A quiet time in Vegas

The last couple of weeks of December are a special time in Vegas, and not just because of Christmas, Hannukah, and Festivus. It's an unusually quiet time in the hotels, and the time when the casinos traditionally "give away the store."

My spouse got an unusual invitation from South Point, one of our secondary casinos in amount of play. It was for a room night, which we took Thursday night, and dinner at either the steakhouse or Italian restaurant. We chose Don Vito's and ran up a bill of $100 without even getting the wine and soft drinks that were part of the comp.

The desk clerk told me the hotel, which had been bursting at the seams through the end of the National Finals Rodeo this past weekend, was only 30 percent full. We have been out and about quite a bit in the past few days and almost all the casinos we have visited have been about as empty as we've seen them.

As advantage players, we're always looking for an edge, and fewer people in the casinos creates opportunities where competition is a factor, particularly drawings.Also, if I were a bingo player, I'd be playing whenever I could in next week or so, particularly if there were some unusually bad weather.

This year is shaping up as a very good one for me financially, but we have faced numerous changes and challenges, as is always the case in this line of work. One of the biggest challenges was being being "no mailed," which is when a casino decides not to send you any more marketing offers. This happened to me twice, and much to my surprise, I am still finding opportunities to make money at the casinos in question. There's no guarantee, however, that this will last.

One of the biggest changes we made this year was setting up a spreadsheet system (with invaluable help from my daughter) to track not only our results but, more important, the value of what we receive from each casino we play at. This will help us greatly in the continuous process of figuring out how and where to best spend our time. We also switched our calendars from day planner books to the computer. Thanks to my spouse for a lot of hard work in setting this up.

My biggest goal for next year is to cut down on the time I spend gambling. Having more information and making better use of technology should make that easier.