Free Play Article
Quote: Mission146That's not at all true, you can take the free shuttle from Fremont or California to Sam's Town which enables you to hit there, Longhorn and Eastside Cannery (if you have anything Webpass). From Sam's Town, you can shuttle to Harrah's (or back to/from Downtown) and from Harrah's to Gold Coast and/or The Orleans.
You can pretty much hit the entire Strip and Off-Strip with ease as well as Downtown and a couple of the Boulder Highway places. If you don't feel like doing much walking, then you can ignore places such as Westgate, Hooters and Ellis Island...though there is a lot of great value at Ellis Island and it's a really fun place, in my opinion.
I forgot about the shuttles, thanks for reminding me. Yeah, I just need to look at the network of shuttles, decide how much time I want to spend on this and how far afield I want to go, and make a plan. At a certain point, the detraction from the fun of the trip will make it not worth the EV. The key will be finding that point :). I'll only have 3 nights in town and most of 3 days.
Then again, grinding away counting blackjack for $30-$40/hour isn't exactly "fun" either...there is the opportunity to win bigger, but also the opportunity to lose bigger.
Quote: AcesAndEightsI forgot about the shuttles, thanks for reminding me. Yeah, I just need to look at the network of shuttles, decide how much time I want to spend on this and how far afield I want to go, and make a plan. At a certain point, the detraction from the fun of the trip will make it not worth the EV. The key will be finding that point :). I'll only have 3 nights in town and most of 3 days.
Then again, grinding away counting blackjack for $30-$40/hour isn't exactly "fun" either...there is the opportunity to win bigger, but also the opportunity to lose bigger.
You're welcome, again!
I don't know how much tolerance they have, but that Blackjack game at Longhorn might be a fun one (It's across from Eastside Cannery) because it is one of the few games in which you can double on more than two cards. I think the minimums are $3, so I might even have a session there next time I'm in Vegas.
Definitely keep the EV v. Fun in mind, though, for such a brief trip. You can see the expectations from the chart in my article. I really think anyone should go to Ellis Island, though. Neat little atmosphere and the brews are outstanding.
Quote: Mission146You're welcome, again!
I don't know how much tolerance they have, but that Blackjack game at Longhorn might be a fun one (It's across from Eastside Cannery) because it is one of the few games in which you can double on more than two cards. I think the minimums are $3, so I might even have a session there next time I'm in Vegas.
Definitely keep the EV v. Fun in mind, though, for such a brief trip. You can see the expectations from the chart in my article. I really think anyone should go to Ellis Island, though. Neat little atmosphere and the brews are outstanding.
Ellis Island is definitely on the agenda this trip as I have never made it there.
Cafe is hit and miss with servers (ranging from very great, to horrible)
They have decent video poker.
Everytim I'm at a bar I hear people say they are glad they came, or locals who say this is the best deal close to the strip.
Quote: Mission146You're welcome, again!
I don't know how much tolerance they have, but that Blackjack game at Longhorn might be a fun one (It's across from Eastside Cannery) because it is one of the few games in which you can double on more than two cards. I think the minimums are $3, so I might even have a session there next time I'm in Vegas.
Definitely keep the EV v. Fun in mind, though, for such a brief trip. You can see the expectations from the chart in my article. I really think anyone should go to Ellis Island, though. Neat little atmosphere and the brews are outstanding.
I decided to get the ACG and the LVA MRB.
I calculated a conservative EV value for the casinos I know I can get to on my trip, mostly strip and downtown. For those properties, I estimated $73 in EV for the ACG and $131 in EV for the LVA MRB. Based on the prices, I pulled the trigger on both. It's not a huge time commitment either, and I'm going to make a plan with an itinerary to hopefully get all of them taken care of without going too far out of my way.
There are some food coupons that I might actually use, but I didn't include them in the EV calcs. In addition there are some near off-strip locations I might hit if I get bored, or if I blow out most of my bankroll, or if I get backed off everywhere :).
I don't think I've ever played a machine in Vegas (other than an organic craps machine once), so that will be a new experience for me.
Then again, you're a smoker.Quote: Mission146I really think anyone should go to Ellis Island, though. Neat little atmosphere and the brews are outstanding.
Quote: AxelWolfSUMS SUMS ~$270
Where is the SUMS and how do I get that coupon ;)
The sad part of all this is, before so much information was spread around on the internet and books (Jean Scott type books) about all of this stuff your value of $270 doing all of that would be multiplied by at least 5 for $1350. Not to mention all the others good things to do along the way, a new player to Vegas could really clean up.
Plenty of $50 and $25 match plays and Aces. $25 -$100 new members, Free buffets, Free fun books everywhere with tons of good stuff in them. 4 of a kind bonuses worth hundreds.
It was not easy to get all the information, people would have to spend time and figure it out for themselves. I have seen the rapid decline of good things as the free information grows.
*SHRUG*
Back in the day guys made a living running coupon routes everyday.
Quote: Mission146Thanks for the compliments! Surprisingly, visiting all of these places is not even as remotely difficult as people seem to think it should be. These are not long walks, and even then, you're in an air-conditioned casino in between stops, so you can cool down and everything like that. The hardest walk was from Sam's Town to Boulder Station along Boulder Highway which I would never advise anyone to do, and even that walk in and of itself was not difficult.
Sam's Town to Boulder Station can be negotiated using the city bus which I think used to run about every 15 minutes on that route.
Quote: DRichCome on Babs, you don't get it? It is about them wanting you to stay in the casino. They don't want you taking your drink and leaving. With the cap it is more convenient for you to leave.
When Becky took over the Horseshoe there was a poker player who brought an empty gallon jug to the poker room everyday. He would order bottles of water while playing and dump the water into the gallon jug and take it home. Instead of telling the guy to quit doing it Becky ended comped bottles of water in the poker room.
Quote: AcesAndEightsMission, what was the "internal" offer from Treasure Island? Was that a free play offer for signing up for their card or something?
That's right, anything that is, "Internal," is an offer either for signing up for the card, or an offer that was available to everyone. I don't remember the specifics, now, other than I recall the TI offer had something to do with earning x points on your first day and there were three different tiers for that.
In any event, what I definitely remember is that I played to the second-highest point level for the promotion. You would play a certain number of points and then you got to spin a wheel at the Kiosk to get an amount of Free Play. I also know that all of the decent paytables were at $0.50 (or higher) denominations, so I didn't play any of those because I didn't want a ton of risk. Finally, I based the EV off of the guaranteed minimum amount of Free Play that one could win, as I had no way of knowing what the average amount to be won was.
Other than that, my memory is a little shaky on the details, but there are one of two possibilities:
1.) You could only get the reward once, so you had to decide what point level to play to before spinning the wheel, and I found that the second level had the best EV in terms of percentage advantage.
Or, more likely:
2.) You could get the reward each time you hit the number of points, and I decided that the third level not only had a lesser % EV than the first and second levels, but also, that I didn't necessarily want to risk as much as I would have needed to in order to hit the third point level.
In any event, having just checked their website, the current offer is $20-$100 in a spin when you earn 100 slot points, so the tier thing is gone. If you play VP, other than the best games ($15/point) the games are $4.50/point, so you'd run through $450 for a guaranteed minimum of $20 in Free Play.
Honestly, if you choose not to count on anything except the minimum (I wouldn't) the current promotion isn't that great, the EV of the one I did was much better.
