Question of the Day - 21 October 2024

I was there for the implosion of the Hacienda. It was very nice and fast, the old-school way and an extra treat on New Years Eve! Mandalay Bay took its place. My question is, does that leave the Flamingo and Sahara as the oldest and most nostalgic casino-hotels on the Strip? And are they going away anytime soon?

Nope. They're both here, presumably, for the long haul. That said, we figured the same for the Mirage, so you never can tell what the future might hold.

One possibility is that the Flamingo will be sold by Caesars. That's been rumored for several years and it surfaced again recently. Even if it happens, the 76-year-old property has 3,460 rooms in four looming towers, so an implosion seems unlikely. And the Sahara completed a $200 million renovation last year, in which it opened Balla Italian Soul, the Noodle Den, and Chickie’s & Pete’s restaurants, as well as Azilo Ultra Pool and Ultra Lounge, a new theater for Magic Mike Live, and a new porte cochere fronting the Las Vegas Strip, so that pretty much lets the 72-year-old property out as well. 

What might be the next implosion? What do QoDers think?  

I and my party are loyal to Four Queens for many reasons and Deuces Wild is our game, with occasional forays to craps and roulette. Occasionally slots too, but that’s limited. We don’t bother to get rated at table games, as we're low rollers not worth the crew’s time. My question is, machine points continue to accumulate and they're stored somewhere, right? Adding up? I don’t have a host, so how do I ever find out if my account has accumulated enough points to qualify for a free room or a dinner credit?

Yes, your points are stored in the All Access Players Club database. They continue to accumulate, but it's best to use them frequently to avoid the risk of losing them. According to the All Access rules, accounts with no activity for 13 consecutive months will be considered inactive and all points and comp dollars will expire (you can read all the rules here).

You can find out how many points you have by checking the card readers on the machines when you insert your players card; you can also ask about them at the players club booth. There, they'll tell you what comps -- and cashback -- your points qualify you for. Points accrued at Four Queens are also good at Binion's, both owned by TLC Enterprises. 

There's plenty more to know about redeeming points for comps and cashback, along with accruing points at the table games; we recommend Jean Scott's books, particularly More Frugal Gambling and The Frugal Gambler Casino Guide, for detailed and comprehensive information on how to play the comp game, especially at the machines. 

I was at a local casino here in Ohio. I was going to play video poker and picked one of the two empty machines. While I was playing Double Double ($.25), a gentleman sat down at the other machine and started playing Triple Double ($1). He hit four aces with the kicker for $4,000. It just made me wonder if I had played that machine, would the four aces have still hit, since it is controlled by a random generator? Or would the difference in the game and denomination change the outcomes of the random generated results?

Yes, the difference in the machine, the game, and the denomination changed the random results. So did the different player, different strategy, and different moment that the Triple Double Deal and/or Draw button was pushed. So did any number of other random unknowable events. We've always liked the expression, "Everything in the universe causes everything else in the universe."

The random number generator cycles through approximately a million numbers per second, so the gentleman playing Triple Double Bonus hit the Deal/Draw button at the exact nanosecond that the RNG called for the four aces and a kicker. That wasn't your jackpot, no matter what. You might've hit four aces and a kicker by playing that machine at some other time and you would if you played long enough. But there's no way, in the conceivable consensual reality anyway, that you could have replicated that exact event.