Planning the $1000 Las Vegas Vacation - part 10 Let's Get All Mathy In Here

In the previous post, I explained how to be a machine pro. And pointed out why I don't want to be one.

This is vacation. Not a business.

Heck, I know a few pros. They are often cranky. They swear a lot. They live a life of stress and uncertainty and consider penalty cards in their sleep. Their fingers are rubbed raw from the machines.  They wear nothing but logo casino t-shirts. And they suffer more ups and downs than a Hawaiian Airlines 737. (One such ship, the ill-fated Queen Liliuokalani performed almost 90,000 take-offs and landings before 20 feet of her skin ripped off, mid-flight. I've seen a few machine pros with rips in their skins, too.)

There's another good reason - I am severely under-bankrolled for it on this trip. Not even close. Not gonna happen.

Now, let's get down to the latest planning happenings for this upcoming $1K bankroll Scrounge Trip.

Tropicana

I got on the phone again to the Trop last week and got bounced around for about 15 minutes before ever getting to talk to one of their Marketing Sheilas. I hung up and tried a different tack and finally got someone who made some sense.

As you may recall, I've booked there without knowing what (if any) my offer is.

Well, it turns out I am good for the 3 nights, $75 free play (down from $100 last month), $50 food a day (up from $100 over 3 days), and $100 in show tickets (aka two).

Heck yeah.

At the end of the call, I asked for the person's name and she told me.

"Melli."

I paused.

"Did you say, Melli?"

"Yes."

"Did you used to work elsewhere?"

I totally knew who this was.

Back when the Downtown Grand opened, we had a lovely young woman become our host. We were her first ever customers.

And now Melli (which isn't her real name, but I misheard it on day 1 and she was two polite to correct me, but I still call her that now, and anyway, Melli is a nicer name than Some Marketing Sheila) is working at the Tropicana Las Vegas!

I'm going to take her to lunch with some of the $50 a day. Perhaps she can have a scone, or a blueberry or something.

So that's great, a bit more freeplay, and some free food to ease the budget, as I had hoped.

But this is where it gets REALLY COOL.

T.I.

I have an offer from T.I. for 3 nights and $200 freeplay.

I have another offer from T.I. for 3 nights and a slot tournament. I figured the EV of the tournament to be $179.25 but of course, almost none of that is guaranteed.

Because I want to continue to get offers at T.I., I don't want to take an offer from them and stiff them. I enjoy having a decent relationship on the strip, and there are some pretty good games there.

My historical coin-in on which the offers are based is around $8K to $10K per day.

Well, I got an email from them the other day improving the first offer to 3 nights, $200 freeplay, and a petite suite.

Or... (cough cough...) 3 nights, no suite, and instead you could have ANOTHER $200 FREE PLAY.

Wait, what?!

All kinds of numbers started running through my head, just like a skinned machine pro. With $400 free play, could I risk maintaining say an $8K a day play level at T.I.? Because I want those offers to keep coming.

Let's take a step back though...

The Twirling Tassle Hotel and Casino and the Cost of Short Paytables

We have various plays in town. Let's look at a typical one, the Twirling Tassle. I like the rooms and amenities, and the show in the lounge there, Merkins, is out of this world.

I play 7/5 Bonus Poker there, quarters, halves, dollars, on the Strict Rules of Parlay.

I figure the rooms and food I get are worth $500. I get $75 in free play.

A better gambling place might have 8/5 Bonus Poker. But I love that floor show and the pool and the food. So I'm willing to give up a percent.

I give them $8K of play a day. That's $24K total. The 1% costs me $240. All things considered, not a bad trade.

On a long trip, maybe I look at playing a total of $100,000 coin in. I figure the cost of shorter paytables is $1000, and then I look at the comps and goodies I get in return and figure if its worth it to me.

But I think I came to a very interesting discovery.

Back to T.I.

The question on my mind was this. Say I limit my T.I. stay to two days. I have to do $16K coin in to cover the offer. Say I play 50 cent single line Bonus Poker, or Jacks or Better. What chance do I have of even coming close to hitting the coin-in I'd like to do using the $400 freeplay?

Now bear with me, it's going to get all mathy in here.

That's where some video poker bankroll analysis software comes in. I ordered up the latest version of Dunbar's Risk Analyzer for Video Poker from LVA. (Video Poker for Winners also has bankroll analysis stuff, but I don't own that one.)

I plugged in 50 cent Jacks or Better, 6400 hands (to give $16K coin in, that's 6400 hands x $2.50 per hand.)

With a $400 bankroll, I have a 40% chance of reaching my goal. And a 60% chance of going broke before reaching it.

It looks like I'd have to put some of my own money in.

With a $600 bankroll, I have a 62% chance of reaching my goal. And a 38% chance of getting button-fucked.

With an $800 bankroll, I have an 82% chance of reaching my goal. And an 18% chance of going broke.

So with the $400 freeplay, if I can scrape up $400 additional cash out of my meagre $1000 trip bankroll, I have a pretty good shot at meeting the coin-in goals I've set for myself. And, I'd have a chance, as always, of hitting a Royal.

I played around with the software some more, and this is where my eyes got opened.

What if I played, say Bonus Poker, instead of Jacks. I like Bonus, but it returns about a third of a percent less than Jacks, in the long run.

With the same $800 bankroll, Bonus Poker has a 30% Risk of Ruin.

Huh????

One third of a percent almost doubles my chances of going broke on this endeavor????

Holy crap.

Switching the game to 7/5 Bonus (remember that 1 and a bit percent I'm giving up at the Twirling Tassle?) I have but a 54% chance of making my coin in goal, and the risk of ruin has ballooned to 46% from 18% with the Jacks or Better.

Thank you Dunbar.

I just learned something about the short term that I didn't see before - those shitty paytables don't just have a vig on your long term costs. They devastate your short term bankroll, particularly if it isn't very big.

Damn you, variance!

Just compare the 9/6 Jacks to the 7/5 Bonus results:

9/6 Jacks 82% chance of making goal. 90% chance of getting 3/4 the way or better.

7/5 Bonus 57% chance of making goal.

Another interesting view for this play is the distribution of outcomes.

9/6 Jacks outcomes. Looks like a 16% chance of a Royal to me.

7/5 Bonus. 12% chance of Royal. Note how many fewer middling outcomes there are.

So, What to Do?

With a $1000 gambling budget I didn't imagine I would have many long video poker sessions like the ones I usually enjoy.

And, I don't want to spend my time chasing positive plays.

But this one... this one seems too good. It's at a property I enjoy, lower denom, slant top, very nice room... plus I do enjoy a challenge like this, and a couple of days of pretending to know what I'm doing out of a long trip is a good balance.

I'm going for it!

Planning the $1000 Las Vegas Vacation - part 9 How to be a Machine Pro Advantage Player at Video Poker

My approach to each Vegas trip changes. Sometimes I try this, sometimes that. Sometimes choices are based on where the good games are, sometimes on where I want to be even if the games suck.

I get a lot of unsolicited advice about what I play, and where. I guess I can understand that, as I am passionate about Vegas and gambling, and people want me to do better.

And, a portion of the readership of the blog comes from vpfree, which has probably the most vocal, talented, dedicated, and video-poker obsessed people around. These folks know how to ferret out and take advantage of a good play.

But here's the thing.

I don't want to be an video poker advantage player.

Now, if you do, here's how you go about it:

• only play when your total expected return is over 100%

That seems simple, right? So how do you do that?

• play only the games with the best paytables around
• combine game return with promotions - cash back, free play, giveaways, bounce back cash, point multiplier days
• construct your play so that your choice of game and denom are all supported by a large enough bankroll to remove the risk of ruin, if possible
• train on your chosen game(s) until you are accurate and fast. Then train some more until you are near perfect. Then train more. Then train some more.

There are many more nuances but that's the heart of it.

If I was retired and lived in Vegas, or somewhere where enough advantages could be found, I might consider being an advantage player.

But for the purposes of my Vegas trips, when you are playing games you might not enjoy that much, when you are putting long hours in on possibly uncomfortable machines, in properties you may not like that much...

...it becomes work. A job.

Vegas - it's a vacation, not a job. And that vacation includes gratuitously placed pictures of gorgeous women with money.

The Dollar 9/6 Jacks Experiment

For a few trips, I played heavy dollar full pay Jacks at a property where, when combined with free play offers, and cash back, the play was positive. I had to do about $10K coin in per day, on uprights. I got free rooms but don't like the hotel.

After about four or five iterations of doing this, I was losing. I never hit a Royal, and that's pretty much why.

I found it interesting at first, and challenging, but then grueling. It wasn't much fun and it wasn't working and I didn't like the hotel rooms and I was losing and getting frustrated. And they kept changing the play requirements.

Why would I give up on a great positive play? Because it became work. It was stressing me out.

No thanks, time to regroup.

Shortened Paytables

The Golden Nugget has some of the worst paytables downtown. Some people go ballistic when they see I am playing them.

Guess what, life time, I am a winner at the Nugget. I've hit more Royals there than anywhere else, and I've hit more dollar Royals there than anywhere else (three, including two on the same machine).

Short pay Jacks Royal

What does this really tell me, though? I know paytables matter.

Well, I think it means that in the short term, anything can happen. In the long term, it does matter that you pick better paytables, to assure a better long term return.

But how long is the long term? As a vacation going to Vegas, I think it takes many years before I get to the mathematical long term.

Balance

I like staying at the Nugget. I like the rooms, I like the food. I hate the paytables. Until recently, I was willing to give up a percent on paytables to have a comped stay. They throw free play, free nights, and pick up some food on the back end.

This is how I liked it, and I think it was pretty good value for money, overall.

That said, they continue to lower and lower the paytables and now they are among the worst - worse even than many strip locations.

So, I think our days there are numbered. We'll use up the free play and free rooms, and play elsewhere. When the offers dry up, we'll see what we want to do.

I'm willing to be sheered a little, but not slaughtered.

Anyway, the point I'm making here is, I never professed to be an advantage player, I never professed to be a professional at this, and I don't profess to make all decisions purely on the basis of the EV of the play.

There are other things besides the money it costs to play the game that are important to me.

And with that out of the way, an interesting play has come my way, and doing some math has made me think a bit differently about those short paytables.

More to come.

Planning the $1000 Las Vegas Vacation - part 8 Don't Blow Tommy Wind!

Groupon is my new best Cheap Bastard in Vegas friend. Groupon is offering me a great deal on a Brazillian wax. Awesome, I adore Latin music.

I haven't posted in a while, as the planning for the $1000 gambling budget Scrounge trip is kind of in a 'wait-n-see' or 'squint-n-grope' mode. I'm hunting here and there for deals and slowly honing my itinerary from day to day.

And with coupon books, Trello lists, spreadsheets, groupons hitting my inbox every 7 minutes, forums, blogs, Twitter, Instagram, Tumblr, Fumblr, FreakR, FaceSit, kreepo, fiGGle, myTripTrap, Grimster, popShute, SLIQ, HipStur, and on and on and on and on, I'm hitting e-fucking planning overload.

But that's okay, because I have no fewer than 4 activities/meals penciled in already.

On penSil.

There are two offer issues swinging in the breeze right now that need to be sorted. One, the Tropicana. Will the June offer replicate the very sweet April and May offers? Still unknown at this time and I may not know until June 1.

Second, I have a great offer from T.I. which includes a really decent slot tournament. But I can't give them the play I have been giving on the last few trips.

I'm toying with the idea of contacting my host, explaining the situation (I'm broke) and pointing out that I can't play per usual, but when I come back next trip with the Quad Queen, we will, and can she fix it up so that I don't burn my bridges on minimal play.

But that's all mostly guilt head-games on my part, I have to decide to either burn them for the offer, or not. But my host is so nice!!! And isn't that what's important in gambling?

Meanwhile, 10,000 new Royal Flusher business cards arrived. These are wonderful. They are such a step up from the first batch, and they have a full color back chock full of... well, you'll have to see one to find out what's on the back.

These savvy new business cards are so great that the Golden Nugget has built a promotion around them.

I am really flattered, but the Smug Nugget knows savvy!

Meanwhile back on Grope-on, I've been watching the deals. It's a bit disappointing - so many of them are geared to two people, and I can't use them - unless I want to eat $35 worth of In-and-Thrust Double Cheesegrease Sliders for $22.

Actually, that sounds pretty do-able.

One came in that interested me from a what the heck is this point of view. A magic show.

Cool, I like magic.

$48.99 value for... get this.... $12. Twelve. Bucks.

Music. He plays guitar and magic happens. He plays drums and magic happens. Then there are dancers.

Great! I love music, and dancing beautiful magic women.

It's the air brushed Tommy Wind! In the Tommy Wind theater, no less. The Grope-on site said that the Tommy Wind deal had died down. But I blustered my way and tried to buy it anyway, and I got it! I just hope that I won't find Tommy Wind blows.

I also get this deal offered a lot:

That sounds kind of useful. Because Flusherville is a hard-to-reach place. Will they come here and remove my unwanted hair? I hope so!

I read the details on this procedure and I'm confused.

During a basic bikini wax, an aesthetician removes hair from any area exposed by a typical bathing suit made of fig leaves. This includes the top and sides of the bikini line as well as the inner thighs, if necessary. The Brazilian wax takes it a step further, removing hair from the entire region, front to back. Since many clients prefer to leave a small, trimmed swath of hair in a strip or triangle just below the panty line, some aestheticians may use the term “full Brazilian” to refer to a session in which no hair is left behind.

Are the Pretty Kitty People from Brazil? Are bikinis made of fig leaves in Rio?

My uncle used to swath wheat with a big implement that he straddled and rode around on, is this the same?

I'm not sure the Pretty Kitty deal is for me, although the woman in the picture sure looks happy about her swath.

I'm seriously thinking about the Million Dollar Quartet Grope-on but it's a little over $50, and that could cut into my lunch money big-time.

Can't even.

How is it I find out that a thing is 50% off before I even have ever heard of it and never even knew it could possible be a thing?

Eyebrow fucking threading??? What is this painful ritual??? I'm going to have nightmares, and I just got over my anal bleaching nightmares from three years ago when that was supposedly a thing.

Maybe this eyebrow thread is decorative. Like dental floss.

Now, Pottery Painting, that's something I could do.

Hot chicks, wet clay, twelve bucks, Flusher style.

This trip just gets better and better.

Planning the $1000 Las Vegas Vacation - part 7 Filling in the Blanks

I'm enjoying planning this trip as much or probably more than actually living the last trip. Things are falling into place but I have to do some more detailed work on the itinerary so I have lots of activities to keep me out of the big bad casinos when the bankroll runs out.

Here are a few updates to fill you in.

New Cup O' Flusher!

Hotels

I have been on pins and needles wondering if the Tropicana will repeat the great offers I got for April and May (4 nights, $100 food, $125 free play, free show tickets). I called them a few weeks ago to see if the June offers were visible - they weren't.

I called back the other day and the June offers still aren't showing in the system, but the helpful and sultry-voiced Reservation Sheila offered to book my nights comped, and if the offer came later, I could add it on to the reservation. So that's what I did.

And no resort fee on the comped room, she said.

Meanwhile, after I ripped the Plaza a new one about hiding their resort fees, I think it's only fair to update you.

When I updated my reservation, cutting it down from 4 nights to just 1, I got a confirmation email that was much clearer than the one I got when I originally booked. (That one was just lines of text and the resort fee price was buried in it.)

Here's what the latest confirmation looks like.

So instead of rating 10 out 10 on the Sleazesort Feeometer, the Plaza now rates 9 out of 10 on the Sleazeort Feeometer. They didn't disclose anything about the fee during the booking process, but it looks like, when their systems are working right, they are at least clear about it in the confo email.

I am still not sure if the Trop is going to come through with a June offer or not, but there was an interesting development on MLife MILF this week - some additional offers were available for booking, including 2 nights at Mirage comped, with $100 free play and $100 resort credit. There are enough days between my Luxhole and Mandalay Bay stays that I could harvest a third MILF offer this trip, in between, right on the dates I booked the Trop for.

Just as I was about to go back and book it for insurance, all the summer offers disappeared from MILF. As usual, their system is unpredictable, unreliable, inconsistent, unfathomable, irrational, and even when working to the extent that you could actually find and book an offer, sucks internet syphilitic arseholes. In the metadata sense, of course, not to be rude or anything.

Meanwhile, in the Golden Nugget department, there is sadness. I got a June offer in email the other day and it includes a big hunk of freeplay available for both QQ and I... for the day after I leave Vegas. If I'd only known this was coming, I would have stayed an extra day. I did my due diligence and called the Nugget to find out when free play was active before I booked my flights. But that's the way the nicotine-stained deal button bounces.

Coupons and Groupons

The Las Vegas Advisor Pocketbook of Values arrived! So I'm good to go on that front. There are a crapload of match play and free play ones in there, and lots of food ones too.

To some extent, I will get punished for being a Single Lonely Diner because many of the deals are buy one get one free. But quite a few of these also offer 50% off for S.L.D.s. I could partake of as many as 16 half-price buffets if I use them all. Urrp.

I had a look at Grope-on and got the email thing rolling where they send me up to 99 emails a day listing endless Grope-ons for Las Vegas. (I also signed up Norbert, the boss at Royal Canadian Veeblefetzer, to receive up to 99 Grope-on emails a day for 28 different cities. That should keep him off of Movie Star Makeover for a few weeks until he figures it out.)

There are some decent values coming through on restaurants and shows. The restaurant ones are usually skewed to two diners though.

The next thing is I have to do is have Jimmy Poon plot the most efficient and effective route to do coupon runs for the Strip, for off-Strip, and for Locals properties. I can handle the downtown plan myself. It can't get any simpler than stumbling from downtown casino to downtown casino, holding the coupon book high in one hand like a drunken Statue of Liberty.

The other thing is, I have to decide how far afield I'm willing to go to use a coupon. Do I really want to drive out to the Desert Whole suburb of North Las Vegas to use the "100 credit bonus for a quad in a denomination matching the calendar date our bartender lost her virginity for the 65th time" at the Col. O. Positive's Leather 'N Chaps Punk Rock Line Dance Pool Room and Saloon?

I'm pretty desperate though, and 66 times is a charm.

Anal Retentive Overplanning

I calculated that there is a 82% chance that I am guilty of over-analyzing things. This tendency also leads to over-planning. But when you are a cheap bastard, making use of every coupon known to man or beast, it comes with the territory.

I've been playing with Trello as a way of keeping track planning for the trip. I have a Trello board that is a catch-all for all the activities I'm considering, and another board for a rough schedule. Normally I would have Jimmy Poon do a spreadsheet for this stuff, but Trello is really easy to use.

My schedule board has a list for each day. It will be easy to rejig things on the fly because with Trello, you can simply drag items from list to list, something that isn't as simple on a spreadsheet. (Michael James, you should take a look at Trello.)

(The one thing they missed is this - you should be able to have a date marked on an item and a series of lists with dates, and when you move that item to a different day, it should update the item's due date.)

Air Canada Maple Leaf Lounge

I have a four hour delay in Toronto on the way out, and the same on the way back (but no life-crushing red-eye!) so I'm trying to figure out how to get into the Maple Leaf Lounge. (I can't buy access on a points ticket.)

Passes are available on eBay and such for around $40. I saw some that were cheaper and sent a message on them yesterday, but nothing has come back yet.

There is another lounge, the Plaza Premium lounge that anyone with cash can pay to get in. And, I found a $10 off coupon on line. The Plaza Premium lounge, I think, has a bit more you could make dinner out of than the Maple Leaf Lounge. Like real protein, meat even. Both have an open bar.

For $30 or so (with coupon), I could hang out in the Plaza Premium lounge for a couple of hours, and have dinner and drinks. I'd likely pay about the same for dinner out in the airport. So maybe I'll give this a shot.

New Business Cards

I can't believe how many business cards I've left around Vegas, many of them with bartender Mike at the Mike's bar at the Four Queens. I've even handed a few out in person to very savvy readers of this blog.

Believe it or not, I'm almost out. So I did an update of the design and put some extra special super savvy info on the back of them. And, I'm getting Signature Glossy stock!

Ordering through VistaPrint is really an endeavor. Just when you think you've completed the order, they start laying on all the additional things you could buy with your artwork slathered all over them. You name it, you can put your name on it.

They have a pretty good system for taking your uploaded artwork and showing you what the various items would look like. See for yourself!

I ordered one of these so Jimmy Poon could keep the blog running. He'll love it!

Make America Flusher Again!

Wall sign? I'm IN!

How about something for the yard in Flusherville?

I ordered ten or twenty thousand of these new business cards, on nicer stock than the last ones, so there will be a lot more chances for you to find them around Vegas. They should arrive well before I leave. I ordered some stickers too, to leave here and there around the casinos.

I still remember the story about a reader who follows me on one of the Vegas boards that I frequent, who was reading a trip report while in Vegas, saw a picture of a business card I'd left on a machine at the airport, and then happened to sit at that machine, and found (and presumably safely disposed of) the offending business card.

Anyway, if you find one in town, let me know about it!

Planning the $1000 Las Vegas Vacation - part 6 Scroungy McScroungeface

It's been a great couple of days here in Cheapbastardland aka Flusherville. I've worked out a few things and got some nice discounts.

And there is exciting news! Where to start?

Exciting News!

First of all, the Las Vegas Advisor coupons have arrived! So I'm good to go there. I can probably use more of the buffet coupons than I thought I would be able to - many of the BOGOs (Buy One Get One free) either state on the front or in the fine print on the back that they can be used for 50% off for Single Lonely Diners.

And that's me.

Sometimes I wonder if I would have the cubes to find someone in line that is going to pay that would let me apply the coupon so I could eat free.

I don't wonder it for long. That would be a pretty outrageous ask. We'll see...

Next up, the car.

The Car!

I did two approaches. AeroPlan has offers where you rent a car, you get a discount, and (useless) AeroFailPlan points. And, Royal Canadian Veeblefetzer (where the grommet shavings are often swept up and mistaken for wild rice in the cafeteria) happens to have corporate discount and upgrade codes.

Fortunately, the Quad Queen works in the officy part of the plant, in the Estimatin' Department. And she was able to get those codes.

Jimmy Poon and I sat down and he opened two 'browser' (whatever that is) windows - and in one we ran the numbers for the AeroFUPlan codes, and in the other, the exact same parameters for the Veeblefetzer codes.

I arrive in Vegas late in the evening, and the next day I probably just want to stay put, rather than picking up a car and tooling around everywhere. So I looked at a 10 day rental.

Yikes.

It was crazy town expensive. Over $400 US. Halfway to $500 US. OK, OK, $451 US. And that was with deselecting every collision damage, personal umbrage, fashion disaster, and alien insurrection waiver I could find. (We are otherwise covered. Except for aliens.)

And, as you will recall with incredible perception and detail, I have a $200 credit to use for travel expenses on a Visa card - expenses such as a car rental. Well that wasn't going to cut it at all.

We cut back to a week on both 'browser' windows and by Godfrey it was still pretty darn expensive. (I think it was my late Uncle Jack that used to say by Godfrey, but I'm pretty sure he said a few worse things than that out in the machine shed when parts brought from Winnipeg didn't fit (which seemed to be a daily occurrence on the farm when I visited) or knuckles got skinned (which was an hourly occurrence on the farm). But that's a whole 'nother story.)

Jimmy Poon left to go home to work on the glycol-cooled supercomputer he was building in his basement from three milk crates of old parts (don't worry, not the album sized milk crates, the useless newer milk crates) and an old Heathkit shortwave scalp massager with 12AX7 tube pre-amp he'd bought on eBay for about three bucks and eleven bucks shipping.

Jimmy Poon's Massager

He might be able not get the computer running but once he got the 1200 watt power supply wired up, he would sure as shootin' he have the sweetest sounding marital aid.

I kept poking around and then I think I discovered something important about car rental rates. When I changed my pickup day to a Sunday, the rates dropped. Big time.

I also thought that hitting a week dead on might be important, but when I extended the rental period by one day (to 8 days), the total amount went up by one day's worth on the 7 day price.

Grand total for 8 days... and I got an additional discount for prepaying... $252 US. With my Visa card credit, the car comes to $92 for 8 days of top down cruising Las Vegas, playing bumper cars on the I-15, and singing Groove Me in the parking lots, all completely free of Lyftber driver's and their preachy Dr. Shamusan Wail CDs that told me that debt just gives power to The Man.

I'm awfully tired of preachy CD men. They preach. Yeah, and they sell. Here's what I was subjected to in a Lyftber ride, last trip, in bullet point form:

• Debt - remember that the money you have in your possession is nothing but energy—so refuse to plug in to an energy system that’s not even there (Huh???)
• "I try not to think about money too frequently because it’s been my observation that people who do so tend to think about almost nothing else."  — Dr. Shamusan Wail
• Living An Inspired Life VIEW ALL PRODUCTS  — Dr. Shamusan Wail

Beware the wise fake doctor man with an online store.

The dates I got completely make sense too. I get that Saturday off. I have the car for a Big Move from the strip to downtown, another Big Move from downtown to the Strip, and a Drop Off at the McCarran Rental Car Ranch just before my sad, sad non-red-eye flight home, because all things must pass (with full odds).

Next up, a Savvy Deal on telecommunications bandwidth!!!

Roam Mobility, who I use every trip to Vegas, has a promotion. When you buy a top-up plan now-ish, you get a code for 25% off a top-up plan this summer.

I feel a bit bad about this because what I did is savvy-sneaky.

I bought a plan for 1 day (my first day) for $5 or whatever. And they sent me, by email, a promo code that I can user for 25% off top-ups bought this summer. As in after June 1. So, on June 1, I am going to buy a top-up for the rest of my trip starting from the 2nd day, to run to the end. And I get 25% off the normal rate.

What a fucking financial angel I am.

But hey, 25% of approximately $60 is... money. Saved.

The Saving Of My Arse

Next in the Exciting News department, is the saving of my arse. At some expense.

OK, so when I booked my AeroFailPlan points ticket, the flight out was showing as being on an Airbus with 3 and 3 seat configuration, and the return on the usual 767 Slaveship. I was able to book a Rouge Rough Plus seat on the return for an extra $42 CAD. Believe me, it's worth it to have extra legroom on a Slaveship flight.

But for the flight out, the Airbus 320, having fewer seats, did not have any available Rough Plus seats. I would have to suck it up on the way to Vegas.

I got notified that there was a flight change for my outbound. For the life of me, I couldn't figure out what it was. I looked and looked. Finally, all those years of training I did on the 'Spot the Difference' cartoons in Highlights magazine as a lonely child paid off.

The Airbus had been changed out for a Boner 767 Slaveship. Damn....

But wait!!! That mean a different seat configuration. I hauled ass into the AC site and sure enough, Rough Plus seats were now available. So I bought for the outbound. $42 CAD.

Air Canada Rouge Seating Map

Worth. Every. Penny. Even on a Cheapass (TM) trip such as the Scrounge trip.