Casinos

The New Frontier closed yesterday.

The decision to close only came a couple of months ago, but it's been on the cards - and on the Las Vegas Casino Death Watch list - for as long as I can remember, so I made sure I took plenty of photos in January.

Another classic sign goes dark, and now as far as I can remember there's just one major freestanding backlit sign left on the Strip, at the Tropicana.  I don't remember if the Riviera has one out front, but even if it does neither would surely have very long left.

The Frontier was a dump and has been pretty much left to rot for years.  I will have no sentimentality for the casino whatsoever.

The sign, on the other hand, was fabulous...

There are some pictures of the Frontier's final day here:
http://www.letis.com/dmr/pics/vegas/finfront/

I have read, albeit with some scepticism, the account of Richard Brodie being barred from all Harrah's casino properties on the grounds that he is simply a lucky player.

Brodie is the author of Microsoft Word, a ball and chain that will no doubt follow him to the grave.  It's only fair to say from the outset that the person responsible, however indirectly, for that goddamn talking paperclip will receive very little sympathy from me.

Besides an overpriced, bloatware word processor, I am unfamiliar with his work and his adventures as a gambler and I had not read his blog until today.  After a little research, there appears to be enough respect for his writing that I decided that I should not immediately call BS, even though the tale seems a somewhat far-fetched.

I will, however, hold reservations that, just maybe, the story is fabricated (after all, he is a poker player) or that Harrah's in fact have barred him for some other reason than simply being lucky.  We cannot assume Harrah's will automatically reveal personal information about a high roller, however there's always a chance that Jan Jones will open her gob again.  Let's hope so.

Brodie has been barred from Harrah's casinos because they cannot work out how to make money from him.

How ridiculous is that statement?  A Las Vegas casino cannot win money.  Sorry, I'll correct that.  The world's largest gaming corporation cannot win money.  It really shouldn't be that hard, and if they're sweating the action on a $300 per spin video poker machine then the answer should be simple.  Pull the machine.

This photograph (click to enlarge) shows Brodie grinning next to his machine having just hit a natural royal flush - on the deal - for $240,000.  The machine is almost full pay deuces wild.  There's one variation: 8 coin payback for a straight flush instead of 9.  I plugged the paytable into Frugal Video Poker and it checks in at 100.35% payback, compared to 100.76% for FPDW.  At $300 a pop, with perfect strategy this machiine is worth $1.08 per spin to a knowledgeable player. 

Add on Total Rewards benefits for some extra value.  It's only a paltry 0.05%, but then each hand becomes worth a theoretical $1.23.  Grind out 600 hands an hour and you've got a job that pays over $700/hr.  If you can cope with the swings, of course.  Typically you need a bankroll equal to five royal flushes to deal with the huge variance of video poker.  That's only $1.2 million then.

Obviously this figure requires perfect play, which is not that simple, when you have to work out which one or two gap straight flush draws to hold and which to discard, taking into account the slightly reduced payout for that hand.  So you have to play a little slower to make sure you make the right holds... maybe it's only worth $300/hr.

This paytable is rather surprising, given the downgrades Harrah's have made to the video poker at Caesars (and indeed to Caesars in general) over the last couple of years.  Once the best paytables on the strip, they're now a poor imitation of their former selves.  The 9/6 Jacks or Better machines have become 7/5 machines, reducing the payback from a healthy 99.54% to a dreadful 96.15%.

Slightly fewer players with a much larger house edge (in this case, more than eight times larger) generates a bucket load more money for the Evil Empire, and since Harrah's has the marketing clout to ensure a constant volume of players through their doors, they have absolutely no incentive to offer ther players a good gamble any more.

Claire has been researching video poker availability for her summer assault and has found that although there's a handful of positive expectation machines scattered around downtown and off-strip, they only exist at the 25c level.  The hourly rate, with the very best slot club cashback deals, is about $6/hr.  It would take a really creative use of slot club points and fancy free drinks to come close to 100% payback on a $1 machine.  For anybody interested in all the numbers, vpFREE is the definitive resource.  They don't even mention the three-coin, $100 machine at Caesars though.

That Brodie has been been lucky is not his fault.  Anyone can run hot, but the odds of hitting a royal flush on that machine still remain in the region of forty thousand to one.  In fact, on Deuces Wild games you should hit less royals than on other types of video poker, if you are playing correctly - you'll never discard a 2 to draw to a natural royal flush.  The Frugal VP simulation shows that it comes along once every 45,409 hands.

Brodie has indeed been exceptionally lucky, hitting three royals at Caesars in the past year.  To hit three royals should require, on average, 136,000 hands, which is a ten day stretch with no sleep if you can maintain 600 hands per hour.  However over the course of a year, this is certainly achievable although Brodie doesn't appear to have played anything like that many hands to get his three jackpots.

Brodie claims he's given about 80% of the winning back, which would put him at about $144,000 profit on the year (20% of $240,000 x 3).  This is the figure I found most interesting though: for an advantage player that would actually grind through 136,000 hands to hit three royals without being exceptionally lucky, their expected return would still be in the same region: $146,000 won plus about $20,000 in comp.

So clearly the thing to do here is to reduce the paytable or bin that machine completely.  It's a major leak in Harrah's game.

Instead their answer is to find players who seem to be winning more than their fair share and then do their best to remove the lucky element from their casinos.  Is this not just the same as a player who has to sit in a particular spot at the blackjack table, or has to set the dice the same way every time, or has to wear his lucky underpants before going out to gamble?

That kind of thinking is for suckers, so who's the sucker now?

It's a ten second clip.  Not even that - honest!  You're missing out on the whole multimedia experience if you don't press play.  But I know you probably won't, so I've added a transcript this time too.  See.  Just a few seconds. But it's still better if you play the clip.

Anyway...

Speaking on the American Casino Guide podcast, legendary collector of free casino shit and (I think it's compulsory to call her this now) "queen of comps" Jean Scott advised listeners that they shouldn't leave comp dollars on a players card, just in case you never get a chance to use them.  Casinos change hands; players clubs mess with their programs; comps expire before your next trip.  There are so many ways players can lose out, and obviously that's bad.

In fact the two casinos I still have comp left with are Binions and Imperial Palace.  Both assured me I'd still be able to eat for free in the summer, but really neither have a particularly certain future in Las Vegas right now.  As usual, we can blame Harrah's.

After Binions went busto, it was stripped of the only things the Evil Empire wanted it for - the Horeshoe name and the World Series of Poker.  It was then sold on to MTR Gaming who, so far, are not doing a particuarly good job at plugging the leaks.  Oh how the Shoe would be jumping right now if it had a little bit of ESPN money to keep it ticking over.  The IP was gobbled up only for the land it sits on and it's only a matter of time before it comes tumbling down.  But as Harrah's themselves are now the subject of a takeover, and their investors have said that they want to clear their outstanding debts (a mere $21 billion) before reinvesting in growth it looks like those Dealertainers are going to be hanging around for a little longer.

Anyway...

Over to Jean.

"You know what happened when Katrina hit Mississippi.  A lot of people lost a lot of comps."

Nearly two years on, our thoughts are still with those victims who not only lost their homes, jobs and families, but also a nice steak and eggs special.

If I may paraphrase the email message I had today Terrible's:

"Once you've lost your money at our casino, we'll help you kill yourself."

Welcome to Fabulous Las Vegas.

 

Roulette is not the most thrilling game anyway, but I can appreciate the recording of the £30 I bet with Sporting Index this weekend that didn't actually cost me anything was pretty much at the bottom end of the excitement scale.  Even for me, whose money was almost at risk.

This one is slightly better.  Ashley Revell bets his life savings on red.

Yes, it's old news, but I never thought to look for it online before and I'm glad I finally did.  When this was on TV, the sound quality was all over the place but in this version you can hear what the dealer is saying to him (just try to ignore the DIY Tarantino soundrack).  Sky One had to rush to get the program out on time.  It was meant to be live from the Hard Rock, but they changed their mind about accepting the bet and in the end the Plaza stepped up but it wasn't allowed to be broadcast live.

For a bet of this size, I think they have every right to be paranoid.  The rule that the bet must to be placed before the ball has travelled twice around the wheel is to eliminate the use of any computer devices that can calculate where the ball will land from its speed.  Even so, such a device is only accurate in predicting a segment of the wheel (its users have to know the arrangement of numbers on the roulette wheel and bet accordingly) so it's unlikely to be significant on a red/black bet.

The Plaza still have a sign on the "lucky" table to commemorate their huge loss.

Congratulations, it's an apostrophe.  Bill's Gamblin' Hall & Saloon has now replaced Barbary Coast in the middle of the Las Vegas Strip.  

Before:

After:

Nice photoshop work, but are Harrah's so ashamed of this place (or perhaps the name) that they had to crop out the neon Flamingo logo from their own hotel next door?

Just like the Imperial Palace - the property just the other side of the Flamingo that they also bought to knock down - they're not associating it with their other Las Vegas casinos.  The slot club is independent of Total Rewards, and you won't find any hotel information on harrahs.com.

Big Elvis is still playing there, but are all drinks still $2?

There has been a story in the news about some crooks being jailed for, apparently, cheating at poker.  I first heard this in a brief report on the radio so my first thought was exactly what they'd been done for - even in a fully licenced casino, the house pretty much can't (or wont) do anything about a poker cheat, on account of it being a game that's played only against other players.  If they're not stealing from the casino, the worst that will happen is a swift ejection from the premises.  They usually want to keep punter-worrying stories quiet, especially when they don't have to worry about getting their money back.

The crime in question took place in September 2005, but with the story breaking less than 24 hours before a verdict is expected in the Gutshot case, and showing the public - and the jury, if they are allowed to watch TV - that a licenced casino is a very safe place to be, the timing is impeccable.  I may very well say more about the Gutshot defense and their shocking definition of gambling and expert witness who does not understand conditional probability after judgement has been served later today.

Footage of the scam taking place confirms that the three men had actually been caught cheating at three card poker.  Just having the word poker in the name of the game will help to carry the story in the media, but really this is just a poker-style carnival game, played against the dealer and featuring a juicy house edge.

According to the ITV news report I saw last night, they got away with "three and a half (pause for effect) thousand pounds", suggesting that these guys were stupid enough to not only hang around long enough to be seen repeatedly winning at a game with horible odds, but also that they only got away with a little more than one month's minimum wage each.  The BBC coverage, however, suggested a much more respectible figure (although only a guestimate) of £250,000, won over a four month period. 

Yau Lam and his partners in crime - Fan Tsang and the fabulously named Bit Wong - used a lipstick camera concealed in his sleeve, positioned to see the faces of the cards as they were dealt.  The pictures were transmitted to a nearby van where his accomplice could speak the relevant information to a hidden earpiece.  Sky News has pictures of the kit.

As only 26% of hands in three card poker are decided by a pair or better, even seeing just one of the dealer's cards is very valuable indeed.  After placing an initial ante bet, the player has the choice of "raising" - doubling the bet to find out if he beats the dealer's hand - or "folding" and forfeiting his bet immediately.

The basic strategy is to raise if you hold a Q64 or better, otherwise fold.  However every time you have a queen-high hand but see that the dealer was dealt an ace or king, you can save a bet by playing opposite to the normal strategy because you already know you are beaten.  Quite clearly though, if you are only investing more money on winning hands, the casinos is soon going to notice.

In case you'd somehow forgotten, it was actually the World Poker Tour that invented fucking tiny cameras (not Noel Edmonds or Timmy Mallett as I believed in my younger days).  If the police didn't get these guys, WPTE's lawyers would have done, and that's a much scarier prospect than a few years of porridge.

Let's talk about the next trip before I'm done talking about the last one then...

Mansion are putting me in a top notch room in Caesars Palace for Friday and Saturday night, but as I'm going early I need somewhere to stay for the first five nights.  January is typically very quiet and great for room offers, and I've already had a few attractive looking mailers to help do things on the cheap.

Harrah's properties from $45/night:
In fact, when I clicked the link in the email, none were actually $45.  Flamingo rates started at $60 but there was nothing available on the dates I wanted for less than $90 at the start of the week.  All rates were well into three figures by the Wednesday.

Aladdin from $49/night:
"Your last chance to stay at the Aladdin" before it finally becomes Planet Hollywood.  Claire went hunting for Silver Strikes here last week whilst I was playing at Caesars and reported a much changed interior - not a single fake plastic jewel in sight.  The offer is available only on six random dates in January, but it includes my first two nights.  However it already says the Sunday is sold out (yeah, ok) and every other night is $169.  In fact the Las Vegas Hilton was also showing sold out for the duration of my trip, which I don't believe either - unless there's a very large Star Trek convention on I don't know about.

Terribles free stay:
This one actually is pretty good.  The envelope promised an "Exciting Special Offer!!! Inside!!".  Yes!!! Punctuated! Like! That!!  It's two midweek nights free, and it wouldn't cost the earth to extend it for three more nights.  Although Terribles isn't half as smokey and dingy as it used to be, I'd still feel pretty isolated there by myself.  It's walkable to the Hard Rock, possibly to Tuscany, otherwise I'd need a car or a lot of cabs to get anywhere.

So the criteria for choosing a place came down to (a) must have internet so I can work and (b) must be close to a good card room so I can play.  The Hilton looked a good first choice at first - even though it's a (large) block away from the strip it's on the monorail, and would definitely be somewhere I could work.  After this trip I'm dubious about the quality of internet access downtown, and many of the rooms are small and probably wouldn't have a desk, so even the superb $29/night poker rate at Binions would be a dodgy gamble.

I set Travelaxe on the case and it gave me a few options.  Call me a snob, I just didn't fancy the Gold Spike - even at $22/night.  But this is why Travelaxe rocks - it found me a Premier Tower room at the Stratosphere for $53/night, when their direct booking web page said $99 upwards.  There's still a $5/night resort fee to add, and their internet isn't cheap ($49/week) but I know the net works and I know that rooms in this tower have desks - we were there last Christmas.  Actually we'd booked a World Tower room - the much smaller hotel building, presumably left over from Vegas World - but there was some blood on the bathroom walls (I do have a photo, but really it could be of anything) which we discovered was plenty reason enough to get an instant upgrade!

As well as being a home-from-home (this will be the 7th time I've stayed there I think), the Strat is a great location for me really.  It has the shortest cab ride to downtown of any of the strip hotels and it's walkable to the Sahara which has decent poker tournaments three times a day, and a monorail station.  At $5 a ride, when you can get a cab to almost anywhere for $10, I've always though the monorail would only really be worth it when you're travelling alone.  Now I guess I'll find out.

Hotels in Las Vegas tend to skip the 13th floor.  As far as I'm aware, they just pretend like it doesn't exist, numbering the floors 11, 12, 14, 15, etc.  It might be possible to grab a crowbar and jam open the doors at just the right moment to get there but (a) that was the 7^1/2 floor in Being John Malkovich, so it may only apply to floor numbers ending in a fraction and (b) why the hell would you want to tempt fate like that anyway?

I worked out that I've been to Las Vegas twelve times in the past seven years.  You don't actually want to know how long it took to figure this out, from passport stamps, email history and - where everything else failed - a mountain of old credit card statements.  But I'm glad I made the effort. 

It's eleven days  (not that I have a countdown using oversized playing cards or anything...) to trip number fourteen.

Yes, fourteen.

Honest.

And just to prove I'm not insane, I took a ten question multiple choice test:

You're not 100% superstitious, but there are certain things that you'd rather avoid…just in case! ... Overall, you likely realize deep down that superstitions are mostly not true, but the ones you follow have become old habit. It makes you uncomfortable to break them, so it's simply easier to keep - especially since many of them are tightly woven into our cultural fabric. ... As long as your superstitions are not controlling your life in any way, there's probably no harm in them.

14.

Boyd gets Barbary Coast back?  Sadly not, it's still winging its way into the hands of the Evil Empire.  I did get quite excited when I saw the (fairly major) typo in this month's Casino Player.  Even though it didn't really make any sense. 

 

I've been in London today but back at a sensible time thanks to complimentary first class train tickets :)  Back in time to see most of the first day of the Stardust auction.  Missed the start, and therefore didn't see just how much the last ever craps used went for, but I did see some vintage memorabilia under the hammer, and an awful lot of TV screens.

       

It's not exactly thrilling viewing I admit, but I was still hooked.  Although with another four days still to go, I'm hoping the novelty will wear off soon.  Well, today at least.  At the same time I've been watching Children in Need, to make my Friday night complete.  Terry Wogan has managed to gather together the largest collection of truely dreary and middle of the road musical acts you could ever imagine.  And whenever you think of a dull band you think of Westlife.  We're not to be disappointed.  Add Ronan Keating and someone who used to be in Blue (he's no less dreadful on his own) to the mix.  Keane - well actually they're not that bad, but really not the rock gods they seem to think they are.  But it just wouldn't be complete without Sugababes, who managed to come up with a mesmorisingly dull dance routine to perfectly compliment the snoring blandness of their music.

Although the Boyd Gaming Press Release originally stated that demolition of the Stardust would begin in the first quarter of 2007, there is now speculation that it could be imploded as soon as New Years Eve.

I'm not sure whether this rumour has much substance - it seems a bit too soon, although if the auction next weekend is as efficient as it looks I guess there won't be an awful lot left to clear out.  Boardwalk closed this year on Jan 9th and it was four months until the freakish clown head and fake roller coaster were removed and the building was imploded on May 9th.

Of the twelve previous casino implosions, only the Hacienda fell on New Years Eve, back in 1996.  Somehow I thought it was a lot more.  However it would be typical if we just miss this one by a day - we fly back on Dec 31st, after deciding to trade a non-stop return flight and triple diamond club miles for that extra night of fireworks and complimentary plastic hats.

We were in town in February this year when Bourbon Street went boom, although good old Harrah's kept it quiet until a few hours before they pushed the plunger and I only heard about it the following day.  Castaways was blown up with a similar lack of fanfare just a few weeks previously.  Apparently, making a spectator event out of watching tower buildings collapse is not considered particularly tasteful any more.

The afternoon before the Bourbon Street implosion we'd got stuck in horrible traffic around there, noticed "something odd going on" and even the road closure notices.  Never even thought that might be happening, or you can be sure we'd have found a prime spot to watch the destruction with a big foam finger and a little flag saying "Go Rubble!".  I know we wouldn't have been alone.

Actually we had made more of a connection with Bourbon Street than to Stardust.  It was actually the home of our first Vegas beer - two small plastic cups of draft Budweiser.  50c each!  On our first trip we were pretty clueless, and - as well as paying for beer - had ended up staying at the Days Inn Town Hall Casino on Koval, just around the corner.  It's also now dust, although with one blackjack table and a dozen video poker machines, the Town Hall isn't the type of casino to be missed.

It was obvious the Stardust's days were numbered a few years ago, when they were making a big deal out of its 45th anniversary.  It was never going to make it to the big five-oh.  As another legendary Las Vegas hotel shuts its doors today, I feel like I should be writing a little bit about what I remember about the place.

Unfortunately, that is very little.  The fact I have a players card (below) doesn't necessarily mean I played there.  I have a whole bunch of players cards from all kinds of casinos I've been to just once.  And why not?  I vaguely remember some cashback promotion at the Stardust for cycling your money through video poker that they never actually coughed the rebate on, and I'm pretty sure that was the only time we'd been there until this summer. 

In August the end was very much in sight, although nobody quite knew when.  Today's closing is ahead of schedule, because most of the staff have already moved on to new jobs and there was little point in keeping it open.  The gift shop sold merchandise bearing the dates 1958-2006, although it was still such tat that all all I ended up buying was an energy drink.  We just stayed long enough to win two silver strikes, both the same one as usual.

We never got to see Wayne Newton there or make a bet in the daddy of all sportsbooks.  Which, for people like me who missed the first fourty years of the Stardust, are pretty much the only things I can really say I know about it.  Oh, and it still did look pretty cool at night.  I do hope they leave the lights on until it finally falls over.

The Stardust will be be imploded to make way for Echelon Place, due to open in 2010.

The signs for Red Rock Casino label it as Red Rock Resort. Which I suppose it is, but it's location in Summerlin makes it somewhat more utilised as a locals casino than a resort hotel. In fact, it looked like the hotel wasn't quite finished yet when we went.

The feel of this place is a bit wierd and the vibe is somewhat mixed. The decor puts i somewhere between in-yer-face and over-the-top. It's feels intensely modern and cool, to appeal to a young locals crowd. But it's also seems to be trying to compete with the Bellagio or Wynn for elegance. There are some quite horribly excessive chandelier structures over part of the casino, and then you move through to a new section and they're all gone. So the kids get to gamble over here, whilst the rich folk have this part to feel at home in...

Didn't stay long, given that one of the reasons for visiting was because it had a cinema, but Superman Returns wasn't showing and however good Snakes on a Plane might be, it's title doesn't do make it sound like making any effort to watch. Claire said there's a reason Speed wasn't called "Bomb on a Bus", and I tend to agree.

... or I will make sure they can't sleep tonight, says Harrah's Entertainment.

How freaking scary is this thing, at the Rio's Masquerade in the Sky show? You have to see the eyes move for the full horror, but it's still pretty grotesque in this snapshot.