Recently in Las Vegas, there was a local pub offering a nice promotion between 1 a.m. and 8 a.m. several days a week. Not a great promo and not likely to be repeated, but I’m not interested in providing more details about it than I already have. Suffice it to say it was close enough to where I live and juicy enough that I arranged my sleep schedule so that I was there during the requisite hours most of the days it was offered.
A friend, “George,” told me about a different play somewhere else. In exchange, I told him about the graveyard shift promo. A lot of players share information on a quid pro quo basis, where we each share information useful to the other, and that was the case here.
George told me that yes, it was a nice promotion, but that he was seldom out of bed during those hours. His sleep schedule is his business, but that got me to thinking.
Over the decades I’ve been in Vegas, I’ve adjusted my sleep schedule thousands of times to take advantage of a play with profit potential. (They didn’t always turn out to be profitable, of course, but that’s the way gambling goes.) The idea of a “regular sleep schedule” is anathema to me. I can nap any time and be ready to go at any hour, provided I’ve had sufficient warning. I indeed need my sleep like anybody else, but whether it’s at 2 a.m. or 2 p.m. is of little consequence to me. Occasionally I can go 24 hours if need be. Not as often as I used to be able to do it, but it’s still possible.
There’s always location, location, location, of course. I live in Vegas, where there are more than one hundred places to gamble — including small bars — and they all have promotions some of the time. Most of these promotions aren’t interesting to me, but sometimes . . . While it does take a considerable amount of scouting and networking to stay on top of which place is having which promotion when, many of my readers don’t live in or near a casino city — or perhaps only have a few places within easy driving distance.
Showing up somewhere at an odd hour is not so easy for people with regular full-time jobs or other responsibilities. If they have to be present and alert from nine to five (or any other set time), that eliminates the possibility of many plays. Sometimes because they are working at the time a promotion is going on. Sometimes because they need to prepare for later things.
There is also interaction with the regular world. Doctors, manicurists, restaurants, and other establishments are not typically open at 4 a.m. I know of the local markets that are open 24/7. Bonnie doesn’t drive anymore, and I take her places when I can. (She knows how to use Uber and Lyft.) This eliminates some plays, but not others. We also try to schedule our stops efficiently, so we go to places near each other back-to-back.
I think my time flexibility is one of my “secrets to success.” It’s not one of the usual secrets I mention (being able to learn and execute strategies well, obtaining and keeping a bankroll, keeping my welcome in as many places as possible, etc.), but it’s an important one nonetheless.
Longtime readers and listeners to the former GWAE podcast know that I regularly study health-related information. Some of the doctors I’ve read say a regular sleep schedule is an important part of good health. It’s possible they’re correct. It’s possible that’s just something they do, and they think it’s part of the secret to good health. I’m not sure. But I’m willing to sacrifice that particular technique. The alternative is simply too valuable to pass up.
The fact that my friend George isn’t interested in having a flexible sleep schedule (which is cutting his bankroll short) is up to him. As is his comment, “I don’t like to eat vegetables,” which I think is cutting his life short. I’ll make sure he knows about this article (I’ll send him a “I wrote a blog about you” email) and he can do with it what he wishes.
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Vegetables are not your friends and are trying to kill you. Search for “plant antinutrients”. Plants can’t move or fight back, all they can do is try to poison you for eating them. Also, they convert carbon dioxide to oxygen while they are alive, another reason to leave them alone.
Sharp as a marble.
Liz- you are right about the “vegetable” in the White House……
I think it is self-evident that repeatedly jerking and jarring your body by going on a different wake/sleep schedule will do damage to your body (and maybe your mind and psyche) in the long run, just as being joltingly woken up out of your sleep 5 days per week by an alarm clock in order to get to your job on time will do damage in the long run. The exact amount of damage may differ from person to person, so it’s hard to measure. But damage clearly will occur. So the promotion had better be worth it.
I’m not that desperate to alter my sleep schedule to make any money.
Getting up in the middle of the night to play, driving to where the promo is, spending time playing…all those are opportunity costs. What’s your time really worth? The net EV of the promo could easily be negative when you factor that in.
Liz: Ignorant donk
LOl Sorry , meant David. David is the ignorant donk (well, obviously)
al- the only “obvious” thing is your ignorance. brain dead corrupt traitor Biden is ruining America and you say that I am ignorant.
The quid-pro-quo thing is good. Why give away good info to people that are not much different than engergy-vampires?
I am limited to certain weeks of the year only but over the years I figured out that some casinos are repeating good promotions during more or less the same period of the year. I started to plan my vacations accordingly and make sure to be in town when there are promos like Senior Days, Casino Birthday, Spring Break, Winter Break, etc.
Sometimes I have to forfeit some of the minor promos because I am not that familiar with all small casinos in town but to the most part I can find the important joints.
From Switzerland
Boris
I think the greatest threat to your health in the wee hours are the cretins and thugs who are out at that time.
Mike you are right by that. Sam’s Town after 2 a.m. becomes like a haunted house to me. If you play on the upper floor on the double deuces game it scares me to death because nobody’s around , no security, just nobody. and then it’s the moment when the creeps come out….
Boris is absolutely right. On two different occasions recently at Sam’s Town, there was a very menacing, thuggish man harassing elderly customers on the floor and demanding money from them. The elderly people looked, as Boris correctly stated, scared to death.
When I politely and quietly reported this to security, they did absolutely nothing. (Gee, what a shocker, I know.) In fact, they did less than nothing. They just acted annoyed and ticked off at *ME* for “bothering” them and daring to speak to them.
Great job, Sam’s Town! Great job, Boyd Gaming!
Zombies, it’s from the xylazine being mixed into street drugs.
A Funny True Story About Bob Dancer and Me
Several years ago, while playing video poker at Greektown Casino (now Hollywood) in Detroit, they were having a video poker contest. The player accumulating the most credits in a short period of time would be the winner and receive a large cash prize.
I speculated with Bob that the winner would probably get about two or three Royal Flushes during his stint at the machine. Bob said that he thought the winner would get at least five Royals to win. I said no way and bet him $100 to prove that I was right. A week later, when the contest was over, I checked and saw that the winner did indeed get those five Royals like Bob said he would.
Okay, I was wrong, and I sent him the $100, but I decided to make it interesting in the way I paid off the bet. At the time, there was a guy, I think his name was Rob Springer (?) who was espousing that the way to play video poker was to play by your intuitions and feelings to get the best results. He was a vocal critic of Bob’s computer perfect theories and said so in a book he wrote.
I bought the book and stuffed a hundred-one-dollar bills in the pages and sent it to Bob. I didn’t hear back from him and thought it was kind of strange as Bob, being the gentleman that he was, would have acknowledged that he received it. Oh well, I forgot about it and moved on.
About five years later, I got an email from Bob saying that he just noticed a book on his shelf By a Mr. Springer, opened it up and out popped all those dollar bills and he then remembered our bet and had always thought that I stiffed him. Both of us had a good laugh at it.
Terrence I. VP Pappy Murphy (see Amazon Books)
Editor, do we really need a quintessential simpleton like David Miller here to poison the atmosphere of what is suppsed to be an advantage-play forum?