As I type this, Bonnie and I are aboard the Norwegian Cruise Line Encore on a 15-day Miami-Panama Canal-Los Angeles cruise. We get highly discounted 7-day NCL cruises from Caesars because we have achieved Seven Stars status. But a Panama Canal cruise has been on our bucket list for a while, and here it is. […]
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Hanging on to Points
At most casinos, you accumulate slot club points. Sometimes these are good for comps only. Sometimes you can redeem them for cash and/or free play. When you redeem slot club points for cash or free play, this is taxable income. I know that many players “forget” to report this, but it’s taxable nonetheless. Eventually one […]
It Goes Both Ways
In January, I had an incident at the Harrah’s Cherokee casino that I wrote about. I started my trip by taking a $20,000 marker, consisting of eight $2,500 TITO tickets and began to play $5 Deuces Wild. When I hit four deuces, I got two more of the same size . When I hit royals, […]
She Don’t Know What She’s Doin’ but She Tries t...
Author’s Note: I wrote a similar blog recently, with some readers requesting more information. I think there’s enough different between that piece and this one to make this one worthwhile. The title of today’s blog comes from a mid-90s song “Baby Likes to Rock It” by the Tractors. I’ve liked that lyric since I first […]
Betting With Bonnie
Bonnie and I’ve been together for about 10 years — with our ninth wedding anniversary coming up next month. We knew each other, more or less, for about five years before that in that we both belonged to the same square dance club. Bonnie would come with her husband Fred and I would be there […]
Time to Be a Good Samaritan?
This blog suggestion was sent to me by a friend, “Al.” It happened at a casino somewhere in the Mid-West. I honestly don’t know where exactly. Al was playing video poker near a bank of Quick Quad machines that weren’t very popular. Possibly players knew how to play the machines and avoided them because they […]
Do APs Cheat?
At the recent World Game Protection seminars, casino expert Sal Piacente said: “Advantage players don’t want to cheat and aren’t doing anything illegal, but instead use their minds to beat the game, whether watching to see if a dealer exposes a hole card or by card counting.” I’m not so sure. For any group of […]
Smoke and Mirrors
I’ve written two recent blogs about a drawing in Reno that was supposed to take place in early March. It was cancelled due to weather, and re-scheduled for the end of June, nearly four months later. Normally writing continually about a promotion that is of interest to a relatively small percentage of my readers doesn’t […]
As Good as I Once Was
In 2005, country music star Toby Keith released As Good as I Once Was, a wonderfully self-deprecating song about a guy reaching middle age and not being as good as he was in his prime. In a clever twist of words, Keith sings that he’s not as good as he once was, but he’s as […]
Maybe we Will Go
A few weeks ago, I wrote about a drawing at the ROW in Reno (a Caesars property where the Eldorado, Silver Legacy, and Circus Circus are all connected indoors), where Bonnie and I had each accumulated more than a half-million tickets during our stay. While that is a lot of tickets, everybody gets free tickets […]