Dear Friends,

The following letter has been submitted to the LVRJ, LV Sun, and several local reporters I know. If the Stations or Fiestas are an integral part of your lifestyle, and you feel as I do about this imminent change, please consider writing letters to the editors of our local newspapers and any relevant Stations/Fiestas employees.

You are also welcome to forward, reprint, publish, print-out, mail, etc., the following letter as you see fit, provided you do so in it's entirety and properly attribute the source as dictated by the Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivs license (link below). In other words, you can do whatever you want to with it, even make money(?), as long you don't change it or take my name off of it.

Finally, although I feel quite passionate about this, I only have so much time I can devote away from my publishing responsibilities. As such, I haven't been able to hunt down the names, addresses, and/or email addresses of people in the Stations' hierarchy to send a copy to. If you have any of these addresses, please either email them to me or send them a copy yourself if you have time.

Good Cards,

V

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Stations and Fiesta Casinos to Bait-And-Switch Customers

To Whom it May Concern,

On January 1st, Stations and Fiesta casinos will begin giving full-pay video poker players only half of the Boarding Pass reward points enjoyed by players of all other machines. It will take $2 to earn a single point, as opposed to $1 for short-pay video poker and slot players. This decision, made by executives several layers away from the players, is dubious for several reasons, and appears to be an attempt to enhance profits by punishing good consumers, and not by improving the product.

When you play a game of chance at any casino, the house edge is the cost of that entertainment, like paying for a movie ticket. The points you earn, much like the points you might earn on a credit card when buying that ticket, are a reward for your loyalty to that casino. Your points also encourage you to return to the casino to eat and shop, thereby tempting you into more play. It?s a good deal for both the casinos and the players.

As such, the dark secret of full-pay video poker is that, although the games can potentially return over 100%, only a very small number of players can come close to achieving those results. The casino?s vast bankroll and the difficulty in playing every hand perfectly for hours at a time ensure that even full-pay machines have a very positive hold for the casino. The practical result is that, although the casino still wins in the end, full-pay video poker gives the average player a fair shot. Most locals, and those visitors who choose the personal touch of the Stations-brand casinos, know this.

And because so many players know it, many casinos, including Stations and the Fiestas, aggressively advertise their full-pay video poker inventory. You see these ads in the newspaper, on billboards, and in television ads. I see it on my buffet placemat at least three or four times a week. They?re inviting you to come into their house and play a game with decent odds.

But starting January 1st, the Stations will start punishing players who accept that invitation. Your ?reward? for being responsive to their advertising and/or just being a good consumer will be to receive only half of the points as other players. With the former this is the classic bait-and-switch, and with the latter this is nothing less than a middle finger to the hundreds of thousands of loyal customers that have made the Stations and Fiestas a success.

With the Stations stock trading at several times its value, and the increasing competition from California casinos for visitors and casinos like MonteLago for locals (which advertises over 600 full-pay machines), the rationale behind this alienating decision is an inscrutable mystery. It would seem that instead of making more money by getting more customers through better marketing, the Stations would rather turn on the people who helped them get to where they are.

Locals are the lifeblood of the economy that has made the Stations wildly successful. These faithful customers, and anyone who visits the Stations casinos because they advertise full-pay video poker, deserve the same treatment as all other players. Or maybe, in light of all their success, they don?t need us anymore. Just the suckers they think we are.

Viktor Nacht
RGE Publishing, Ltd.
www.rge21.com
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This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivs License. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/1.0/ or send a letter to Creative Commons, 559 Nathan Abbott Way, Stanford, California 94305, USA.