I keep reading in the blogs about the "$20 trick" in regards to getting an upgrade upon checking in at a hotel. What does this mean?

A friend of mine who plays video poker uses the phrase "they don't reach" when referring to certain groups of cards. I don't want to look dumb, so I never ask him, but what does that mean?

What's the average gambling budget of a typical visitor to Las Vegas?

My wife and I plan to retire to Las Vegas in six or seven years. We want to keep our home here in Saskatchewan, and live at least six months of the year in each home. I don't really like being a landlord, but we think it might be a good time to buy in Las Vegas while your prices are so low, and rent the house out until we move there. We can sell our home if we have to, but we'll be able to keep our home here if we can find a three-bedroom home in Las Vegas for under $250,000. Is this a realistic plan?

With the onset of TITO machines at most every casino, I often don’t have a few dollars to tip the cocktail servers. Are they allowed to accept TITO tickets?

The Missus, some friends, and myself are coming to Las Vegas at the end of May. I successfully lobbied our little group to stay downtown at the Golden Nugget to try something new. Now that I've convinced everyone to stay downtown, what would you recomend as the top things that we should do in order to get the most out of our Downtown Field Trip?

In light of the recent IRS investigations of PURE-managed nightclubs and the huge amounts of income they generate, doormen making hundreds of thousands of dollars is probably just the tip of the money iceberg. Why would the money-hungry casinos let outside entities such as PURE have access to any of the huge profits these clubs generate? I’m sure the hotels are more than capable of running nightclubs. Do you think they didn’t know how much money was involved, and now that they do, they’ll take back control? Or is a few hundred million dollars not enough to interest the casinos?

With the subtraction of the Stardust and New Frontier in 2007 and the addition of Palazzo and Encore in 2008, what is the net gain for hotel rooms on the Las Vegas Strip?

Is there a website that states the current numbers and kinds of slot machines and video poker games (as well as the available denominations of them) that each casino offers?

Once while my wife and I were driving by the parking garage behind Imperial Palace after a rainstorm, there was this huge, and I mean huge, gush of water that would have taken out any vehicle in its way. I hear that this is common in that spot. Then shouldn’t the road be closed at times like this? What causes this to happen and are there other spots we should be aware of?