Derek Stevens, along with his mostly silent brother, Greg, owns Circa, the D, and Golden Gate casinos in downtown Las Vegas. The three properties share a slot club and the same ONE player\u2019s card may be used at all three properties. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Circa checks everyone\u2019s ID every time using a hand-held device about the size of a cell phone. I assume they capture the information on your Driver\u2019s License in the process, but I don\u2019t know that for a fact. The D checks your ID on weekend nights — but not always all three doors. The Golden Gate, by far the smallest of the three properties, rarely has anybody checking your ID as you enter.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Sometimes the checking is done by regular security officers. Sometimes the checking is done by what appear to be temporary employees.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Strangely, on a midweek day in mid-November, a man in a tuxedo was checking IDs at Golden Gate. I produced mine and he asked if I was there for the promotion. I read mailers fairly closely and was pretty sure that no mid-week promotion was advertised for that casino, so I asked, \u201cWhat promotion?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
He told me that if I sign up for a card at the players\u2019 club, I\u2019d receive guaranteed free play for some amount between $5 and $1,000. I told him I already had a card, and he replied that all I had to do was to show the card and I\u2019d get the free play.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Free money is always good. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
On the way to the machines I wanted to check, I glanced over at the players\u2019 club. There was a line of about 25 people and it wasn\u2019t moving very fast. I didn\u2019t see how many booth attendants were servicing the front of the line, but clearly not enough to make the line move very fast.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I figured it would take me 30-45 minutes to get to the front of the line. If I knew I was going to get $200 or more, such a wait would be tolerable. While I don\u2019t know the distribution of the free play amounts for this particular promotion, historically in Las Vegas it goes something like 50% of the time it\u2019s $5, 25% of the time it\u2019s $10, 23% of the time it\u2019s $20 or $25, and 2% of the time it\u2019s higher than that. If those percentages held true for this promotion, my EV for standing in line for a long time was less than $10.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
When I first moved to Las Vegas and was scrounging to make enough money to be able to stay, I would have stood in line. Not anymore. Today I have a bankroll, and my earning power is more than $10 per 30-45 minutes. So, I passed up the line and checked the machines I wanted to check.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Perhaps I should modify my \u201cFree money is always good\u201d statement to something like, \u201cNo money is totally free. Whether it\u2019s good to get depends on what you have to do to obtain it. Correctly evaluating this is part of what makes a gambler successful or not.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Also, please note that in no way am I criticizing the Golden Gate for their promotion. Clearly a lot of people were capitalizing on it and I would have done the same 30 years ago. It\u2019s just that for me at this time in my life, no thank you.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Derek Stevens, along with his mostly silent brother, Greg, owns Circa, the D, and Golden Gate casinos in downtown Las Vegas. The three properties share a slot club and the same ONE player\u2019s card may be used at all three properties. Circa checks everyone\u2019s ID every time using a hand-held device about the size of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":15763,"featured_media":843442,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[601,558,557],"tags":[561,585],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/shop\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/09\/spinach-2.png?fit=500%2C300&ssl=1","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/shop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/899101"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/shop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/shop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/shop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/15763"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/shop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=899101"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/shop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/899101\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":899102,"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/shop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/899101\/revisions\/899102"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/shop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/843442"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/shop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=899101"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/shop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=899101"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/shop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=899101"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}