Club Grazie Benefits

I enrolled in the Club Grazie Players Club on New Year's Day (the day I met my new favorite poker player aka: the Venetian). After I enrolled, I was itching to play some black jack, but all the tables had a minimum bet of $25, which was a little too rich for my blood, so I played video black jack. It turns out that this is roughly the equivalent of playing slots! I put in $20 which lasted me quite a while and I kept recycling the money through. Finally, I busted out and proceeded to put another $60 in there, so I ended up losing $80.

Ever since this visit, I've been getting offer after offer from the Venetian/Palazzo for complimentary nights at the casino. The fine print says that I need to maintain my historical level of play. Out of curiosity, I checked to find out how much I had cycled through the machine in the 90 minutes I was playing... turns out it was quite a bit! $4,679!!

So, THAT'S why I've been receiving offer after offer... well, I called up to find out more about the program. Other interesting tidbits:

• If you're a poker player and you play 6 hours a day in the poker room, they will reduce the amount of your suite (as long as your price is $399 or less) to $119 on Sun - Thurs and $159 on Fri-Sat nights. So, you can book the fancy suites for $369/night, play your six hours in the poker room and then have the poker desk call to the front desk to have them adjust your room rate. Good to know!
• You earn food comps while you're playing. But they don't carry over! I had earned about $50 of food credit from my 90 minutes of video black jack and I had no idea!
• They won't charge you for your hotel room if you don't maintain your level of play. They just won't offer you any more free nights.
• To earn comps by playing slots, it's better to play longer with smaller bets than the way I did it, which was very concentrated playing.
• To get a comped night for playing table games, your average bet has to be about $200/bet.
• If you're staying there, open a credit line, charge everything to your room and then when you leave, check to see if you have any comps. If you do, have it applied to your bill.
• If you aren't staying there and play the slots, you can go to a credit desk to get the credits you've earned (like my $50!!) transferred to a restaurant so you can use it up before you go.

I'm ready for another Vegas trip! Who's with me?

Vegas Trip

I'm back from Vegas and TIRED! After getting off to a slow start on Saturday, we finally hit the road and had a relatively uneventful ride out to Vegas. We made the ritual stop at In-n-Out in Barstow.

We checked into the Las Vegas Hilton and Stephen at the front desk gave me a free upgrade because it was my birthday! And then after being in the room for a bit, there was a knock at the door and it was room service! Stephen also sent up a gift basket for my birthday! He is definitely getting a "thank you" note from me! I was thrilled!


For dinner, we went out to Mon Ami Gabi and got a table out on the patio. It was fabulous! The weather was perfect and the people watching was really fun. The best part? We had a front row view of the Bellagio water show every 15 minutes!
Water Show at the Bellagio

Steph & Chris

Jon & Shane

Travis & Ron
Dinner itself was pretty good. After dinner, we went over to the Bellagio to check out the new set-up in the atrium. It's gorgeous inside, as usual! Check out this snail!!!


And the pretty umbrella flowers in the atrium area!
Shane & Steph in the Bellagio atrium

After that, we sadly, did no gambling and went back to the hotel to play Race for the Galaxy so we could get to bed early and do some serious gambling on Sunday. Oh my, we are dorks! I tried to get them to play for $1 per point, but no one seemed that interested!

On Sunday, we had breakfast/lunch at Blueberry Hill and then headed over to the Pinball Hall of Fame and I got my fill of Addam's Family & Fish Tales! Then we finally got to the gambling!

We headed over to the MGM Grand because that is our poker room of choice. Travis and I played from about 3 PM - 9 PM. I think by the time we left, I was down about $75 and Travis was down about half that. We went out to the Burger Bar, dropped of the non-gambling folk back at the hotel then headed back to the MGM Grand for more poker! We got there around 11:30 PM and stayed until 4:30 AM. By that time, Matt, our new private pilot friend had gone to bed and all the fun people left, so we took off too. I tried to talk Travis into hitting Casino Royale for some craps, but he wasn't havin' any of that.

I woke up on Monday morning because Travis' phone alarm went off at 8 AM. I contemplated getting up to go play more poker before breakfast, but sadly the Las Vegas Hilton doesn't have a poker room. So I just went back to sleep... as Chris said, "Thank God Travis needs to back to LA tonight for class, otherwise we'd never get out of here..."

Overall, we all had a great time and I got lots of poker in. Unfortunately, no craps, but that will have to wait til I go with my friend Gary who loves craps and poker! Trip is being scheduled for June as I write this! I also found out that if you have a player's card at the MGM and play an average of 4 hours per day, the pit boss will call the front desk to have them knock up to $40 off your room night. The catch is that you have to book the room through the MGM website or by phone and you can't already be getting some special deal they have. It would've worked out great for us if we had known that because the rooms were listed at $140 per night so it would've only been $100 per night! Next time, I'm definitely doing that.

My new gambling love... poker!

I went to Vegas last weekend for my birthday and the first night there, Travis asked if I want to hit the poker room. I've never played poker for any money ever and pretty much have just seen some World Series of Poker episodes on ESPN, so I have an idea of how it works. And of course, I know the order of ranking on the hands. It was getting close to 1 AM and we hadn't gambled at all yet, so I said, "Sure, I'll give it a shot."

We stayed at the MGM and their poker room is actually not a room, but a barricaded area. It was pretty cool. We put our names on the waiting list for the $2/$4 limit table and while we were waiting, Travis filled me in on the procedure of the table. After about 10 minutes, we both had seats at two different tables.

I started with $100 just to test the waters. According to Travis, I bet loosely because I almost always put in my $2 to see what the flop was even if I had crappy cards. Then, I'd even go ahead and put more money in to chase a card on the 4th or 5th one. Sometimes it worked and sometimes it didn't. I'm sure there's lots of room for improvement in my betting strategy.

Travis would come over periodically and see how things were going. Around 3 AM, he said, "Just let me know when you're ready to go, we can leave anytime you want." I furrowed my brow and thought, "Does Travis really not know me?" He walked away and I told the guy next to me, "That's like a drug addict telling another, I'll stop using drugs when you do!" Around 5:30 AM, my eyes were getting pretty tired, so I told Travis I was ready to go back up to the room.

The verdict? I had $97. Not too bad. At one point around 4 AM (?), I had almost all my chips in a big pot that I won (whew!) and came back to almost even money. So, overall, not bad at all, considering it was my first time playing ever.

We played a bit at the Flamingo on Sunday and while I think I was betting a bit better, I didn't get that great of cards. So, I think I lost about $40. The thing I didn't like about the Flamingo was that we were seated at the same table. I prefer being at two separate tables. However, the Flamingo had this jackpot board, so you could win $$ if you hit certain hands, mostly 4 of a kinds and straight flushes.

I'm totally ready to hit Vegas again and try my hand at more poker. I have several friends who are into poker though, so I'm sure I'll get lots of advice from all of them. I'm sure I'm doing everything wrong, but whatever. I had fun.

I'm outta here!

I'm outta here and on my way to Vegas!! Whew. This is awesome. I'm finally finished catching up from all the hard drive crash stuff and February financial results are finished. I can go into my birthday weekend worry-free!