Luxor doesn't have a poker room, does it?
What's the best way to acquire a couple racks? Go to the casino cage and just ask? Play table games and hoard them covertly?
Any insights as to how hawkish that property is about their new chips?
@Moxie Mike...
Correct, no poker room.
I went last night, at about 11PM. It helps to be a local and a Veteran (MGM issues a "Pearl" level rewards card to Veterans, which gives free parking at all of their properties!) FWIW - Caesars Entertainment does the same thing with a "Salute" rewards card that also gives free parking at all of their properties! If you are not a player and collect chips, these cards are invaluable!!! But I digress.
The Luxor has greatly down-sized their table-games area from years ago. They have 2 craps tables and 1 electronic/human craps table with stadium seating for players. The table is small, bathtub shaped, with a stickman at one end and human thrower at the other end. Players place their bets (all electronically) and the thrower is pushed a pair of real dice. The dice are thrown, the number is called out, payout/losses are done electronically and the dice are pushed back to the thrower. I do not know how the thrower is recruited, but I was surprised that all player seats were occupied, about 20 players.Oops, I digressed again.
My 1st location to try and get chips, is always the cage, and 90% of the time, here in Vegas, the cage will NOT sell chips. True to form, the cage said critter said, go to the tables. So I left the cage with zero chips, knowing that 70% of the time, the tables will say, 'go to the cage'. But, since the chips can only be gotten at the tables, that is where I headed. The Luxor has 2 roulette wheels, and about 24 table games (a mix of blackjack, pai gow, 3-card poker, etc., but most;y blackjack. Keeping in mind that I do not play table games, just to get chips, but I will buy-in to get chips at the craps table(s). My bank was $50 and I had a target of 20 $1 chips. But to my horror, but not surprise, the new HS chips were intermix with the paper inlay $1 chips, and while the newer chips could be spotted by their clean, brite-white edges, you can't buy-in and say, "I only want the new $1 chips". What I do is laydown my stake, $50, and ask for 10 whiles, and the rest red. I then pick up the chips, go through the 10 whites, pulling out the HS versions (3 of them) and then stand there for a couple of rolls, not playing, looking like I am intimidated by the game. I then lay down the buy-in, minus the 3 $1 chips and ask to be colored up. Coloring up can be interesting as they take all of your chips (7 whites, and 9 reds) and give you 1 green, 4 red and 2 white. Hopefully, the 2 white will include 1 or 2 more of the HS chips. I got 1 and was now up to 4. I took my green and 4 reds to the 2nd craps table and basically repeated the process and ended up with 9 HS $1s and my stake was then 1 green, 3 red and 1 white.
I then walked all of the table games looking at the chip trays, where only about 30% of the visible front chip of the $1 stacks were the HS versions. I typically do not buy-in to these table games, because its tougher to stand there, not playing, while I go through the $1 chips, especially when the house has the $1 chips for the side bets only and does not like to do a table fill, just to refresh the $1s. So, what I do is skip to the chase. I spot an open table that has no players. I get the attention of the boss and explain that I wanted to get 10 of the new chips, but not interrupt any of the games that have players. In the vast majority of times I have done this, the boss is very amicable and we go to the empty table, where I will put down a couple of red chips. The boss has the dealer spread out the $1 chips and pick out the ones I want. The table I picked, only had 1 HS chip!!! So, I went to another table, again with the approval of the boss and there I got 2 more, but, I could tell the boss was at her limit, so I move to the next pit.
There I hit gold. The boss there interrupted a game with 3 players, and when the dealer grabbed some of the $1 chips, all of them were the new ones. So I pressed my luck and asked for more, and was shocked when I was able to get 22 chips, for a total of 31, and tipped that dealer a chip. 30 was enogh for me, so I cashed in the remainder of my stake ($20) and headed on my way.
However, on my way out I passed both of the roulette tables and noticed that they had an abundant amount of white, red and green rack chips, for those players that prefer to bet with rack chips, versus wheel cheques/checks. The stacks of whites while capped with the paper inlay versions, sure looked like there were lots and lots of the new HS version in the stacks. It dawned on me that roulette could be a source of harvesting that comes close to a poker room, because one could buy in for a rack or two of the whites, sit there of pull out the new ones, playing a hand or two and then coloring up. Doing it that way, would require a bigger stake, but something to think about for getting chips is a large quantity, when thay are mixed in with the plurality of the other versions. Yes, the 2 different sized paper inlay chips are mixed in with the new HS versions.
Whew, if you stayed this long, which I did not intend to write, thanks for hanging in there, and my final note is, not counting gas, and drive time, and walking time to/from the casino floor/parking structure, it took me just over an hour to get 30 chips!
Geez... I sure wish every casino had a poker room!
Jim
ps. In contrast, this morning I stopped by the Resort at Summerlin casino to get their new $2 side bet chip, use at their Face Up Pai Gow table game. My 1st, and only stop, was the cage! They said yes, and even had to go back to the vault area to get 10 of them, as they did not have any in their drawer that had been cashed in earlier. Sometimes you lucky!!