Hotel booking trick for high-profile dates, in order to avoid "non-refundable" BS

A lot of Vegas hotels are now instituting a "no refunds" policy for certain high profile dates in Vegas, such as Superbowl 2024, the F1 race, New Years, etc.

If you attempt to book these dates, you are often committing to pay no matter what, with no cancellation allowed. But there's a trick to get around this.

1) Book 1-3 additional days BEFORE your desired reservation dates. This will avoid the "no refunds" rule, and will also be a much smaller deposit. Experiment with this, first a day early, then 2, then 3, to see how many are necessary to tack on at the beginning in order to avoid the no refunds shit.

2) Call back about a week before the reservation and cut off those extra days, saying you can no longer make it, and will now check in on the date you really planned to be there.

Your reservation will now be refundable, as long as you cancel it within the normal period of time.