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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
Meantime, here’s the news coverage from the first Las Vegas theme hotel’s last full day on the planet. KTNV/ABC: KLAS/CBS: KVBC/NBC: FOX5 Vegas:
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.
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… I’ve just stumbled on – and I can’t even remember how – work of artist Eric Joyner and his fabulous Robots & Donuts collection. Obviously, this one is my absolute favourite. DUCY?
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?
GBC = Gamblers’ Book Shop. Worst acronym ever?
They have a podcast now. In fact it’s been going for a few months but as usual I’m playing catch-up. This was a little gem back from episode #2 when celebrity bookshop owner Howard Schwartz (he thought I was from Pennsylvania) asks Vegas old-timer Sam O’Connor what he thinks about Omaha poker. [8 second clip – press play!] Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser. "Well it seems like a gamblin’ game to me". I’m not particularly surprised. I’m only part way through O’Connor’s book, Just Sit Tight and Wait For The Nuts, but it’s already in great shape to be the nittiest poker strategy I’ve ever read by a mile. 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!
I can’t even remember the last time I watched football, but I was betting on it at the weekend thanks to a Sporting Index "safety net" promotion. The deal: lose up to £50 over the weekend and get your money back on Monday. This is a great promo, almost the same as a free £50 fixed odds bet if you use it well. To get maximum value, you have to find a single spread bet with a fixed downside and a reasonable upside. If you play volatile spread markets, there’s the risk that you could lose much more than £50, or win or lose a only few quid which makes the refund hardly worth having. Not that I’m complaining, but I’m sure this promotion must actually discourage action. Even for a genuine bettor, if you lose a bet early in the weekend and are guaranteed £50 back on monday morning, in effect you have to win that £50 on your next bet before you can take any profit from it – so why bother trying to win it back when you can just sit tight and wait for the refund? I backed Norwich City. I can’t remember who they were playing, and I didn’t particularly care. I wouldn’t have been any more likely to make a better decision if I’d considered the game. I’d realised it was already Sunday and opportunities to use this free bet were running short, so I jumped in and bought their win index at 11.5 for a highly suspicious £4.34 per point. The "win index" on a football game awards 25 points for a win, 10 points for a draw nothing for a loss. So if Norwich lost, my total loss would be 11.5 x £4.34, a fully refundable £49.91. If they won I’d be looking at a nice little profit of £58.59. In fact the game was a draw, although I only saw my bet result not the game result, and I just wasn’t interested enough to look it up. It was a small loss of £6.51, but because the safety net promotion covered net losses from the whole weekend I got to have another go. This time I bet against West Ham. They were playing some other team that I don’t remember, and I only know that it was West Ham because it says so on my bet result. I just went for whatever game was on TV at the time. It was about 30 minutes into the match and they were a goal up, so I could sell the win index at 19 for £7.30 per point – slightly less suspicious, but it’s still pretty obvious what I’m up to if they care to look! Worst case, if West Ham stay ahead and win, I’d be down another £43.80 – with the previous loss that’s just a few pence more than the refund limit. If they give up a draw, I’m up £65.70 on the bet and if they manage to throw it all away for me, I’d be counting £138.70. Worth a random punt for sure. Another draw, and I’m £59.19 up on the day. Result!
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".
It’s a good few weeks since I’ve been in this part of town so this could be pretty old news. But worth mentioning nonetheless. The last remaining city on the giant coffee house bingo card can be crossed off. Stoke-on-Trent finaly has a Starbucks! I had to double-take when I saw this walking through the Potteries Shopping Centre in Hanley but the arrow did not mislead. A few seconds later I was handing over two quid and change for a very, very large cup of coffee. Bliss.
There’s a price to pay though. It’s taken over the entire food court, so Stoke now has a different dubious honour: it’s the only city in the UK without a Burger King. |
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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 
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.
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.
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