No Kickers Trip Report Creative Accounting Wrap-up

Who could ask for more on a trip than what we experienced on the No Kickers trip?

Well, for one thing, the Quad Queen could have won. That would have been pretty awesome.

If anyone gives me a gift horse this Christmas, I'm going to look it squarely in the chops.

Let's look at some numbers and see how we did. I have a pretty good bead on our coin in, but some of it is kind of guesstimated. Still, I'm confident it is within 5% or 10% of what we actually did.

But first... I didn't talk about the trip home! It was generally okay. We did play a bit at the airport, and the Quad Queen finished the trip with a quad there. We worry the way Air FU Canada Rude schedules flights - only a 90 minute layover or so before the Flusherville Regional Aerodrome flight. And the Rude flight is notoriously late into Toronto. Well, it was late again, and we didn't have a hope in hell of making the Flusherville flight, and certainly no time to say hello to our friends at Customs at Pearson. Fortunately the last flight of the day had room, so we got put onto that one and had time for a very leisurely overpriced dinner.

Now the wrap-up.

Total coin in for the trip: $386,772

When I tell people at Royal Canadian Veeblefetzer, where I slave my days away prairie-dogging grommets out of an automated size 7 grommet sphicter line into bins full of the things which get flushed out to God knows where that we gambled $386,772, they generally wet their pants.

Winner of the Golden Grommet!

For some reason, they seem to think that I carted almost $400,000 in cash to Las Vegas, bet it, and then carted some or most of it (or in this case, all of it plus a bit extra) home.

Consider this - it is theoretically possible to create $386K coin in by starting with a single $5 bill using judiciously applied savvy gambling and parlaying techniques, and being luckier than the only man left in a town full of virgins. This does not describe me in any way, so obviously, it takes some bankroll to do this.

No, the $386,000 is the some total of each bet made on the trip. And typically, our play returns very close to 100% of those bets. Theoretically.

Total combined win / loss for the trip: $5090

That is not too damn shabby. This represents a 101.316% return on our coin in. (Math guy will let me know if my Jonny Quest big button calculator has failed me.)

But there's more... read on.

Total Quad Queen win / loss for the trip: $-2590

Total Royal Flusher win / loss for the trip: $7680

Yes, I crushed it.

But there's more... read on. The Man withheld $3450 in taxes. Depending on how we did for the whole year, we might be able to get part or all of that back.

Total Quad Queen win / loss for the trip including taxes withheld: -$1990

Total Royal Flusher win / loss for the trip including taxes withheld: $10,630

Combined win / loss for the trip including taxes withheld: $8640

Bottom line for me here is I can say that I won over $10K. That is a first, and miles ahead of any previous result in my 52 trips thus far.

But there's more... let's look at the comps we received during the trip. I figured room rates based on what we would actually pay for the room. I only included one set of room nights for the days we had more than one room even if we didn't stay in the same place. That's because I would never pay for two rooms in one night just for the fun of it - if it was out of pocket, we'd stay in one room.

I also added 12% to the room night value for the room tax. If you pay for a room, you are paying this hefty tax. I suppose could have also added resort fees that were waived for the nights we had comped rooms in cases where that applies, but I didn't.

Okay, here's a look at the rooms, meals, free play, cashback, and other goodies that we got.

Comps Oct 2014 No Kickers Trip
Nights include 12% room tax we'd have to pay
California room 4 nights at $70	$          280
California food	$          350
Cal freeplay	$            25
Cal Cashback	$          208
T-shirts	$            20
Golden Nugget Room 5 nights at $168 (paid for 3 nights)	$          840
Golden Nugget Wine	$            85
Golden Nugget Freeplay	$            30
Golden Nugget earned Freeplay	$            60
Landry's	$            50
Four Queens food (October)	$          400
Four Queens freeplay	$       1,000
Four Queens comp dollars earned	$          800
Four Queens cashback	$          375
Mandalay Bay Resort Comp	$            50
Mlife Pointplay	$            25
Citizen Cafe	$            27
D Freeplay and Matchplay	$            10
Downtown Grand food	$            65
Downtown Grand earned freeplay	$            25
California room 2 nights at $70	$          140
California food	$          200
California cashback 2	$          142
Bottle Gentleman Jack on points	$            32
Prime Rib on points	$            25
Total Comps:	$       5,264

The rule of thumb for comps is that casinos will return 40% of your theoretical loss in comps (although this number is lowering... Boyd I think is looking at 30%). I don't know how they view video poker, but just for fun, let's say that we could expect a 2% loss. That would account for mistakes, play on games that return less, not getting enough royals, etc. 

So, if you calculate say a 2% loss on say $400K of coin in (to keep the numbers easy, the '8' key on my Jonny Quest Big Button Calculator is kind of sticky), you get $8000. 40% of that is $3200.

I guess we did all right in that department.

When all is said and done, we won enough to cover all our hard expenses - airfare, taxes, tips, Left-B-Hind kennel for Chippy, limo, rental car, purchased meals with some left over besides.

That equates to a completely free two week Las Vegas vacation (which beats the pants off of last summer's bill of $7000 for a 10 day Las Vegas vacation.) I think that's pretty damn savvy.

Now... how did we do for the year?

The Quad Queen had $1800 withheld in 2014 and she qualifies to get all of that back.

2014 results	Royal Flusher	Quad Queen	Combined		Comps
Spirit of Savvy Jan 2014	-3244	-435	-3679		2400
Nifty Fifty April 2014	1310	-1620	-310		2461
Kenny and LuLU July 2014	-4610	0	-4610		2485
No Kickers Oct 2014	7680	-2590	5090		5264
Totals for 2014	1136	-4645	-3509		12610
Taxes we can get back	0	1800
Net loss 2014	+1136	-2845	-1709

Not too shabby!

Well, that's the skinny for this, our final trip of 2014.

Royal Flusher
Wishing you season's greetings and a Savvy New Year!