Rating: perfectly cromulent++.

No one goes to the Gold Coast for the glitz. This hotel is pretty much the working definition of the working man’s casino, with plenty of cheap games and plenty of cheap rooms. Plus they have bowling and bingo, and don’t knock it ’til you’ve tried it.

That said, if you’re looking to stretch a dollar (or stretch your trip as long as possible with as few dollars as necessary), this is an excellent choice. Room rates are frequently low, and go lower with casino or poker time. The restaurants are decent and cheap; the buffet is surprisingly good for the price. The room’s not much to look at, but hey, did I mention it’s pretty cheap?

Point scored: what might not be immediately obvious is that the Gold Coast is in an excellent location, and is a great bargain for that location. In your hotel, cheap eats and gambling. Across the street, the Rio. Across the other street, the Palms. Three very different casinos, very different crowds, and probably more entertainment options than you can fit into the average week.

If you want to go to the Strip, hop the free and frequent shuttle to Bill’s Gambling Saloon (formerly known as Barbary Coast), or grab the Rio shuttles to Ballys, Caesar’s, or Harrahs. Once you’re there, the monorail pretty much takes you everywhere else. I wouldn’t recommend the Gold Coast for anyone who wanted to spend significant time Downtown, but otherwise this place is a lot more central than it first appears.

Point scored: I didn’t realize it at the time, but Gold Coast offered one of the best poker games I found in a week in Vegas. 4-8 with a half kill was spreading two out of three times I stopped by, and the game was usually soft and rather friendly. Might be the high hand jackpots, which topped out at $2,000 for a heart royal at the time–and which I missed by a sole ace in one heartbreaking hand.

Rating: damn decent-.

As I mentioned in an earlier post, the Red Rock is just about the most beautiful hotel/casino I’ve ever laid eyes on. The hotel entrance and lounge bring to mind the sort of New York hotels that I don’t enter because I know I can’t afford them; extremely stylish and easy on the eye. And yet the place feels comfortable to a guy like me, who is not extremely stylish and whose easiness on the eye depends on the beholder. I sometimes feel like I’m underdressed to play poker at the Borgata in Atlantic City; the Red Rock doesn’t have the same pretensions. Like the Suncoast, it’s way out in the middle of nowhere so far as tourists are concerned; likewise, it offers a range of amenities geared to making sure you don’t need to leave the building for months.

The poker room is spacious and had 4-8 with a half kill running on both days I attended; on Sunday there was an 8-16 half kill. The 8-16 was the highest game I’ve played to date, and the first time since 2003 when I felt outmatched at a limit poker game; that said, I’d love to take a crack at this game when I come back for CES next month. Meanwhile, the 4-8 had the highest variability of any game I’ve seen in a single casino; on Sunday, it ranked among the softest games I’ve ever played, but on Monday it was only marginally easier than the 8-16 (possibly because 3 of the 8-16 players joined me there over the course of the evening).

Red Rock had a nice innovation at their tables. Instead of clocking in at the front desk, the dealer swipes your card at the table to track your time. A small LCD screen then tells the dealer the names of all the players, so he can say, “Your turn to act, Jeff.” It’s a small thing that greatly increases the friendliness of the game, since the players can pick up each other’s names over the course of play. Slight downside: the system also allows the dealer to clock you out when you’re out of your seat, so you can’t lock one up and keep the comp clock running while you’re in the bathroom or grabbing a smoke.

The casino itself resembles a theatre in the round: a central bar, followed by an inner circle of table games, a large outer circle of machines, followed by restaurants, shops, and spokes out to the rest of the hotel. It’s an easy place to get lost, but with a clear field of view to landmarks, it’s also an easy place to get reoriented.

Red Rock offered one game of note: a video poker machine that sells blocks of hands rather than the standard one bet per hand. At the quarter machines I played, $40 purchased 200 hands at any of six different games; games with weaker paytables compensated by offering more hands, up to 200 extra at the Jacks or Better. Once you start a round, you can’t change games or reduce your bet from the maximum.

For your forty bucks, you get a countdown from 200 onscreen, and your credit meter starts at zero. This is decremented by five every time you deal, and will go negative if you’re losing. At the end of 200 hands, you cash out whatever is on the credit meter. If you hit quad Aces on the first hand and you’re afraid you’ll put it all back, you can quit and cash out at any time, forfeiting the remaining hands.

Here’s what was fascinating about this structure: it’s not a video poker game, it’s a one-person tournament. You basically have two goals: one, finish with a credit meter above zero to get anything back; two, finish with a credit meter above 160 to win money. Beyond that, it doesn’t matter if your credit meter is zero or the theoretical maximum of negative 1,000; both scores leave you down forty bucks. I played three rounds, and lost them all with final scores of -360, -120, and -60; do the math and you’ll see that I did marginally better than I would have done playing the game straight, provided I played the same number of hands. On the flip side, towards the end of each round, there was absolutely no value in hitting trips or worse; these hands weren’t big enough to get my credit meter back towards positive.

I don’t have the calculus to do a mathematical analysis of the variance involved here, but I think it makes sense to play this like a tournament game rather than a straight video poker game. First, play the highest variance option you can find; with your losses capped at forty bucks, it makes sense to shoot for the bigger payouts. (On the machines I played, that was Double Double Bonus, paying 9-5-4.) It seems to me to be a poor bet to play the lower variance games like Jacks or Better; they give you more hands but a weak paytable, so you’re likely to lose money to the churn.

Second, adjust your play as you near the end of your session, if you’re negative. On the second-to-last hand of my last session, I was down 80 credits and was dealt four to a flush; I kept two to the straight flush for the Hail Mary. My guesstimate is that aggressive play adjustments kick in when the negative credit meter is just over the hands remaining times five; i.e., if you’re down 300 and you’ve got 50 hands left, it’s time to kick it up a notch. I’m not sure the exact inflection point where you keep 44 on a deal of 9944x, but I’m sure it’s in there somewhere.

Point lost: okay, so I know I sound cheap when I say this, but Red Rock is the first casino where I’ve asked about a poker rate and was told no. The impression they give is that the entire place is first class, so I can understand the marketing decision behind not discounting the rooms–that said, that’s the sort of bennie that is likely to get my butt warming one of their chairs in the future.

Rating: damn decent- -.

I booked at the Suncoast primarily because I had two days extra on this trip without a room, on the same day that an offer arrived by email. I had a good experience last year at the Orleans, another Boyd property, so I gave this one a shot sight unseen.

My first impression when I got here: this is likely the best room value to be found anywhere in North America. My deal works out to $25 a night, and for that my room is quite likely larger than my first studio apartment was in DC. There are two separate seating areas, one with a couch, and one with a dinette table; king bed, plasma flatscreen TV, and a bathroom with a walk-in closet-sized anteroom for the sinks. The icing on the cake is the floor-to-ceiling windows with a view of the golf course and the mountains.

The disadvantage is that the Suncoast is pretty much in the middle of nowhere. There’s a shuttle to the strip, but it runs infrequently during the day. Plenty to do here, though, and close by a residential neighborhood, so this would be a good place for visitors with a car looking to do some shopping and eating in regular venues. I don’t fall into that category, but for me the location is balanced by the short cab ride ($13) to the gorgeous Red Rock Casino, where the poker room is hopping and the eye candy is plentiful. As the Red Rock doesn’t offer a poker rate on its rooms, I’d definitely consider staying here if I wanted to do my gambling there.

Not that the Suncoast is a slouch in the casino department; the poker room is large, and offers high-hand jackpots. I’m looking forward to getting back into the 4-8 half kill later this evening, after I catch a movie downstairs. Like the Gold Coast, 100% video poker machines are on offer if you know where to look.

Point lost: the downside of my hotel room is a bizarre hospital disinfectant odor. Not strong enough to get me to change the room, but then again, I’m a smoker and I have no sense of smell. People with normal senses might have hated this room. I don’t know if I’m more bugged by the odor, or by wondering what the hell happened here that required it.

Point lost: when going to the buffet on your 38th birthday, the last thing you want to hear is the cashier asking if you’re eligible for the 50-and-over discount. I know I’m a bit dissipated after a week in Vegas, but sheesh.

Addendum: if I were writing this review today (upon checkout) rather than two days ago, I’d drop the rating a full letter grade to Perfectly Cromulent. The reason: that 4-8 half-kill game that I spotted the day I got here didn’t spread again until an hour before I left, which led to long periods of wandering around the casino deciding what to do. The 2-4 half kill ran pretty much 24-7, but a game that goes to high stakes at 3-6 just doesn’t do it for me. Needless to say, this put the cherry on the “you’re staying a long way from anywhere” sundae that didn’t bug me at first.

Naturally, the 4-8 that fired up immediately before I had to leave was damn near perfect: mostly loose passive, two tight-aggressive players who allowed me to dial in their play in five minutes, and just as I left, my favorite maniac from Sunday who makes every pot go to 100 chips or higher. Somehow, this happens every time I leave Vegas.

Rating: meh++.

Schlepped across town to the Sahara tonight to catch a show, so I decided to stop in at the dirt cheap Sahara buffet: $6.95 for dinner if you have a player’s card. You’re getting just about what you pay for here; most of the food gives the impression that it might once have been worthwhile, before it spent the last three weeks on the steam table. (Note: I’m here on a very slow Tuesday; it’s likely that the place actually improves when it’s busier and they have to replace the trays.)

I do kind of like the college cafeteria approach here; everything is self-serve. Get your own beverages, pick your own table. The waitstaff seems to be here to bring your napkins and maybe take away your plates (apparently only after you leave). The result is that you don’t have to wait for that cup of coffee you really need right now.

Point scored: the pizza and taco bar is pretty darn good, and in fact is making up the bulk of my meal.

Point scored: seven bucks, and they have lox on the buffet. At dinner time. That sort of blew my mind. Unfortunately, they serve same with minibagels that resemble hockey pucks, so I resorted to inventing the lox and cream cheese burrito. Mmmmmmm.