|
|
My investment in achieving Total Rewards Diamond with Harrah’s is already starting to pay for itself.
I just had to flash the card at Venetian and instantly got an upgrade to their own Gold level.
Oh, and the $50 in slot play for upgraded members was a very nice bonus too. We’d only stopped in to get $10 free play for Claire as a brand new member, but walked out with $55 of their cash after playing it through.
Gold is not the top tier of Club Grazie but it’s enough to get access to their VIP lounge and it’ll rack up slot points a little bit faster if I ever play video poker there. They do have 9/6 Jacks or Better at both Venetian and Palazzo, although even with the points multiplier it doesn’t quite make a positive game.
I’m hoping one other hidden benefit might be when playing poker if I make sure the card is in view when sitting down at a table. Anyone who is paying attention will clock me for the big gambler that I am, then all I need to do is make a big hand and the monies will flow even faster than usual.
We crawled along the strip by foot on a free money run from Harrah’s ($5 bonus comp for 50 points earned) down to Sahara ($50 in blackjack chips for a $40 buy in) via a complimentary hot dog at Slot-a-fun.
Casino Royale told us that we should have had room offers in the mail for this month, and it’s nice to know we’re still in the system but not much use when we’ve already booked places to stay. Oh and look, we’re already in town too. But they explained because two of us are have qualified for mailers – usually a 2 or 3 night free stay – we can combine them and take 4 or 6 nights in the same room if we book at the same time.
In fact, as the offers are one stay per month if we were ever able to time a trip over the end of one month and the start of the next we could take up to 8 or 12 nights free all in one go!
This has to be the best hotel offer in town – to get into the comp system you only have to earn about $10 cash back, which is about $2000 coin-in. Play it through on 8/5 Bonus Poker at 99.2% payback and it costs a theoretical $16 for the mailers, and I’m pretty sure it racked up at least $10 in food comp as well as the $10 cash back.
They’re virtually paying you to stay there before you get started!
It looks like there’s still some work to be done on the upper floors of Monte Carlo following the fire earlier in the year.
But this really doesn’t get in anyone’s way, 36 floors up. It’s the construction of the monstrosity that is CityCenter next door that’s making life difficult.
With sections of Frank Sinatra Drive closed off while they build, there’s really no other route than to drive down the Strip to get to Monte Carlo. Which was fine in the early hours of the morning while I was getting up jet-lagged, but any later in the day and the traffic around there just gets horrendous.
Not to mention the dozens of pedestrians at every set of lights that look at the red hand on the crossing sign through the blue drink in their dice-shaped glass and see some other god-knows-what symbol and colour pairing that apparently always means they should cross whenever they feel like it.
There is also no access to the garage right now. The only place to park a car is a makeshift outdoor lot next to New York New York, and it’s not even close to being big enough. When it takes 30 minutes of circling to get a spot on a Tuesday morning you know they’re going to have major problems with this. I’m just glad I didn’t try to spend a weekend there.
So what about the hotel itself? First impressions go a long way, and unfortunately they weren’t particularly good.
We decided to valet park and hoped to get some assistance with our bags after a long flight, but the valet jumped straight into the car and waited for us to unload the bags and that was that. We juggled everything together and strolled past two bellmen rolling a cart back and forth between themselves on the way into the hotel, who eventually thought to ask if we needed any help with the luggage. I declined as politely as I could: "It’s OK, we’ve done the hard bit now".
The room (on floor 13, can you believe – how many hotels in Las Vegas
even have that floor number?) was fine and did the job, but it was nothing special and felt like it was about due for some modernisation. Also, I blew the food credit that came with the room package on room service on the first night and that took well over an hour to arrive.
Overall slightly disappointing. I guess I just expected a little more from a hotel I was actually paying for.
As the USA flipped onto daylight savings time a few weeks ago and the UK don’t put the clocks forward until next weekend, it’s actually a 7 hour time difference right now rather than the usual 8, and I’ve felt a little less jet-lagged than usual.
Even so, after an early start for a bunch of pre-breakfast gambling and a long walk along the Strip all the way down to Sahara I was ready to crash pretty early last night and ended up flipping TV channels in bed until I came across Deal or No Deal.
The contestent, Mary Beth, was a self-proclaimed great poker player who had actually played in a live tournament one time and finished like 9th or something.
However her interest in poker actually came into play in one of the offers she was made. In addition to $138,000 in cash for her case, the banker added an extra special prize.
Look, it’s Annie Duke!
We’re reminded that this leading female player "won two million dollars in a televised poker tournament". But not that she only had to outlast nine other players – sucking out on most of them – to take down that freeroll.
So, take the deal now and the offer also includes admission to some women-only poker seminar thing, but the really special part is that it would also include a whopping four hours of private poker tuition from the special star guest.
Annie was really giving it the hard sell trying to get the contestent to take the deal, quoting impressive-sounding results from people she had mentored the past. She said she hardly ever gives personal lessons, so it’s really a once-in-a-lifetime kind of thing. And a fast track to easy money, obviously.
Her efforts made perfect sense when we found out the reason that there might be a shortage of takers for her private tuition.
The value of this little package, Howie Mandel revealed, is $25,000.
Twenty five grand for four hours work.
No deal, apparently.
What better way is there to belatedly start a trip report than with a photo of a royal flush?
Claire hit this beauty at Palms on monday on the bank of Deuces Wild machines we’ve played so much in the past – and seen the progressive jackpot hit at least half a dozen times while playing there. So I’m sure this was overdue!
Remarkably, another player also hit a royal flush at almost exactly the same time but Claire just got in there first. The jackpot meter showed $1067.01 for hers (it’s rounded up to the nearest quarter for the hand pay) and $1000.56 for second place.
Nice work indeed, and it’s not even her only one. Make it three royals in three days… spades, clubs and hearts ticked off the bingo card – just diamonds to go.
 
The one of the left came from a 10-line machine and the one on the right from a 50-line machine, so these weren’t quite so difficult to hit but each was worth $200 nonetheless. A royal flush always looks pretty, even if you do have to get quite close to the screen to actually see it.
We decided not to leave it to chance to find out whether BMI was going to fuck up the seat reservations again. Night-before check-in began at 7pm and we were there at 6:45.
Even so, we were only the second group in line – with quite a few queueing up behind us before they started letting us through – and I thought for a minute I was going to have to produce a doctor’s note to get an exit row.
"Do you have neck or back problems?" he asked when I made the request. "No, I’m just quite tall", I replied. I don’t know if this would have been enough on its own, but Claire lovingly added "and quite fat" and without any further ado we given window and aisle seats in row 28.
I’ve actually lost nearly 20 pounds in weight and two belt holes since the start of the year. I think I’m ready for a Vegas-style burger…
Carefully constructed compositions using all available light sources, or photos spoiled by taking them through perspex? Art or bollocks? You decide…
Forget the Bellagio Gallery of Fine Art, check out this beauty from inside the McDonalds between Harrah’s and Casino Royale.
I mostly get this. Gladys Knight (left), Celine Dion (centre) and Wayne Newton (right) – none of them have shows in town anymore, but that’s OK. I understand why they would be chosen to be immortalised in a burger joint on the Strip.
But who is that staring over Celine’s shoulder? I just can’t figure it out.
Oh but there’s more…
It’s an amazing picture, but who the hell are they all?
Isn’t this pretty? Say hello to my Diamond Total Rewards card!
It’s not the very top tier of the Harrah’s players club, but it should still be enough to fool them into treating me like a high roller!
This card acts as a priority pass to just about everything. Staying at the hotel? No need to wait in line to check in. Don’t want to wait for a buffet, or for the casino cashier, or for the players club? Even for a damn taxi. Just flash the plastic and step right past the plebs to the front of the line. Valet parking full? No sir, not if you’re Diamond.
There’s also the Diamond Lounges – one in every property – where you can go and chill out with free food and a bar. If you’re worthy.
Then there’s the wealth of offers that I should now start to get by mail. Room discounts (possibly even free stays), free show tickets (two every month guaranteed) and even cheques for real money just to get me back into the casino.
Best of all, because I earned this status on January 1st, it’s valid right through until March of 2009. Although the card pictured says 03/08, apparently they don’t have the new batch yet and they’ll be sent out in the mail in February.
So what does this little life upgrade cost? Much less than you would expect if you do it right. To earn Diamond status you usually have to earn 10,000 reward credits in a year, but if you clock up 3,000 in a day and ask nicely, you’ll get upgraded instantly if it’s your first time.
To earn a reward credit you have to feed in and spin through $5 on a slot machine, or $10 on video poker. Clearly, doing it in a day is much better than gambling $50k or $100k over the course of a year, but pumping fifteen grand through a slot machine in one sitting wasn’t an attractive proposition. But with the horrible paytables at the Harrah’s casinos in Las Vegas, neither was $30k on video poker.
So we drove to Harrah’s Laughlin, where there’s several 99.5% payback video poker games, including a 50-line multi-play effort. 50 lines x 5 coins per hand x 5c per coin is $12.50 per spin, but because you’re drawing each hand fifty times you always get at least some money back – in theory it’s a low-variance way to churn through the play requirement quickly. With two of us playing on the same account, we got there in about four hours.
This really is one of the most peculiar advantage plays I’ve tried. I never thought it would be possible to get good value out of Harrah’s, but so far the signs are very good.
With a 0.5% house edge (compared to about 3% at best in Vegas) the theoretical cost of fifteen months of VIP treatment is $150. The 3,000 base reward credits I earned and (I don’t know why but I’m not complaining!) a further 9,000 bonus credits awarded on top of that are worth in total $120 back in comp for starters. Just one room offer, cashback cheque or pair of free show tickets will push this into a money making play! Heck, I’d pay $30 just for hassle-free parking at Caesars for a year…
In fact I ran below expectation (just two royal flushes between us in 120,000 hands – I’m owed again!) and it cost me about $600, so I might need to see Jubilee! twice or three times to get full value.
Things would have been sweeter with even just one $200 royal when we drew 50 times at the TJQK of diamonds:
Thanks very much indeed to Channel 13 News who reassured me that the roof of the Gold Coast car park would actually be a great place to watch the Strip fireworks. They got it wrong.
I already knew that the view of most of the landmark hotels from there is obstructed by either the Rio or some construction project, but there is a great view of Luxor and Mandalay Bay.
The TV report I saw went something along the lines of:
– "I’m here at Mandalay Bay with lots of drunk people. Hey look, here’s a middle-aged couple who scored tickets to get into the Foundation Room tonight, they dance like your dad, how cool is that?".
– "Yeah! Happy new year! Woo! Vegas baby!".
– "Fireworks are going to be set off from the roofs of seven hotels along the Strip at midnight and this is one of them. Now, back to someone else who is somewhere else in Vegas with more drunk people".
I’m absolutely sure she said that, even if not in those exact words. So I set up camp facing the far south end of the Strip. This is what it actually looked like a couple of minutes after midnight:
Right there in the Luxor’s tractor beam you can see smoke drifting across from the fireworks – as they shot up from the roof… of the MGM Grand.
Mandalay Bay was never supposed to be one of the seven. They were: MGM Grand, Planet Hollywood, Flamingo, Venetian, Treasure Island, Circus Circus and Stratosphere.
This is the most direct pyro shot I could get:
That’s the CityCenter construction, illumated by some badly obstructed fireworks. MGM is behind there somewhere, but you just can’t see any of its green glow.
This really doesn’t look like Vegas at all, if it wasn’t for the Bellagio sign in the foreground it really could be anywhere!
Playing deuces wild video poker, a four deuces hand doesn’t happen very often but it’s very nice when it does. It pays off $250 for a $1.25 spin – second only to a $1000 royal flush.
So when Claire and I both hit four deuces within seconds of each other on adjacent machines, it was pretty special and much hi-fiving ensued.
What’s more, I still can’t believe it came in after I decided to record the redraw. It’s crappy cellphone video, but still…
|
|
Comments