Ruby wanted to visit a much larger casino, so Aaron and I took her to the Ameristar casino in Kansas City and she treated us to dinner and a bit of gambling money (with firm instructions that I *had* to spend it in the casino – I was not allowed to pocket it and invest it, as is my habit with everything that flows into my life – which made me laugh because my family knows me well). Here are some pictures of where we went with the rest of this post written in the captions of each image.
This is the casino Aaron, Ruby, and I went last night. The whole time, all I could think was that two years ago, Ameristar shares were down to below $6 each and today they are at roughly $20. Although they are still losing a few million dollars a year (compared to making more than $60 million after taxes not that long ago), revenues are decently higher than they were two years ago with the cost of goods sold lower (which makes me guess - and this is total conjecture - that they lowered the payouts to players on the casino floors). By law, they must post the payout percentage and I found the (tiny, framed notice) by the customer service desk, which said payouts for the past 12 months had average 90.9%. In other words, statistically, every time you hit the "spin" button on a slot machine or other electronic gaming device, you are going to lose 9.1 cents for every $1 you put in ...
Ruby treated Aaron and I to the buffet and bought our dinner for taking her to the casino. It was actually really good (far better than one would think when you hear the word "buffet" so it was a great surprise - we would all eat there again, definitely). Of course, she heard the bells and whistles and ran out the door as Aaron and I were still eating! The temptation was too much for her and we were laughing because it is exactly how we act when we attend a shareholder meeting of some company in which we've been investing a lot of our money.
