I recently saw a Northwestern Mutual commercial which aired during the college football playoffs. Although it ended as an advertisement for their insurance company, the part that interested me said:
There are no accidental champions.
You can’t hope your way to victory.
Titles aren’t won at the end of the season.
They are won in the offseason. Continue reading You Can’t Hope Your Way to Victory
You’re going on a two week vacation and back home you frequent a number of casinos. Let’s say they give you $40 a week in free play. How do you deal with that?
Some casinos, not many, will hold the money for you and let you collect it when you get back. Some casinos, again not many, allow at least some of their customers to pick up their free play any time during the month. If your regular casinos are like this, there’s no problem. You simply pick up your free play before and/or after your trip. Continue reading Whose Money is it Anyway?
For the sake of discussion, let’s say I lived somewhere in New York and regularly flew to Las Vegas to play for big stakes. Further, let’s say the airfare cost me $600.
If I play enough at one casino, sometimes I can get them to pick up the airfare. It’s a lot harder than it used to be, but it’s still possible. Continue reading Airline Fare Redemption
As I wrote last week, Bonnie and I recently returned from a comped cruise on the Norwegian Dawn. Laundry service was included in the package, and on one particular night both of my long pants had been sent to the laundry. I had expected the laundry to be returned prior to dinner, but such was not the case. I had some clean Bermuda shorts, but no long pants.
There are two main dining rooms on the Dawn — the Venetian and the Aqua. The Venetian is larger and has windows overlooking the bow of the ship, but the restaurants themselves share the same galley and have identical menus. As far as most of the passengers are concerned, the two dining rooms are equivalent. Continue reading How Do You Interpret?
Bonnie and I had to skip our European honeymoon six months ago due to her health. She’s feeling better now and so we went on two back-to-back cruises out of New Orleans-the first November 30 – December 7 on the Carnival Dream and the second departing a few hours later, December 7 – December 14, on the Norwegian Dawn.
All of it was casino comp. Our Carnival Cruise Lines trip was courtesy of the M Casino. Our Norwegian Cruise Lines voyage was a Seven Stars Signature Event from Caesars Entertainment. For our travel to and from New Orleans we used a Seven Stars annual trip. Continue reading A Sense of Entitlement
I’ve been playing $1 Ten Play 9/6 Double Double Bonus Ultimate X (DDB UX) for about two years at the Palms. It’s supposed to be a 99.87% game when played perfectly. The perfect strategy is very complicated. The simplified strategy I use is worth a bit less. With the 0.25% slot club, mailer, drawings, etc., it’s a decent enough play.
In 2013, I lost more than $100,000 on this “decent enough” play. In 2014 I’m ahead. But still, how I can run so bad on such a good play? Continue reading What Makes Ultimate X So Volatile?
The following is a hypothetical problem set at an unidentified casino: Assume the games are single line, for dollars, and I play $20,000 coin-in a month. Assume the slot club pays 0.25% and the mailer gives me $160 a month (i.e. $40 a week times four weeks) as long as I play $20,000 or more coin-in.
One month, however, my mailer includes a coupon that will pay me double for four 4s with a maximum bonus of $500. If I’m playing a deuces wild variation, it has to be four natural 4s, and if I get five 4s with exactly one deuce, I get paid double for that as well. I get to cash the coupon once only and it expires at the end of the month. Continue reading How Would I Go About It?
I periodically attend a dinner hosted by Tommy and Debby Hyland. Tommy has run a large blackjack team for decades and is a member of the Blackjack Hall of Fame. A number of gamblers of various stripes are invited to these dinners and the conversation is often stimulating. Tommy is also a very good golfer and plays several times a week.
The dinner was winding down when Tommy and a few others excused themselves from the table to catch the end of a Sunday night football game. Tommy likes to bet on football and I suspect he had a wager down on this particular game as well. I was lingering at the dinner table, enjoying the conversation and finishing my coffee. Continue reading The Principles are the Same
I don’t read a newspaper. I pay attention to the news, but get it online. Bonnie has subscribed to the Las Vegas Review-Journal for 20 years and reads it daily.
She is not particularly savvy about gambling offers, but she cuts out many of them and places them in my office. Mostly I either already know about the offers and/or am not interested. Occasionally, however, she comes across something I didn’t know about. One of those times was an ad for the Downtown Grand. Continue reading Checking out the Downtown Grand
In last week’s article, available here, I explained how I happened to be playing for large stakes at the newly-opened SLS Casino on its opening weekend. I was down $34,000 after four hours of play. The story continues:
Shortly thereafter I hit $20,000 aces. While I was “in for” $56,000 at this point ($40,000 in markers plus $16,000 of cash I had fed into the machines), I had about $20,000 worth of tickets in my pocket and credits on both machines, so I “bought back” one of the markers. Continue reading My Adventure at the SLS — Part 2 of 2
