The Lucky Donut

I haven't quite figured out which tournaments I'm going to play on my next gambling trip, but I have sorted out all my accomodation - without it costing a penny.

Three nights in Laughlin, Friday to Sunday, were included with the poker tournament package, so I just needed two weekights on either side in Las Vegas.

I've booked Imperial Palace for my last two nights.  I was sorely tempted to try their Luv Tub room, but I've passed this time.  It seemed a little sad, and perhaps a little creepy, to chose a room with an oversized bathtub and mirrored ceiling when I'm travelling by myself.

IP usually shows a comp on any weeknight.  The funny thing is that the comp is for a Deluxe room (usual rate: $59) whereas the cheaper Classic and Capri rooms (usual rate: $49) are listed at full price when I'm logged in.  Are they really so bad that they wouldn't want to let a VIP player book one by accident?

My first two nights managed to throw up a two night complimentary stay at the Rio, which is awesome.  I thought it was amazing enough that I was offered these for the very quiet time before Christmas (the listed room rate for most that period is just $70) nevermind while the World Series of Poker is in the house.

I already know I'm not going to play in any bracelet events, but living that close to the action I'll almost certainly poke my head in and check out the side action.

So, it seems that the decision on January 1st to pump $30k through a video poker machine to get Diamond status was worth it, even if it did take a little more action in March to trigger the Las Vegas room offers.

In fact, it's been very much worth it.  For this trip alone, those rooms would normally cost $539 ($220 for Rio, $119 for Imperial Palace and somehow a total $200 for Laughlin, which is a bit OTT when you can easily get rooms elsewhere in town for $19/night).  Of course I'd never pay that much when all I need is a place to put my head at night, but it's definitely worth something.

Add to this the room in Laughlin in March, some bookings I've made for the summer in Laughlin and San Diego as well as three nights in the Flamingo (which I won't use except to steal the soap, but the reservation qualifies me to play in a blackjack tournament) and the bargain five nights at the Rio for $50 at Christmas, and already I make that nearly $1,700 of room value.

To get there, Claire and I have gambled a fair bit to be sure.  Nearly $40,000 in total action, but with an expected loss of just $240 (and an actual win, so far, of $62 - the downswing is on the way!) and about $150 of that back in food comp, I've made worse investments.

This year it looks like I'm trying to prove whether it is actually possible to have too much of a good thing.

The trip to Las Vegas and Laughlin I just booked for June really isn't necessary.  We just came back at the start of April, and it's less than ten weeks until the summer trip.  So adding another week to the time I'll be spending in Nevada this year is somewhat excessive.

It all started when I got this offer in the mail from Harrah's Laughlin.

I completely disregarded it at first, along with a handful of other mailers they sent me that I figured I'd never use: two tickets to see Boz Scaggs in concert on May 17th; an invitation to a Golf Weekend May 23rd-25th; a Blues Brothers tribute show on 14th June.  This one - a free World Series of Poker satellite tournament - falls on the weekend of June 6th-9th.

Put them all together and that's four offers in four weeks.  I'm about due another batch of American mail (it's forwarded from my California mailing address every 3-4 weeks) so I'll should soon get an idea of whether they have some kind of offer every single weekend, or if most Laughlin players had been waiting months for something, and then four came along at once.

As silly as it seems to fly half way across the world for the sake of a freeroll, I just kept on thinking of too many good reasons to be able to say no to this.

The value of the tournament is unknown, but it could be pretty good.  It's a $25,000 prize pool with a $6,000 bonus drawing, so if they get 100 runners that's a $310 entry for each one.

When I booked it, they told me 400 rooms were reserved for the promo so there could be 400 players, which would clearly be much worse but unless I'm being extremely naive I can't see that happening.  This can't be taking place in the poker room (it has a total of 8 tables) it'll be out of the way in some meeting space, but even so it's taking place during the WSOP and on a weekend.  Will they really ship in dozens of dealers from Las Vegas for a freeroll when they could be dealing tournaments or side games at the Rio?

However the major factor that got me considering this silly plan was my frequent flyer miles situation.  Yes, it's a serious concern!  With my bargain business class flights coming up in July and returning in August, I was set to reach gold status on the return trip but taking this trip in June means I'll actually make that status on the outbound jouney instead.

The big deal with this is that I've decided to try to retain gold status for the next ten years (which awards lifetime membership) and having the new status begin in July rather than August will make it much easier because of when our travel dates (determined by Claire's school holidays) are likely to fall the next few years.  Sounds like a feeble excuse, I'm sure, but I've worked it all out and it does make a lot of sense to take one extra flight now to make sure the trips we'll take regularly will be enough to re-qualify me for gold each year.

By the same logic, it's actually going to be a easier for Claire to retain her own gold status if we take another trip in before Christmas, but the jury is still out on that one.  I'm rooting for Atlantic City in October, but I know that it's a long shot.

Every set of dates I looked at came up with a US Airways flight that was much cheaper than any other airline (it cost £368 in the end, making me remember just how much we get shafted having to travel in school holidays).  US Air awards miles in the BMI Diamond Club so it was a perfect fit.

Additionally, the miles I'll earn from this flight, and by getting the status upgrade early, are worth about £180 - that's half the cost of the flight back!

I can also use this trip to get some extra play time at Harrah's Laughlin to get a head start on retaining Total Rewards Diamond status for next year.  It'll definitely help take the pressure off for the summer if I can get a few thousand tier credits racked up on the almost-positive video poker machine there.

The final justification to myself was that I had been thinking about going to Bristol for the Gala Tour later in June, which would have been an £880 buy in for 3 events, plus a fair chunk of cash to stay down there.  Accomodation is included with the Laughlin offer, and I have plenty of comps to be able to stay in Las Vegas without paying a penny the other nights, so in fact there's not that much much in it overall.  Could I get to Bristol and stay there for four nights and get much change from £200?  I doubt it.

I'm not particularly bothered about playing a World Series event (the choice would be $2,000 No Limit, $1,500 six-handed or $1,500 shootout) but there are several other tournament series in town at the same time.  Golden Nugget, Binions, Caesars and Venetian all have their own tournaments in the $200-$500 range.

Once I've decided what I'll actually play, I'll probably be selling pieces of myself again.  If you fancy a solid, just-about-break-even investment, stay tuned.

By the way, I'm not knocking Bristol - I've never been, would quite like to, and was actually going to go there using my Virgin Traveller ticket until they lost the West Coast franchise - but it's no contest when I can get to Vegas almost as easily.  OK, it takes about 12 hours longer, but I'll just about live with that...

I'd seen plenty of screenshots, which in themselves were enough to get me very excited, but only just discovered this gameplay movie of the forthcoming video game This Is Vegas.

http://www.videogamer.com/xbox360/this_is_vegas/screenshots.html

I thought I'd be more interested in being able to drive around a neon-lit virtual world of fake casinos than the clubbing elements, but the dancing missions do look pretty special.  I particularly like the way the character's walk changes the minute he sets foot on the dancefloor.

If it's possible to connect a dance mat controller, this definitely has the potential to be the best game ever.

Harrah's are labelling their decision to delay the final table of the World Series of Poker Main Event until November an "enhancement".  From a player's point of view I really can't see why it's a good thing.

Taking a day or two off in the middle of a marathon tournament is one thing.  Indeed, if you are drawn to play on Day 1A you already have to take a 4-day forced break before day 2A begins, then everyone gets at least a day off before all the players merges into a single Day 3.  Another day off before the final table after 6 long days of poker is probably a welcome break.  But a four month hiatus once the end of the road is in sight - and when you must be In The Zone to have got that far - is just a bit of a nonsense.

The point has been made that you could use this time to get some coaching and study the play of your opponents, but how exactly are you going to study the play of the eight other unknowns who haven't played a single hand on TV yet.  That's actually the whole point of this stupid rearrangement - to accomodate ESPN.  Are they really going to give the players a few hundred hours of unedited tape to wade through?  I doubt it.

What I really wanted to know though was just how much the players might be losing in potential interest on their payouts as a result of having to wait nearly four months between Day 7 and Day 8.  This is the richest "sporting" event in the world, after all, and the prize pool is pretty hefty.

I'm going to base the calculations on last year's field, because that means the full payout information is readily available and there's no reason to assume there will be wildly different numbers this year.

In 2007 there were 6,358 entrants, each paying $10,000 to play.  There's a total 6% taken from the prize pool for the house and tournament staff which, accoording to my calculator, is about twenty grand more than the $59,784,954 prize pool published.  I have no idea how this number could end in anything other than two zeros.  It's must be just good old-fashioned skimming.

Just over a third of the total prize pool is given to the top 9 spots - $22,019,901 in total.

This year, once the final table has been determined, each of the remaining players will be given 9th place money straight away and when they return in November they'll be playing for the difference.  9th place last year was worth $525,934, so, based on last year's numbers, that would be a further $4,733,406 paid out in July.

Therefore the amount of the prize pool left unpaid during the hiatus is $17,286,495.  A cool seventeen million - or about $1.9m per player - still to play for.

The interest rates for savings on the US Dollar are far from great at the moment.  However, after a quick shop around the net I found a certificate of deposit product that offers 3.3% APY, but over a four month fixed term.  That's almost a perfect example - the delay before the final table is 117 days.

I just plugged these numbers into an online interest rate calculator and the answer comes in at round about $180,000.

That's 18 Main Event buy-ins.  Or, it's twice as much as the nine remaining players will have paid for their seats in the first place.  Although it pales in comparison to the $3.8m total rake taken out of the prize pool for this tournament, $180,000 is hardly insignficant.

Quite what it's worth to Harrah's for hanging on to it for the same amount of time I couldn't really say.  $17m is probably just a drop in the ocean to the world's largest gaming corporation, but nevertheless it's money that doesn't belong to them, yet they know that they will have custody of it for a fixed - and reasonably long - period of time.  It's certainly investable, one way or another.

Suddenly the offer of an all expenses paid trip for two for each of the finalists to return to Las Vegas in November to play out the end of the Main Event doesn't seem quite quite as generous.  Even I can get a free suite at the Rio!

Even though Krispy Kreme's invasion of the UK is well underway with about 40 proper stores - and a number of Tesco supermarkets also stocking their products - it's all down South still.  There's just four stores North of Oxford.

So today we drove to Manchester to buy donuts.  Well, it is my birthday.

I know for a fact I didn't ask for the two chocolate ring donuts, I think we missed out on glazed lemon filled at the expense of those, but it doesn't really matter.  They're all good.

I've learned that the Krispy Kreme at Trafford Park is open as a drive thru until 2am some nights, and they bake fresh until 11pm every day.  This is the actual definition of temptation.

The question of whether a 90-mile round trip is far enough to put me off returning without any other reason for being in Manchester has yet to be answered.

A month ago, I started playing the drums.

OK, that's a bit of a romanticisation.  What I actually mean is I started playing the drum part on the video game Rock Band.

Still, they reckon that if you can master the songs on "expert" level, you could sit down at a real drum kit, make the same movements and you'd be actually playing that song.

I'm sure that if real drum kits only had four things to hit, all of them being the same shape and each one always making the right sound at the correct volume no matter where or how hard you hit it, and with a couple of them doubling up as tom-toms and cymbals, then this would be true.

However, for someone of my limited co-ordination - and having never picked up a pair of drumsticks in my life before - I consider it something of an achievement that I got my first 100% score on hard level today.

The photo is horrible, sorry - I only had my phone to hand.  It just about shows Claire getting 99% on guitar (apparently just one silly mistake away from perfection, she's done it 100% before) and my massive 100% with a 1016 note streak, both playing hard level on The Clash's "Should I Stay or Should I Go".  I will almost certainly make the effort to fetch a proper camera the first time we both nail it at the same time.

That has happened before, but only on medium difficulty (Pixies "Wave of Mutilation" is pretty straightforward for both parts) and we've already gained as many virtual fans in the "world tour" mode as we can without moving up to hard level.

I'm not unhappy at acing The Clash, but I actually wanted my first 100% song to be Weezer's "Buddy Holly" so I had an excuse to embed that video rather than just link to it.  Or Nine Inch Nails, because that sounds like it should be a lot harder than it actually is.  I've been very close on both.

Or for bonus cheese points, it could have been The B-52s "Roam".  I don't care what you think, it's great fun to play and I already had a 1600+ note streak and came within one brain fart of doing it perfectly!

So, for the next step in my drumming career, I need to decide which route to take.  Should I aspire to be as great as this guy, who owns every song on expert level, and has made many top quality videos to prove it?

Yes, he has socks strapped to the drum pads.  This is strangely appealing.  The only modification I have is a set of Hard Rock logo drumsticks painted with a flame pattern.

Or, should I paint my face blue and start hitting other things?  How would that be for a career change?

There's already an official "stage kit" with lights and a smoke machine due out this summer, but I haven't heard anything about a paint drumming kit yet.  It's inevitable though, I'm sure.