[Writer's note: The report is somewhat long, so skim through and read
if interested - it's not gambling-stats-heavy]
Some friends and I visited Las Vegas over the past 60 hours. Our main
base this trip was Bally's since I am a Diamond player and I receive
comp rooms at several strip locations. I prefer an off-strip hotel
since I play most of my video poker off-strip, but my friends enjoy
the central location of the strip casinos and access to many local
entertainment venues. This was just a short trip since my friends
like to gamble, but hate to lose money, and since we all had work to
return to on Monday!
_BALLY'S_
The room at Bally's was an 18th Floor room with a view of the pool and
the airport. The room wasn't huge, but was wide with plenty of room
to walk between the beds and the armoire. It seemed to have been
recently renovated with good, working a/c, a redone bathroom (with a
sloppy paint job), a safe, two queen beds, a nightstand, and two
tables, one with plugin for laptop and "high speed" internet. The
"high speed" internet connection was unreliable on the trip and I was
unable to complete work I had to do while there. I told the
representative at the Diamond check-out that I was unhappy with it,
but her statement was, "I'll tell somebody about it." and that was
that. I now learn that I need to complain if something is wrong and
it might be fixed, especially for a diamond player.
_HARRAH'S CORPORATION_
In the past, Harrah's has done some things to make me feel important
as a Diamond-level player, such as call housekeeping to tell them to
rush the cleaning of my room and to always want to transfer me to "VIP
Services" when I call even though I already had to go through one
phone tree and wait on hold for the first representative I reached who
would just transfer me to "VIP Services." I need to learn VIP
Services direct phone number. The Diamond check-out was really nice
and saved me from standing in a line of about 50 people on a Sunday
morning. I also like the line pass to most Harrah's "attractions."
_VP CONSPIRACIES???_
I played many hours of VP at Bally's, mostly 8/5 BP because I enjoy
the low volatility of the game. I'm not quite sure what happened to
low volatility or even low variance because I kept waiting for the
good side of the variance curve to reach me and it never got there.
It was just a large tidal wave that kept building up and up. I have
never lost at VP so fast, it was really amazing. It got to the point
where I gave up and stopped gambling at all because I wasn't having
any fun. When I was getting tired of losing at BP, I'd switch to
quarters (from half-dollars) ugly deuces wild and put a $20 bill in.
I got through an entire $20 bill once without a single deuce! My
four-of-a-kind stats were disappointing, but not unbelievable if one
bets on the lottery and expects to win.
VP is like global warming to me. There's lots of evidence that it's
happening such as extreme/record heat waves, hurricanes, and cold
spells, but not everybody is willing to accept it. I accept global
warming and do my best to conserve energy and reduce emissions from my
vehicle. For me, it's amazing that some of the VP machines defy all
odds and probabilities when it comes to VP. After thousands of hands
(yes, I realize that 25,000 - 30,000 hands is very short term), it's
amazing that I can get down over two royals without having any FUN.
I'm not ready to admit that some machines aren't fair, because I
believe they are fair, but it's _almost_ as if they have been
programmed to give the player a rollercoaster ride down the large
first drop before ever bringing them back up again before the next,
smaller dip.
_BUFFETS_
We ate at Wynn's The Buffet on this trip. We have a buffet-enjoyer in
our group, and she doesn't eat for about a day and half before the big
meal in order to get her money's worth. She grew up with parents who
shamed her for not eating enough crab at the buffet. Now, they tell
her that she may want to lose weight. Go figure! I am still
extremely amazed at this buffet's quality. Everything I ate, save the
Pad Thai, was excellent. They had these tremendous sweet potato
raviolis that we all liked, as well as huge Alaskan king crab legs
with clarified butter, and huge plump shrimp ready to eat with an
excellent cocktail sauce. I think the crème brulee as gotten smaller
as time has gone on, but the quality of the deserts is also amazing -
right down to the presentation.
Our second buffet was at the South Coast which we went to for bowling
and low blackjack minimums. The buffet, was, honestly, terrible. The
food was cold, old, and not flavorful. The mashed potatoes were
awful, and were it not for the color of the stuffing, one could not
tell the difference between the two dishes (they had the same
consistency and almost the same flavor). The deserts were stale, the
chicken marsala's sauce was out so long that you couldn't scoop it up
with the serving spoon to put any on your chicken because it was
crusty and baked onto the chicken. I thought it was especially funny
that they laughed when we asked for a booth for four people. I find
booths more comfortable so I'm unsure why the hostess and the waitress
laughed when we wanted to switch from a table to a booth.
_THE DRIVE_
We went to GM's "The Drive" behind the Sahara monorail station twice.
For $10, you get to drive two cars either on a performance track
(Corvettes, Sunfires, GTS, etc.) or on an obstacle track (Hummers or
Suburbans). They let you go fast on the performance track as long as
you're not "drifting" or unsafe and squealing the tires. The
performance track did let you go fast, but it was too short to get a
real feeling for speed in these cars. The track was better for
demonstrating the vehicle's handling in turns and curves than speeds
on straight-aways.
The Hummer was a blast! I drove and H2 and you get to climb large 18"
steps, go through 45-degree banks, up and down a 60-degree incline,
and over logs and other obstacle-like things. The employees are
super-friendly and give good advice about driving the vehicles. We
all had a great time and it was well worth the $10 entrance fee.
Passengers come in for free and you can ride along in any car except
the performance vehicles with two seats.
You must pass a breathalyzer test in order to drive their cars, but
this was a very easy, non-obtrusive test where you blow into a tube.
They have a deal right now where if you have a cell phone and you send
the text "DRIVE" in a text message to 96787 and show the resulting
message they send back to a monorail attendant, you get a free round
trip monorail ride to the test track.
_PINBALL MUSEUM_
I visited the Pinball Museum. It was great! They have so many
pinball machines there and most of them are 50 cents or three games
for a dollar. Granted, I'm not old enough to know many of the older
pinball machines they had there, but I do know some that I grew up
with in my childhood such as Pinbot, Taxi, Adams Family, and my
personal favorite, The Twilight Zone. It was hot inside, maybe due to
poor a/c, but maybe due to cost-saving since it is a not-for-profit
business. I had a blast and played pinball for two and half hours on
about $5. I am a pretty good pinball player (if I don't say so
myself) and got quite a few replays.
_LUCK?_
I'm not quite sure if I should tell this story, but I don't have much
to lose since HET tore the shirt off my back, used it to clean the
bottom of the refrigerator, and then gave it back to me on this trip.
I was playing at Bally's on a 25-cent triple-play DB machine. It
was short-pay, but was nearby my friends and had a good dealt royal
progressive. After playing for a bit, I'll just say that Bally's was
giving quite a few bonus credits in that I was receiving 8-9 base
points for each $3.75 maximum bet. I played on this machine for a
while and they kept on giving me the same base points so I didn't
complain. To make sure the points were for real, I pulled my card a
few times and watch to see if my comp balance and tier scores went up
at the rate the machine was rewarding credits and sure enough they
were. I waited until the next day when my stats were uploaded to the
Harrah's website and saw the result was indeed as I had experienced -
all credits were there.
I went back down to the machine the next day to see if it was still
open so that I could share my information with the group, but alas,
the machine was out-of-order and probably being placed out of super
bonus mode.
I didn't tell the powers-that-be about the super bonus mode that this
game was in since I bet that if they found the machine was giving too
few credits, they would have _never ever_ approached me and told me
about the problem or even offered to fix it.
_BONUS REWARD CREDITS_
There has been much discussion here about bonus reward credits. I
don't have the patience to keep scrupulous notes, so I just make
casual observations of what's happening with points. I found that
once I reach about 100 base points or sometimes an hour's play, I
would suddenly receive a huge influx of bonus reward credits. It
would go from .75 bonus per base to almost 7 bonus per base as time
progressed. It was different, but similar, at Bally's, Ceasar's, and
even Harrah's.
_HET GREAT SERVICE_
One annoying factor of Harrah's is that they try to please you at
every step of the way - almost to the point that it becomes
patronizing. Being genuinely helpful and friendly is one thing, but
being friendly and helpful from a script that your fellow "cast
members" all follow means that they don't really care if they help you
individually, they just want to follow the rules and keep their job.
I do get fast service, but is it really great? The man never asked me
if I needed anything until I signified I needed help.
When I turned on my change light for change on my first day, a slot
person practically ran over, pulled my diamond card right out of the
machine, inserted his, hit a special code so that the display read
"HELP COMES" and then asked me what I needed. He MUST get a bonus for
helping people fast and the card readers must track the time it takes
between pressing "Great Service" and actually getting some help. When
he was done giving me change, he said something like, "My name is XXXX
and I'll be glad to help you with anything else Mr. XXX, just call
press that button again." He then hovered over me like a vulture
waiting to scavenge on a dying animal. I never pressed the button
again on my trip because I didn't want super-slot-man to feel too
pleased about having no jackpots to payout and therefore being able to
give me "Great Service."
_SUMMARY_
This trip was devastating VP-wise, but every other aspect of the trip
was excellent. If you got this far, thanks for reading along. I'd
like to make my contribution to the group through this trip report as
a thank you to all of you who give such good trip reports. I really
want to get into all the eff-yous on this trip, but I'll respectfully
allow Mr. Stungazed to continue his tradition. Besides, all of my
eff-yous would be in the form of "Eff you to Bally's BP machine number
65287 for not giving me a single deuce in 25 plays!"
-sdbravo