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Tags: Fantasy Football / Football / M Resort / Las Vegas Hilton / Wynn / Station Casinos / The Orleans / The California / → All Tags

Time To Sign Up For Your Vegas Football Contests

One guy that's happy the Wynn sportsbook is breaking out a fantasy football contest this year.

For true fantasy football freaks, one contest is not enough. If you missed last week’s SUPERDRAFT with Snoop you can still draft in style with Harrah’s Ultimate Weekend. But for the true freak, there are plenty other season long and weekly contests of all levels that will whet your pigskin.

THE RIDICULOUS:

Cantor Gaming’s High Stakes Football Contest
Where: M Resort
Cost: $100,000 per entry
Type: Pick 5 winners using point spread each week
Prizes: 1st: 70% of prize pool, 2nd: 20%, 3rd 10%
If you have 100K to blow and no desire for anything less than winning, this is obviously the contest for you and the ego. At least eight players have signed up already guaranteeing $560,000 for first.

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Tags: Deals / Room Rates / Packages / M Resort / Discounts / → All Tags

Calling All Californians: The M Resort Wants To Save You Money

We love it when a deal turns out to be a real deal, so after our disappointment at the lackluster “locals discount” at New York New York, we’re pleased to report that the M Resort is doing things the right way.

When we drove past a billboard offering 30 percent off rooms to California residents a couple of weeks ago, we assumed it was more of a tease than anything else. So we were very excited when we called the M this morning and asked about the offer.

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Tags: M Resort / Free WiFi / Hotel WiFi / Hotel Lobbies / → All Tags

Nice Lobby, M, Shame You’ve Nixed The WiFi

We had two places to be last night: on our laptop, working, and at the M Resort to watch a friend’s band. A good combo, we thought – seeing as the M has free WiFi in the lobby, we’d work and listen at the same time.

But when we got to the lobby (very pretty, FYI), we found no signal. And the lady at the check-in desk told us not to bother looking, as it was only available in-room now. “We’ve actually been working on sorting that out,” the lady told us. “Because people who weren’t staying at the resort were coming in and using our wifi, so we’ve had to lock it”. Digital Nomad fail!

She then said we could have a go but doubted we would find a signal, and she was right. In fact, we couldn’t pick up any signal in the lobby, password-protected or not.

We did pick up what looked like the resort’s network in the Ravello Bar but obviously it was locked. Which, we guess, is fair enough – it’s still there for residents, after all, and the M abolished its resort fee a while back. But we can’t help thinking that the off-Strip resorts should probably be a little more accommodating of visitors. ‘Cos we very much doubt they’d be flooded with WiFi chasers, what with being so far away, and even if it was, they could probably do with the custom. Not being rude or anything, but it wasn’t exactly slammin’ last night.

Tags: Holidays / M Resort / Christmas in Vegas / → All Tags

Rockin' Around The M Resort's Giant Christmas Tree

As of late it's been hard to recommend a resort off the Strip when casino-hotels on the Strip have been offering such great deals lately. But should you find yourself in a Christmas-y mood during your Vegas Vacation and the holiday decorations at The Bellagio and The Palazzo just don't cut it, drive on out to The M Resort where you will find a 109-foot Christmas tree in front, which is the "largest non-living Christmas tree" in the nation.

The White Fir tree came to the resort from Oregon and it had quite a trip. From the LV Sun:

“We cut this tree down, closed roads and highways to bring it here. It took more than seven days to get it in the ground and decorated and tonight, I’m very excited that so many people showed up to share the lighting of the Christmas tree with us,” said the resort’s chief executive, Anthony Marnell III [on the eve of the lighting December 12th.

The resort's restaurants are all serving Christmas dinners from 5 to 11:30pm and you can check out the menus here. Wanna spend the night? Room rates start tonight at $106 a night for a Strip View room. We say book the Fa la la la la package instead which comes with a $75 dining credit.

[Photo: LV Sun]

Tags: Cashing Out / Garth Brooks / BB King / M Resort / Haze / → All Tags

Garth Brooks Swag Already Looking Fancier Than Most

Garth Brooks comes out of retirement tonight for his first concert at the Encore Theater. We hope some of you were lucky enough to get tickets (even day of tickets too) but if you aren't, you can always pick up some Garth Brooks swag just outside the theater which is daintily modeled by a hand mannequin. There you can find the obligatory concert swag like keychains, CDs, and t-shirts. But we're still waiting for a black cowboy hat that has Wynn written on it.

Here's what else is on in Vegas:
· Haze at Aria to have a $25,000 drink (that no one will ever buy) [San Fran Chronicle]
· M Resort to light gigantic Xmas tree tomorrow [M Resort]
· CityCenter's own fire station has opened [We Do it All Vegas]
· Don't Forget about BB King! His blues club opens in The Mirage tonight [VegasDeluxe]

Another pic of Garth swag after the jump.

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Tags: M Resort / Poker / Video Poker / Gambling / → All Tags

M Resort Ups The Ante for Video Poker

Slot players, listen up: there’s a swanky new video poker bar at the M Resort in Henderson.

The bar, located on the casino floor near the Red Cup Café, opened last week and boasts 20 brand spanking new machines. Like many other video poker machines on site (there are more than 100 overall), these machines took just about any denomination of coins.

Other machines at the M are situated in banks all over the casino floor. Our rough count tallied sixteen 100 percent machines (meaning they pay back 100 percent of what players put in), many of which were quarters-only. A number of other machines offered close to 99 percent payback, making the M’s video poker products among the loosest east of the Strip.

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Tags: Top Chef / Cyrus / Restaurants / Douglas Keane / M Resort / → All Tags

The Boys from 'Top Chef' Will Battle it Out at Cyrus in Healdsburg

We don’t know about you, but we are so looking forward to the Top Chef Season 6 finale on Bravo tonight. We may have to medicate to survive the episode if it’s anywhere near as stressful as last week’s nail-biter.

As rumors swirl about who takes home the title of Top Chef, sightings of Kevin and Eli, together in Napa Valley, and the big Voltaggio brother showdown, one aspect of this week’s episode was cleared up when a press release from Chef Douglas Keane’s (of Cyrus Restaurant fame) people arrived in our inbox.

The email revealed that:

For the Season 6 Finale, finalists prepare and cook in Cyrus’ kitchen for the final stage of this year’s exciting challenge. Maitre d’ and Co-Owner Nick Peyton greets Tom Colicchio, Padma Lakshmi and other judges and guests before all are seated in Cyrus’ elegant dining room.

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Tags: Top Chef / M Resort / Macy's / Ads / → All Tags

The Advertorials Are Getting Out of Hand on Top Chef

After an unexpected one week hiatus, Top Chef Las Vegas was back last night with a “Dinner Party” episode. The episode opened with Ash talking about how he didn’t go to culinary school and Michael dishing on the difficulties of being away from his young daughters, ages 5 and 9. (Insert sigh here.)

Jennifer wasn’t feeling well, but the thick-skinned gal was quick to note that she didn’t need any sympathy. (She also probably shouldn’t have been handling and serving food. Sick servers and people behind the line is one of our biggest restaurant pet peeves.)

The contestants assembled at M Resort where slot machine results defined three keywords that described mood, taste/texture and a type of cuisine. The chefs had to create a dish in less than 30 minutes that combined the three keywords in the Cookstr.com High Stakes Quickfire with guest judge, Tyler Florence, chef, author and television star. Keywords included words like romantic, tart, Latin America, umami, stressed, adventurous, Middle Eastern and Asian.

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Tags: Top Chef / M Resort / Chefs / Date a Top Chef / → All Tags

If You Can't Watch Top Chef, Play 'Date a Top Chef'

Wah. We were totally crushed that there wasn’t a new episode of Top Chef Las Vegas last night and wish the marketing minds at Bravo TV had said something like, “See you in two weeks” after last week’s episode. A little head’s up would’ve been nice, since we schedule our social schedule around this Wednesday night ritual.

Just to be sure, we logged onto Bravo.com to confirm that our crappy cable TV provider, Comcast wasn’t fooling us, and found this titillating "Date a Top Chef" feature on the site’s landing page. Always up for a Cosmopolitan-esque quiz, we were ready to click our way through a few easy questions to a culinary match made in, umm…The M Resort. Nope – no such thing.

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Tags: Football / NFL / Sports / M Resort / → All Tags

There’s More to The M Resort Than Being Just Top Chef Digs

This past weekend, The M Resort (as in The M Resort so prominently displayed in Top Chef) kicked off its weekly football viewing parties inside Ravello Lounge. "Weekly football viewing parties" sounds so morbid, like it’s a funeral or some other kind of formal function. We sure as hell hope they deliver more fun, although we tend to make our own fun wherever we go.

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Tags: Top Chef / M Resort / Chefs / Sandy Valley Ranch / → All Tags

Cowboy Cookout with The Top Chef Crew

We we

re kinda non-plussed by Top Chef Episode 6, “Camping.” The usually opinionated/bossy Jennifer kept a low-profile. Mike I. wasn’t his usual obnoxious self. There really wasn’t any drama. Period.

About the only emotional aspect of the show came from Ashley The episode started with her calling her older brother, whose wife gave birth the night before and she was teary because she couldn't be with them. Later in the show, she reveals that she grew up in a very poor family in the middle of the woods with her single mother. Turn out, those circumstances helped in with the cooking challenge. So we like it when Ashley gets real, instead of angry. But on with the recap.

The main culinary component of the High Stakes Quickfire Challenge was determined via text – contenders included rattlesnake, cactus or kangaroo with cactus taking the lead. The remaining 12 contestants had 45 minutes to prepare their dishes at The M Resort's Top Chef kitchen, with the winner taking home $15,000 but no immunity. Chef Tim Love, a tried and true Texan man, was the guest judge.

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Tags: Labor Day Weekend / Lake Las Vegas / Palazzo / M Resort / First Food and Bar / El Cortez / → All Tags

Resorts Offer Barbecues, Free Mini Burgers to Celebrate Labor Day

We like the Las Vegas Sun's comprehensive blog roundup of some Labor Day weekend festivities you might want to check out. Here are some highlights:

On Sunday, the M Resort is having a poolside, end-of-summer food festival consisting of American and Mexican food, barbecue, a watermelon-eating contest and a fresh lemonade stand. Admission is free and it runs from 3 p.m. until 8 p.m.

Also on Sunday, Lake Las Vegas’ Sonrisa Grill is hosting a Margarita Festival. A $20 admission allows you to taste up to 30 margaritas and vote for your favorite tequila-tainted concoction. The potential for widespread mayhem starts at 4 p.m. and goes until 7 p.m.

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