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Finally my online status for Harrah’s Total Rewards is showing up as Diamond. I had a slight suspicion that the nice lady at the Rio hadn’t actually ugpraded me properly, but that she’d simply reprinted my details on a nice shiny diamond card to shut me up. Seems like that was actually the case.
I had to talk to someone at the Rio as I had the wrong kind of ID in Laughlin. A UK driving license was good enough to get a brand new card printed when we arrived, but suddenly no longer good enough to have anyone at Total Rewards want to speak to me after I’d finished cycling thirty grand through one of their machines.
I’m only a little cynical, because to their credit it only took one email to get everything put right. I’d waited two weeks, checking the web site daily for the colour of the little card icon next to my name to change from gold to diamond. Eventually I wrote to ask when they would start to make with the free stuff.
Hello Mr. Newman,
It appears that you earned that tier score out our Laughlin property. I’ve contacted their personnel to upgrade your tier status.
Thank you!
Imperial Palace
Total Rewards Central is Imperial Palace? A few months ago it wasn’t even worthy of being part of the Total Rewards program! More likely their web site remembered the last casino I’d been looking at for room offers, and I had been rummaging around, desperately trying to find something – anything – for free.
I’d heard Tim and Michele on Five Hundy By Midnight saying they could usually get a Luv Tub room or even a Suite at Imperial Palace comped on any weeknight with their Diamond offers. I got excited.
My best deal though was (and still is, even now with my shiny new status gleaming in the corner) a basic room for $62 per night. It’s really not hard to get a better rate than that from almost anywhere else, so maybe I should give it a bit longer for the offers to come through…
While logged in tonight I took the opportunity to update my mailing address. They had it ever so slightly wrong, and I didn’t want anything to come between me and my junk mail.
I also wondered if I might be able to update my name. It really doesn’t bother me that the only people who call me by my full name besides my parents are slot club staff, who generally copy everything verbatim from my ID without asking. But Christopher is sometimes a bit long for the slot card display, and I really don’t like being called Christophe by a machine that was programmed by someone who decided nobody would ever have a first name longer than ten letters.
No, it’s not possible to change your name but, should the need ever arise, changing your gender is really easy. Just two clicks and I could be a woman.
Now, some thought must have gone into this. It’s an updateable part of the profile with it’s own submit button, but your name and date of birth are read only. The only thing you can change is your gender!
Why might I want to update my date of birth? Perhaps because Americans write dates in a funny order and it’s usually a lottery over whether they put me down for May 3rd or March 5th. The only way I could tell if they got it right here is by checking to see which of the sets of numbers you would pick from to change it only goes up to 12.
Your name never changes though, right? Well, maybe just once when you get married… but, that happens so rarely in Vegas that I guess it’s hardly worth considering and Vegas weddings don’t count anyway.
So, do women get the best casino offers? There’s one way to find out…
The Palazzo may not have manageed to open on time, but Station Casinos made sure that this place did.
Affectionally dubbed "Trailer Station", the smallest gambling joint in Las Vegas opened Tuesday and lasted just eight hours before being closed again – with no plans for a spectacular implosion.
That’s just long enough to make sure that the former site of the Castaways casino retains its gaming licence.
Looks cosy, doesn’t it?
The Review Journal has the full story.
For their 25th anniversary, Poker Player Newspaper has made available copies of some of their very first issues from 1982.
It’s a fascinating read
Back then, the Stardust was in its prime…
… the Golden Nugget was spreading $1/$2 Pineapple on a regular basis …
… and David Sklansky had great hair.
In issue 1, Mike Caro wrote his first "Today’s word" column, which is still going strong today and he only looks slightly different.
There’s a feature on computerised poker tables, where players see their cards on a screen but still bet on the felt. Not quite as sophisticated as the PokerPro tables that can be used to create a fully automated cardroom, but it’s interesting to see that what’s being touted as the latest advancements in poker technology is not quite as innovative as many may think.
This was my favourite story though. A young whippersnapper named Stu Ungar caused some fuss among the old-timers at the tables by wearing – god forbid – headphones while playing poker. It’s not like he started a trend or anything…
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…
All the excitement of having my next three trips all booked up turned out to be a little premature, following the announcement on Christmas Eve that MaxJet has filed for bankruptcy.
They’re trying to make arrangements to get anyone who is half way through a round-trip back home, but their own flights are all suspended. I wouldn’t be surprised if the planes were on eBay by now.
Three of my four flights booked for 2008 are cancelled, and the freebie return with BMI is useless without an outbound flight to match. Every one-way ticket I looked at was more expensive than buying a round trip and throwing away the return half. It cost £25 per ticket to cancel the miles award booking and have the remaining money and all the miles recredited to my account.
MaxJet’s recorded message says to contact your travel agent or credit card company for a refund and I’ve spoken to MBNA who told me there shouldn’t be a problem but it could take some time to get the money back. They said MaxJet should write to confirm that they don’t intend to provide the flight, and then there will be strong claim that can be made against their bank (they still have money, we hope) which is virtually impossible to dispute.
Otherwise I’ll have to wait for the travel dates to pass and not fly, and then apply for the chargeback. It could be getting on for next Christmas before I get the money back if that’s the case! It should all be a formality, but I haven’t even had an email from MaxJet yet – I only found out when I stumbled on a post on openvegas.com.
So given how popular the summer flights are, I already panic-booked replacements today. Well, a little thought did go into it as I actually ended up on a £1400 business-class fare. Compared to the £800 I expected to pay for MaxJet, it’s a little steep but that extra £600 should help to secure some extra value for the future.
As well as the nice big flat-bed seat I was so looking forward to and a chance that the food will be edible (the sausage crap I had on the way out last week was the worst yet; how hard is it to warm up a sausage?) the double miles award for business-class will bump me up to Diamond Club Gold status which opens the door for free upgrades on future flights and the ability to put your name on a waiting list to book seats on the flights you actually want to redeem your miles for. Given that Claire and I now have enough miles for nearly five return USA trips between us, that’s got to be a good thing!
It took me a while to realise, but last night at Binions I was playing $1/$2 NL with Sam O’Connor, apparently one of the first men to ever be seated in a Texas Hold’em game when it arrived in Las Vegas.
In fact I only realised when he started recounting a story about being on the set of Lucky You and being asked for an autograph by someone who didn’t know who he was. Well really, why would they? Although he was a poker advisor for the movie, his part on screen is credited only as "Old Man". But he was in a movie with Drew Barrymore and that, apparently, is enough to make you a celebrity.
I was sure I’d heard the same story told the same way, it just took me a few minutes to remember where: an episode of the Gamblers’ Book Club podcast. I posted a clip of that interview here. A stroppy local woman ran her queens into aces and left the table moaning that "Sam is always bad luck for me", even though he wasn’t involved in that hand, and the penny dropped.
He wore a cracking Christmas jumper. Although very popular with the ladies over here, you don’t see so many worn by men so I was pretty impressed. Almost impressed enough to pretend I was a fan of Drew Barrymore myself and whip out the camera phone to take my picture with him. But not quite, so I’ll just have to describe it: blueish with many large white snowflakes. I’d wear it for sure.
Now that I know that O’Connor actually plays $1/$2 live games I have a little more respect for his book, which contains some of the tightest poker strategy advice you’ll ever read. Fold all draws and most pairs btw, just try to flop the stone cold nuts. Perhaps it’s suited to the ultra-tight game at Binions, which is usually comprised of at least half a table of rock-tight locals looking for just one big pot before they turn in for the night. If it’s not a strategy for beating them (wouldn’t that be rude?) it’s going to be a guide to joining them, so I’ll attempt to read it again with this context in mind.
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