Yet another strike against the Palms

When George Maloof owned and ran the Palms, I was a regular customer there. The place had its annoying quirks but offered good video poker and other benefits that made it worthwhile to play there often. Since corporate management took over, many of the perks have been taken away, along with a lot of the good video poker. Moreover, as I have described in this blog, unbelievable incompetence has been on display more or less continuously for the past couple of years.

During this time I have made several attempts to return to the Palms as a regular player, but have not found it worthwhile. In recent months about all I've done there is play enough to take advantage of one of the few positive things the new management initiated. If you earned one ticket for the weekly drawing and weren't called as a winner, they would give you $10 in free play good the next day. On $1 video poker, that requires $250 coin in -- a good deal, especially since my spouse would often play it for me. (The Palms recently wised up and now requires that you earn 10 drawing tickets to get the $10 free play.)

Today my spouse said that she wanted to go to the Palms and play for the gas cards they were giving away. She argued that she had received a pretty generous mailer from the Palms for the amount of play she had been giving them and that it might be worth it for me to give them yet another try.

The gas cards are part of a regular promotion that Palms runs called Play for Prizes. There are usually two sets of prizes, for the first and second halves of the month. Points accumulated on weekdays are used to qualify for the prizes, though players get to keep their points.

Today was the last day for the Chevron gas cards. Because we had not played during the second half of the month, we could get only what we could earn today. The lowest denomination was $5, requiring us to earn 2,500 points. That would also get us the $10 free play tomorrow. We valued the play at very close to $15 because we consider a gas card almost a cash equivalent and because the Palms' points, worth 0.25 percent, would make up for almost all of our loss on the deuces wild game (99.73 percent maximum payback) we would be playing.

So we played enough for our gas cards and went to the promotions center to cash in. At the counter, we were told that they were out of Chevron cards and we would instead be given Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf cards. I explained to the clerk that I did not consider these at all equivalent, that my car runs on gas and not on coffee, and that I did not appreciate being surprised by this news when the casino could have put up signs announcing the substitution. I asked him if I could get a rain check for a gas card. He said no. Not, "I'm sorry, I can't do that," just "no." I asked him if I could get free play instead. He said no. I asked him if I could speak with his supervisor. He said yes, and a young man came out from behind the curtain and agreed to put $5 free play on my spouse's and my accounts.

Problem solved, more or less. In the casino business, that's all that usually counts, so I told him I thought it was important that this situation be dealt with better if it comes up again. He assured me he would speak with his boss. I was satisfied with the way the matter eventually was handled, but if I had not made a fuss, I never would have gotten to speak with the supervisor. As my spouse pointed out later, many people probably just took their coffee cards and left unhappy -- especially if they had played a lot during the past two weeks and earned a lot of what they thought would be gas cards.

Here's what I think the Palms did wrong:

1. Someone assumed that gift cards of equal denomination are of equal value. My guess is that they had a surplus of the coffee cards and saw this as an opportunity to get rid of them, not stopping to think that some customers might not appreciate the substitution.

2. Because no one anticipated that some customers would be upset, no one thought to provide notice that they had run out of the gas cards. This could have been accomplished by posting signs at the entrances to the casino and at the players club.

3. If someone had been smart enough to do this, he or she might have taken the thought process a step further and tried to come up with ways to satisfy customers unhappy with the switch. No casino ever runs out of free play, and I believe this would have satisfied almost all customers. Another alternative would be to give points, which could be used for comps as well as free play.

4. The clerk at the counter who initially tried to "help" me was inadequately trained. Regardless of his own opinion on the matter, he should have expressed some sympathy for a customer who was being denied what the casino had promised. More important, he should have been the one to call in a supervisor if he couldn't satisfy the customer.

Under the best of circumstances, I am not a big fan of Play for Prizes. The prizes, usually gift cards, often have less value to me than their face amount. Plus, the process of obtaining the prizes is cumbersome. You have to go to a kiosk and get a printout of the points you earned for the promotion. This may entail waiting on line or dealing with a malfunctioning kiosk. Then you have to go to the promotions center and wait on line to get your prize. The last time I did this information had to be entered manually in a ledger before the clerk could get the prize. And, of course, there's always the possibility they'll run out of the card you wanted and give you something of much less value to you. This has happened to me before at the Palms.

As we left the casino, we stopped at the cafe. My spouse had a $10 credit and we wanted to use it to pick up a prepackaged salad. In the past I had enjoyed the gigantic chicken Caesar salads from the Palms cafe. I had noticed on previously that the size of these salads had been cut about in half. On this visit I observed that the price had also gone up!

Based on my visit today, I'd say the Palms is still badly in need of new management.

Never give up?

One of the things I do when I'm not in the casinos is read with two third-graders on
Thursday afternoons at an elementary school in Henderson. This volunteer gig, through a very worthy organization called Spread the Word Nevada, is a lot of fun and, I hope, a benefit to the kids who get some personal attention as well as help with their literacy skills.

A couple of weeks ago one of my kids brought a book about a toad and a frog who were best friends. One of the reptiles (I forget which) gave the other a hat for his birthday. The recipient loved the hat, but it was too big and came down over his eyes, which caused navigational problems.

The giver of the gift offered a solution. He told his friend to think very big thoughts before he went to bed. This would cause his head to swell to a size that would accommodate the hat. The giver sneaked into the recipient's house while he slept, removed the hat, altered it to fit his friend's head, and replaced it before dawn.

When the birthday amphibian woke up, he put on his new hat, and it fit perfectly. He was sure his friend's plan -- think big thoughts -- had worked.

The story offered me a golden opportunity to impress upon my young reading buddy what I consider to be a key aspect of human psychology -- the ease with which we reach wrong conclusions about cause and effect. Not the easiest of concepts for a third-grader to understand, but still I was surprised by his answer when I asked him what point the author was trying to make:

"Never give up!"

So many stories in our culture convey that theme that it's what jumped into his mind, irrelevant thought it was.

It's an idea I've thought about a lot. Obviously, persistence can be a virtue. If you're trying to achieve something worthwhile, and you're going about it in an informed and intelligent way, working hard to achieve your goal makes sense.

But what if what you're trying to do is impossible, or you're going about it the wrong way, or it just isn't worth the effort that will be required? In those cases, applying your efforts in another direction obviously would be a good idea.

But the here's the question I find interesting: How do  you know? The folklore posits a maverick whose ideas are dismissed by those around him. But somehow he just knows that if he keeps at it, he will prove the skeptics wrong. It's just a matter of keeping at it.

But sometimes the critics are right. Even if the're not, engaging them might yield some ideas or information that could help the loner achieve his goal. But cooperation isn't as good a literary ingredient as defiance, so the stories tend to be about heroes who go it alone.

Even just periodically reevaluating one's progress might lead to the conclusion that giving up is the wiser course.

So what does this have to do with gambling, the subject of this blog?

Gambling is one of the few activities in our society in which quitting is encouraged. "Know when to quit" is on the cover of the brochures about problem gambling offered by many casinos.

The assumption behind the encouragement of quitting is that gamblers who expect or hope to win are on a futile quest because, in the long run, the house will always win.

For the vast majority of gamblers that is true. Continuing to gamble in an attempt to recover losses or obtain money to pay debts or expenses will usually result in further losses. It's better to quit when you're less behind rather than continue to play until you're more behind.

But the presumption that a gambler is destined to lose is rebuttable. As I have explained in this blog, there are ways a gambler can get a long-term advantage over the house. Even better, it is often possible for a gambler to know with a great deal of precision the amount of that advantage.

In fact, if you cannot determine the amount of your advantage or explain how you calculated your advantage, you almost certainly don't have one. Gambling is governed by math, and you have an advantage only when the numbers give you one.

Losing streaks are part of gambling, even for players who have a long-term advantage. But in gambling, unlike many other human endeavors, it's possible to know whether you should persist through adversity. If you're playing at an advantage and within your bankroll, you can power through knowing that losing will eventually give way to winning.

Places we used to play

Since we started coming to Vegas about 10 years ago, we have probably played with some frequency at about 40 casinos. We're now down to about 10. In most cases -- all until quite recently -- the decision to stop patronizing a casino was ours. In the past few months, several casinos have cut off the offers that made it worthwhile for one or both of us to play there.

Over the years we have heard stories about video poker players being "no mailed" (mail offers stopped coming) and even being outright barred from playing. We learned that the players cards of those who patronized South Point only on double point days sometimes stopped working, that those who won "too much" at Ellis Island were asked not to come in any more, and that Station Casinos (slogan: "We Love Winners") had barred Bob Dancer from playing there.

But for years, we were the ones who got to decide, exclusively, where we would play video poker. We played where we thought we could make money, which meant places with good games, good players club benefits and good promotions. When any of those things changed significantly to our detriment, we were gone.

In the past 10 years, the main thing that changed was the games. Probably 90 percent or more of the changes were for the worse. There were many reasons for this. As good video poker books and software became available, more players were able to cut into the take the casinos expected from good games because a good part of that take resulted from player mistakes. Video poker, once considered just another form of slot machine, began to be seen more like blackjack, a game that players could beat. One way casinos could protect themselves was to take out high-payback games.

The recession worsened this trend, as did the additional self-inflicted financial troubles of some of the big gaming companies. In many cases players bore at least some of the burden in the form of pay-table downgrades and stingier comp policies,

In most cases we tried to work with the new realities. I think one of the biggest mistakes a player can make is to overreact to change. Even if can't do exactly what you had been doing at a particular casino, there may be other opportunities to make money there, especially if you're still getting mail offers.

But sometimes the changes are just too severe. We kept playing at several casinos as they removed one game after another, but you have to draw the line when there is nothing left that's worth playing.
The sad thing is that the public is so ignorant that these casinos have not been forced to relent and bring back better games, if not the best games they ever had.

The following is a list of some of the casinos we have stopped playing at, or are in the process of phasing out our play; the games we used to play there; and in some cases other reasons for our decision:

1. Club Fortune, Henderson, Nev. -- this neighborhood casino once had positive games, including 25 cent full pay deuces wild and $1 loose deuce deuces wild.

2. Hooters -- $1 full pay double bonus deuces wild and "not so ugly" deuces gave way to 9/6 jacks or better as the best game. We left after that came out and management decided 9/7 double bonus was too strong a game to allow point multipliers on.

3. The Stratosphere -- I think I burned out the $1 loose deuces when I hit the deuces three times in one weekend. They disappeared soon after; so did I.

4. Eastside Cannery -- $1 NSU deuces are long gone, leaving 8/5 bonus poker the best game for dollars and up. Points earned are not competitive with other casinos on the Boulder Highway, and promotions and mailers aren't making up the difference.

5. Peppermill's Rainbow -- this locals casino in downtown Henderson once had 50 cent full pay deuces. Without a players club, there's no reason to go there unless a progressive is high enough to be a positive play.

6. Jackpot Joanie's -- this chain of small casino-bars lost us as customers when it downgraded NSU deuces to "pseudo" NSU, changing the payback from 99.7 percent to 98.9.

7. Dotty's -- another group of casino-bars cut its point multipliers on video poker.

8. Arizona Charlie's Decatur -- there are good games, but you earn so few points playing them that a good mailer is needed to make playing there worthwhile. The mailers started out strong but faded with time.

9. The Palms -- My spouse still plays there a little, but all the changes since George Maloof was deposed have taken most of the value out of playing there. You can still make a little money, but not enough in my opinion to make playing there worthwhile.

10. The Orleans -- Video poker has been tight since we first played there, but for a while we got mailers with free play and giant point multipliers. When those stopped, we stopped playing there.

11. The Westgate -- When this near-Strip property was the Las Vegas Hilton, it was one of the best places to play, with the best tournaments in town, positive and near-positive $1 video poker, and great promotions. Through ownership changes, most of the benefits and the best video poker games for more than 25 cents disappeared. This was probably our biggest loss.