In my “Waiting for Wednesday” blog a few weeks ago, found here. I was addressing the idea of scheduling when to play. One reader named Steve responded by quoting me first and then stating his “correction.” He wrote: “For me, that includes remembering that chasing every good promotion takes a backseat to doing what Bonnie wants to do. At least some of the time.” “SOME” of the time? For me, “Happy wife, happy life” is at least “MOST” of the time 🙂
Okay, Steve, you are now Bonnie’s new best friend and she sends her regards. And while I don’t disagree with what you said, there are some nuances worth discussing.
In my family, Bonnie isn’t a player — and she knows how I make my living. She knows I play at, among other places, South Point, M, and Dotty’s. She knows they run promotions and I do most of my play during certain promotions.
What she doesn’t know is how valuable the promotions are compared to each other and how flexible the promotions are. If she wants to know how much coin-in I plan to play at South Point in any particular month, I’ll tell her. But usually she doesn’t ask.
For example, I want to play $xxx at Dotty’s during the month to keep mailers and other benefits coming. For certain reasons, I play weekly rather than all at once and since the maximum benefits come after midnight and before noon, it doesn’t matter too much when I do that play subject to those constraints.
Conversely, if I play for the Silverton’s seniors’ drawing, that play MUST be done on Monday’s between 2 a.m. and 4 p.m. and prizes (if any) must be picked up between 4 p.m. on Monday and 4 p.m. on Tuesday.
I rank each promotion on a 1-5 scale, where 1 means it’s okay to skip it entirely and 5 means “I don’t care if your daughter is coming to visit — I’m playing! If you want to take her out to dinner, I’ll get a comp, but I’m not going to eat with you.”
Bonnie trusts my ranking system. If I tell her a promotion is a number 5, she works around that. (If Bonnie or I had a medical emergency, for example, that could definitely trump a number 5. But under normal circumstances, when I declare that a promotion is a number 5, I get my way.) Could I abuse the system and usually get my way? Yeah, probably, but the “happy wife, happy life” motto Steve cited is a good one to keep in mind.
We use the same sort of system near the end of the month when we decide which food coupons we’re going to use — and which ones we’re going to let go. Bonnie has a huge vote in these discussions, but it’s my job to keep track of the offers so I can explain her options.
As I write this I’m on a cruise ship. We use a variation of the same system on deciding when and where to eat, or who gets to use the bathroom first.
There have been occasions where Bonnie has said she really wants to go to a particular square dance event and can I please have some flexibility in my ranking system. When she says this, she usually gets her way. Had she said this about the night of the “mistake” 12x promotion at the Silverton which I wrote about recently, she would not have prevailed. That promotion was worth more than $5,000 in EV and would have been worth more to me than yielding on that particular night.
To be sure, I would have “bargained” with her, saying something like “I really, really can’t do that on Thursday, but what can we do on Wednesday or Friday to make up for it?”
We are both trying to make this relationship work — so almost always we can come up with something that is acceptable to both of us. Winning in casinos is the name of that game. Winning (or getting my way) at home — not so much.
Hope you are enjoying the cruise with Bonnie. My wife loves going on cruise ships, and I only go because they have table games (horrible rules) and slot machines (usually horrible payout schedules).
I am curious as to how you determine which cruise lines and ships you will sail on. Does it have any correlation to the quality of gaming available onboard? If so, do you primarily consider VP payout tables? Other considerations?
The casino games on a cruise ship are not a factor at all to me.
I basically never go into a casino on a cruise ship. Casinos on cruise ships have pay schedules set for a captive audience who will play anything. That’s not me. I can easily wait a week or four until I’m back home and can fine plenty of gambling opportunity.
Bonnie and I enjoy dancing together. Sometimes we’re the only couple dancing to the music. Other times there are several couples who dance and we meet new friends. There have been cruises where we found insufficient dance-able music, so we both read a couple of books that week.
I get “moderately free” cruises on NCL from Caesars Entertainment. I get moderately free cruises from Penn National as well — used to be Carnival but now it’s NCL. We choose cruises based on where we haven’t been — or where we haven’t been lately.
Earlier this year we were eligible for two cruises and we chose back to back ones out of Miami. We had been to 6 out of the 7 ports, but hadn’t been on either of the cruise ships (NCL Getaway and NCL Escape.)The cost of getting back and forth to Miami was by far our biggest expense — and we prefer to only bear that cost once a year rather than twice.
Probably in 2017 we’ll do back to back from Boston-Quebec and then Quebec-Boston. We’ll stay in the same cabin which will give us an extra half-day to explore Quebec.
Hi again, Bob. (Waiting For Wednesday) Steve here (Hi Bonnie!).
I hope you didn’t feel challenged by my playful (I did use a smiley face) “correction”. It was not my intent to suggest that you ignore Bonnie’s input in your married life. I’m glad that this week’s column sounds like you’re OK with it, with the accompanying explanations. Plus, it gave you another column idea. I’m a weekly reader of your GWAE blog and use VPW software regularly before visiting our not-so-great pay schedule San Diego casinos, with good results.
Best Regards to you and Bonnie,
Steve
Kevin, I don’t think that Bob is carrying all of his money with him when he goes to the casino, where he can’t invest his money like anyone else. At most he would have a tiny percentage, and probably zero because I’m sure he takes advantage of the interest free lines of credit that casinos offer. I think deciding when to retire is a personal decision that everyone has to decide for themselves, whether you are a professional gambler or have any other job. If you enjoy what you do and are healthy enough to keep working, I think that would be a big factor in not retiring even if you have plenty of money. The only issue I would be worried about for anyone who gambles for a living is secondhand smoke, which is definitely a big danger. I would love to move to Las Vegas at some point, maybe after I’m able to retire from my “real” job, and try to do what Bob does but with a much smaller bankroll. I would have a lot of fun and at worst I would probably be close to break even. But I would never do it as long as Las Vegas continues to allow smoking in casinos. To me spending that much time in the casino and breathing in all of that secondhand smoke is just too dangerous.