Posted on by — Leave a comment

Station: Better than Ever?

In spite of construction disruption that should have dampened revenues, Station Casinos beat Wall Street expectations for 4Q25. Cash flow of $213 million came in 4% above Wall Street’s consensus projection. Not to be outdone, revenues of $512 million were also ahead of forecasts. Investors were further pleased with $48 million in share repurchases and a $1/share special dividend. For one, Barry Jonas of Truist Securities was moved to boost his price target from $75/share to $80.

Continue reading Station: Better than Ever?
Posted on by — Leave a comment

Bobby Vegas — Good and Not-So-Good Offers and Something Hinky in Sports Betting

Bobby Vegas: Friends Don’t Let Friends Play Triple-Zero Roulette

As a devoted scuffler, I chase deals that collectively work out to being paid $20/hour to visit casinos. And every hour on their dime is good for the old bottom line. 

Heck, I drive to downtown Henderson all the time to my gold at the end of the Rainbow. Free meals, positive-expectation games, and it all grew from chasing MRBs.

As I’ve said before, Rainbow and Emerald Isle are stack heaven.

For decades, the MRB has been solid gold. In a bad year, it’s worth 10-to-one. A good year? 25-to-one or more. And that’s just direct savings and winnings. Add discovering a plus-EV game you hit a royal on, or in my case 4OAKs, and I’ll take that bet all day long.

Anyway, I stopped by Silver Sevens for their little free play re-sign offer, the MRB 3 to  1 on your first natural blackjack and free-gift MRB.

Back at home I got what I call a “non-offer.” Two “comped” nights (Sun-Thurs.). The resort fee​? $42.50. Please. That’s not a comp. Play $20 and get $5, but it takes two days to load?  Sigh … Please work on those, Mr. Sevens.

Now here’s a good offer, Plaza’s 2026 deal: 26% off room rates, $26 free bet, and $26 food credit. And great games.

Also, their $125 all-inclusive is back. Room (with no resort fee), breakfast and dinner, unlimited drinks. Add a slew of MRBs. And bingo is back up to $160,000 monthly. Once again, it “Pays to Play at Plaza.”

Now about something “hinky” (apologies to Tommy Lee Jones) in sports betting

A hypothetical question. Of all the adults you know, how many are legally betting sports? Your mom?  Your dentist? The barista?

The December numbers in North Carolina, $665 million, in a month, stunned me.  SEVEN BILLION in 2025? Our state transportation budget is $5 billion. $2.2 million a day? Who are these people? With approximately eight million adults, EVERY ADULT  wagers $850 a year?

Then I looked at New York. Double that. $1,700 a year per adult.

How many people have sports betting accounts? How many people are in the target population, male 21 to 40? The closer I looked, the higher the per-person number went up. A lot. Frankly I find this odd.

Either a smaller group is betting astronomical amounts or these numbers don’t make sense.

That tsunami of money funneling through legal sports betting? The states and sports books don’t want to kill the golden goose, tens of millions in taxes and profits every month.

How would you launder through this method? Pay individuals for cover accounts? Cash through legal sports books? That’s tough. There are some holes, but the process requires real ID verification, even geolocation, and I’ve written how closely they monitor advantage account activity. But let’s say you could set up cover accounts, run money through, and lose only, say, 15%?  From a laundering perspective, that’s not bad.

I’m just having a very hard time accepting that either everyone is betting or some folks are betting huge amounts. Or is it something Hinky?

The numbers just don’t make sense. Your thoughts. Please.

Posted on by — 1 Comment

Hugo’s Cellar’s Split-Plate Deal

I’m a big fan of Hugo’s. It’s a step back in time and walking down the steps seems to take you into a different world. The noise of the casino is replaced by the conversation of people enjoying a great meal in a classic setting. Call it dated if you want. I view it as a tribute to old-school Las Vegas, where the customer was king.

Now, you can order two complete dinners and I’ll bet you will have plenty of leftovers. Sometimes, however, you don’t have a fridge in your room for the leftovers or just don’t want to bother with boxing stuff up and taking it with you.

If you order just the tableside salad, it’s $28. Ordering a split plate gets you the tableside salad, plus all the normal dinner accompaniments (bread plate, sorbet palate refresher, dessert platter) and the cost is $40. Plus, they split the entrée for you. This is one case where one-half plus one-half is more than one. We’ve done this move several times and it sure seems like we each get more than half of an entrée.

Wait people rarely mind splitting an entree, especially if there’s no split-plate charge. That way, they can bring you a lot of food for the price of one meal and most people, except for the worst stiffs, will tip like they paid for both meals. Also, if the waiter tips out the kitchen staff generously, they get in on the deal too.

While you’re at Hugo’s, if you’re brave, order a martini. They bring you a full martini, plus some extra in a little pitcher on ice. You get almost three full martinis out of it. Last time I was there, it was $14. It’s probably higher now, but that same drink at Circa would be $65.

Also, the wine list is tremendous and very reasonably priced. I’ve seen the same bottle of wine cost $100 more at other steakhouses downtown. Jon the sommelier is delightful and makes ordering wine a pleasure. He doesn’t try to upsell you and really enjoys his job.

Finally, the Kona coffee experience for two is $14. Well worth doing at least once.Overall, Hugo’s for dinner is a wonderful treat.

Also, check out my Las Vegas Savings Tips page for further suggestions.

Posted on by — 1 Comment

Hither, Thither & Yon

January was super-cold in Illinois … except at the casinos. They leapt 13.5% on a same-store basis (i.e., excluding Fairmont Park). An extra weekend day helped—but still! New Hollywood Joliet is fending off management’s fears of an early slowdown, growing 1% from December and 60% from the old place last year at this time. It grossed $11 million. If only it didn’t look from the outside like a strip mall …

Continue reading Hither, Thither & Yon
Posted on by — 7 Comments

Weather or Not

Bob Dancer

A significant part of the country experienced colder than usual weather starting January 25 and lasting for a while. While Las Vegas escaped most of the cold weather, January 25 was a day I was scheduled to fly from Newark, NJ to Asheville, NC to begin an 11-day Cherokee trip. Both airports were snowed in, and I tried to cope as well as I could.

My flight from Las Vegas into Newark was on January 24, arriving about 6:30 p.m. When I arrived, I learned my flight the next day to Asheville was cancelled. I searched for any flight on January 25 that was still open and was traveling from Newark to either Asheville or Atlanta. I found one into Atlanta on Spirit Airlines, leaving at 5 a.m. I booked it, hoping I could travel before the storm hit. At that time, we didn’t know how big the storm was going to be, or exactly when it would strike, but it was supposed to be bad.

That left me about 10 hours to rent a car, drive two hours to Atlantic City, pick up free play on both Saturday and Sunday, play it off, sleep and eat if I could manage either or both, and then drive two hours back to Newark. When I left Atlantic City at 1 a.m. for the drive back to Newark, the flight status listed online was still “on time.” 

The drive to Newark was dry until I was very close to the airport. I kept driving past signs that told me serious weather conditions were coming, and non-essential driving should be avoided. I kept asking myself what in the hell I was doing.

When I went to check in at Spirit, I discovered my flight had been cancelled — as well as more than 80% of all flights in or out of Newark that day. Spirit had a seat available on a flight to Detroit which was scheduled to fly out soon, and from there, after a six-hour layover, I could fly to Atlanta if that flight didn’t get cancelled. Since some chance of getting to Atlanta on that day was better than no chance, I got on the flight to Detroit.

On the flight from Newark to Detroit, I had a window seat, and there was only snow to see out there. I couldn’t see the ground at all until just before landing. Detroit had snow, but the airport was operational. Some flights were taking off. Others weren’t — but that was a function of the weather at the destination rather than the weather in Detroit. Atlanta was currently allowing flights to land, but that could change at any moment. I got a brief amount of sleep sitting up in the Detroit airport. Not quality sleep by any  means.

While I waited to see if my flight would take off, I called Cherokee and inquired if by any chance they would have a driver in Atlanta near the time I was supposed to arrive? No such luck. It’s a three-hour drive from Cherokee to Atlanta — in dry weather — and their only drivers were booked elsewhere. 

Bonnie was traveling separately from Vegas to Asheville, North Carolina. Originally, I was going to fly from Newark and meet her there. A car from Cherokee would transport us both to the property. But now, I was flying to Atlanta, some 200 miles away from Asheville. I haven’t traveled the road between these two cities before, but I know it’s not all flat driving. The elevation at the high point on that route exceeds 3,400 feet — which is plenty high enough to be snowy and/or icy in the current conditions. Driving from Atlanta to Asheville was going to be out for me — I was too tired for a three-hour road trip in a car I wasn’t used to in bad weather. I’d concentrate on getting to Cherokee and let the casino driver pick her up and bring her to me. Bonnie and I both know the driver, Chris, who was scheduled to pick her up and that wouldn’t be a problem.

Renting a car in Atlanta was going to be an issue. There were cars to be had, but nowhere close to Cherokee to drop them off. Enterprise has a location relatively close to Cherokee, but the Enterprise rental location within the Atlanta airport was closed for the day. The cars I could get would have to be dropped off in Asheville — a full 60 miles away from Cherokee.

The plane did take off from Detroit and land in Atlanta uneventfully — and the passengers on the plane gave out a heartful cheer. I checked my messages and found out that Bonnie’s plane to Asheville had been cancelled. I texted this information to Chris so he wouldn’t drive out there for nought. 

I checked Lyft and found out that I could get to Cherokee for $320 from Atlanta. I decided this was better than driving in icy conditions to Cherokee when I was sleep deprived and in a car I wasn’t used to — and then dealing with getting to and from Asheville to return the car. Before I ordered the Lyft car, I checked Uber and found out the ride cost $260 — and if I was willing to share a ride, $165. Yes, I was willing. I hoped whomever I shared with didn’t mind my snoring. Not for the first time, I was amazed that the rates varied so much between these two companies that offered essentially identical service.

Turned out that I paid the “share” rate, but there were no other passengers. Sometimes you catch a break.

I arrived in Cherokee and checked in. I was more tired than I was hungry, so I immediately went to bed. My plan was to awaken at 2 a.m. and play $50,000 coin-in before the casino day changed at 6 a.m., earning me 5,000 Tier Credits and the maximum daily bonus of 10,000 TCs. I can redeem one Experience Credit (requiring 250,000 TCs) for $450 in free play, so earning some extra TCs would be worth money to me to obtain.  But when my alarm rang, I turned it off, rolled over, and slept longer. I was worn out by both the lack of sleep and the stress of not knowing how I was going to cope with my transportation problems caused by weather conditions that were both serious and uncertain.

I had my toothbrush and toothpaste, but no other toiletries. I’d flown into Newark for a day with just a backpack — and my clothes and things were in a suitcase Bonnie was bringing. With the weather, she ended up getting here Thursday night — four days later than originally planned. I wore the same clothes day after day, washing out my underwear nightly. The handheld hair dryer became a clothes dryer. When Bonnie finally saw me, she laughed at how scruffy I had become. But we were together again, clean clothes were at hand, and everything was okay in our world.

Posted on by — Leave a comment

Boyd: Weathering the Storm

Despite bad weather, the fourth quarter for Boyd Gaming was steady as she goes. Wall Street expected $334 million in cash flow and Boyd delivered $337 million, along with $1 billion in revenue. That was achieved even with soft business in the Midwest and South, as well as in the drive-in business in Las Vegas. Locals play in Sin City remains solid, which was a saving grace. Destination customers just weren’t coming, which hurt business at The Orleans, for one. To console investors, $185 million in stock was bought back, and projects in Virginia, Illinois and suburban Vegas remain in train through 2028.

Continue reading Boyd: Weathering the Storm
Posted on by — Leave a comment

Steak ‘n Shake Deal at the Fremont

I know some of you are thinking, what’s the big deal about a fast-food meal in Las Vegas? That isn’t the reason you come to this town. But this one is significant for several reasons.

First of all, McDonald’s pulled out of the D and the Plaza over the summer.  There are no McDonald’s in the downtown area. Sometimes you just want a quick bite.

Secondly, Steak ‘n Shake is more short-order cooking than fast food. I’d rate it quite a bit better than the Burger King, McDonald’s, Checkers, etc. options.

Third, $5.99 barely gets you a cup of coffee in many places. So getting a full meal for $6 is quite a find.

Finally, the Fremont Food Hall is an attractive place to visit and eat, with other good choices for good quick meals.

As a bonus, if you’re downtown and don’t want to walk to the Downtown Grand via 3rd Street , you can cut through the Fremont casino, exit the north doors, and be very close to the Grand.

Check out my Las Vegas Savings Tips page for further suggestions.

Posted on by — 1 Comment

MGM: Shoot the Messenger

Don’t you just hate it when reality refuses to conform to Big Gaming’s preferred narrative? MGM Resorts International CEO Bill Hornbuckle sure does. That would explain the hissy fit he threw last weekend. Faced with a Las Vegas that was 9% down in visitation in December and off 6% in gambling grosses, Hornbuckle stuck with the ‘Happy days are here again’ mantra.

Continue reading MGM: Shoot the Messenger
Posted on by — 13 Comments

Found It!

Bob Dancer

A few weeks ago, I wrote that in the hours shortly after New Year’s Eve midnight I was cruising downtown Las Vegas looking for slot attendants resetting machines. Due to the W-2G threshold changing from $1,200 to $2,000 effective January 1, most machines needed to be reset to make them lock up at $2,000 rather than $1,200. My search on January 1 was unsuccessful, as I reported.

One of my readers, Mike, suggested I was off base. The jackpot meters have nothing to do with resets. Well, yes and no. The meters are unrelated to each other, to be sure, but some games need to be reset whenever such a change is made — and a few are positive when this happens. 

Most games, of course, don’t reset at positive levels. With Buffalo Link, for example, the meters reset to a value of 100. At this level, the game returns about 80% and only players oblivious to the meters will play. (There are a lot of such players.) But there are definitely at least two games that reset positively.

On January 17, I found one! Or rather, I found a circular bank of four slot machines which had all been reset. Not immediately before I got there, but not too long before. Maybe a day or two? I can’t be sure.

How do I figure? There were four identical machines with perhaps 40 different combinations of denominations and number of coins required. You could play it for as little as 50¢ per spin — to as much as $50. 

The $50-per-spin games are pretty formidable. Although the player definitely becomes the favorite at the level these meters were at, these are gambling games with considerable variance. Losing more than $10,000 playing a positive game of this size isn’t that uncommon. The vast majority of players who frequent this casino are not in position to play games requiring such bankrolls. The smaller games on these machines, where anywhere between 50¢ and $20 was required to play each hand, had all been played and the meters were no longer attractive. Perhaps by one person who made a day of it. Or perhaps by several people.

But among the four machines, there were five playable games — three for $30, one for $40, and one for $50. I had some money on me, but quite a bit less than $10,000. There was no guarantee I had enough to play one game — let alone all five. Bonnie, however, was with me because we had gone out to dinner together previously using casino comps. As is often the case in such situations, we checked some machines before we went home. If I ran out of money, Bonnie could sit at the machine while I went where I needed to go to get some. We would make sure the machine displayed an unattractive meter amount while Bonnie quietly sat in front of it so anybody walking by would have no reason to challenge her for the chair. I told her about this possibility before we started, and she was fine with it. She was actually pretty excited about us making some “big money.” Regardless of whether the results would be plus or minus, we don’t split gambling results, and this would all be my money we were dealing with. But she’s my biggest fan. Plus, she gets to experience hitting big jackpots with no financial risk to her at all.

When I started playing, I didn’t know there were other positive games on the other three machines because they were occupied. I loaded the first machine with $2,000 before we started. Playing for $30 per pull, it took longer to insert the 20 Benjamins into this machine than it did afterwards to hit a jackpot of $3,700. It took 20 minutes to be paid. I would have shifted over to one of the other machines while I waited, except all three were being played by friends of each other — for either 50¢ or $1. When I hit the jackpot, the players on the other three machines scurried over to take look. They were excited because playing for low stakes, they rarely hit jackpots. One finally saw that I was playing $30 a hand — and even asked me if I knew I was playing for that much! I told her I knew.

Just as we were finished with our first game, (it was the only good one on that machine), one of the other machines opened up. I had Bonnie hold the current machine, without playing, while I checked all the games on the recently vacated machine. Had there been good games on it, I would have had Bonnie hold that chair while I finished off on the machine we were playing. When the third machine opened up, and I found two suitable games, Bonnie sat there until I was available — which came about rather quickly because I hit a jackpot for $2,100 and it was going to take awhile to be paid.

Over the next three hours, we took down all five games — and received a large number of W-2Gs along the way. We ended up ahead a few thousand dollars — but nothing major. It was a decent result — but nowhere near what it could have been. I figure that where we started on those five games, our average expected win for the five was more than $15,000. We got nowhere near that, but I’m still glad we checked those machines that day. Plus, we put thousands of points on both Bonnie’s card and mine and will likely result in bigger mailers in the not-so-distant future.

How am I so sure that these machines were reset only a day or so before I got there? Well, I’m not 100% sure. But close to that.

Consider this: In the previous three months, I have checked those same four machines several dozen times — and have found plays for $20 or higher twice. This time I found five such plays all at once. I figure these games were just too big for casual players and so they remained on the machines. At this casino, the larger denominations don’t get much play.