Good news is I know how to avoid resort fees. Bad news is if you have to book under a block of a group that has negotiated the waiving of resort fees so not everyone can do it.

You do understand that in the Prisoners' Dilemma, both prisoners are the suckers and it's the prosecutor laughing all the way to the bank?

You are exactly right in one narrow aspect - we all pay higher prices so you can make the best of a bad situation by using the gougingest credit cards (Amex, Discover). But you're missing the point that you're not getting a 5% "discount" on anything. You're getting 5% off a price that has been jacked up.

People look at resort fees like some kind of addition to the actual room cost. It's not. The actual room cost is the advertised price plus the resort fee plus the taxes. Sure, there are ways to "avoid" the resort fees. They involve paying or bartering in different ways - and the credit card is just a different way of paying them. Gambling to earn elite status is another form of payment. (And opening a bunch of credit cards lowers your credit score and defers the payment until you apply for a loan.)

I'm not saying that one way is inferior or superior. If you're gonna drop money at the craps table, you might as well get credit for it. If you're gonna use a credit card, make sure the rewards are something you use (e.g., I dropped an airline card after realizing I hated the airline). If you're gonna stay at an unpopular hotel that doesn't play games with their costs, great. But you're not sticking it to the man in any case.

Slight derail but this is like those going out of business sales. They jack up the price before marking it down so the GOOB price might be higher than what it would have been had they not been going out of business.

I do understand that, that's why it's a dilemma. The fact that a participant can't truly be a "winner" doesn't change the fact that the GTO solution as an individual is to defect.

The price is going to be jacked up regardless of what I do as an individual.
My business is a tiny drop in a huge sea. So effectively, the price is what it is, jacked up or not. If I'm getting 5% back, and others are getting less or none, I'm doing the best I can, and would be foolish to do anything else.

Lmfao!!! This is funny! So I guess a cash paying customer, versus a credit card customer which receives 5% cash back, makes no difference? Like Rob said, he is getting something, instead of nothing. This year alone I have made at least over $1000 from playing the credit card, and checking account game.

Yeah! You totally made it! Let's be sure to include it in GDP!

You're confusing GTO with EV+.

I'm pointing out the GTO solution is EV-.

It's not a derail. It goes to the general principle of fluid pricing. There is no objectice price for anything. So when a company decides that their shirt is $50 or their room is $100 or their blowjobs are $300, it's simply a measure of how much they thino they can get away with. If they decide to call it a $75 shirt 33% off, you're not "saving" $25. If they call it a $75 room with a $25 resort fee, you're not getting "overcharged" by $25. If they tell you it's a $100 agency fee plus $100 stripping fee plus an expected $100 tip, you're not paying more than you "should."

Popular hotels could even use price discrimination, like colleges do. Set the price arbitrarily high - $1,000 per night - and then give out 90% discounts to 99% of the people who book.

I understand that, but acting in a GTO manner is not as -EV as other actions, so I'm doing the best I can.

This is so off topic to the thread at this points. I am TR platinum and also interested in ways to continue to avoid resort fees if the policy has changed.

However...the prisoners' dilemma is a toy game where only the relative ordinality of the payouts matters. Their cardinality, and thus whether they are on the whole expressed as positive or negative numbers, is irrelevant and just arbitrarily assigned in any given example. So saying the GTO solution is -EV is meaningless....I suppose it is -EV if you've decided to invent negative payouts, and +EV if you've decided to assign positive payouts, but this decision makes no difference to the essence of the game and its application to game theory.

Only on 2p2 does a conversation about resort fees lead to GTO discussion.

I'm going to try and get this back on track.

I'm staying at Vdara for 7 nights ( 88/145 + tax + resort fee per night ) and I charge all my MGM purchases to my room ( around $400 ). I don't plan on any significant gaming ( 20 VP for 1 hr or broke on ~3 different occasions ).

Has anyone gotten their resort fee partially waived from hotel charges alone?

I would say no chance.
If you're not going to gamble, they have no incentive to deduct the resort fee.

Downtown on Fremont Street the 4 Queens, and the Fremont Casino don't have resort fees. I like staying downtown it reminds me of old Las Vegas.

The El Cortez resort fee is $8.95 a night, so not too bad.

They have recreated Paris, Italy, Egypt etc at the strip casinos. I wish someone would recreate an "Old Las Vegas" style casino in a mega resort. I think that would be a fun experience.

I think they tried it a bit at New YorkNew York but that property settled into middle road mgm quite quickly.

Main Street Station has no resort fee, and is nicer than 4 Queens or Fremont, imo. On the strip, TI has a "television special" under which the resort fee is optional, and the Best Western connected to Casino Royale has no resort fee.

The thing with the TI deal is the room rate is higher than the rate with a resort fee. Not as much higher to make up the difference, but it is higher. BE SURE to tell the front desk person you don't want the resort fee because they are unlikely to ask you and just put it on by default.

Stick around for check out (which I never do...-EV tiime sink) and when you get to the counter, ask checkout to call slots or table pit or whatver you play and ask them to review your action......assuming you have actually PLAYed at your casino, you will probably get them to cancel any fees.

If you're NOT playing, vacation elsewhere like SF or NYC because you aren't gambling anyway....

No legal poker in either one of those places.

And there's more to Vegas than gambling.

If they comp your resort fees off the bill, then you also had enough action to comp something else off the bill. So it still isn't exactly a situation where you're getting them for free. You're just choosing to use your comps for resort fees rather than some other hotel charges.