Further adventures in Reno

As I've noted before, my spouse and I got interested in Reno because several casinos there offer good video poker games at higher denominations than are generally available in Las Vegas. This weekend we took a trip to Reno for the primary purpose of earning Diamond in a day at Harrah's Las Vegas.

The spouse, who put in some heavy play a while back at the Rio in Las Vegas, got an offer for a free room for a weekend at Harrah's Reno and round-trip airfare for two. This was an attractive proposition because Harrah's Reno offers the best game on which to earn the 5,000 tier credits needed for Diamond status, though the game turned out not to be exactly what we expected.

I'll explain, but first, a little background. Diamond in the second-highest tier level in Caesars Entertainment's Total Rewards program. Most player reward programs have tier levels, but they usually don't mean that much. You might get preferred parking, a discount at the buffet or gift shop, and shorter lines at the players club. A few, such as Boyd Gaming's B Connected, offer players at higher tier levels all-the-time point multipliers, a benefit that has real, quantifiable value.

I am not yet an expert on Total Rewards, but many benefits seem to come to those who achieve diamond status or the top tier, Seven Stars. Among other things, these players get free rooms and show tickets without having to use reward credits. My spouse has gotten several offers for tournaments that require a hotel stay at a Caesars property, but as less-than-Diamond, she has had to pay the (pretty steep) resort fees on her "comped" rooms. These fees are waived for Diamond and Seven Stars players.

Diamond status normally requires earning 15,000 tier credits in a year. On most video poker at Caesars casinos, $10 coin in earns one tier credit. So the requirement for earning Diamond is $150,000 coin in. But, if you earn 5,000 tier credits in one day ($50,000 coin in), Caesars will give you a bonus of 10,000 tier credits and make you Diamond.

The problem is where to earn the 5,000 tier credits. Most of the video poker at Caesars properties is, by our standards, too tight to play. The best games in Las Vegas, at the Rio, require considerably more coin in that $10 to earn a tier credit -- as much as $50. But Harrah's in Reno offers 9/6 jacks or better, with 99.54 percent maximum payback, yielding a tier credit for only $10 coin in. This would allow us each to earn Diamond status at an expected cost of about $250, which equals one-half of one percent of $50,000.

Based on what my spouse saw on VPFree2.com, we expected to find $1, $2 and $5 single-line games of 9/6 jacks or better. The plan was to play for $2, betting $10 a hand at max coin and putting through $50,000 in five to seven hours.

But what we found was the single-line game only at $1. The only other choices were triple play and five play at $5 a hand. It would have taken a very long (and boring day) to put through $50,000 on the $1 game, so we decided to play the triple play -- at $75 a hand.

Unfortunately, we both lost a lot of money in a short time. The result could have been just as bad as if we had played all day for $1, but it seemed worse because it came in such a short time. I think we put enough money through that we didn't fall victim to a very negative short-term swing, and the fact that we were playing three hands at a time evened out our results some (decreased our variance, in technical terms). I think we made the right decision, though the price we paid was a lot higher than we had hoped for. It is normal for gambling results in the short term to vary wildly from mathematical expectations. Had either of us hit a royal flush on any one line, it would have paid $20,000, pushing our results much further in the opposite direction.

I'm going to start something new in these postings: tips to casino management. The first one is based on what happened in Harrah's high limit room when we finished playing and went to cash out our slot tickets. The employee said "pretty good" or something like that when presented my spouse's ticket for more than $1,000. She informed him that it wasn't good, it was what was left of a lot more money. I have had the similar experience many times of being congratulated by a casino employee on what was actually a losing slot ticket or stack of chips. The tip is simply to train employees never to assume based on the amount being cashed out that a player has won.

Finally, a word about Harrah's hotel in Reno. This place may not quite qualify as a dump, but it's pretty close, especially the East Tower. The casino in that building contains some very strange things, including a single bowling lane; an area that looked like a sparsely equipped basement rec room; a closed sundries shop containing a dusty old craps table and some wrecked fixtures; and what a guest told us was an abandoned noodle bar with an old banquet table and chairs. It's inconceivable to me that the latter two areas weren't at least walled off so guests couldn't see them. They made that area look like something from 'Hotel Impossible."