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Dice Coach & Instructors / Newsletter / Contact / Home
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You've Got Mail! Sometimes it pays to get out of bed early in the morning. Once each week I have all of my mail FedExed to me
while on vacation. With the proper delivery
instructions, those Fed-Ex guy can find the remotest Caribbean harbor-village and even the
correct boat at the dock. In my package this week was a couple of casino offers, and one
was in the form of a Get Well card. A casino
host with a great sense of humor, that I've known for years, sent one along with the
words, "You MUST be sick, because we haven't seen you for SO long. Get well, and come back soon." It provided a good early morning laugh. Even if you are like some people who like to rise
at the crack of noon, I still have news for you to smile about. Contrary to popular belief and recent e-news reports, not ALL casinos
have tightened their comp policies. Yes,
Harrah's in trying to pay for their Rio and Showboat acquisitions have clenched their
complimentary wallet a lot tighter in the past number of months. Yes, the Venetian has their pruned their
generosity-tree and put the fear of a tyrannical boss into the hearts of their
casino-hosts. Yes, MGM-Mirage has a new
slogan for super high-rolling "whales", that goes something like "We can't
spell "SUCKER" without "U"; but all is not bleak and morbid in my
favorite desert oasis. The amount of freebie offers to players is increasing
exponentially for a couple of reasons.
Whatever the reasons, there are now abundant opportunities to take
advantage of some interesting complimentaries, which are being offered by even the most
tight-fisted management teams. Besides the usual luxury suites, full spa treatments, free shows and the
customary gourmet dinner offers; I thought that I would list a couple of the more
fascinating ones that we have received in the past little while.
From Station Casino: A $700 air-flight allowance, airport limo pick-up, luxury suite,
unlimited movie-theater pass, full gourmet meal comps and four tickets for any and all
performances by Loretta Lynn, Blue Oyster Cult & Nazareth, Ronnie Milsap, The Doobie
Brothers, Patty Loveless, Tricia Yearwood and Diamond Rio.
I usually don't play very much at Palace Station, Boulder Station, Sunset Station,
Santa Fe Station, Wild Wild West, or Texas Station, et al.
The reason for that is because I find them fairly crowded even in
"off-hours". These casinos are
frequented by a lot of local players, but they also treat "out-of-town"
customers quite well.
From Lady Luck Hotel: They continue to offer the full use of their corporate box for the
Thomas & Mack Events Center and Cashman Field. This
is especially useful when big concert tours or the National Finals Rodeo comes to town. Lady Luck has also added the use of their
corporate box at Las Vegas Motor Speedway to their list of tempting comps. If you too, are a big Nascar Winston Cup, Busch
Grand National or Craftsman Truck Series fan, who enjoys All-Access Pit Passes, Corporate
Sponsor party invitations, and "Meet the Drivers" luncheons, this is a special
treat.
From the Horseshoe Casino: A one-week all expenses-paid vacation to the original Benny Binion
Ranch. Playing cow-poke for a week on this
working ranch is a change of pace from exploding volcanoes and pirate battles.
From Las Vegas Hilton, Stardust, MGM Grand, Bally's and Caesars: Every casino has a Super Bowl party, but for a good handful of players,
these casinos in particular will send you right to the Big
Game. They do the same thing
for the Kentucky Derby, Preakness, and Belmont Stakes, NCAA Final Four, Indy 500, NBA
Championship, the World Series, and a number of other high profile sporting events like
the PGA Masters and the tennis world's U.S. Open.
From Terrible's Casino: All-Access passes, transportation, accommodation, and private party
invitations to any off-road desert races that Terrible Herbst has vehicles entered into. This includes the Gold Coast Desert Classic, the
Baja 500, the Reno-to-Vegas, the Barstow 250, Mesquite 300, Tonopah Classic and the Baja
1000.
From Bellagio, Mandalay Bay, Venetian, Rio, MGM Grand, Mirage, Paris and
Aladdin: It seems that all of the "big" houses are trying to entice
players with super-gourmet offerings. Not
only are fully comped feasts being offered, but the newest trend is to have their world-famous chefs prepare special meals for a small,
intimate gathering of players for an extraordinary presentation of culinary
"oneupsmanship". So far we've sat
down to enjoy what Julian Serrano of Bellagio's Picasso, Joachim Splichal of Venetian's
Pinot Brasserie, and Allesandro Stratta of Mirage's Renoir have creatively offered. In addition to that, a couple of hotels have started offering gourmet-cooking lessons for either the player or
the player's spouse. The idea of learning
from Emeril Lagasse, Wolfgang Puck, Mark Miller, or Charlie Palmer sounds intriguing,
especially if your spouse has said that she wanted to go on a vacation to someplace
she's never
been before…and you showed her where your kitchen is! Also, a comp like this is really useful if your
wife's idea of calling you for dinner includes the words, "Okay honey, get in the
car, I'm ready to go to McDonalds."
Boxing: It seems that interest in boxing is not limited to the cartoon-bad-guy
antics of Mike Tyson. The usual boxing venues
like MGM Grand and Mandalay Bay, have been joined by the lesser likes of Sunset Station,
Gold Coast and even downtown's Plaza for pugilistic pummeling.
From Caesars Palace: A couple of tantalizing offers from the Roman Empire. The first, is an all-expenses, full-week stay at
any one of Caesar's four non-gaming resorts in the beautiful Pocono Mountains of Pennsylvania. These are the ones that have
the two-story-high champagne-glass see-thru bathtubs in some of their suites. The other offer is for a six-day, five-night
whirlwind junket that starts with a trip on the supersonic Concorde out of New York direct
to Paris. A connecting flight to Nice,
France disembarks onto a waiting helicopter where you are delivered to your final
destination of Monte Carlo, Monaco for the upcoming Grand Prix race. Accommodation at either L'Hermitage or Loew's
Casino Hotel is offered for this very tempting fully-paid-for excursion. I could go on and on about various other perks and comps that are
currently being offered, but after thinking about Monte Carlo, everything else is
beginning to pale by comparison. Hmmm, maybe
I'll be even happier to wake-up early, and walk out to a hotel balcony overlooking the
Grand Prix circuit to watch Ferrari, Mercedes, Jordan and Williams battle it out. That would definitely put a smile on my face.
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