California Here I Come, Pass Line Odds and Dynamo Hum

The urge to party has never been stronger and the urge to party in Vegas has never been bigger. So it would seem.

Finding myself committed to a trip, with nowhere reasonable (i.e. free) to stay, I pondered. I did have some options, including the 35,800 gems I'd stashed away on the Wynn Slots app. Those could provide some nights, but they certainly wouldn't be free.

I decided to start groveling. I'd had a host at the Cal who I'd taken great care of every single stay - and there had been eight or ten of them. And when I say this host was well taken care of, you could count the ways on one hundred fingers.

However... we'd drifted apart. And my play had dropped in 2018 and 2019, and I really didn't require a host, nor could I give the kind of play we used to give.

For $10K coin in per day each, we'd get a mini suite, limo pickup at the airport, food coupon books to cover our meals, and usually a free meal at Redwood Steakhouse.

I decided to contact my old host and see if there was anything she could do. I explained we'd been absent because of covid, all my points and status was zeroed, blah blah blah.

It wasn't even an hour when I got an email back.

Three nights comped.

NO RESORT FEE!!

And that includes the first night, which is a Saturday!

Things were definitely looking up.

I thought it was interesting that the first night was labeled as a RAINMAKER COMP.

I started to sketch out some options using my spreadsheet.

I could get a suite at Luxor but not for free, and the timing wasn't good. I needed the MGM offer over the Friday through Sunday, because to use the Wynn Slots gems, I'd have to slot them in mid-week. And even that was crazy expensive, in terms of pretend gems that otherwise were worthless.

As best as I could figure it out, I had the first 3 nights covered. I'd buy enough chip packages on the Wynn Slots app to get the next 3 nights comped. Then, I'd hope for three things.

1 - I'd hope I could generate enough gems in the meantime to cover 3 more nights at Wynn/Encore

2 - I'd hope the gem price wouldn't go up beyond my gem budget in the meantime.

3 - I'd hope I could make a reservation after checking out of my first Wynn reservation to cover the last 3 nights - because you need to have 72 hours between stays.

OK, that's really just 2 things. The cost in gems deal was indeed a worry - prices are sky high and they are going up.

As a backup plan, I decided against Luxor and booked my MGM offer to cover three weekend nights at Mandalay Bay. 

It cost $345 once you add three resort fees and their taxes, and the room cost for the night that isn't comped. Ugh.

But that meant the two tough weekends were covered. I'd have to grin and bear it.

The next thing was to pony up $400 and get a booking for three nights at Wynncore.

That's what I did. The $400 hurt like hell but I had a shot at getting 6 nights out of it. When I checked the rack rates, it felt like I'd gotten a bargain.

My discounted rates for 3 nights in an Encore King room would be $1,691.

My $400 gem cost (no resort fee, no taxes) now seemed like a bargain. I booked the cheapest room for the nights I needed - a King room at Encore, which suited me fine, as it was closer to Tacos El Gordo.

And indeed, spreading the costs out across the 9 nights I'd now got booked, I was at $745, or $82 a night all in.

Way more than I'm used to, but with no status anywhere anymore, it has to be.

Now all I needed was to figure out a backup reservation for the last 3 nights in case I couldn't book Wynn on the fly after I checked out.

What was I going to do?