Poker Poker Poker!: [vpFREE] Re: General level of initial play to solicit offers

Campus_chic13 writes:

<< So what level of play is likely to generate some decent freeplay
mailers pretty much anywhere I go, without overplaying too heavily at
casinos with smaller maximum offers? >>

This is a key question for any ambitious player, of course. You've
received some good answers, but I'll add my two cents.

It's true what they say, you should learn from mistakes, preferably
other people's. This highlights the irreplaceable value of forming
information networks. One player's experiment can profit the whole
group. You probably don't have the time to try out every casino in the
travel destinations you're considering, all on your own. Nor would you
choose to take on that level of risk, given a good alternative.

I'm focused on plays that have the potential of producing offers
adequate to give me a worthwhile return on my time. That pretty much
rules out quarter machines. Rarely, you'll find a 50 play quarter or 50
cent machine that will do the job for you. But for the most part,
you'll be looking at $1 to $5 machines. At the $1 level, you'll
probably want 3, 5, or 10 play machines, because single line will just
be too slow.

If you have no information whatsoever on a particular casino's marketing
programs, you'll want to begin by sizing the place up. Read the vpFree2
database by all means, but it's only a starting point and not always
complete or accurate. Go to the player's club booth, and get a copy of
the brochure. Go through this carefully, and make sure you understand
the program in full, including the benefits of higher card tiers. If
the brochure doesn't make everything clear, ask the staff to explain the
rates of point accrual, what points are good for, comps, free play, or
both, and the rate of conversion. Find out about any other valuable
perks of the program. Sometimes this is like pulling teeth, because
staff don't know themselves. The bar for hiring in many casinos is set
very low. So take information you receive with a grain of salt. Walk
around the casino, and take inventory of what games and denominations
are available. If the biggest game in the house is a single line $1
machine, honestly, you're USUALLY wasting your time there. You have to
ask yourself, do I want to put in the time necessary for the coin in
that's going to generate a good offer? And since this is obviously a low
roller place, what's their top offer going to be? Are they likely to be
giving away, say, $150 per week when that's bigger than their target
customer's whole trip bankroll? There are definitely exceptions, but
this is an important guideline. Also, walk around and see what other
customers are actually betting. Some casinos may have a couple of
higher denomination machines, but if they hardly ever get play, it may
be irrelevant to their marketing.

Determine if the casino offers multiplier days. If you don't see them
advertised, ask. Be sure to find out about any cap on the number of
multiplied points you can earn in a day. Sometimes the caps are quite
low, making the multiplier days not very valuable. There have been
plenty of reports on this board about people getting backed off for
playing too heavily on multiplier days. But as a new customer, you'll
probably want to take advantage of any good multiplier day for your
initial play. You're rarely going to be penalized for this. It can
dramatically lower the cost of your play, or even give you a nicely
positive game.

You also want to find out if free play will be made available direct to
machine, or if you'll need to show your smiling face at the booth each
time to collect.

Having done your homework, you want to make some estimate of what you
might be able to get in the way of offers, and given the games offered,
what it's going to cost you (in expectation, statistically) to try to
get it. And how much TIME you're going to have to put in. The way I
handle things personally, there's going to be a considerable variation
in how much action I'll give on an initial play, depending on how
valuable I think the casino might be. If I think that the offers might
be lucrative, I have no problem giving away $100, $200, $300 in
expectation. If the likelihood of getting good offers seems poor, and
the games are lousy, I'm much less willing to give action. I might
still give $3000, $6000, $8000 coin in as a probe. If I get a
proportionately good offer in response, maybe I'll go back and give a
bigger play, to see if I can scale up the response.

At a casino where I have prior information that offers may be good, or
that caters to and successfully attracts a well-heeled clientele, and
that has decent games, or that has point accrual that makes the games
decent, I may give a much higher level of action--often $30,000 to
$50,000 coin in.

Or in many cases, I'll give action somewhere in between those ends of
the spectrum.

Yes, this approach carries a risk of losses that most people would find
painful. If you're going to aim for substantial free play offers, I
think that you need to be prepared to accept the risk.

These are general guidelines. Understand that they'll turn out to be
completely wrong in some cases. There are casinos that look like
desperate little grind joints that turn out to have surprisingly
generous top offers. Then there are plenty of fancy places that give
away hardly anything, no matter how good your play. So it would pay to
know that the Western Village in Sparks gives no free play to anyone.
You'd probably find that out if you just went to the booth and asked
them flat out. This is an example of how it never hurts to ask.
(Talking with hosts is a delicate dance. But booth staff are low level
employees, and there's probably no down side to asking even the rudest
questions.)

A sometimes-important question is, should I give a local or out of town
address? It's easy enough to appear to reside wherever you like, by
renting a private post office box. These have addresses that are
indistinguishable from apartment numbers. If staff ask why the address
is different from what's on your driver's license, you can say that you
just moved, or better that you're bicoastal, because of your work
schedule. The question of local vs. out of town address is particularly
important in Las Vegas, where the two categories of player often get
dramatically different offers. As a rule (another broad generalization
here), you'll do better at Strip casinos, and fancy places that consider
themselves honorary Strip casinos, with an out of town address, and do
better elsewhere with a local address. But an unfortunate syndrome with
the Strip casinos is that they dramatically overvalue hotel rooms. That
means that offers will include free rooms, but the free play will be cut
excessively to pay for this. And another unfortunate syndrome is that
offers for locals are often broken down into an excessive number of
small installments through the month, such that it's going to be very
hard and inefficient to redeem them all.

Outside of Las Vegas, giving a Las Vegas address is often not a good
idea. Casinos correctly assume that Las Vegas is full of hustlers and
sharps, and will look at you with a jaundiced eye if you say you're from
there.

I don't want to go into specifics here, but in shopping for offers, an
important factor is understanding if the casino goes solely by coin in,
cumulative theo, ADT, or the the like, or gives great weight to actual
results. In the latter case, going for a big swing can be very
profitable, but clearly you need to be prepared to gamble.

Sometimes you think that you have a casino all figured out, and then you
get surprised with a special offer. We had one place that sent out a
set of 12 scratchers for Christmas last year. We didn't figure they'd
be worth much, but they turned out to average $300 each. The trouble
was it was impractical for most people to get to this sort of remote
location every day for 12 days in a row.

Caesars in particular has been very good in the past, but I'm mostly
leery of them until they get their bankruptcy worked out. This board is
full of reports of players' officers getting slashed to small fractions
of what they were used to. And other problems. There are
exceptions--some venues are probably still very decent. But I'd
recommend broadening your horizons beyond the biggest chains.

If you're planning a trip to northern Nevada and would like more
specific information, feel free to contact me.