Since last posting, I left Vegas, returned for the blogger tourney, and as of Friday am back again. Even my gambling friends said I was insane.

I'm dumping all my comps and stiffing casinos for the last 2 weeks of the year, booking hotel rooms, freeplay, free food, and slot tournaments at 12 different hotel-casinos.

My New Year's resolution is to rid myself of these offers, which get me to visit Las Vegas far more than I should. From Nov. 16 to Jan. 3, I'll have been in Vegas a whopping 30 days. That's too much, even for me, and even for free.

It's sort of like when a girl came on Maury Povich with her fear of pickles and Maury tried to dump pickles on her to cure her phobia.

This trip is my pickles.

First on the target list is what's become my favorite hotel -- The Venetian/Palazzo. At The Venetian over the blogger tourney, I was told I was overcomped for my 3 nights, $100 freeplay, and $50 food. Overcomped means I won't get anything more above those offers, and I'm less likely to get the same offer in the future.

But here's what overcomped also means: last weekend at The Venetian, I lost $2130 (plus $135 if you count the blogger tourney that I didn't cash in) over 6 hours of play. That's just at Venetian, excluding losses elsewhere.

Like the majority of casinos, Venetian doesn't take into account actual losses, they calculate Average Daily Theoretical. This was made popular by Harrah's, which even holds a patent on how to calculate player comps (Harrah's lost the battle of protecting their tiered system, which is why many casinos now offer Total Rewards-like tiers).

Whether you win or lose, you receive comps based on average bet and time played. Longer is always better. My average bet last weekend was $1.71 per pull. At about 12 spins per minute, that's 720 spins per hour, or $1231.20 of coin-in per hour.

For 6 hours, that's $7387.20 of playthrough.

Figuring a 10 percent hold on penny slots (from the back pages of Slots Today), I'm expected to lose $738.72. What I lost is more indicative of a 29 percent hold, but way too small a sample. And besides, Nevada's maximum hold percentage on a slot machine is 25 percent. I was just unlucky.

That I lost three times that amount doesn't come into play when calculating comps. There used to be a time when you could scrounge some sympathy out of a pitboss or host for a food comp, but as things become more and more computerized (or Harrah's-ized), even they have lost authority.

If I were to win big, however, all bets are off and I would see even better offers to lure me back and return some of my winnings.

It doesn't make much sense to me that casinos make this the exception, yet they don't see the player who loses $2000 per trip every trip, even if they don't make their ADT.

Why not continue to comp that player?

Last weekend, my host at Venetian said I needed another 6 hours of play at my average bet before I could start asking for any additional comps, which means Venetian wants players to play enough to an average loss of $500 per day for a free room ($1477.44 / 3 days).

This is roughly equivalent to a $1 average bet for 8 hours per day of play (about $5760 coin-in/day) in order to get a free room, confirmed by another host.

This trip, I'm again overcomped.

My playthrough was $17,232 at a higher $1.89 average bet over 14 hours (I won't say how much I lost, but you can probably figure it out).

But it also includes entry into a $50,000 slot tournament and $50,000 sweepstakes tournament, the EV of which is about $333 for both.

My intention was to stiff the casinos, but the sweepstakes tourney was enough to get me to play -- 1 entry for every 100 points.

We'll see if it pays off. With 172 sweepstakes entries, I had better win something. I bombed in the slot tournament with a big fat zero, so all my eggs are in the sweepstakes.

The person at the player's club said I had the most amount of entries she'd seen so far, with the next highest being 112.

With 300 players and cash awards to 100th place, I figure I have a better than 1 in 3 shot at hitting something. 1st place is $20,000, 2nd is $10,000 and 3rd is $5000. 51st through 100th get $50 in slot credits.

I'm writing this with an hour to go before the awards reception.

If I get nothing, the Venetian/Palazzo will soon see what hath the wrath of my bad luck.