>
> As bad as some people think Harrah's is these thoughts go through my
> mind:
>
> 1) They did not introduce 6/5 BJ Park Place Entertainment / Ceasars
> Holdings did. Also they DID have better VP on the strip for a while.
> They could have pulled it all just after the merger, but they just
> slowly eliminated along with MGM/Mirage. The question is did Han or
> Greedo shoot 1st.
>
You are right it was Park Place Entertainment and Bally's
specifically, but they are part of them now. But there has been
additional gutting of BJ, Harrah's made the rules even worse at
Harrah's LV and Flamingo than they already were and the destruction
of the blackjack at Caesars just occured in the past few months and
it is not just 6:5, it is games where you can only double on 10 or
11, cannot double after splits etc.
MGM MIRAGE did not gut video poker like Harrah's did, they did it on
the low end, but not the high end - Harrah's did it on every denom
and if they left 9/6 somewhere, they are giving you zero bonus reward
credits. By the way, with room prices where they are you can't make
money offering 99% quarter video poker and there is no reason to when
people will play 15% hold video reels - currently for $25 players and
up, MGM MIRAGE generally offers far better BJ than Harrah's, look at
quarter minimum (usually ) DD games at TI, they actually just made
them better, because they stopped hitting a soft 17. The Mirage often
has shoe games where the BS player faces only a 0.26 edge and yet
people play across the street at Harrah's crapjack and they still
have people playing even green at Caesars' some on games where the
house edge is 0.94 and those games are still 3:2, it is all the other
rules they changed on them. How long before MGM MIRAGE follows
Harrah's when the idiot public is telling them the price of blackjack
is price inelastic because they like the people on this site are
telling Harrah's there are no odds bad enough you won't take on so
long as you can get a free room and a lamb chop from the diamond
lounge.
Not to mention the Holiday Gift program Harrah's is now doing only n
Vegas is because MGM MIRAGE and Venetian do it and the Venetian
copied it from the MGM Grand.
I agree with most of what you said above except:
1) I feel that Harrahs had more low end VP to cut then the MGM group
did. I have no hard evidence of this, I personally just found it that
it used to be easier to find FP VP at their properties then the
others. *If that is the way it was or just how I found it I don't
know.* ($1/$2 is what I play for the most part, that or multi line $0.25)
1a) When you see the number of people playing slots, you have to
wonder why the casinos have anything but them there.
2) Yes, they have decimated their BJ offerings faster then other
places. BUT and this relates the the friendliness of the staff issue
below (once again this is just me and my opinion no basis in fact)I
have never had a truly bad experience playing BJ at Paris / Ballys /
Harrahs. I have walked away from tables at MGM / TI / NYNY because if
I didn't I was going to take a swing at the dealer. Sorry, but you
don't smirk at the players when taking their money when as a dealer
you just hit your 3rd BJ in a row. It does not make up for the worse
odds but it helps. The floor people at those places were also fair at
best. To be fair it was quite the contrast from the Mirage where I
don't think I ever found a rude person.
3)The Holiday gift promos seems to have started in Mohegan Sun and
Foxwoods, Vegas stole them from over here. I found some old gift card
offers from Foxwoods the other day. Makes ALL the current stuff from
ALL the casinos look like a joke. $500 for $20k CI
> 2) Not only are their room offers nice they offer from different
places
> in the US. From 99 to 03 I could get a room at The Mirage or TI
with a
> phone call. When I wanted to go to Beau Rivage I got NADA. I had to
pay
> casino rate and they would look at my play upon checkout.
>
On this I have a question - do you not get rooms at Mirage and TI
post 2003 because you could not or did not want to? Harrah's gives
away the rooms a lot easier than MGM MIRAGE, to that there is no
question. But they are not that different - they are and will be
giving less free rooms away at Caesars because they see the kind of
cash rates they can get and Beau Rivage is in a similar situation, it
is by far the best hotel down there, they have less need to give away
the product - but I understand your point here, Harrah's has a more
seamless nationwide program and the MGM properties operate more
independently
I WANTED the rooms but they would not give them. My play remained the
same more or less per trip. Even after giving the Mirgae $165,000 of
play over 7 days in the off season during mid December I could not get
a limited RFB. That's when I left them. [I was down less then $100 for
all that play but that's not the point, or is it? See all the way below.]
3) Once again this is just me. I find their staff very FRIENDLY and
> competent. This counts a lot in my book. Other people have had bad
> experiences with Harrahs's staff. So far all have been very
friendly to
> me.
>
> -Dave
Their staff are definetely better trained in customer service - I
would agree you with on that - I would love to play dice more at the
Rio, their pits there are very friendly, but Harrah's is so greedy
they even cut the payoffs on the prop bets - sometimes I like betting
the field or a horn and even though those are sucker bets anywhere,
Rio "had" to reduce the odds even more.
Sucker bets, shame on you 
Not knowing the odds on those bets and
assuming that ALL the bets are negative expectation. Is it better to
loose $200/ session in a friendly and fun environment then $175 in a
boring one? Making the assumption that you are not in it to make a
living I file it as the cost of entertainment. I just picked those
numbers out of the air but the sentiment remains the same.
I have seen some evidence on various discussions on the net that
Harrahs is just concerned with CI and THEO all the rest be damed. They
are not sweating the individual ups and downs of players. MGM/Mirage
has been discussed to cut offers to winning players. I don't know 100%
that there is any truth to those statements it just is what has been
discussed out there. Has anybody seen any conclusive proof of this?
-Dave
···
--- In vpFREE@yahoogroups.com, "caplatinum" <belairgold@...> wrote:
--- In vpFREE@yahoogroups.com, "mrdave2006" <dave.feuer@> wrote: