Goodbye, old buddy

One of my favorite ongoing casino promotions, the Wheel of Winners at the Las Vegas Hotel and Casino (formerly the Las Vegas Hilton), is no more. The wheel was a drawing held Thursday nights that offered five people a chance to win from $1,000 to $5,000 each. Weekend drawings with a chance to win $10,000 were also offered several times a year.

The best thing about this drawing was that the tickets were paper, which prevented the ticket inflation that has become rampant since most casinos started doing their drawings electronically. The Wheel favored bigger players because tickets had to be earned, but low rollers got a break because the first ticket each day required less play than the rest of them.

Another good thing about this drawing was the prizes. Most of the big locals' casinos that have drawings offer top prizes of $4,000 or $5,000, but the lesser prizes are often as low as $250 or $500. At a Coast or Station Casinos drawing with five winners, maybe one or two typically win $1,000 or more. At the LVH, everyone called won at least $1,000, and the average was probably well over $2,000.

Finally, the number of participants in this drawing was smaller than for most drawings at the big locals' casinos, so it seemed like everyone had a decent chance of winning. Any individual's actual chance of winning, of course, depended upon the number of tickets he or she had in the drum that week. And, I think, that's what did in the Wheel. There were too many repeat winners, some week after week. I do think the promotion caused regular players to play more than they otherwise might have, to earn more tickets. But it didn't seem to bring in a lot of new business for the casino (probably because it wasn't advertised to the public much outside the property).

The LVH still has a lot to offer in competition with the locals' casinos. It has decent blackjack, sometimes for as little as $5. The video poker is actually better than at many locals' casinos, with many games returning more than 99.5 percent. The race and sports book is the biggest in the world. Locals get 25 percent off at all restaurants, which are excellent. But perhaps most important is the LVH's program of tournaments, which is hands down the best in Vegas, with many of the events free to regular, local players.

Meanwhile, concerning weekly drawings, other casinos have picked up the mantle, at least temporarily. Stations, which for at least a year during its financial difficulties ran no drawings, is now offering them at several properties. Perhaps the best drawing this month is at the Silverton, which is giving away an Audi (actually a gift certificate to a dealer for $32,500) each week. Second prize each week is $5,000, which typically is first place in similar drawings.

A stunning surprise

I'm not much of a football fan, or a sports fan in general, but I have been participating in the Coast Casinos' and M Resort's free football contests this year. Both are easy to enter and the Coasts make it particularly easy to check for winning entries. In both cases, entries are handled at kiosks, and it's possible to pick your winners using a quick pick feature, as in lottery games. In the Coast contest, you also have a pick a "tie breaker" for each entry, a prediction of the total score of the Monday night game. I always use the quick pick feature for both contests, and for the tie breaker, I just type in a number more or less randomly.

Each week I press the "winning entries" button on the screen on a Coasts kiosk, and each week I've been told "no winning entries" -- until this week. On Tuesday when I hit the button at the Gold Coast, the message said something like "Winner $10000." There was no comma in the number so I had to look twice to make sure it was what I thought it was -- $10,000, and not $1,000. The kiosk spit out a ticket. I couldn't concentrate well enough to read the fine print, so I stepped over the the players' club counter and asked the woman there, "What do I do with this?" She read the small print, gave me a high five and told me to take it to the sports book.

There a supervisor handled the paper work and explained to me that I was one of nine people who "picked" the winner of all 12 games that week. Further, I was the big winner because my tie breaker came closest to the actual point total for the Monday night game. The other contestants who picked all the winners got only $2,500 each.

In my entire gambling "career," including the 3-1/2 years I've been living in Las Vegas, this $10,000 win was my biggest single hit.