I left out one thought that I meant to include in my piece last night about why I've lost most of my interest in going to Las Vegas. I planned to make this observation: The Powers That Are in Vegas seem to have decided that they aren't that interested, the way they used to be, at the kind of tourist who is attracted by discounts or coupons or ridiculously-cheap shrimp cocktails.
They appear to have decided that there are plenty of folks out there who aren't alienated by price increases. There's a sense of "Gee, we raised the price of that by $10.00 and didn't lose enough business to regret it. Let's raise it another ten and see what happens."
And someone I know who isn't very rich told me this morning that they don't care how much Vegas costs. They just want to play Video Poker. They seemed a bit startled at the concept when I told them that you can play Video Poker day and night and night and day and not lose a cent if you play it at home, not for money. There are only about 17,398,772,044 Video Poker games available for any computer.
In fact, you don't need to even buy or download anything. The big rage in casinos these days is Ultimate X Poker, a brand of Video Poker where you wager on ten hands at the same time but you play one and…well, it's a little tricky to explain but you can learn it as you play it for free on this page. You won't win anything there but then again, you won't lose anything…except many hours of your life because it's so addictive.