They will still seat you if you don't pay. You just don't get to choose the seat, it gets assigned automatically.

This is one of the more genius uses of the "what else can we do to make people pay more?" approach. People who care about where they sit now have to pay to make the choice. People who don't care don't have to pay, and the airline chooses for them.

This is why when you look at seating charts on the "choose a seat" section while booking, the plane often looks like it is nearly empty, but then when you show up for the flight, it's full. Because most people don't pay for seat selection, so most of the seats show up as free because the airline wants to wait until the last possible moment to assign them. That gives the people who are willing to pay for seating choice a greater range of options.

Yeah, I don't know how it works at American, but on Spirit you defintately do not have to pay to choose a seat, although some people might misunderstand and think it is required.

Yes, that's the way it's supposed to work; and normally i would have gone that route. But you're at more of a risk of getting bumped if the flight is overbooked and you don't have an assigned seat. Which is something I didn't want to risk on a flight during the holiday season.

That is exactly how it works.

Given that most people don't pay to choose seating, the bump concern (while correct) is not a material risk. Being afraid of getting bumped and paying for a seat to lower the risk is exactly what the airlines want you to do.

The fact that airlines are allowed to knowingly overbook flights is ridiculous in the first place. Them using that as a way to increase profit by scaring their customers is reprehensible.

Yeah, I always thought the overbooking was shady as well, but I also have always hoped to be on an overbooked flight. Twice I volunteered to go on a later flight and got a free ticket for another trip; once it was a change from a flight with plane change to a direct flight, and I got there less than one hour later than I would have otherwise.

You realize that overbooking is SOP in all facets of the T&E business, right? Hotels do it; car rental agencies do it; cruise lines do it; restaurants do it, etc.

I didn't know what other companies for which reservations were pre-paid do it.

Yes, what is your point?

I thought my statement was self-explanatory. You said that overbooking by airlines is ridiculous and I just pointed out that that was standard throughout the travel and entertainment agency. But if you need me to expound on why they do it....

Airlines know that a certain percentage of passengers who hold tickets will not show up for a given flight (not all tickets are nonrefundable). Rather than have the flight fly with those vacant seats, they sell more tickets than seats trying to ensure that the flight flies full. If they were not allowed to do so, and had to just give up the revenue when ticketed passengers don't show up and request a refund of a previously issued ticket, then the prices for other passengers would need to be increased to cover that expected shortfall.

IOW, you can prohibit overbooking and have higher ticket fares to compensate for those unused seats, or you can have the present system where airlines base their ticketing prices on filling 100% of the seats, but offer compensation to passengers when flights are overbooked. I prefer the latter.

Dang.... 4/8 limit for a living. As someone who regularly "grinds" and I do mean grind 4/8 in Vegas for 100hrs plus per trip, he must have been miserable. Like any game, one can have some -50 to -100 BB sessions. I play for the challenge /entertainment and socialization.

Like the original poster, I also got fed up with resort fees and taxes. Decided to purchase a timeshare to know exactly what my room was going to cost 1 year out. Both hotels and the TS have pros and cons.

Making it or not in vegas..... Well had a bump in the road robbed wont get into **** story main thing is i now have to dervive on 327 no cc to my name .. Im off to play for my life .",, feeling presser but im a natrual nit now hav to short stack. A hundo d up and burn off else. Where. I think of another. Sulution ?,,, Abvice is welcomed

Overbooking is fine. They know the numbers and if they didn't overbook the cost of the ticket would be higher. I fly all the time and only once have I seen someone bumped who didn't agree to be bumped for compensation.
And if you didn't let them overbook, if you missed your flight, were late etc your ticket would have to be worth exactly 0 and they would have you by the balls for the next flight out.

Offer to blow dudes for $50.

You are amusingly condescending for someone who doesn't understand how seat selection on a flight works.

Overbooking being standard in T&E does not invalidate the practice being ridiculous either in one segment or all of them. Taking off our shoes at airport security happens almost everywhere for the average airline passenger in the USA. Just because something is standard doesn't stop it from being ridiculous.

You are pretending that because I said something that is standard is ridiculous, that I must not understand why it's standard, so that you can make a condescending explanation. Now that's ridiculous.

Your final conclusion presents a false dichotomy. There are other solutions, including not selling refundable tickets, or pricing refundable tickets higher. They can also implement other strategies that some people fall for, such as the one you fell for by thinking your wife wouldn't be able to fly on the plane if you didn't select a seat during the booking process.

So basically is hotels still best way if want to go to vegas and play low stakes poker for a short time? Like 1 month and less.


Also im curious how has the poker scene changed in vegas. Back in 2012, i mostly played 1/3nl for close to 3 months there. My w/r was around 24/hr at the time. I was considered a reg and many players consider me to be very good. I played Tag mostly. It was just many players who played there were bad.


Has poker changed a lot in vegas since 2012? Is 1/3nl and 2/5nl much tougher now than in 2012? I relocated outside the usa to play on stars a while back and games are just very tough now. I was mostly a mid stake sng player who play low stake mttsng. Yes i know.


I recalled 1/3nl was very soft in vegas though. Of course i would want to play 2/5nl. But is it okay to say even 1/3nl is not that easy anymore? I keep having a feeling that a 1/3nl game in vegas would have a few grinders at the table. There weren't that many grinders when i played there back in 2012. However i noticed at the 2/5nl tables, it was mostly same faces etc so obviously its a reg infested table.

I find 1-2 or 1-3 to be much harder now to win money. The bad players are way less than they were 5-6-7 years ago. 2-5 is reg infested at some places like Venetian (or at least it was last year). I find for stays over 2 weeks places you can find on sites like airnb for example are cheaper. Hotels are brutal in Vegas now outside of a few weeks in the year. Most notably those 2 weeks after Thanksgiving are usually dirt cheap. I flew in Sunday evening after TDay last year and walking around that night I would have thought I was in some small town in Iowa or Nebraska it was so deserted. Take for example the week after Labor Day. I'm headed out there...probably gonna be cheap right? Wrong...hotels are brutal the ensuing 5-6 days after Labor Day for whatever reason. Statistically this is the slowest or one of the slowest travel weeks of the entire year, but apparently not in Vegas this year.

isnt rodeo in town that week?

hotels are a lot more expensive than they were a few years ago largely due to the bs resort fees but rates are higher outside of that and easy comped rooms are much harder to come by than they were back then.i mean if you're playing for fun,want to go to Vegas and have poker subsidize your trip that's great.

but if you live anywhere near a casino from a purely monetary standpoint you'd be better off just staying him at 2/5 and especially 1/2.the expenses of being in vegas for a month will be more than the extra money you'd win from better games (if they even are better)

but of course there will be 1/2 and 2/5 nl players on a heater staying at the aria for 150 a day putting in 6-8 hours a day thinking they have an edge.

that's the other thing- when these events or conventions are in town room rates sky rocket. i've seen rooms at harrahs go for 30 bucks a night one week and 250 the next.

It's usually 2nd week of December, but it doesn't generally crank rates all that much in my experience. It does cause rates to be higher than the week either side, but not as much as you'd expect. Last year it didn't really raise rates at all because it was held a week earlier than it usually is, immediately after Tday when I was there. I guess they felt given it was a deathly slow week they couldn't afford to jack up the rates as they often do for major events

And it's totally moronic too. They give all the convention groups block rates anyway. So what purpose does it serve to go and force everyone else out? Which is ultimately what happens. Anyone who lives nearby will just come out the week before or after.

well if one week rooms are 30-50 bucks and the next they're 250 i doubt the conventioners are getting group rates of 30-50 bucks

also this is odd- total rewards used to give out rooms like candy

i haven't had comps or given them any action in years.

just logged in and in vegas i can get some weeks comped including the week of labor day.

looks like i have have to get the founders club thing to get diamond status bc 1 nights a year of resort fees will pay for the card.

Those convention room rates are at the high end of the range, not low. Conventions are a jackpot for hotels: rent hundreds or thousands of rooms at a time at a much higher rate than they otherwise could get, have all those people using expense accounts at their restaurants, and god knows what they charge for use of the convention space.

Try AirBnb for a cheap room (actually can be had for <$50/night, even on weekends) and just Uber/Lyft it to the Strip for under $10 each way; even less with a discount code (new Lyft users can get $5 off each trip for first 10 rides; PM and I'll pass along a code that I think still works).

not spamming for FC card-but it has been a really good deal for me-just from resort fees-plus there is the $100 dinner comp......