ONLINE GAMBLING AND CASINO GUIDE

Super Bowl Weekend is in full swing and we have a very respectable crowd in town.

I’m not sure if it’s “third busiest weekend in Las Vegas” busy, though, which it has purportedly been over the years.

Traffic is certainly worse than usual, but only modestly so.  Up to this point, I have been able to zip in and out of sports books to grab betting sheets with little to no delay, and book window lines have not been appreciably longer than they are during a random NFL Sunday.

Casino floors have been widely variable from “normal” at Paris to “downright packed” at the adjacent Bally’s.

With overcast skies, drizzle, and temperatures hovering in the 50′s, the weather this weekend could not be more perfect.  I would go so far as to say that this is as good as it gets for Las Vegas.

The weekend has also been somewhat mellow for yours truly.

I scheduled a poker tournament on Friday afternoon at the Luxor, but as luck would have it for the participants, the table was overbooked and I had to cede my seat.  With me out of the game, those who played had a shot at winning some money.  From what I hear, two chicks won the tournament, so in retrospect I can’t help but have liked my chances.

Since I had only a couple of hours available on this day, I headed over to the MGM where I grabbed a NL seat and proceeded to win 18, count’em eighteen dollars.  I stole a few blinds, but I didn’t get any substantial bets called.

This is why I typically don’t play early in a “Vegas Weekend” (loosely defined as 11am Friday – 2pm Sunday).  Players are far more patient on Friday.  Nobody wants to blow their bankroll before the weekend begins.  By Sunday, however, these same people are often pressed for time and they loosen up substantially.

Since the table wasn’t my speed, I cashed out early and headed to my other favorite time-waster … Sigma Derby … where I proceeded to give ten of those won dollars back to the MGM.

I’m still a sucker for this game for no other reason than the sheer mindlessness of the endeavor, and in the back of my mind I am well aware that it is on borrowed time.  As soon as the machine needs any kind of serious service, my guess is that it will find its way into a gaming graveyard.  Given the presence of only one Derby machine on The Strip, I cannot imagine that there are a large number of service personnel available, much less a market for spare parts.

On Saturday morning, I got an early start so that I could collect some proposition betting sheets for the folks back home.  For obvious reasons, I am the resident bet-runner for a group of people that do not reside here.  Since I do not keep a cut of any winnings, I assume this is perfectly legal.  A bookie that doesn’t get paid isn’t much of a bookie.  Besides, it’s good for the economy.  Propositions are almost sure-losers.

I stopped by Le Burger at Paris to chat with a couple of visitors, and then I walked over to Planet Hollywood to take care of a little bidness.  I need to get my fill of the place as much as possible over the next two weeks.  It’s still one of my favorite places in town (especially the Pleasure Pit), and I worry that it will not be one of my favorite places for long once Harrah’s takes over on February 19th.  I hope that I am incorrect in my assumption.

While still in the casino,  I inexplicably got an “acid eyes” attack.  I don’t know if someone was smoking something odd, if the inside-outside climate change was too drastic, or if it was just random, but my eyes began stinging and tears began streaming down my face as if I had been sprayed with Mace.

I made my way out to the sidewalk, and I heard someone say “Hey, VegasRex”.  I looked ahead, and recognized a gentleman who goes by the moniker “Rabbit” walking up to me.  We talked shop for awhile as tears streamed down my face, but I’m assuming that the rain and my sunglasses provided ample cover for my distress.  “Acid Eyes” are still a Vegas-only phenomenon that happens to me about once a week, and there is really no cure for them.

Thinking back, it would have been mildly humorous to hear someone describing this encounter in real-time:

“VegasRex is standing outside of Planet Hollywood with acid eyes, and he is talking to Rabbit.”

It sounds like the mindless ramblings of a schizophrenic.  Much like my blog.

After regaining my composure, I made a quick wager in the Bally’s Book and then headed up to Sahara and Strat to get their packages.

While everyone else is already drinking, eating, and getting their groove on … I sit here before me, on Super Bowl Sunday, with sheets of prop bets before me, a pen, a calculator, and a cellphone.  I periodically shake my fist at my computer screen and wonder why, in 2010, I still have to trudge through every casino in town like a freaking pilgrim instead of being able to pull up the bet sheets on my computer screen.

Las Vegas is still being dragged kicking and screaming against its will into the 21st Century, and I don’t care what anyone says, casino Twitter accounts do not count as being “tech-friendly”.

Advertising and insincere glad-handing are well and good, but for Christ’s sake, put some money into IT infrastructure.

Real-time webcams, free and abundant Wi-Fi, up-to-date gaming conditions (“we currently have two 2/5 NL tables running with three open spots”), sports odds, online waiting lists … there is just so much that could be done by multi-billion dollar corporations to make themselves more tech-oriented and thus ahead of the curve.

Of course, the first and most important thing casinos need to do is to remove all Flash from their websites lest they confuse legions of iLosers who can’t figure out why wynnlasvegas.com won’t render on their “magical” iPad.

I digress …

If you will excuse me, I have some paperwork to do.  Figuring out these wagers is like untangling spaghetti.

When all is said and done, I might actually have an opportunity to relax and enjoy the game.  Hopefully, all of my people will lose their bets so I don’t have to go through the trouble of collecting them.

On second thought, maybe I should start charging for this.

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