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I'm going to be heading to Las Vegas for my first trip this fall. I don't wanna be the guy that has to spend the last 24 hour at the pool because he ran outta money, but I'm not sure how much I ought to take. When I gamble, I tend to play $10 blackjack (5 if I can find it) and occasionally some slots. (I found a lord of the rings slot machine last trip to a casino that was more like a flash game from kongregate with unlockables and achivements and crap. It was  :drill:)

Anyway, going for a weekend. Planning on taking around $1k for food/entertainment expenses. Excessive? Not enough? Any must see/do for a first timer?

You will have a hard time finding low $ tables on the weekends, unless you go to "local" casinos vs the big Strip casinos.  That said, $500-700 of gambling money should be ok as long as you husband it early.  It is all about what you are willing to lose, though.

Don't feel obligated to tip for free drinks if you are winning. That happy feeling usually leads to wishing you had that extra $25 later on.  Save you tips for when you have won and are leaving soon.

Resist roulette at all costs.

The Stratosphere is a crappy place to gamble and eat, but the roller coaster thing on the very top is fun if you like daredevil rides.

Taxis cost a fortune and spend a lot of time in traffic.  Pick your casino each night and stay there or use the monorail.

I go to Vegas for five days a year in October.  I usually spend around $300 for the whole thing.  That's $500 a day into the machines at Casino Royale to keep up my free room there, which translates into losing about $30 a day on average, with the rest on food and a little on transport.  Mostly I walk, since the Royale's on the Strip right across from Caesar's, but if I want to reach the other end of the Strip I'll pay for a monorail pass, and I'll occasionally use the Deuce bus if I need to travel off of the Strip entirely.  The amount I gamble usually nets a free meal or two, and there's a $45 pass for 24-hour access to the buffets at Caesar's, Harrah's, Imperial Palace, Bally's, Paris, and a couple other casinos.  That covers room, food, and cheap-ass sightseeing.  Any shows or other premium entertainment stuff that catches your fancy would be above and beyond.

Betting on table games will of course balloon the hell out of your expenses.  There are $5 blackjacks to be found, but I don't recall seeing anything under that.  If you've memorized the perfect plays for blackjack you can hold down the costs somewhat, but bear in mind that casinos are using shuffling machines now that constantly reshuffle several decks at the blackjack tables, making counting tricks close to useless.  Also, from casino to casino the payouts and dealer rules for blackjack vary, usually to the benefit of the house, so what once was a statistical 97-ish percent return can be much lower depending on what table you go to.

Most casinos will give a new player a voucher for $20ish in free machine credit when they sign up for the players clubs for the first time.  Take shameless advantage of that.

Never pay door price for any show.  There's a discount ticket company with kiosks at the mall on the Strip (the mall looks like it has a big silver UFO hanging over it, hard to miss) and in a few other locations that will sell you tickets for much less.

If you're willing to play dumb and nod a lot, people trying to sell you timeshare condos sometimes offer free show tickets to people who endure their sales pitch.  I never found it worth my time to sit through them, but if you have time to spare and no cash to spare, that can get you some free entertainment.

As far as sights go, the casinos themselves are spectacular.  They go from insanely lavish (Wynn's) to insanely campy (Camelot) and everything inbetween.  Some have extra attractions inside, like the MGM's lion enclosure.  Sadly the Star Trek exhibits at the Hilton are gone now, they were well worth the price of admission.  The shows rotate weekly, so you'll need to look up the dates you're going to find out which musicians, comedians, etc. will be performing while you're there.  Permanent acts like Cirque de Soleil aren't as tricky to pin down, so anything playing now is probably still playing when you go.

I will cut you for speaking such blasphemy.  The Top of the World restaurant on top of the Stratosphere is absolutely phenomenal.  Not cheap, but the food's fantastic and the view is great, I make a point of going there every time I'm in town.

(But you're right about the crappy gambling, and the crappy mall-ish place between the casino and the elevator to the Top.)

When I've gone, I always felt the best way to stretch money while drinking is playing $2/$4 Holdem. Let the other tourists get drunker than you, play conservative, and it's not hard to make that $80 stake last all night.

Buffets are your friend in Vegas. If you recognize the name of a chef on the sign at a Casino restaurant, that steak sandwich for lunch will cost you $35.

My biggest advice. Dont go.

What about hookers?   :grin:

You won't find a $5 table on the strip after 3PM.

I like the Sahara though for $10 tables and not jacking up the rates on you when you start to win.

The Sahara's shut down.  I think the Casino Royale keeps $5 tables up all day, but that may have changed.

Well that sucks. I liked that place. I'm also a fan of the Mirage.

Yeah, Sahara closed something like two or three months ago, it's recent.  Mirage is still up and kicking just fine AFAIK, but my time there's been limited ever since they thought it was a great idea to take the tigers away and put a $15 admission door in front of them.  Making obvious money grabs turns me off of a casino; they need to at least pretend that they're endless money fountains.  A casino displaying a visible need for tourist cash just ruins the image.  Vegas is, after all, a city of image and illusion.  Anything that reveals the lie kills some of the fun for me.

Food quality can be fixed.  Sounds like that might of happened.

Oh, and rule #1:  NEVER EVER EVER eat shrimp from a casino buffet.  I don't care how fancy it looks.  You have a 50% chance of being bedridden for 48 hours.  Half of the guys (3 out of 6) I have worked with over the last 10 years who went to Vegas and ignored this advice paid the price.  It just isn't worth the risk to a few shrimp.  Stick with steak and chicken.

Don't east at buffets period.

Don't eat at shitty buffets.  The $45-a-day buffets are all good, with the one in Caesar's being top notch.

Hookers are illegal in Vegas. Plus every American hooker I have ever met is over priced and no where near as affordable or as beautiful as their European counterparts.

God I miss the brothels of Europe.

 :oh_i_see:

To answer the original question, it really depends on what you are into. Do you want fancy-schmancy or down and dirty?  Are you a foodie or just want to get by on sustenance?  Clubbing (strip or non-strip) or shows?

For future reference, I'd like to spend a moderate amount on Craps - where should I go in the future?

In AC, I tend to wait until I can find a $10 table, even if I have to search multiple casinos.

In Vegas? For good craps you need to go down to one of the shit-holes downtown like Binnions, Main Street Station or Four Queens.  They have 5 dollar/20x odds tables.

That's one of the things I like about the craphole border town near SLC (Wendover). They have 3 dollar min craps and 20x odds.

EDIT: Oh, the Casino Royale on the strip also has super cheap/high odds craps but it is a lousy place in general.

Hah, good to know.

Now when you say shithole, or that Casino Royale is lousy...how lousy are we talking, because AC isn't too great. I usually end up at the Taj just because they normally have the tables I am looking for.

I my experience even the shittiest of shitholes in Vegas is better than anything in AC.

Just drive down to the Bunny Ranch.   :grin:

The Royale was renovated last year, it's still not what I'd consider classy like Wynn's, but it's a little roomier and nicer than it had been.  Plus they keep giving me free hotel nights, so  :awesome_for_real:

Casino Royale is a dive, but you can't beat the location or the pricing. They also have (or had on my last trip which is now almost 5 years ago :cry: ) a sit down craps table, which is pure danger.  Standing up after 4-5 hours of steady free cocktails and hot rollers is quite an adventure.

If you want to really economize on gambling, buy a book or some of the strategy cards for video poker. It has a very low house advantage, and it plays slow. Get a cocktail waitress to come by (and ALWAY TIP your waitresses if you ever want to see them again) every few minutes and you can drink and play for hours quite cheaply. Video poker is kinda fun too- not as fun as table games or actual poker, but better than 90% of the other machine games.

If you want to see a show, check around the net before you go- you can almost always find some sort of discount. Last trip I got an insane deal (2/1) on tickets for Love (which was pretty new then). I am a huge Beatles fan, but even if I wasn't I would have loved the show for the spectacle, not to mention the Big Gulp-sized pina coladas  :grin:

If you don't know how to play poker, stay away from anything but the low limit LIMIT tables. No limit will blow through your daily allowance for gambliing in one or two bad hands if you aren't careful. I try to stay at an average of about $200 per day to gamble. I keep all my gambling money separate and my winnings roll back into the fund.

A great game to make your money last is pai gow poker, it is fun and probably has the lowest hands per hour of any pit game. It is easy to learn, starting out just play your cards face up and when it is your turn ask the dealer how the house would set the hand.  Tons of pushes and unlike blackjack a bad player at the table doesn't fuck you over.

That game does have a very high drink per hand ratio if that is what you are looking for and you luck out with a good waitress. Seems like in the big places these days you only see one every half hour at best (if you see one at all).

So, I know a couple people here have gluten issues, wondering if any of you know good places to eat in Vegas?