Grubby at PokerWorks

The freeplay my hot little hands will be wrapped around for the Las Vegas trip (T minus six hours if I can grab my laundry in time, shower, and not miss my flight this time) is not just free money.

There’s no such thing as a free lunch. Except in Vegas. But in Vegas, there’s no such thing as freeplay.

Same with the slot tournament at Harrah’s.

For the cost of $20,000 for the slot tourney prize pool and three free nights for 500 select players, Harrah’s is basically spending per player $40 and the cost of their hotel room, which is practically nothing to a casino that just had a private equity buyout of $26 billion. On a Tuesday through Thursday, the hotel cost is even less because it isn’t taking rooms away from weekend players.

All that needs to happen and all that will happen to break even is for each of the 500 players to lose $40 over the course of four days and three nights. Highly likely, and doubly likely if they bring a friend.

The slot tournament with its juiced machines only increases the taste of winning, and players are likely to want to continue that feeling on the main floor.

There’s also the sense of loyalty a player will have to a casino that gives them perks and free rooms.

Even the money that players win from the slot tournament will surely find part of it recycled through Harrah’s machines.

And of course, the reason these 500 players were selected in the first place was because of prior slot playing history with Harrah’s.

Freeplay is the same way. $25 is worth risking because it gets the player inside the casino. If it’s money players can cash out immediately, it still gets them into the casino, it makes them $25 richer and willing to spend on gaming or something else on the casino property, and casinos can write off that $25 as an expense.

Most freeplay requires a 1x playthrough before cashing out (this used to be the case online before the advantage players hiked that up to the 30x range).

Now casinos force players to play, giving them a taste and getting them hooked. How often do you say you’ll play down to a certain amount and then keep going? How often do you lose the freeplay and want to make it up?

-EV games aren’t like poker (unless you play the way I play). Odds always favor the house. In time, you will always lose. It’s just a question of how much.

Even the amount of freeplay has been meticulously studied. Interestingly, casinos have found that increasing the freeplay and giving away more money actually increases their revenue.

Casinos aren’t stupid, or else we wouldn’t keep getting comped gluttony.

During my stay at Harrah’s, my plan was to play the slot tournament and nothing else. With my Diamond status expiring today, any play there would be less than the 10,000 tier points ($5 playthrough per point) required to renew, so any points earned would seem like a waste when I could earn points at the MGM Mirage casinos toward free rooms (MGM Mirage doesn’t have a tiered system — or rather, a tiered system known to the player).

And because Excalibur was nice enough to bail me out of sleeping in the rental car Easter weekend, I had planned to lose a couple months of rent on their slots (plus their $100 freeplay) in my neverending quest for a W-2G (c’mon, odds are I should have many by now).

Forget Harrah’s, who needs ‘em? Besides, when I was going to the slot tourneys at Luxor (an MGM Mirage property), their prize pool was five times as much at $100,000 with a 250-person cap, a guaranteed cash prize for every player, a free gift, and a free dinner banquet (during March Madness one year, I took home a pair of Polo shirts and a basketball).

Harrah’s: harumph.

In the mail the other day, despite not achieving 10,000 tier points last year (I had about 9000), I received a renewed Diamond card good through March 2008 and three free nights at any of Harrah’s properties, which I put to use by reserving at Rio for June’s WPBT.

In an instant aligned with a paper cut, my allegiance switched back to Harrah’s.

How do they know?

This entry was posted on Saturday, March 31st, 2007 at 10:51 am and is filed under Uncategorized.