The Las Vegas Thread and MSE guide

Entertainer

ferf1223 wrote: »

'with perfect strategy' would be the other thing I would note there. Perfect strategy takes time to learn and the strategy differs for each type of VP game. For committed VP players it would be an option, sure...but for those who aren't inclined to learn the strategy it wouldn't be nearly so good a bet I don't think.

Plus there are stupid people like who no matter how much we practice on the free version WinPoker in training mode, still can't get it.

In reality the payout is nothing like that percentage. The only thing that gets that up to that is when you include the Royal, and then you would have to be playing max. credits
Ask anyone here, if you play through $450 you sure as hell are going to lose more than $2, dang things swallow up my twenties like nothing on this earth, but hey, my free drinks only cost me roughly $15 each BTW I play double bonus poker 9/6
OMG look at the time, jetlag or what!!

To follow up on your posts, you should always play video poker at max coins without exception. On the vast majority of machines the full payout for the royal is only achieved at max coins, if you don't like the stakes then drop down to a lower coinage. The royal flush accounts for about 1.98% of the payout so this means that even ignoring this it has a lower house edge than roulette. Of course there is variance with video poker but hey, if people are gambling anyway on bad games like slots (typically 5% house edge) or roulette (2.7%) or some of the wretched prop bets in craps (up to 13%) then they may as well do this and get their free buffets and have some fun too.

I've investigated this some more and found out that the Wynn has alot of full pay JoB 9/6 machines which is good so the 0.46% is attainable. There may be some 25c coinage machines ($1.25 a spin) but most of them seem to be $1 coinage ($5 a spin). Obviously higher coinage means more variance but it also means you achieve the $450 wagering quicker and if you get the royal then that's $20,000 (I'm sure some of you doing this have played the National Lottery before so you must be comfortable with high variance, oh and terrible payouts as well- 45%).

Basic strategy for Jacks or Better yields a payout of 99.46% and is this:

Four of a kind, straight flush, royal flush
4 to a royal flush
Three of a kind, straight, flush, full house
4 to a straight flush
Two pair
High pair
3 to a royal flush
4 to a flush
Low pair
4 to an outside straight
2 suited high cards
3 to a straight flush
2 unsuited high cards (if more than 2 then pick the lowest 2)
Suited 10/J, 10/Q, or 10/K
One high card
Discard everything

Very easy to learn just take a printout with you. It's all fairly intuitive.

I will be putting my money where my mouth is in July and be doing this.

Anyway, if anyone's interested and wants any more advice about this or gambling in general then let me know.

iltisman

January/February

At least the USA is fighting for us Las Vegas fans.


http://www.telegraph.co.uk/travel/travelnews/2085184/US-threatens-Britain-with-legal-action-over-airline-taxes.html

pennylane99

May

iltisman wrote: »

At least the USA is fighting for us Las Vegas fans.


http://www.telegraph.co.uk/travel/travelnews/2085184/US-threatens-Britain-with-legal-action-over-airline-taxes.html

According to USA Today's research, airlines servicing Las Vegas will cutback service by 12% this fall

trets77

April

yet more of our money that our prime minister wants to get his hands on. i swear he thinks we should all go to work come home shut up and not leave the house .

isn't the £40 tax he already put on flights to the USA enough !!!!!!! and he wonders why he will be out of job soon :rolleyes: :rolleyes: .

Stew68

Trip report

Well as promised here’s a short trip report from my recent visit to Las Vegas, I’ve never done one of these before so hope its okay.

The purpose of the trip was to celebrate my 40th birthday (it only comes around once after all). My brother and I had been planning this for quite a long time and by the time we went it felt like we knew everything we needed, how wrong we could be.

I guess the trip report has to start with the getting there, yes, we travelled Virgin from Gatwick. We flew on a Sunday so this may have made a difference. As recommended we booked two of the twin seats at the back, the plane was probably only three quarters full so as soon as the seatbelts sign came off my brother jumped ship and moved into another seat so giving us both a bit more room to maneuver. This made things a lot easier as we are both six footers. The flight is also made a little easier with the excitement and anticipation of actually heading to Vegas. The flight arrived on time and we were pretty much off the plane last, our wait to get through immigration took about 35 minutes and by the time we picked our bags up we were last out of the terminal building.

We’d booked a bungalow queen suite at the MGM Grand and were very impressed with the size of the room, separate shower cubicle to the bath, two televisions, large sofa and easy chair. The bungalow suites are right next to the lifts so saves a long walk at the end of the day but does mean you may get a lot of noise late at night.

We spent the week exploring the strip and enjoyed investigating each casino in turn. We’re not big gamblers, playing mostly slots wherever we were.

We both enjoy our food so a big part of any holiday for us is our eating. Reccomendations would include :-

Earl of Sandwich in Planet Hollywood, we had a good breakfast sandwich there to start the day a couple of times, their sandwiches are excellent and the menu looked extremely varied for any time in the day.
Cheesecake Factory at the Forum Shops. We’ve eaten here a few times when we’ve been in the USA before. Never had a bad meal, best tip is not to have an appetizer and leave room for the cheesecake instead.
Grand Lux. Two of these now in Vegas, at the Venetian and Palazzo. The Grand Lux is related to the Cheesecake Factory, another massive varied menu, took us a long time to select what we wanted but the food was very good.
Harley Davidson Caf! also very good (especially the barbecue chicken.)
Craftsteak at the MGM Grand. We went here for my 40th Birthday. :beer: I apologise to the vegetarians amongst you but the food here was probably the best I ever tasted. If you look at the menus on line there is an option for taster menus and that these are for parties of only four or more. They will do them for two though, we tried the Kobe Beef menu and loved every bite. Four separate appetizers, two different cuts of beef with three sides and four different desserts. I also got an extra dessert as it was my birthday and a very nice dessert wine as well. Highly recommended although a bit more than we would normally pay for a meal. ($306.00!! :eek: ) But then you’re only 40 once.

This seems to be going longer than I thought, I’ll post my thoughts on the various hotels and trips in another post.

Feel free to ask any questions,

Stew

Stew68

Trip Report Part 2

We visited the majority of the casinos on the strip and were mightily impressed with all of them.

The MGM Grand is massive, somewhere I’ve written down the shortcut we managed to track down to get from one side of the casino to the other without having to get through the madness of the casino, as soon as I can track it down I’ll pass it on. The pool area looked fantastic with a great lazy river, and numerous pools.

The Bellagios entrance and conservatory are certainly worth a visit as they look fantastic. We also wandered around the ballroom and and conference room areas and loved the look of the back areas, the pool area looked very good as well.

Planet Hollywoods casino area was a fun looking area with a very good vibe to it.

New York New York was nice but seemed to have some issues with service, we tried to eat at a couple of restaurants but seemed to sit there for ages without even being acknowledged. The coaster there was a lot of fun though.

Ceasars Palace was also nice to wander around, we couldn’t get a glimpse of the pool area as they seem to keep it from prying eyes. (which I suppose is good for the people using it!!)

Monte Carlo seemed to have the best waitress service, they popped up as soon as we sat down even though we were only playing on low denomination machines and continued to come round numerous times. Highly recommended. The Brew Pub here was also very good, the Nachos are massive!!!

The Wynn, wow what can I say, it really is one of the nicest places I’ve ever been in. The buffet is simply fantastic, we had great fun just wandering the background areas. Did some window shopping (which is all I could afford to do!!)

The Venetian and Palazzo were also very impressive, the Grand Canal Shops were again another window shopping extravanganza. I would definitely be interested in staying at the Palazzo at sometime in the future.

We did go to the Stratosphere as we were very interested in the rides at the top. (When I say interested I mean in seeing them, not doing them!!) They were certainly fun to watch but you wouldn’t catch me doing that kind of ride at that sort of height. The views were very good though.

The only problem I had with all the casinos was the affliction they gave me “Casino Mouth” I don’t know if anybody else has suffered this, but as soon as I walked into any of the casinos the mixture of smoke and air conditioning just sucked all the moisture from inside of my mouth.
Next part, a couple of shows and the Canyon Trip

Stew68

Trip Report Part 3.

One of the highlights of this trip was the Grand Canyon Trip, I booked this back in January, like most people I was confused by the myriad of choices. We went with Scenic airlines and were very impressed. We went with the deluxe tour which involved a flight in a light plane to the Canyon, an Imax presentation and then the coach tour of the Canyon itself. It was all very well organized. Picked up at the MGM at 8.10 in the morning and got back at about 6.00 pm. They operate from Boulder City and they take you there by coach. The plane takes about 16 people and can be a bit bumpy. (We were warned when we got in for the trip back that it was going to be a bit rough and they weren’t wrong). The Imax wasn’t brilliant but the coach tour was very informative. Lunch is supplied at the local Best Western and is a buffet, food was great. You get an hour at the first stop which is plenty of time for the taking of the classic pictures. Don’t be late back for the bus though as the driver comes looking for you in the shops!! I would certainly recommend this tour.

We’re not the kind of people that do shows but a friend of ours suggested that we should go and see the magician Lance Burton, he was at the Monte Carlo and was certainly well worth the money, I have no idea how he did any of the tricks and would be happy to see him in action again.

I also saw David Copperfield, like Trets has said previously he did look fairly bored with what he was doing and perhaps a little too arrogant. The full show was only 65 minutes, much preferred Lance Burton, another tip is don’t get front row seats, you’re likely to get a crook in the neck!!

We also saw Wayne Brady at the Venetian, you may have seen him on ‘Whose Line is it anyway’ The majority of his show is improvisational comedy and is very funny. He finishes with a song and dance routine, a very talented man.

My brother went to see Spamalot and he had some very good comments about it though he thinks they missed out a scene from the show he’d seen in London.

This was supposed to be a short trip report, hope I haven’t taken too much of your time. One more post to go where I’ve got just a couple of comments and tips.

Stew

Stew68

Trip Report Part 4

Well hope I’ve not bored you too much. Just a couple of comments.

We were there over the memorial day weekend and the strip was a heaving mass of humanity so I would try and avoid there public holiday weekends.

If you’re looking at some of the maps remember that there is no tram service between the Monte Carlo and Bellagio because of the City Center construction.

The Forum Shops has a couple of shows which are worth seeing, we also had fun just going up and down the spiral escalators. (We even tried to take videos while we were on there, how sad is that!!)

We did find the strip a little seedy at night, the slappers seemed to be everywhere there was a space, they didn’t force themselves on you but you certainly knew why they were there.

To make a quick exit to the strip and avoid the casino at the MGM use the corridor that leads from the West Wing bar round the back and out by the high limit poker room. Would certainly avoid using the ground floor of the West Wing rooms as a lot of people use this cut through.

We flew from Vegas to LA using US Airways who were very efficient, certainly McCarran airport has more facilities than LAX with plenty of places to eat.

Well that’s the end of that, hopefully I didn’t bore you to death and you found some useful information in it.

If you have any questions I’d be pleased to try and answer them.

Many thanks for all your help in planning this trip, I gleaned so much information from you all, just hope I can give a little back.

Stew

dan28

MGM Grand from $49
from vegas-hotels-online.com, name: Ultimate Escape, stay from June 8, 2008 - September 30, 2008
https://reservations.mgmmirage.com/bookingengine.aspx?pid=001&host=promo&code=SDM054&kbid=755041&sub=en

MGM Grand from $49
from vegas-hotels-online.com, name: Ultimate Escape, stay from June 8, 2008 - September 30, 2008
https://reservations.mgmmirage.com/bookingengine.aspx?pid=001&host=promo&code=SDM053&kbid=755041&sub=en

ferf1223

March

Stew68 wrote: »

Well that’s the end of that, hopefully I didn’t bore you to death and you found some useful information in it.

I'm not even close to bored to death -really enjoyed reading it, you guys sure did a lot in your time. You didn't say how the slots treated you or if you found any fun new machines - that's something I would love to hear about.

As for Spamalot - I've only seen the London version but Vegas shows are generally cut down for time - usually to 90 minutes or so with no interval. I think the London version was 2 hours 20 with an interval, so would imagine that they cut a fair bit out for Vegas.