Treasure Island's gonzo promotion & "soft" Vegas rooms

Those of you who keep up with the goings on in Vegas may have heard about this crazy good promotion that Treasure Island is running. You can earn up to $599 in cash back by playing up to 60 hours a week. (Why $599? That's for tax reasons.)

They pay you in cash at the end of the week...like getting a paycheck without the check. In addition, you get the standard $2 in comps per hour played. So if you grind for 10 hours a day, six days a week you'll earn $599 in cash, plus $120 in chow (or whatever else you spend it on there).

As one 2+2 poster wrote, "If I was in Vegas I know where'd I'd be." Yeah, me too.

Nothing comes easy, though. In reading more discussions about this promotion online, I hear plenty of people complaining about how tough the games at TI are during this event -- which the manager said has an indefinite end. They say you have eight sharks and maybe a tourist or two per table, as the wise grinders of Vegas are making their way to this room.

That reminds me of the question constantly posed on 2+2 that asks which room or rooms have the softest 1-2 games in Vegas. The correct answer may be all of them...and none of them.

You can think of it like "market correction" in business. Any Vegas room that gets the reputation of having plenty of "soft" play will attract the better players, and over time that room would probably become tougher than the average room for a period. That way, the average skill level in a room is elastic. I'd say that TI will become a harder place to win during this promotion, and will continue to be for a short time afterwards. Still earning $12 an hour in cashback and comps may still make the room a good bet if you play smart.

I do have one theory concerning "soft" Vegas rooms, though. Since Mandalay Bay attracts plenty of convention traffic, and is in an inconvenient location on the south end of the Strip, that room probably has a better chance than any others of being consistently "soft." Or maybe I just think that because I've always won the few times I've played there.