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Tourist Dodging
I love public transportation and take the bus and monorail to work. Today was some of the easiest tourist dodging ever (I race myself everyday to best the time it takes me to get to work). Huge herds would take the escalators and I would take the nearby stairs (score!) and end up way ahead of the pack. I got into the very last monorail car (per usual) and of course it was empty while every other car was packed (yay, all the better to scope if the heard chooses stair or escalators at the stop I get off at).
OK, I'll keep to myself on the way home from work
Every once in a blue moon I'll offer advice to tourists I see trying to navigate transportation options. For example months ago, a young lady approached me at the monorail station because "I looked like I knew what I was doing" she was lost, her hotel happens to be right by the stop I go home @, I walked her to her hotel and had a nice conversation.
Twice I've corrected confused tourists at the bus stop that I take home that goes away from the strip into the "real city" and suburbs, that no this bus will not get them to their hotel and they are no longer on the strip.
Tonight the advice stops, there was a huge MMA fight and my walking route happens to go right next to the cab stand of the hotel the fight was at. The cab line was HUGE and I could hear tourists bitching about how long the wait would be. I decide to pipe up randomly and let some know that if they would walk less than 100 yards to one of two of the smaller hotels there would be empty cab stands with no wait (and there were), one guy ignored me hard core, one girl said "what?" so I repeated myself, she scoffed snottily back at me "I know!" and got right into the HUGE cab line at the hotel the fight was at. So no more "help" unless you ask me.
On to the workplace, and the LAST MINUTE IDIOTS!
Memorial Day weekend is a holiday/long weekend/the start of summer every year. Plan ahead people! I luckily didn't get any of this but bunches of my co-irkers did. People who decide to book their hotel room A) when they already have arrived in Vegas room-less B) in the car driving to Vegas C) from the airport D) from the freaking airplane. Book your room before you plan your transportation people.
Yes, we do send you marketing offers promising free/cheap rooms for certain dates. No, that does not mean we have a room sitting on wait for you if you decide to use your marketing offers at the last minute. We predict a certain number of people won't respond to the marketing so we send more people the offers than we have rooms. This is why everything says "Based on availability"
Yes, the rumor is true we do hold back rooms just for casino players, but these rooms still obey the laws of physics and there is a finite number of them. There is certain criteria of which players can get these rooms when things are busy. Let's just say if you have a history of having the potential to loss several $100 or more in a night of gambling your more likely to get one of these rooms than if you have a history of sticking $5 in a slot machine and calling it a night (even less likely if you have a history of taking free rooms and then not playing). If you don't qualify I will tell you we are sold out (sometimes we even are really and fully sold out), no amount of "I know you have rooms just sitting empty" will get you a room.
Oh and don't get me started on host marketing blocks, I'll bitch about those in the appropriate section for sucky co-workers.
Rainman and I hope the host I transferred him to is smart
I got a kind-a last minute (day or two ahead) call from a guy I could tell was a "big player" right away. He was to the point and explained that he hasn't gambled with us in years because he went to a competitor for a while. He wants to know if he still has an active line of credit (he does and it's enough to buy a new car) and who his host is (he no longer has an assigned host but he is more than qualified to be transferred to one, my department acts as a buffer for hosts, not all players can get a host on the phone).
He lets me know he would like 2 free rooms (very hard to get, we try to limit as many players a possible to 1 room only), free show tickets to a competitor (hard again, but possible through a host), and full food and beverage (host territory yet again).
His play is so far in the past that I can't even get him one free room so I offer to get a host on the line. He accepts, but sensing I'm fairly competent he asks "how much information about me can you get from a competitor?". I give him the honest answer that we have no automatic way to get info from them but sometimes we will share limited information with each other based on our mutual needs.
It takes forever to get a host on the line so I do what I typically do and pull up the information that a host uses for discretionary decisions. Hosts that are familiar with me know I know my shit and I can and will give them the right info they need so they don't even have to bother getting to a computer. I start looking at the guests play history and can see the last x# of trips, I see he played with us 2 days a year and each time he had a big but not too big buy in, just enough of an average bet to play at our tables with liberal rules (higher limit tables tend to have less of a casino advantage than lower limits), in theory we should have been making $1xx or so off him each trip. All of his trips he has won off us from a low of $5xx to a high of $1x,xxx. I also noticed some odd things like he once played 2x hands of blackjack in 4 hours (casinos deal around 70 hands per hour so 4 hours should have around 280 hands played). To me this reeks of card counter (legal but not welcome in Vegas casinos, casinos can and do ban suspected card counters from playing). Also I noticed he only has used his credit line once and for a very small fraction of the full amount (sometimes you have to loss a LONG time before the count turns positive and you make a profit and having a big enough bankroll to get through the lows is crucial). Now I have a hunch why he all of sudden switched from competitor (I bet they banned him) and why he wanted to know if we share information with each other.
I get a host I don't know on the line who was very aloof and didn't want anything from me but the guests players card number. I hope the host can deduce what I did.
Dude, I give you props for having the knowledge and discipline to make a consistent profit playing a game designed to offer a disadvantage. But, if you can win like that you don't want to be tracked in a computer so you can get freebies. Be as anonymous as you can and buy your own freebies with our money
. I kinda think he was of the mind that the huge line of credit would woo a host into giving him all sorts of free stuff knowing he has a large amount of money available to lose.
I love public transportation and take the bus and monorail to work. Today was some of the easiest tourist dodging ever (I race myself everyday to best the time it takes me to get to work). Huge herds would take the escalators and I would take the nearby stairs (score!) and end up way ahead of the pack. I got into the very last monorail car (per usual) and of course it was empty while every other car was packed (yay, all the better to scope if the heard chooses stair or escalators at the stop I get off at).
OK, I'll keep to myself on the way home from work
Every once in a blue moon I'll offer advice to tourists I see trying to navigate transportation options. For example months ago, a young lady approached me at the monorail station because "I looked like I knew what I was doing" she was lost, her hotel happens to be right by the stop I go home @, I walked her to her hotel and had a nice conversation.
Twice I've corrected confused tourists at the bus stop that I take home that goes away from the strip into the "real city" and suburbs, that no this bus will not get them to their hotel and they are no longer on the strip.
Tonight the advice stops, there was a huge MMA fight and my walking route happens to go right next to the cab stand of the hotel the fight was at. The cab line was HUGE and I could hear tourists bitching about how long the wait would be. I decide to pipe up randomly and let some know that if they would walk less than 100 yards to one of two of the smaller hotels there would be empty cab stands with no wait (and there were), one guy ignored me hard core, one girl said "what?" so I repeated myself, she scoffed snottily back at me "I know!" and got right into the HUGE cab line at the hotel the fight was at. So no more "help" unless you ask me.
On to the workplace, and the LAST MINUTE IDIOTS!
Memorial Day weekend is a holiday/long weekend/the start of summer every year. Plan ahead people! I luckily didn't get any of this but bunches of my co-irkers did. People who decide to book their hotel room A) when they already have arrived in Vegas room-less B) in the car driving to Vegas C) from the airport D) from the freaking airplane. Book your room before you plan your transportation people.
Yes, we do send you marketing offers promising free/cheap rooms for certain dates. No, that does not mean we have a room sitting on wait for you if you decide to use your marketing offers at the last minute. We predict a certain number of people won't respond to the marketing so we send more people the offers than we have rooms. This is why everything says "Based on availability"
Yes, the rumor is true we do hold back rooms just for casino players, but these rooms still obey the laws of physics and there is a finite number of them. There is certain criteria of which players can get these rooms when things are busy. Let's just say if you have a history of having the potential to loss several $100 or more in a night of gambling your more likely to get one of these rooms than if you have a history of sticking $5 in a slot machine and calling it a night (even less likely if you have a history of taking free rooms and then not playing). If you don't qualify I will tell you we are sold out (sometimes we even are really and fully sold out), no amount of "I know you have rooms just sitting empty" will get you a room.
Oh and don't get me started on host marketing blocks, I'll bitch about those in the appropriate section for sucky co-workers.
Rainman and I hope the host I transferred him to is smart
I got a kind-a last minute (day or two ahead) call from a guy I could tell was a "big player" right away. He was to the point and explained that he hasn't gambled with us in years because he went to a competitor for a while. He wants to know if he still has an active line of credit (he does and it's enough to buy a new car) and who his host is (he no longer has an assigned host but he is more than qualified to be transferred to one, my department acts as a buffer for hosts, not all players can get a host on the phone).
He lets me know he would like 2 free rooms (very hard to get, we try to limit as many players a possible to 1 room only), free show tickets to a competitor (hard again, but possible through a host), and full food and beverage (host territory yet again).
His play is so far in the past that I can't even get him one free room so I offer to get a host on the line. He accepts, but sensing I'm fairly competent he asks "how much information about me can you get from a competitor?". I give him the honest answer that we have no automatic way to get info from them but sometimes we will share limited information with each other based on our mutual needs.
It takes forever to get a host on the line so I do what I typically do and pull up the information that a host uses for discretionary decisions. Hosts that are familiar with me know I know my shit and I can and will give them the right info they need so they don't even have to bother getting to a computer. I start looking at the guests play history and can see the last x# of trips, I see he played with us 2 days a year and each time he had a big but not too big buy in, just enough of an average bet to play at our tables with liberal rules (higher limit tables tend to have less of a casino advantage than lower limits), in theory we should have been making $1xx or so off him each trip. All of his trips he has won off us from a low of $5xx to a high of $1x,xxx. I also noticed some odd things like he once played 2x hands of blackjack in 4 hours (casinos deal around 70 hands per hour so 4 hours should have around 280 hands played). To me this reeks of card counter (legal but not welcome in Vegas casinos, casinos can and do ban suspected card counters from playing). Also I noticed he only has used his credit line once and for a very small fraction of the full amount (sometimes you have to loss a LONG time before the count turns positive and you make a profit and having a big enough bankroll to get through the lows is crucial). Now I have a hunch why he all of sudden switched from competitor (I bet they banned him) and why he wanted to know if we share information with each other.
I get a host I don't know on the line who was very aloof and didn't want anything from me but the guests players card number. I hope the host can deduce what I did.
Dude, I give you props for having the knowledge and discipline to make a consistent profit playing a game designed to offer a disadvantage. But, if you can win like that you don't want to be tracked in a computer so you can get freebies. Be as anonymous as you can and buy your own freebies with our money
. I kinda think he was of the mind that the huge line of credit would woo a host into giving him all sorts of free stuff knowing he has a large amount of money available to lose.
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