The Lucky Donut

The Palms is running their usual kind of swipe-and-win promotion this week.  Free gift cards, restaurant credit, random junk and point multipliers on offer – everyone wins something.

I’d play there regularly anyway, but the chance of some casino-branded junk or bonus slot club points is enough to make sure I turn up every single day in my awesome PT Cruiser.

I noticed the text on the points multiplier coupon I won on Sunday is now much more restrictive than it used to be:

For a while it’s been a bit of a grey area as to whether you would have your points multiplied if you played one of the 100%+ games on offer.  These machines have a label on them stating "not valid for any promotions".  In the past I’ve found that sometimes they’ve been excluded from point redemption offers and sometimes they just don’t seem to care.

With a multiplier, generally, as long as you didn’t play exclusively 100% machines, it seemed like you’d get all that day’s points multiplied.  So a quick session on 99.5% jacks or better (which actually becomes a 100% game with a 2x coupon, and a profitable game with anything better) usually did the trick.

Now the coupon specifically excludes all the good machines.  Some of the jacks or better machines have the non-promotional label but some do not, and after some experiementation I can confirm that, sadly, even the unmarked machines are excluded.

This is the first time I’ve ever seen a casino refer to a particular version of deuces wild as NSUD ("not so ugly ducks").  This particular variant is a 99.7% payback game which requires a quite different strategy than FPDW ("full pay deuces wild") because a flush pays 3 coins compared to 2, and four-of-a-kind 4 coins compared to 5.

Although a 99.7% paytable can provide some good opportunities when add the value of slot club promotions to the expected return, FPDW has remained my wild card game of choice because it pays back a much healthier 100.7% (before any other incentives).

Some casinos label their best machines with a "certified X% payback" banner (and a tiny footnote that reads "with optimal play") but I’ve only ever seen or heard the terms "full pay" and "not so ugly" used by players or strategy guide authors – never by the casinos themselves.

So anyway, the point multipliers are pretty much dead to me.  But there’s always the free shit.

On Monday, my ticket told me I’d won a "Tree Clock".  My reaction was (as, presumably, yours is too): "WTF is a tree clock?".  Fortunately it didn’t take long to find out:  it’s a clock with a picture of a tree on it.  Obvious really, I suppose.

At least the picture is a palm tree, but this isn’t Palms branded gear.  The label on the back simply states "made in China" and calls it a "CIOCK", which is pretty close.

Not only do I have no idea what the connection is between this piece of tat and "April Showers of Cash", but also, especially given that this promotion only lasts 5 days, I really didn’t expect to get the same gift two days running.  But sure enough, on Tuesday I won another super tree clock.

"I got one of these yesterday, is there any chance I can swap it for a t-shirt?", I asked.  I’d have traded it for almost anything on offer, but the man with the prizes wouldn’t budge.  It wasn’t until later that I realised my brand new tree clock actually had a slightly different design to the first one: two trees!

I can only hope that my run of luck continues so that I can end up with a whole forest of clocks before the week is out.

This was the view from our room at the Four Queens at sunrise.  The towers in the foreground are part of the Lady Luck, which was just about the only thing in town not lit up at the time.  It was closed "for renovations" in early 2006, but very little has actually been done to it since then.

Just in case you needed proof of our VIP status at the Four Queens, here is the official documentation.

The inside of the "passport" outlines what you can eat for free (click to enlarge).

There’s absolutely no way we’ll eat close to the daily allowances – especially as yesterday’s late arrival cost us a free lunch – but it’s a pretty sweet deal nevertheless.

With all the stuff we’ve charged to the room so far, here’s what shows up on the bill.

We went slightly over the $15 allowance at the deli and only the difference appears.  There’s no trace of the other food at all – it just disappears!

I have to admit that I didn’t even realise that Four Queens had a deli, and having now experienced a fantastic pastrami sandwich I realise the best way to play this comp is to eat breakfast early, get a sandwich to go from the deli for lunch on the road and then get back to the hotel for dinner.  If only I’d realised that yesterday…

I can’t remember the last time it was dark when we arrived in Las Vegas, but the unortodox choice of route for this trip made sure that this time we got to see the lights from afar.  MAN-PHL-PHX-LAS might have got us plenty of Diamond Club miles but it made the total journey time door-to-door more than 24 hours.

It was dark when we came in to land at 8pm, just as dark when we finally left the airport at 9.30pm and felt like it must almost be time to start getting light again by the time we finally made it to the hotel at 11.15pm.

It really didn’t help that US Airways put one of our bags (just one, mind) on the wrong plane.  With two changes of planes, and one with only about an hour stopover, I was expecting a fairly high chance of losing something.  However, it turned out to be the same plane all the way through from Philadelphia to Phoenix and on to Vegas (we left the hand luggage on board, stretched for 15 minutes and got back in the same seats) so at least the bags weren’t going to get lost in transit at Phoenix.

We’d even caught a glimpse of one of our bags through the window as they were being loaded in Philly, proving without a doubt that my idea to stick dayglo tape all over a suitcase does indeed mean you can see your bags from almost literally miles away.

However, only one shiny disco bag actually made it onto the plane, the other (identical, and also sporting fluorescent go-faster stripes) was left behind, then sent along on a later flight, leaving us to suffer 90 minutes of looped adverts for half a dozen different shows – all the self-proclaimed best in town and apparently unmissable – while we waited for it.

Otherwise the flight was fairly pleasant and the food was also edible, with a salad that was still crispy and a pork main course that hadn’t turned to rubber.  I was actually quite impressed.

US Airways’ business class seats aren’t as good as the fully flat recliners we had last year with BMI, but they’re comfy enough.  Apparently the cabins are being upgraded to lie-flat seats later this month.

In other US Airways news, they also start flying from Birmingham to Philadelphia in May which will open up a new route from the UK to Las Vegas to help spend all those lovely miles I accrued with BMI before they decided to axe all their flights to the USA.

Another thing that didn’t help with the overall travel time is that we had to wait in line for car rental for an hour.  This is pretty standard with Dollar when it’s busy but I thought it would be much quieter than it was.  Seriously, who arrives in Las Vegas late on a Saturday evening?  Apart from me, obviously.

Dollar has a huge desk but there’s rarely more than 3 people serving, and they’d all lose their job if they didn’t try to sell you a dozen more insurance that you haven’t heard of and don’t really need.  This is obviously much more important than trying to keep the queue moving.

An English guy just in front of us had reserved two week’s rental online for $400, only to be told the total was over $1200 when he got to the desk.  They obviously see us coming, unfamiliar with the insurance requirements and jargon, and too tired to argue.  This is why I always have a fully inclusive prepaid booking now, so you know what you’re getting up front and can just shake your head at any questions rather than have to try to construct a sentence after nearly 20 hours on a plane.

When we finally arrived at Four Queens, check-in was, thankfully, instant.  The room is nothing special, but it’s right next to the elevator for speedy access to and from the casino, and it also has a Fremont Street Experience stage view.

I’m not sure if that’s meant to be a premium feature, the kind of thing you might slip them a $20 to try to get, but there was just happened to be something different going on tonight: Leanne Rimes live!

Not one the usual tribute acts that entertains Fremont Street passers by, but actual Leanne Rimes who had the whole street watching her.

We heard The One From Con Air as we parked up and she was doing The One From Coyote Ugly when we got up the the room.

I think she’d been to see Blue Man Group earlier that evening.  This is Rock Concert Movement #6 :

We listened to the end of her show (to be honest, we didn’t have much choice) and crashed out.  Gambling and stuff would have to wait until the morning.