LV hotels will offer you fantastic deals if you show a little loyalty. We get free rooms on weeknights and drastically reduced rates on the weekends, plus (typically) a $30 food voucher. And we’re not even big gamblers or anything. The only reason we show on their gambling radar at all is that I play vast amounts of video poker, which is formally considered a slot machine even though the house advantage on video poker is minuscule compared to slots. I’ve mastered the strategy for video poker (regular Jacks or Better and its more big-pay-oriented sibling, Double Double Bonus Poker ) well enough that I can play well and zone out at the same time. For me it’s a kind of active meditation: I deal and hold, deal and hold while letting my subconscious take me wherever it wishes. Consequently, I can offline and generate good karma with the hotel simultaneously. The California Hotel in downtown LV still amuses me. For some reason, despite the name, they cater heavily to Hawaiian tourists. The banks of video poker machines all have names like Pau Hana Poker and Shaka Five Way. (The latter used to be festooned with a pair neon signs of perpetually back-and-forth tilting hands with thumb and pinky fingers extended, in the universal “Hang Loose” sign.) A new promotion is the Diamond Head Jackpot quarter video poker: Any sequential royal flush in diamonds, ascending or descending, pays a whopping $25,000. (The probability of such an event, assuming optimal strategy for standard Jacks or Better, is about 1 in 10 million.) We don’t gamble at the Cal. The real payoff of its Hawaiian theme, for us, is the food—for its overall deliciousness as well as the novelty. How many mainland American coffee shops do you know of whose salad bars prominently feature edamame, sushi and that delectable, bland Hawaiian macaroni salad? Not to mention a gigantic, misshapen football of wasabi—with no explanation or warning whatsoever? You’ve heard of the Tar Baby from B’rer...
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