Top 10 Tips for a Gambling Trip

Whether you’re planning a gaming trip to Las Vegas casinos or the Sin City of the Far East in Macau, it helps if you have some experience with these casino excursions. But even if you don’t have any experience with gambling trips, you can still get by with some solid advice. Keeping this in mind, here are 10 tips you can use to ensure that your gambling trip is an enjoyable and inexpensive one.

Assuming you don’t plan on packing 5 people onto a single bed, the costliest thing about a casino gaming trip is the hotel room. In fact, if you visit on the weekend, you could end up spending $600-$1,000 just on a hotel! Luckily, there’s a simple solution to this problem: go on weekdays. Seeing as how people don’t travel as often on weekdays, hotels lower their prices dramatically to attract more visitors. In many cases, you can save up to three times the cost of a weekend room. In addition to this, the casinos and other attractions will be less crowded during the weekdays, which is certainly nice.

One of the biggest mistakes that people make on gambling trips is just winging it in terms of a budget. They don’t set up a gambling plan, they don’t have a food budget and they impulsively do whatever comes to mind. This is all a fantastic recipe for needing money wired to you later when your funds are complete gone. Obviously you don’t want the embarrassment of having money wired to you during a gambling trip, so make sure to set up a plan before leaving. Ration money for gambling, dining and entertainment, and stick to your guns!

Expanding on the aforementioned point about coming to the casino with a plan, you should also set win and loss limits when you’re in the casino. When setting win and loss limits, take a look at your bankroll and decide how much money you hope to win as well as how much you can afford to lose. For instance, if you have a $1,000 bankroll for the entire trip, you could set a loss limit of $200 per session; likewise, you could set a win limit of $150 per session. When you hit either the win or loss limit, you need to end the session and go find something else to do.

The first thing you should do when visiting a casino is ask an employee about comps and/or signing up for the loyalty program. Casinos reward people with free meals, tickets for shows, and even free play just for gambling. Unfortunately, you’re only eligible for these benefits if you inquire about the program (or if you’re approached after gambling for hours). Assuming you do sign up for the comps/loyalty program, you’ll also receive mail about upcoming promotions and discounts on meals and shows.

Every major gambling destination has dozens or even hundreds of taxis filling the streets; this makes traveling around cities quick and convenient. Unfortunately, taxis are the most expensive way to travel in gambling cities. Since you’ll already be investing lots of money into your gambling trip, transportation is one area where you should really try to save cash. Buses offer cheap transportation in most cities, and you can also walk seeing as how it costs nothing at all.

In order to cater to people from all walks of life, casinos offer both fine dining and economy food choices. Unfortunately, the fine dining can get pretty expensive with many plates costing $40 or more. And it’s alright to spend this much once and a while, but if you’re working on a budget, there are plenty of buffets and cheap food options available too. In some cases, you can eat delicious buffet food for just $4 or $5! Case in point, treat the fine dining as an experience and the cheaper food as your main choice throughout the trip.

If you’re able to combine reasonably-priced food along with cheap show deals, you’ll really save some money on a gambling trip. You can find a lot of deals online or you can look for booths where cheap show tickets are offered (of course, this will require some additional research). In any case, do your research beforehand because most of the shows and side entertainment offered in and around casinos offer discounted tickets. You just need to be able to find them.

As important as this tip is, some people might think it’s self-explanatory to learn rules and strategy for gambling games before leaving for a trip. However, you’d be surprised how many people ignore learning rules, etiquette, and strategy for the games they plan on playing. Even if you don’t study and learn rules before leaving for a trip, you can always buy a strategy book at the casino.

Now this tip has nothing to do with managing your casino bankroll or finding cheap deals in gambling destinations. But it’s still very important to bring your laptop computer (or similar device) on the trip so you have something to do during the downtime. Many casinos offer free wireless internet, which means you can surf the net in your hotel room. If you don’t bring a laptop on the trip, there’s a good chance that you’ll get bored and gamble more money than you have or spend cash elsewhere.

There’s no law that mandates you tip casino dealers and waitresses. In fact, some people flat out refuse to tip the casino staff since they think dealers and waitresses already get paid enough. However, it’s common courtesy to tip the staff, and you shouldn’t even go on a gambling trip if you don’t have enough money to leave tips. Of course, you don’t have to overdo it by tipping people $5 for everything they do. But you should be willing to tip both waitresses and dealers around $5 an hour.