It has struck me continually over the last decade-plus how inept Vegas has been at keeping its brand intact. The Vegas casinos act as if they can keep up ratcheting up their prices, lowering their quality of service, and making their gambling worse, and the lemmings will keep on coming no matter what. They don’t seem to realize that people have other options these days: casinos closer to home, and other ways to spend their entertainment dollars.

Re finding +EV plays: If you’re a quarter player, you can still get by. The best opportunities, though, are in short-term plays that improve nominally -EV games. The South Point spin promo last month is a case in point, as is their recurring gas card promo. The point multipliers at Boyd can make it worthwhile to play games that are 99.5%+. The coupon runs that you can put together from LVA and ACG are better than ever. You can’t make a living doing this (the only real possibility for that is to have a million-dollar bankroll and play dollars or higher, with a tiny edge, and do so PERFECTLY), but it is certainly possible to cut the cost of a vacation down to near-zero, which is all I think most of your readers want to do anyway.

In fact, it might be a worthwhile article–which I should probably write–on how a first-time Vegas visitor can combine club signup bonuses + loss rebates + ACG + LVA to make that first trip actually PROFITABLE, something the Vegas newbie would probably think is impossible. I think that also, it helps to have the “frugal mentality” and be willing to expend the effort to get deals. I for one just loooooove it when I don’t have to pay for rooms or food and that when I gamble, I, not them, have the edge.