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Gaming the System With Priceline
April 16 2017

Gaming the System With Priceline

Lee Jensen Travel Tips 2

Most of the time when traveling outside of major casino destinations it makes sense to stay at an off site hotel. I spend about half of my life in hotels, and so I’ve developed a few methods to save a considerable amount of money without sacrificing much quality of life. One of the simplest of these methods involves the “name your own price” and “express deals” features on Priceline.

Name Your own Price: This feature allows you to book a hotel by picking a desired star rating and area you want to stay in. You can name a price lower than the typical price for hotels of this star rating in your chosen area, but the catch is that you won’t know which hotels you’re actually booking until the reservation is complete.

There are a few downsides to using this feature. First, the area you pick can be broader than you realize; Priceline’s interpretation of “downtown” may differ greatly from what most would consider the actual downtown area. Second, if you go blind on one of these, you may even end up staying somewhere that charges an extra fee for parking, or a “resort fee” that gets added onto your bill when you check in. Resort and parking fees can be as high as $40 a night, making your “deal” not much of one after all.

I don’t recommend blindly naming your own price here. I do, however, recommend using this feature when you know what you’re actually bidding on. There are a couple simple ways to narrow it down.

The first, and most obvious, is when there’s only one hotel in your chosen area that meets your criteria. For example, when I go to the Tacoma, Washington area, I always bid on a 4-star hotel in the downtown area. There’s only one 4-star hotel in downtown Tacoma, so I know exactly what I’m bidding on. Using a few different email accounts, I can start low and bid up a few times until I get the hotel for the absolute lowest price they will accept. In this case, I’ve booked the hotel for as low as 1/3 of the listed price.

So what do you do If there’s more than one hotel matching your search criteria? Luckily, others have done some research for you, giving you a pretty good idea of what you’re bidding on by looking at their results given the same same criteria. These results are posted on a free forum at <a href=”http://betterbidding.com/” target=”_blank”>betterbidding.com</a>.

Express Deals: Sometimes you just want to book a hotel and not have to deal with bidding, narrowing it down, or using multiple email accounts in order to make multiple bids. This is where the express deals feature comes in handy. The prices are always considerably cheaper than the posted prices on Priceline’s main page and much cheaper than the hotel’s own listed prices.

As is the case with naming your own price, you aren’t given the name of the hotel you’re booking until the reservation is complete. Fortunately, these are usually easy to narrow down based on available amenities and star ratings. For example, if you see a 3-star express deal for $69 In Tacoma with an 8+ rating and a pool, you can go back to Priceline’s main page and look at the number of hotels that fit that criteria. Usually, there will only be one or two hotels that fit the bill. To narrow it down even further, it’s usually the cheapest of these options that are offering the express deal.

When you’re on the road for work as often as many APs are, quality of life is important. I’ve saved thousands of dollars using these methods, without having to stay in dumps.

Is It Heat, Or Is It Sweat?
April 15 2017

Is It Heat, Or Is It Sweat?

Lee Jensen All Things A.P., Heat, The Basics 4

Anyone who has played professionally has heard the term heat or heard a casino described as sweaty. Although those terms are related, there’s a big difference between getting heat and getting sweat from a casino, and it’s important to be able to recognize which is which.

Heat: The casino is not happy, they don’t like what’s going down, and there’s a good chance you will be backed off or 86’ed soon. Common signs include phone conversations about you, multiple suits coming in and out of the pit and taking an obvious interest in you, and repeated requests for a players card after you have already declined.

You may even experience a pit boss standing behind you, trying to see what you’re doing, or rifling through the discards. Worse yet, you might see a pit boss standing on the floor outside of the pit, waiting for security to arrive so they can walk you out. I once had a pit boss sit next to me at a table right before a hand was dealt, to see if I was doing what he thought I might be doing. That was definitely heat.

Sweat: The casino may not be happy, but it’s just because they don’t like your action for what could be a number of reasons. They probably don’t know the play (at least not right away, unless you’re straight counting) and they probably aren’t going to take any action against you without further investigation (which may or may not occur).

Pit personnel in sweaty casinos act like they know you’re up to something—whether or not they actually do—when you hit a certain betting level or win threshold, or even just because you fit the AP profile. Casinos that sweat are generally the lower end places: in Las Vegas, think Jerry’s Nugget, Cannery, Hooters, etc. Go into one of these places and start betting $500 unrated, and you will likely see some sweat.

I call this procedural sweat. The casino goes through these same motions for any unknown player betting what they see as big money.

So how do you determine which one you’re getting? Unfortunately, there’s no cut and dry answer; a lot of it comes from experience. There are, however, a few things to consider that might help you figure it out:

What is the tolerance level and attitude of the place you are playing?

If I flat bet $300 on blackjack at a high end casino that has similar action all over the floor, I don’t expect much attention at all. So if I suddenly start getting a lot of obvious attention, it’s likely heat. If I take that same action to a casino that mostly gets low roller action, they are likely going to immediately act like something big is going down and run all over the pit making phone calls, asking for a players card, and so on. Here, I would attribute this to standard casino sweat.

Have you played at this casino before?



If yes, is this an attitude change for the casino? Did they used to be happy to see you but are suddenly giving you the cold shoulder or acting as if the roof is on fire? This is likely heat.

If no, and you have reason to believe that your face and/or name are clean at this place, then this is likely procedural sweat.

Did the casino’s attitude noticeably change hours into the session, or has it remained constant?



If it changed, this could be heat, or it could be due to other factors, like win amount or buy in amount. These, of course, are not mutually exclusive.

If it remained constant, then the casino is likely just sweating you. it is their procedure to sweat, and they won’t stop until you leave. If you’ve already played for a couple of hours and nothing has changed, you’re probably OK to continue.

Have you had any backoff or 86ing incidents recently (or ever) in the same region?

If you’ve had recent trouble, then any negative attention given right away is likely heat and the result of a flyer from the offending casino. In some regions, the only way to avoid further issues is to just leave town because you are done everywhere (unless you’re good at very drastic look changes).

If you’ve had trouble in the area but not recently, then it’s of course harder to tell. I would generally play through it unless I saw signs of obvious heat.

If you haven’t had any trouble recently, then any attention that occurs right away—assuming you are not using a dirty name and are not a notorious/recognizable player—is likely sweat.

That last point is an entire issue altogether. If your name and/or face are well known by casino personnel, things can be a lot trickier. I will save that discussion for another post.

What is Advantage Play?
April 14 2017

What is Advantage Play?

Lee Jensen All Things A.P., General, The Basics 13

Imagine you are walking the Vegas strip with your buddies and stopping at casino bars along the way to have some $15 drinks. At your current stop you notice that the people playing bar top blackjack aren’t paying for their drinks. You look at the machine: it’s Game King BJ, $1 denomination.

You figure you might as well gamble the $15 and get a “free” drink, hoping to win, break even, or lose less than $15. At least there’s a chance of coming out better than you would if you just gave up the $15 without trying, right?

Now, these bar top BJ machines are usually terrible for the player, with a casino house edge of around 5 percent on average. Against a 5% house edge, if you play correctly and bet in $1 increments, you expect to lose just $0.05 a hand in the long run.

As long as you play fewer than 300 hands per $15 drink, this is a money-saving venture. You may not realize it, but this is an advantage play.

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Recent Posts

  • Play to Your Strengths; Know Your Weaknesses July 30, 2017
  • Manipulating Game Speed July 26, 2017
  • Dealing With Toke Hustlers July 19, 2017
  • Notes From a Significant Other July 11, 2017
  • A Trip Report July 3, 2017

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