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I have never seen these socks before, or anything like them.
Just in case you can’t make out the detail among all those stripes, it says "Flamingo".
This is a very good sign. Unless they’ve been sitting in a warehouse for nearly ten years, it means that Harrah’s are still producing new sock designs with their casinos’ logos on.
I’m still not 100% sure this is a man’s style (it’s a man’s size, but so were the baby girl pink ones I bought a couple of years ago, which are unsurprisingly still attached to the card they came on) but I didn’t think that was a good enough excuse not to get them.
A steal at $6 (with my Total Rewards Diamond discount) and hopefully the first of many.
Terrible’s casino looks set to be the place where I’ll be putting in most of my video poker action for the next few weeks.
There’s never just one promotion at Terrible’s, there’s usually dozens and understanding exactly what you’re entitled to is part of the fun.
I’ve long been a fan of their "gas days" (currently every day except Thursday and Sunday) when you can claim a $5 Chevron gift card for every 1,000 slot points earned – up to $25 per day.
With the huge gas-guzzling Toyota Rav 4 (which I’m sure is almost double the size of a Rav 4 in Europe) we rented set to make some significant journeys as well as ferrying us around town for the next month, money to spend on fuel is as good as cash in the bank.
What makes this a great promotion is that you don’t have to redeem the points to get the gas cards, you can still use the same points for free slot play or spend them in the restaurants or gift shop.
To get 1,000 points you need to play $1,000 through a machine, which means a theoretical cost of about $5 on Jacks or Better video poker (99.54% payback). The $5 value of the gas card therefore offsets the house edge of the game and the slot club points are all gravy.
The 1,000 points you accumulate are worth between $2.50 and $5, depending on what you spend them on. At the gift shop – the easiest way to burn points on booze, soft drinks, cigarettes, coffee, donuts and sometimes even socks (although sadly none as yet this time around) – it’s 300 points per dollar. You get a better rate at the buffet, or a slightly worse rate if you exchange points for more gift cards or gambling money.
It takes me about half an hour to cycle $1,000 on a 50c video poker machine (the highest denomination they have with the "9/6" pay table that’s needed for this to work) so assuming the 300 points per $1 rate, that’s normally a theoretical hourly rate of about $6.
Certainly not good enough to "go pro" for, but it’s not bad at all for a promotion that takes place five days out of every week. If there’s nowhere else worth playing, there’s usually Terrible’s.
So you can probably imagine how excited I was when I read that Tuesdays and Thursdays were 5x points days – including (unusually) video poker as well as slots.
I really didn’t expect the best video poker games to be included in the promotion, but I could only find signs indicating one particular game that was excluded, and that one wasn’t even as good as the one I’d been playing (Double Bonus, at 99.1% payback).
A couple of spins on the Jacks or Better game confirmed that they were indeed multiplying my points by five, so I made myself comfortable.
The point multiplier doesn’t award the gas cards any quicker (only "base points" count towards that) but the value it adds to the game is phenomenal. It turns the 0.33% of money back from the slot club into 1.66% back.
Whenever you can get a full 1% back in any form – cash back, free play or comps – it’s worth taking notice of.
Looking at it another way, for the first $5,000 you play the gas card still offsets the house edge but you also earn a whopping 25,000 points on top. That’s worth $83.33 at the gift shop or $62.50 in gift cards or free slot play.
Pretty good for about two and a half hours work – it’s a rate of about $33/hr.
Beyond $5,000 played, it’s still a great deal (which means it’s also a great deal on Thursdays too, when it’s not a gas day, but you can still get 5x points and probably a free pack of beer or something too). The point multiplier alone turns the 99.5% game into a 101% game.
Sure, it’s still a bit of a grind and I’m not going to come home from Las Vegas a millionaire because of it, but it’s an enjoyable way to earn food and beer.
And besides, if I spent every day chasing Megabucks for 5 weeks, I think the chances of going broke before the end of the trip would be pretty high…
I still can’t get over just how recklessly Harrah’s have been giving away free hotel rooms, but I’m not complaining.
As our reservation at the Rio was booked in Claire’s name and she’s literally only gambled about $20 on her players card since she had it, there was no offer an awesome Strip view to go with our free room this time.
It’s still a suite – all the rooms at the Rio are – but we’re looking down onto Flamingo Road. It isn’t so bad though, it’s a great view of Palms and Gold Coast.
Although we have this room until Thursday when we can get the keys to our rented house, we also had to check in to two more hotels today – just for the extra free goodies we’d get for accepting their offer.
Gold Coast is right next door so we didn’t even need to drive over there to check in and get the free stuff. They’d offered Claire $20 per day dining credit and $10 per day free slot play if she stayed two nights for free.
The room was newly remodelled and quite nice.
This is the first hotel for quite a while where I’ve been hit by the dreaded "resort fee" stealth tax. It’s only $3 per night – just about the lowest one I’ve heard of and a far cry from the $20+ per night at Station Casinos properties – but the list of amenities that the fee is said to cover is ridiculous.
Apparently this is what it pays for:
– Parking (which is free for anyone, including non-hotel guests)
– Shuttle buses to the Strip and The Orleans (which are free for anyone)
– Local phone calls (which are free)
– Toll free phone calls (I think they are missing the point)
– Incoming and outgoing fax service (I didn’t try it, but I just know there’ll be a charge per page)
– Coffee maker in your room (which would be a feature of the room, not the resort, surely?)
– Access to the fitness center
I checked to see whether there was an additional charge if you actually used the fitness center and there is not, so at least there is one genuine resort feature included. Basically this dumb fee works out to be nothing more than a compulsory gym membership to eek out a few extra quid from guests – even those who have been invited to stay for free.
After taking a few bottles of shampoo and messing up the beds so it wasn’t obvious we hadn’t stayed there, we moved on to the next target.
We actually decided to spend the night at Harrah’s Laughlin, who gave me $85 in cash for showing up as promised. We only managed to use $30 out of our $50 of food credit there for dinner though. The Mexican restaurant closed at 9pm and we just missed it, so it had to be the cafe and I thought ordering myself a second pizza when I couldn’t even finish the first one would be a little unnecessary.
We were delayed getting there a little by the closure of Hwy 95, which was apparently shut for 6 hours after a truck did a somersault in one of the storms we’d been seen looming around the edges of the valley during the day (although they didn’t hit Las Vegas itself).
The desert skies were fairly clear by the time we set out but there were some monster puddles on the ground and the temperature dropped from the hundreds to a modest 80F along the highway. The radio kept being interrupted by end-of-the-world emergency broadcast alerts saying very little of specific use but constantly advising not to attempt to drive through water on the road.
"Turn around, don’t drown", said the daunting message, repeatedly.
A single overhead notice sign warned "US-95 closed at Searchlight" but that was all. It didn’t say why, how long for, or how to avoid it. I didn’t really know what else to do, and wasn’t even sure if there was a sensible detour (I was driving a 4×4, but I didn’t actually want to use all four wheels) so we carried on in that direction.
As we approached Searchlight, there were dozens of trucks all parked on the shoulder and traffic started to slow down.
Amazingly our timing had been just about perfect. Just ahead, trucks started to pull back onto the road – they’d obviously heard something – and we crawled along until we passed a solitary highway patrol car with one officer beckoning traffic through.
Thankfully the route to Laughlin is usually plain sailing all the way. We have to return on Thursday morning to check out of the hotel room that we’re no longer using!
Here’s a picture of today’s bonus value from The Palms.
The reason I’ve included my players card in the haul is that they reissued it at the "MVP" level when there’s absolutely no reason that it should be. All my play there recently has been on Claire’s card, and we weren’t even sure that she would have qualified for a green card with the recent rule changes.
But as we had a linked account and Claire was asking for an updated card, I handed mine over at the same time and got one the same colour but still with my own number on it. Whether or not it will work for half price buffets I don’t yet know – the register may flag me up as an imposter – but it’s definitely good enough to make me look like a VIP so I can carry on jumping various queues.
The other stuff was from a swipe-and-win promotion, and as there’s some kind of giveaway every day this month (and most likely next month too) this is just the first of many yet to come.
Today’s promotion is something to do with cars (I didn’t really pay that much attention) and I won a $10 gas card and Claire got the green stick thing in the photo, which is actually an air freshener that clips into an air vent.
Of course it’s tat, but at least it’s Palms-branded tat, not like those horrible clocks they were giving away in April.
In other tat news, I got this awful string of plastic beads from Binion’s.
The whole of Downtown Las Vegas has adopted a Summer of ’69 theme with tie-die shirts, peace symbols and lava lamps all over the place. It’s pretty cool that all the casinos are taking part in the same theming in their own way.
I didn’t have to do anything in particular to get this piece of garbage, I just asked for a new slot card. However, I think that giving me something shiny was really just misdirection while the players club took a sneaky scan of my driving license.
It was a swift move, as I could only tell as I’d already positioned myself to look down over their screen, knowing that I’m sometimes awkward to find when my British ID shows a date of birth with the numbers the wrong way round to an American, and when I’m actually listed under a California address anyway.
After I pointed out the right record and the lady handed me a set of beads, I saw my mugshot flash on screen before she gave me my license back.
If the Palms hadn’t also taken a scan earlier I would have asked what the hell is going on, but it looks like this is becoming common practice – I think so that rather than having to produce ID every time you speak to them they can just pull up your picture and make sure it’s really you.
However, at the Palms they actually asked if they could take a copy. I don’t know why Binion’s were so deceptive about it.
(Technically it was Day 2 when we started out at 3am after a few hours sleep in a Travelodge next to the airport… but with absolutely nothing to report from the night before and with a full Day 2 ahead in Vegas, this is as good a place to start as any).
Once you leave behind the last traces of Californian civilisation, the drive from Los Angeles to Las Vegas is pretty much just a long, straight line.
In 141 miles, take the exit.
I just got a nice short summer haircut, and then walked home in the piddling rain which made it seem a bit pointless.
However, tomorrow I leave for Las Vegas.
It’s one of the most overly-elaborate ways I could think of to reproduce a weather forecast, but I’ll just let this video clip speak for itself. Forget about the big number at the top (it’s only 4:45am Vegas time) look at the coming week’s highs and lows.
Free beer. It almost exists, thanks to Tesco.
Bonus Clubcard point offers returned to the shelves last week after a long absense, and they came back in style. There’s some fantastic value among them. The full list is here:
http://www.supermarketspecialoffers.com/TescoPointOffers.aspx
For example, 6 bottles of Heineken for £7.34, with bonus 200 clubcard points untll 21st July.
Points are worth 4p each if you spend them on Clubcard Rewards, so you get you £8 back for every £7.34 you spend. Although £7.34 is not a great price for 6 bottles of beer, it effectively costs you nothing.
Buy 7 packs and you not only make enough on top to cover the delivery charge, the £50 spend should also trigger a 5p per litre fuel discount voucher. There are also voucher codes floating around for discounts or further bonus points when you spend £50 or more. Each time you do this, you get 42 bottles of better-than-free beer.
Claire and I a serial multi-accounters with Tesco, and two of our accounts accepted a “Save £10 when you spend £50” coupon!
If wine is more your thing, there’s a bottle of Rose or Brut for £10.99 with 300 free points (worth £12) and some kind of red wine for £5.99 with 150 points back (£6).
Or, slightly more mundane, there’s several offers on washing powder. Don’t knock it, you’ll always use that sort of stuff eventually and it doesn’t go off.
What’s this got to do with the kind of stuff I usually write about, apart from being a fairly oblique +EV play?
Well, there are now two ways that Tesco Deals can get you to Las Vegas (or many other placed in the world, if you’re that way inclined) which is why I’m now trying harder than ever to eek every last point out of the system.
As well as Virgin Holidays (who I’m not a fan of) you can convert your points to British Airways Executive Club miles. BA start flying non-stop from London Heathrow to Las Vegas in October.
Free beer if you buy a holiday, or a free holiday if you buy beer. Whichever way you look at it, that’s a superb deal.
It’s not a freebie, but I’m still pondering this offer I had in the mail from the Palms.
Inside, it offered me:
Not a bad deal. In fact, Claire had almost exactly the same offer. Hers said:
Which I guess means the Palms thinks I’m worth exactly $10 more than she is. Bling!
This is notable because, despite playing at the Palms more than anywhere else in town the past couple of years, this is the first piece of mail I’ve had from them for something other than “get a credit card with our logo on it”.
The Palms caters for tourists who want to party and locals who want to gamble. There’s not much overlap, and they definitely don’t seem to care too much about tourists who want to grind out some free shit on a positive play machine. Room offers are something of a rarity so it’s fantastic to finally get one.
Although it’s not a free room, I’d already been considering taking advantage of some heavily discounted room offers just because they’re there, and room rates as low as they are right now can’t last forever.
MGM Grand, Mandalay Bay and Planet Hollywood all currently have offers where you can get a room for $50-$70, with goodies or gambling money back to the value of at least $25. As long as you only stay one night, it’s a fairly cheap way to check out a hotel I’ve never stayed at (I’m intrigued by the movie-themed rooms at the P-Ho) or get access to some nice swimming pools.
MGM Grand works out at (effectively) $24, and Mandalay Bay $44. Anyone can get these deal without needing to be a rated player. Pretty damn good.
So we can add the Palms to that list now too. What’s most interesting about this deal, though, is the rest of the promotion – and the reason for the Southwest plane on the front of the mailer.
As they say, 400 points gets you $1 back in comp or slot play, and as you earn 1 point for every $1 played through a machine, this adds 0.25% to your expected return from a game.
The ability to swap points for slot play is a new thing and is only valid on points earned since June this year, and when this change was introduced we had a bit of a scare. At first they’d said that any older points had to be redeemed within a year or would expire.
After some mammoth sessions the last few trips, Claire and I have nearly $700 between us on our cards. That’s a lot of half price buffets and movie tickets! It’s not that I’m not up for a Brewster’s Millions type challenge, I’d just rather spend the comp the way I want to than be forced to eat expensive meals that I don’t appreciate at restaurants where I don’t really fit in.
When 10,000 base points on video poker gets you a $50 gift card, that’s worth another 0.5% on top of your points value. Where it gets really interesting is if you could combine a triple points coupon from one of the frequent swipe-and-win days – which would take your base earning rate to 0.75%, a total of 1.25% when you include the gift cards.
The very best video poker machines will probably be excluded from the deal, but with 1.25% added to the expectation you could legitimately play 99.2% Bonus Poker – which is never marked as excluded from promotions – with an edge.
Of course, things happen much more quickly if you play slots. One gift card for every 2,500 makes the the promotion worth a hefty 2%! I can’t remember if the Palms has any certified 99% payback slots, but if it does this promo turns them into winners.
The question, really, is what use is a Southwest airlines gift card to me, and the answer is not a great deal. We’ve toyed with the idea of going to Disneyland to get away from… well… the grown up Disneyland but it’s so much easier to drive to California than fly to Florida – where there’s still plenty of good theme parks – I don’t think that’s likely to happen. So I’d be looking to sell them on eBay for about 90% of face value.
It’s definitely a good deal. But whether it’s good enough to justify actually paying for a hotel room to be able to use it, I still haven’t decided.
It’s always sad day when you grab a faithful pair of socks from the draw, pull apart the opening to start putting your foot inside and hear that horrible cracking sound. It’s like fingers on a blackboard to a sock aficionado, and it can only mean one thing – the elastic has given up the ghost.
I’m especially saddened by my latest casualty. It’s my longest serving pair of Las Vegas casino socks.
Say it with me: “Hard. Rock. Socks”.
I can’t put a precise date on how long I’ve had these, but it’s at least five years. Possibly closer to ten. They were the ones that started my casino sock collection, and I’ve been trying to replace them for several years to no avail.
Believe it or not, the World’s Largest Hard Rock retail store doesn’t sell a pair of logo socks any more.
I can’t bring myself to throw them away yet. I’m not sure whether to let them go out with a bang and put up with them slipping down when I wear them for one last outing, or simply to have them preserved.
Would that be called “soxidermy”?
In other age-related sock death news, I think these fantastic Mirage socks with reversible cuff only have one more wear left in them too.
They’re also irreplacable. I’ve checked at every available opportunity the past few years. The Mirage does still sell socks, but only Siegfried and Roy branded children’s socks.
But these ones are threadbare in several places and I need to let them go with at least a little dignity.
I don’t use Moneybookers very often, but I have an account there for the odd times I need to receive money that way.
This was one of those times. I was sent a sum of money, originally in British Pounds but it got converted to US Dollars as that’s the currency on my account. It landed in my balance as $96.20.
Then I went to withdraw it. As I hadn’t really taken any notice of the actual amount in dollars so far, I just agreed to everything – including a $2.50 withdrawal fee. It said I could withdraw up to $93.69 and I asked for the lot.
Did you spot it? $96.20 minus $2.50 cannot result in a number that ends with a 9. There’s a penny missing somewhere, and I almost wan’t paying enough attention to notice.
Thankfully, it showed me a handy statement afterwards:
Great, everything balances in the end. They just made a penny disappear to compensate for the error.
$2.51 minus $2.50 is zero. Apparently.
I don’t think there can be anything more embarrasing for a wannabe bank than not being able to add or subtract two amounts of money. Perhaps that’s why their software has this error correction built in: “If something goes wrong, we’ll just pretend that it didn’t and hope nobody notices”.
Guess what. I noticed.
The penny is insignificant, especially when the amount of money we’re talking about has already been converted to once and will be converted again to end up back in a GBP bank account. When that happens, you have to expect to be hit by an unfavourable exchange rate and that they’ll skim off fractions of a penny at every possible opportunity.
But that’s not what’s happened here. The statement simply does not add up – it is blatently wrong.
We’re not talking about a dodgy online casino that only has to pay a sum of money to a random island nation in order to call itself licensed. This is a financial institution regulated by the FSA in the UK, and it’s very worrying that such an organisation could make any sum of money vanish without an audit trail.
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: it’s not hard to make sure that your software handles decimal numbers correctly. And, yes, I am available for consultancy work.
Let’s see what they say…
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