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Bob Dancer writes a video poker column for beginners to experts. He also writes a column with Jeffrey Compton, "Player's Edge", featuring information on promotions at various Las Vegas casinos. Player's Edge is published each Friday in the Neon section of the Las Vegas Review-Journal. Click here to send Bob Dancer an e-mail.

For more details and a schedule of Bob's free classes, visit www.bobdancer.com.

April 15, 2008

A Strange Use for a Strange Comp

I play enough at the Palms to get one of their top two mailers each month. These mailers give you eight or nine $50 free play coupons, along with some food comps, movie passes, and a few other things. Every month they're the same. Every month they're a little bit different.

In April I got a very unusual "special" food comp. It was for one day only, Monday, April 6, for $50, and it MUST be used at the Bistro Buffet. At dinner, for example, one buffet costs $16.99 before tax, so the comp could be used for two people without going over. Using it for three people costs $50.97, so you'd have spend 97 cents worth of points for that third person.

Assuming I was going to use it for two people (officially costing $33.98), normally I get a 75 percent discount, which means I'd have to spend $8.50 to get the meals. But I have "excess" points there which they allow me to sell back for free play at half value, so the comp really saves me $4.25 worth of points.

And the Palms is more than 10 miles away from where I live and the buffet is, at best, average. I found it difficult to get too excited over this comp.

Still, I had free play to collect that day and something else nearby so I decided that I wouldn't let the coupon go to waste. Shirley had dinner plans with some girlfriends. My workout buddy wasn't interested in going that far for that little. So what to do?

I decided to buy bottled water with the rest of my comp. They sell these 12-ounce bottles of purified water for $2.50. It might cost them 10 cents apiece for these bottles, who knows, so they sell them at a big markup. I show up at 8 p.m., one hour before the buffet closes, and ask for one meal and 13 bottles of water.

Whether or not to allow me to use my comp to buy 13 bottles of water is a high-level decision that is above the pay grade of the buffet cashier. "I'll have to call my manager," I was told. I was optimistic, because I knew most of the managers.

The cashier put the phone down and told me the manager had said she couldn't do it.

"Let me speak to your manager," I requested politely. Trying to negotiate through an intermediary is a losing proposition.

So the cashier called the manager back and was told the manager would be up in two minutes.

"Please stand over to the side so I can help these other people," I was asked. No problem.

When the manager arrived, she greeted me by name -- or rather by pseudonym. She knew me as "Bob Dancer" because she had been to some of my classes at the El Cortez (no more, alas.) She hadn't recognized my "real" name, which is the one the cashier read to her over the phone. She'd told me she really enjoyed the classes but I didn't know if that was going to buy me anything here. Plus, if I HAVE generated some extra something with this particular manager because of the classes, blowing it all on 13 bottles of water hardly seemed to be a smart move.

She told me that the comp was for food only and couldn't include water. I asked, "Why not? Where does it say that?" I handed her the comp and she looked at it.

She shrugged and said she guessed it didn't really matter, so she told the cashier to go ahead and give the water to me. The cashier looked amazed, but did as instructed.

I ended up tipping the server an extra $2 for bringing me the 13 bottles of water in a plastic bag, so it wasn't all profit. And it cost me an extra 10 minutes or so talking them into it. Still, it felt good to "get away with one."

I don't know who said it first, but money earned in a casino is so much sweeter than money earned in a regular job. This sort of felt the same way. It was "succeeding by my wits." I felt great!

Perhaps I need to get out more.

Postscript: I showed a draft of this article to a friend who plays quarter video poker. He suggested I don't submit this because it put me open to criticism.

"Why?" I asked

"You play $125 a hand. I play $1.25 a hand and I wouldn't consider taking a shot like this one. You don't need the money. Why do it? And if you ARE going to do it, why tell everyone else you're so cheap?"

Well, maybe. One of the attributes that has gotten me to where I am today is to regularly look for how I can squeeze a little extra out of a situation. That was the case here as well.

Had the manager not seen it my way in a relatively short period of time, I would have let it go. There are times to pick your battle, and 13 bottles of water worth a couple of bucks certainly weren't worth going to war over.

Whether or not someone else would do it the same way isn't really the point for me. Each of us have to figure out what works for us.