Play craps, win $545, lose $200, buy tickets to the Blue Man Group. Budget $100 more for gambling. Break even.

Gotta love Vegas.

PS. The dealers at the craps tables at the Luxor still suck (though not as bad as last time, one or two were actually nice). New York New York has some pretty nice dealers but we did have a dud today. Unlike most other casino games, the dealers in craps are critical in terms of how fun the table is. A good set of dealers will keep you entertained while you’re losing your money. They’ll help you remember bets you usually make but forget because, say, your girlfriend asks you what a “horn high 12″ bet is. Bad dealers make losing money about as fun as, well, losing money.

Odd note: they don’t seem to believe in the $5 table at Mandalay Bay anymore… we’ve walked around a bunch of times and found nothing in this casino that has a $5 minimum… no craps, no blackjack, and no roulette. Instead, everything is $10 min or $15. Luxor and New York New York were the only ones we found that had $5 tables and the Luxor was ratcheting up to $10 by 10PM or so.

Another odd note: you can’t use coins in slot machines anymore. The new casino in Niagara Falls (Canadian side) doesn’t use coins. Instead, you put in bills and you get your payouts in these tickets with an encoded strip on them. The strip looks a lot like the scannable tracking code on UPS packages. The machines also accept these tickets, allowing you to move between machines without lugging the familiar plastic cup of coins. It’s not just those crazy Canadians apparently. The entire Mandalay group of hotels is using a similar system, as is New York New York. Wish I hadn’t hoarded quarters during the earlier part of my vacation…