In this weeks video Anthony and Andrew talk about Vegas becoming Hollywood 2.0, buffet rumors, where to get the best Italian food in Vegas, and more.
LAS VEGAS ADVISOR WEEKLY UPDATE – EP 147
Are Video Poker Machines Actually Random?
This post is syndicated by the Las Vegas Advisor for the 888 casino group. Anthony Curtis comments on the 888 article introduced and linked to on this page.
AC says:
Are video poker hands dealt randomly? A debate over this comes up from time to time, due to the true meaning of “random.” The cards video poker players receive are determined by a “random number generator” (RNG), but purists point out that true randomness cannot be created by a computer algorithm. The argument can go on, but the reality is that the video poker machines you play in Nevada, and presumably in any legal and licensed casino in the U.S. (and mostly beyond), are random enough, given the game’s procedural objective. This article correctly makes that point, while also imparting bonus information many players want to know (even though it doesn’t affect their outcomes) about how the cards are dealt on a video poker machine.
This article was written by Jerry Stich in association with 888Casino.
Are Video Poker Machines Actually Random?
I doubt many video poker players even consider this question. They head to the casino (or play online) hoping their luck will bring them riches – or at least buy them some decent time playing their favorite video poker game.
Serious video poker players – those who learn and practice perfect video poker playing strategy for the specific game and pay table they will play are betting on the game being random. Each line of playing strategy assumes that video poker games are random. If the game is not random, the strategy is flawed and perhaps worthless.
So, what is the truth? Are video poker machines actually random? Will playing strategy based on a random game have the desired results? This article addresses these topics.
Lone Star stupidity
“Class” with a capital K. That’s what the Adelson family brings to Big Gaming. They’re the casino equivalent of that embarrassing, nouveau riche uncle who shows up wearing a loud, polyester leisure suit, smoking a noxious cigar and waving a wad of greenbacks. That’s certainly been their heavy-handed approach to the state of Texas, which continues to resist these garish blandishments. So crass is Las Vegas Sands‘ siege of Texans that it’s almost enough to make one sympathetic to the mossbacks and prudes who oppose Sands.
Continue reading Lone Star stupidityPlanning an Almost Free Trip to Vegas
Do you use a points earning credit card? My flights are free.
I’m currently staying at the Downtown Grand. My casino rate (50% off) runs $50-$100 per day total, including reduced resort fee, parking, and Gallery Tower upgrade.
Downtown Grand invited me to a $10K slot tournament with currently 120 players (200 are expected) paying to 30 places, so one in four wins so far (current EV $83+). The cost was $20 for the first entry, with additional entries earned for 60 points or $120 coin-in at video poker. I plan on having three. Most VP was downgraded, but I hear they still have a progressive at Furnace bar. We’ll see.
Others may be happy with Uber, etc., if staying on Fremont or the Strip. Myself, I run around a lot, visiting 15 to 18 casinos with fullpay video poker: M, South Point, Palace Station, Gold Coast, downtown, and the Rainbow in Henderson. I might stop at Boulder Station for the $1.99 shrimp cocktail.
It was a slog, spending an hour on multiple travel sites (even U-Haul!), finally getting a reservation direct from Dollar for under $50 a day. From where it started, I ended up saving about $150, so that was worth an hour for sure.
I’m signed up for Rakuten cashback, which pays 3% on this rez and of course Dollar and airline points, plus the points earned on my credit card for a triple stack! It all ends up worth about $50.
I’ll be returning to the Pinky Ring, Bruno Mars’ lounge at Bellagio, for two nights. I expect to see Bruno and my friends in the band. They’re also playing several nights at Dolby. I’m also expecting a surprise “lady” guest to be with Bruno, as he dropped a song with her last week and she’s been with Bruno at the Pinky Ring. I give it 55% or better.
Lots of Bruno Mars superfans are in town for his Dolby shows, so it’s VERY VERY EXPENSIVE and very booked to hang at the Pinky Ring — starting at $2,000 for a table. Owww. But I can walk in on my host open invite. And I booked an early-evening table for $50! I won’t have a table after 8 p.m., so I’ll do SRO hanging at the bar (you can too), which is fine, as I dance all night. I just need a place to set my drink down and I almost always find a place to hang with the band or some guest or hosts let me have a seat.
It’s a tough job being the unofficial house dancer. Someone’s got to break open the dance floor.
I’ll also be going to the opening of Speigelworld’s brand new Discoshow. Yes, I love disco (along with funk, R & B, pop, Latin, and rock n roll) and that will be a hoot. The Friday night show is $69 (Saturday $99). Dance dance dance.
My week in Vegas: out of pocket for air, hotel, and rental car before any winnings is … $980.
Living my best life. Keep on dancing.
Ai Pono Café
Hawaiian cuisine, such as it is, is getting good.
When we reviewed Zippy’s, we weren’t particularly complimentary, especially considering the irrational exuberance over the place. But 808 Café was a vast improvement, so when we read a highly positive review of Ai Pono on a San Francisco news site, we took notice.
Ai Pono (“Good Eats” or “Eat Right” in Hawaiian) Café is one of the sit-down eateries at the Eat Your Heart Out food hall at Durango.
It’s the brainchild of Hawaiian-born and -raised Las Vegan Gene Villiatora, a 30-year local who’s cooked at numerous restaurants around town and had a mostly successful run on “Top Chef: New York”; he opened the first Ai Pono in Orange County, California, in 2019.
The word is out about Durango’s Ai Pono. We were there at 4:30 on a Saturday, figuring to beat the dinner rush. No such luck. We waited a few minutes to order, but behind us, nine people were in line.
The menu is amusing, with names like Mento Bento, Dim Sum and Den Sum, Crackhead chicken (“everyone keeps coming back for seconds in one sitting”), and Ham Buggah steak. Most dishes are a major carb fest, with two scoops of rice and one of macaroni salad, along with some Asian slaw.
But the proteins and sauces are the stars of the show. The Crackhead chicken ($17) is sauteed in Ai Pono’s “secret batter” and topped with a coconut-garlic miso glaze. You’ll also find guava-chili chicken, Japanese chicken in a katsu sauce, and Korean chicken in a truffle sauce ($17 each), pork chops in a spicy garlic barbecue glaze ($18), mahi mahi in a garlic-butter-white-wine sauce ($18), and Korean short rib ($20). You can also get bowls ($14-$16), sampler plates ($20-$23), and add-ons such as kim chee, lumpia, potstickers, and lollipop shrimp ($5-$10).
We sampled the garlic shrimp in a cilantro-citrus-chili sauce, which comes with a fried egg on the rice, and the OG beef, hibachi-style slices of striploin marinated in “black-magic” teriyaki (both $19). Each ushered the Zippy-style Hawaiian plate lunch into a whole other dimension— a very good thing. Our bill, including a pickled-mango lemonade (delicious), came to a reasonable $48.77 (including tax, not tip).
The verdict: This is the kind of menu that, beyond our reviewer responsibilities, tempts us to go back and try everything else that looks so good. Villiatora claims that Ai Pono is on its way to becoming the standard of Hawaii fast-casual and street food and it might just succeed.
More About Airport Slots
A few weeks ago, I wrote about slot players (including me, occasionally) “hustling” at Harry Reid International Airport and the organization that runs those slots doing what it could to remove these hustlers. I received a few comments that didn’t get posted, and I want to address those now.
One comment was from someone whose contacts among knowledgeable people in the gambling world are as good as anyone’s. I’m not naming him. Had he wanted to be identified, he could have figured out how to post the comment so that everybody could see he sent it. He wrote:
I am told that it is the employees who are playing these slots so that they are trying to intimidate players off them to get them for themselves. I’ve also heard a big team is paying them off, but I think it is more the former.
My personal contact was with the managers of the airport slots. One of them was a former shift slot manager at the South Point, and since Michael Gaughan owns both the South Point and MJG Airport Slots, this strikes me as a reasonable, believable promotion for him. This man had worked for Gaughan for a couple of decades.
I asked him if identifying “advantage” players and restricting them was company policy or just some rogue employees doing their own thing for their own purposes. He was very clear that it was company policy. I’ve known him for years and watched him closely as he answered. I believe he was telling me the truth. If my expert friend is correct, I got conned. You can draw your own conclusions.
Another player wrote words to the effect of:
If the advantage players keep going after certain brands of slot machines, the obvious solution is to remove those machines so there’s nothing to attract these players.
Perhaps obvious to you, but to me this is clearly the wrong approach. Many of the machines the pros like are also very popular with the recreational players. If the airport removed these slots, whatever machines they replaced them with would not be as popular — and hence, not as profitable.
One thing not obvious to some of my readers is the difference in the way a casino profits between video poker and slots.
In video poker, if only expert players play the machines, the house makes a lot less money — or they may even lose, depending on the pay schedule, slot club, and promotions. Whether a casino profits or not can depend on removing expert players.
In slots, however, the house makes the same percentage whether the game is played by pros or novices. The competition is not between players and the house, but just among the players themselves.
So, if they’re making the same percentage, why do some casinos run off advantage players? Let’s say a casino’s slots average a 94% return. If pros pick off the games when they are positive, regular players are playing games averaging maybe 89%. Occasional players can’t tell the difference, but frequent players get a sense that their money doesn’t last as long at this particular casino. When the game returns that little to the players, many quit.
If the casino removes the knowledgeable players, the average player gets a 92% return or higher. These players enjoy themselves more and play more. The casino holds more money because there are more coins played. Casinos depend on repeat customers — especially casinos with a lot of competition.
The airport is different in several ways. While at the airport, there is essentially no competition from casinos. If someone wants to play slots, he/she has to play whatever is offered by the airport. You can bet that these slots are tighter than they are at most of the casinos in Vegas.
A related factor is that the customer base of players at the airport is a lot more diverse than the players inside the casinos. Many people inside the airport are not casino patrons. Their flight between, say, Fresno and Phoenix, makes a layover in Las Vegas. These customers are not in town to gamble — but since they have an hour to kill between flight legs, why not? Such players might not be able to differentiate between tight and loose slots. You have to be a somewhat frequent player to know this.
This means the organizers of the airport slots have less incentive to kick out pros than regular casinos do. So why do they do it?
My guess is that it’s in the DNA of the managers that having an environment that supported professional gamblers was a bad thing for them — simply because it was a bad thing back when they worked for regular casinos. So they continue to do it.
Icahn gets caught
Fontainebleau Las Vegas‘ former owner and a fixture of S&G, Carl Icahn has been a naughty boy. The SEC caught him using his shares in Icahn Enterprises (IEP) to cover risky personal loans. Let’s leave aside the question of why someone as fabulously wealthy as Uncle Carl is supposed to be would need personal loans. How would you like to be an investor in IEP, only to learn that its namesake’s stock was mostly pledged to various (undisclosed) lenders? Caesars Entertainment, maybe you should check up on the status of all those CZR shares that Uncle Carl is supposed to be holding. Has he pledged them to any third parties who might come calling?
Continue reading Icahn gets caughtØØ Pie and Pub
50 Top Pizza is an independent online ranking service that’s dear to our hearts; like us, they evaluate restaurants, in this case pizzerias, with anonymous inspections, then pay in full for their meals. In this year’s 50 Top Pizzas USA Guide, two pizzerias in Las Vegas made the list, one of which is Døuble Zerø (or ØØ) Pie & Pub. TastingTable.com, a popular site that covers all things in the food and restaurant world, also identified ØØ as one of the top 14 pizzerias in Las Vegas. And ØØ being located within a three-minute drive of our office doesn’t hurt.
First, about the name. “00” is the most finely sifted flour, common in Italian pizza, calzone, and focaccia making, perfect for airy crispy crusts. Second, the pizza chef, Michael Vakneen of Popup Pizza fame (at the Plaza downtown since 2012), lets the dough rise enough to stretch it out in such a way that the crust blisters, then he burns it slightly to perfection.
Third, Vakneen, a New York Italian, went to Tokyo to learn how to perfect his Neapolitan pizza technique. Yes, it sounds like the start of a joke (with the punchline something like, Do Tokyo chefs go to Rome to improve on their sushi?). Apparently, in Tokyo, Neapolitan pizza is made with the obsessive and perfectionist attention that’s invested in sushi and rice. Oh, and did we mention that the ØØ oven is wood-fired? Heating pizza ovens with wood is classic Naples style that dates back to the 1700s, adds special flavors and textures, and retains the freshness of the toppings.
It all adds up, as the experts attest, to some of the best pizza in the country.
The restaurant is on Spring Mountain Rd. on the western edge of Chinatown near the corner of Valley View. It’s a pub as well as pizzeria, with a long bar and brick walls giving it an industrial feel. The kitchen, complete with pizza oven, is right out in the open next to the bar, so you can see everything that goes into making these fantastic pies.
The food menu is limited to antipasti, starting with the house pickles ($8) and a couple of salads, including Caesars, and roasted red peppers ($10) and going up to wagyu carpaccio ($20). There are eight pizzas — marinara, mushroom, pepperoni, eggplant, short rib, etc. ($17-$26) — with a choice of three special sauces. They’re smallish, though big enough for two if you start with an appetizer or salad.
We tried the house pickles, seasonal vegetables naturally fermented, and a Caesar salad that were both as good as we’ve ever had.
Then we got a marinara pizza topped with speck, cured ham that’s like prosciutto, but with the added factor of a smokiness that can’t be beat. We took home one slice and the next day, the crust was as crisp and airy as when it came out of the oven; the sauce, cheese, and meat hadn’t caused any sogginess at all. (Note that ØØ doesn’t do takeout; they’ll give you a box for leftovers, but you have to eat in.)
It was an unforgettable meal — simple, striking, and scrumptious. The bill, with one glass of ale, came to $50 including tax, which was almost ridiculously modest for such an exquisite dining experience. We can’t wait to return.
Life Is a Gamble Podcast — The Blackjack Ball
Bob Dancer and Munchkin are back after a long hiatus to talk about this year’s Blackjack Ball. They’re joined by John Chang, former head of the MIT team, Max Rubin, creator and long-time host of the Ball, and Rick “Night Train” Blaine, author of Blackjack Blueprint and this year’s inductee into the Blackjack Hall of Fame. A stellar lineup for the 48-minute podcast. You can also read the transcript at your leisure. All at this link.
Atlantic City inferno; Mega-Jottings
Casino revenue from the Boardwalk fell 6% last month, reaching $272 million, 2% below where it was before Covid-19 struck. Casinos took a double-digit hit at the tables, down 10%, and it was downright dreadful for the Caesars Entertainment threesome, whose slot win fell 14% and table win dropped 23%. Such are the consequences of being overexposed in a fickle market. Harrah’s Resort got slammed extra-hard, plunging 24% to $19 million. Caesars Atlantic City did only slightly better, tumbling 19.5% to $20 million, while Tropicana Atlantic City slipped but 4% to $23 million.
Continue reading Atlantic City inferno; Mega-Jottings