The Lucky Donut

With just one week to go, it’s officially close enough to Christmas to start thinking about it now.  So first up how about a little Christmas music, courtesy of Mr Richard Cheese…

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Seven days to Christmas means it’s just five days to Vegas baby!  They don’t make an advent calendar for that, but it’s tradition for us to have a countdown to any trip in the living room using oversized playing cards.  From three weeks away, a different blackjack hand shows the number of days left until it’s time to gamble.

Hit me.

I’ve already spoilt the surprise of BMI’s Christmas present to me this year.  Yet again they’ve rewarded us for being loyal customers and booking months in advance by losing our window/aisle seat reservations.  When I called to check last week there were no adjacent window/aisle seats left.  The very same thing happened in the summer, except then I didn’t find out until I got to the airport.

The guy I spoke to thought he was being helpful by offering one window seat and one aisle seat just one row apart, but he really wasn’t.  Isn’t it in Seat Booking 101 to keep adjacent seats free rather than just plonking passengers randomly around the plane?  Whoever had requested the window seat must be on his own, even if the person behind him in the aisle seat is not (benefit of the doubt: they could have booked a group on either side of the aisle) so why not put those two passengers in the same row?

It could be the last time we’ll pay to fly with BMI anyway, with MaxJet being comparable on price for the peak dates we usually have to travel and all business-class too – it’s a no-brainer.

Anyway, back to Christmas.

Do I need to do much more than post a picture of Mr Terrible dressed as an elf, and wrapped up in Christmas lights to get into the festive spirit?

No, apparently not.

Palazzo, the Venetian’s sister resort in Las Vegas, has delayed it’s "soft opening" from December 20th to December 28th.  Which means that I’ll be actually be in town for it, although I’m not sure if that’s really something to get excited about.

The casino will open, obviously, but there’s no rush to get all the amenities completed for this date.  The "grand opening" isn’t until January 17th and even pre-delay we knew the retail mall – an extention to the Grand Canal Shoppes and, naturally, to the canal itself – wasn’t going to be ready until Jan 18th.

I don’t imagine that missing out on a few days’ business either side of Christmas will make a whole heap of difference.  Anyone with an existing reservation has been moved to The Venetian without them breaking a sweat – there’ll be no shortage of rooms to be able to do that at that time of year.

The new opening day is the Friday before New Year, and with the 31st falling on a Monday the busiest weekend of the year in Vegas is going to be an extended one.

I don’t know how many of the 3,000 all-suite rooms in Palazzo are actually expected to be finished in time for the soft opening (let’s face it, I doubt anybody will even notice if the hotel isn’t ready as long as the casino is open) but they are taking reservations at $599 and upwards a night for New Years Eve alone, and relocating guests to a suitable alternative on the busiest night of the year might not be quite so easy if there are further delays.

I’m sure I’ll check it out, but there’s really no specific appeal to me of another Venetian; there’s not going to be another poker room (not much need with the major one in the Venetian) and the two resorts will share a players club, so there won’t even be a new member signup bonus to take advantage of!

The closest thing anyone gets to a picture postcard these days, from my dear sister, who I’m sure is just trying to make me jealous…

So within just a couple of hours of landing we have:

[X] Drinking in the afternoon
[X] Likelihood of eating excessively
[X] No intention of sleeping
[X] Wanna gamble…

A+ message delivers.  She’s off to a cracking start.

March’s Stardust implosion had really cool animated numbers in the windows of the building counting down the time to death.  The New Frontier took it a step further with an awesome animated plunger on zero that pushed down to start the demolition.

Naturally, videos will follow soon to show what happened in between this…

… and this …

EDIT: Click here for videos from every angle

The New Frontier is set to fall at 2.30am Vegas time.  That’s 10:30am GMT so I’m hoping to be able to watch it live on www.ktnv.com.  They’ve promised a live web stream.

Meantime, here’s the news coverage from the first Las Vegas theme hotel’s last full day on the planet.

KTNV/ABC:
Final Preparations Underway for New Frontier Implosion 
New Frontier Implosion Nears, Expect Road Closures 

KLAS/CBS:
Countdown to Take Down of New Frontier
New Frontier to be Imploded Early Tuesday

KVBC/NBC:
Time’s almost up for New Frontier

FOX5 Vegas:
New Frontier Goes Out With Bang

Back in August, I entered two football contents in Las Vegas.  These things are pretty cheap for 17 weeks of take-home gambling, with some added instant perks as well as the chance of a big score.

The Great Giveaway at all the major Station Casinos is $25 per entry but you can get three entries for the price of two.  That total $50 fee also gets you $25 in slot play, so it’s really just $25 for all 3 entries if you’re going to play there anyway.  Each week they pay $10,000 to the person with the most winners and $5,000 to the person with the most losers, with $100,000 given away at the end of the season to the overall champion and other cash prizes to the biggest loser and the "fiddle in the middle".

The Football Frenzy contest is also run by Station Casinos, but is only available at their properties that don’t have the word "Station" in their name, which includes both Fiesta locations and a bunch of smaller neighbourhood casinos.  It costs $15 for 3 entries and a t-shirt, and you can never grumble at a free t-shirt.  This contest gives most of its money away each week to the top 50 winners, rather than having one massive grand prize.  Losers and those who get it all about half right get nothing here.

Both contents use the same system that allows you to choose your teams for each week at a touchscreen terminal in the sports book.  Fortunately for me, you can make your picks as far in advance as you want – unlike at some other casinos where you have to turn up once a week to hand in your selections.

However, for both contests, I just pressed the "random" button for each week in turn and decided to treat it like a lottery ticket.  There wasn’t much point trying to actually make the right picks for a whole season of games back in August, especially when you have to compete against Las Vegas locals who are able to enter or change their picks each week once the season is in full swing.

I’d only override a computer-generated selection if it gave a stupid number for the tie-breaker, which is to guess the total points scored on Monday Night Football.  Computer says 4 points?  That could only happen if both teams scored exactly one safety each in four quarters, and then nobody managed to do anything in overtime for a 2-2 final score.  I can’t say for sure that it’s never happened, but safeties are pretty rare and it’s been five years since the last tied game in the NFL.  Declining to bet on a 4 point game total here doesn’t exactly make me a wiseguy.

It’s Football Frenzy where my numbers seem to have come in – this Sunday I had apparently picked 11 winners out of 13.  It doesn’t sound spectacular, but nobody chose all 13 correctly this week and only five people were better with a 12-1 record.  The system only shows eighteen of us with 11 wins, so with 50 weekly prizes I’m already in the money!

I don’t know yet how much it will be, it depends on the outcome of tonight’s game, but the very worst case is $50 in slot play in the bank for Christmas.  Prizes 1-5 are obviously gone but if I can scrape 6th-8th I’ll have a massive $100 cash to collect from the Fiesta Henderson in December!  9th or 10th place makes it $50 cash instead of the slot play, which makes little difference to me at a casino with +EV video poker.

My randomly-generated-by-computer tie-breaker for tonight’s MNF game is 31.  It’s a sensible number…. come on the 17-14 scoreline!

EDIT: 24-0.  Officially I took 28th place in the Football Frenzy.  The MNF result was still to be counted and I got it wrong, slipping to 11-3 for the week.  Still, it’s $50 in slot play in the bank…

This clip is from the DVD extras for Ocean’s 13.  As producer Jerry Weintraub is walking us around the casino set, he explains why the inside of The Bank casino looks the way it does.

"It’s Asian-themed because there is no casino that we know of in Las Vegas that’s Asian so we decided to have an Asian theme."

Err, apart from Imperial Palace perhaps?  They haven’t knocked it down yet.

OK so I know there’s a few red-herrings thrown in to confuse you as to what their theme actually is, like the collection of classic American cars and the Hawaiian Luau, but it’s definitely meant to be Asian.  It even says so in Wikipedia, and that’s almost never wrong. 

If the roof doesn’t convince you…

…there’s dragons out front.  What more does it need?

Unfortunately I’ve had to change my travel plans for December.

At least that’s what I need to tell the Gold Coast, where I’m currently booked in for eleven nights over Christmas and New Year.  Their rate was a pretty good deal, but somthing better just came along.  Twice.

Thanks to Claire’s video poker play in the summer, she’s scored five free nights in total for the next trip – with no further obligation to meet any play requirements at those casinos!

We’ll begin with three nights at Casino Royale.  Claire had done her research and found out that a little video poker play on a 99.5% machine was usualy enough to get some room offers, and indeed it was.  It’s a sickly sweet sugary smelling dive (you really have to try not to inhale as you walk past Ben & Jerry’s in the tiny entrance hall) but it’s a decent location right next to The Venetian.

The only game worth noting there is craps with 100x odds, which is great if you’re in the mood for putting $5 on the line and $500 behind.  That’s not really for me – if I had $500 to play on dice, I’d want to spread my money around on more than one roll.

Then it’s off downtown for two nights at the Four Queens.  It’s also nothing special, but also a decent location – about 30 seconds walk from all the other downtown casinos – and it does have plenty of 100%+ payback video poker to qualify for next trip’s room offers!

It’s a day late I know but I only got this email this morning and I just couldn’t resist one more fabulous picture of Mr Terrible going "awoooooo".

Claire just tipped me off to this fantastic seasonal advice in the Player’s Edge column in today’s Las Vegas Review Journal.  The piece discusses current slot club promotions which right now includes much halloween-themed goodness.

Halloween gamblers warning: While the casinos encourage players to wear costumes on Halloween, several do not permit masked customers at the tables (especially blackjack). And under no circumstance should players approach the cage wearing a mask.

Among the latest offers, Texas Station is giving away a "Halloween Collector Dauber Gift Set" to bingo winners, and I can only imagine how great it would be to get my hands on one of those.

But it’s the free slot tournament Terrible’s that rules all – if not for the value of the promotion itself, then for the awesome advertisement:

You can click on that image to see the full ad, but it’s all about the mummified Mr Terrible.

Best casino mascot ever.