Idealcrap, “Aren’t you tired of playing yet?”
Player, “No, why?”
Idealcrap, “Because I’m tired of dealing to you.”
Don’t get me wrong, I’ve loved getting stiffed by you for the first six hours of my shift but now the whole act is getting old.
Many of you have asked me about the now (in)famous video that someone made and posted on YouTube. I was going to link to it here and talk about it but the video has been removed from the websites. If anyone has a copy of it can you please email it to me? If I can find a copy of the video I will revisit the issue. I do need to say that the work is not mine. Also, I don’t know who the author is.
As some of you may have heard, Michael Jackson is died the other day. I understand this is a world wide tragedy but I just can’t seem to care. Don’t get me wrong, I do understand the genius of his work but to me he’s a just another pedophile.
I have a buddy who I will call Hamlet. We were having this discussion in the break room the other day and Hamlet pointed out that Jackson had never been convicted in court. Now, Hamlet has never allowed logic to get in the way of a good argument but really. O.J. didn’t murder anyone either. I don’t know why anyone would think there was something wrong with Jackson; after all, he comes across as such a normal guy.
OMD and I were in Hollywood for a couple of days last week and it’s striking how much different the two properties are. I’ve been critical of how sterile the Tampa property is. If you haven’t seen the Hollywood property it’s hard to compare. That’s my fault because I was just down there and didn’t take pictures for you. I think I’m going to be back down there in a couple of weeks and I will take tons of pictures for you.
The Hollywood property is first class all the way. The biggest and most striking difference is Paradise. For those of you that haven’t been there, Paradise is the name of the outdoor mall located on the property. The mall has shops, bars, and restaurants. They have created a place so hot that Miami clubs have actually closed and moved to Paradise. This has made the Hard Rock THE place to be in the area. We have the same opportunity here in Tampa. There are some great clubs in Tampa but nothing that couldn’t be matched by Hard Rock if the effort was put out.
Next is the property its self. The Hollywood property has character. It’s hard to explain but walking into the Hard Rock Hollywood is much more impressive. I don’t understand why the Tampa property is so sterile when they did such a great job on Hollywood.
I don’t know why I bring this up but it was the most obvious thing. OMD, who had never been to the Hollywood property, commented on it as soon as she walked in.
Also, as a customer, it take entirely too long to get a drink. I think we played for about 2 hours and we got drinks in that time. We ordered a drink every time the cocktail waitress came by and that was at 2 am. Other then that, from a customer standpoint the property was nice.
Speaking of the property from a customer point of view I have to address this whole soft 17 thing that starts tomorrow. This is a bad idea. I’m trying to wrap my head around this but I can’t. I think it’s flat out stupid to have different rules in different pits but we did the same think at Treasure Island in Las Vegas so that isn’t as strange at it may seem at first blush. However, we only had a different rule in the high limit pit; not in 3 out of the 8 pits.
But the main reason I think it’s a bad idea is the message it sends to the players. Let’s take an honest look at some of the things we do for our players.
- We charge for drinks. Not only that, we charge them bar prices. I think this is ridiculous. The only reason we charge bar prices for drinks is because we can. This is the wrong reason. Liquor should not be a money maker for a casino.
- We make them play limits above what is normal for a local casino. Don’t get me wrong, I like not having to deal 5 dollar blackjack but it doesn’t send the right message.
- We don’t comp anyone for anything. I don’t pretend to know a lot about the comping policy of most casinos but it would seem that we are pretty stingy with our comps.
- Now we are starting to hit soft 17’s. I will have to look it up but I believe this equals an edge to the house of less then one percent. I realize this is a huge edge over the course of year but it seems to me like we are chipping away everywhere we can.
Without going into all the silliness around having different rules in different pits let’s step back and take a look at the message this sends. You are basically telling your customers we are going to take single edge we can because you can’t go anywhere else. Players aren’t that dumb. In an age of The Google, anyone can go online and find out what the true odds of the change are.
Let’s be real; the edge means next to nothing for a player in actual game play. However, when you consider that players will be able to Pit 3 and play with better odds, out of show, and for the same 25 dollars a hand, you’re changing the rules just because you can. This is bad policy.
When you have a monopoly you should have a moral obligation not to take advantage of the situation. I now that morals have very little to do with casinos but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t do the right thing.
Just my opinion.
Just for fun, the best Jackson joke I’ve heard so far goes like this: McDonalds has announced it will have a tribute burger to Michael Jackson. It will be a 50 year old piece of meat on 12 year old buns.
The runner up joke is: During the autopsy the coroner opened up Jackson and found Tinker Bell.
Oh, I almost forgot, Billy Mays died too. I’m glad I’m not a celebrity because it seems they’re dropping like flies. No truth the rumors that at the time of death the doctor said, “But wait, there’s more!!”
OK, that’s all the jokes I’ve got at 3:51 in the morning.
Peace, love and good happiness stuff.
Matt
