The value of free play

Those who have been reading this blog know that serious gamblers in general and video poker players in particular often think in terms of percentages, particular the percentage return of a particular game. What we hope to find are advantage plays -- situations where a game returns more than 100 percent. Although some “full pay” video poker games such as deuces wild, joker poker and double bonus pay back more than 100 percent in the long run with optimal play and max coins bet, advantage plays also can be found in combinations of other games, slot club benefits and promotions.

I’m going to describe two current casino promotions to illustrate how this works. In particular, I’ll explain how to put a percentage value on free play, a benefit commonly offered both as a slot club benefit to a casino’s regular players and as part of many promotions. A few casinos still give “bounce back” cash instead of free play, and the principles for putting a value on it are the same.

In the first promotion, the Eastside Cannery on Saturdays is offering a minimum of $10 in “mystery” free play to anyone who earns 300 points. Players may earn a maximum of two free play awards. Some players are mailed postcards entitling them to one free play award and can earn a second; those who do not get a postcard can get two by earning 600 points.

On video poker, the Eastside Cannery awards one point for every $2 coin in. (As noted in an earlier post, this does not mean $2 deposited in the machine; it means money played through, including the proceeds of winning hands.) So two “mystery” free play awards require running $1,200 through a machine. This gets the player a minimum of $20, or 0.167 percent.

The best video poker game at this casino is 16/10 “not so ugly” deuces wild, which returns about 99.7 percent. Slot club points are worth 0.125 percent. If we add the percentage return of the game and value percentage value of the slot club points (0.167, 99.73 and 0.125), we get just over 100 percent, essentially break-even. However, the play involved in taking advantage of this and other promotions is likely to result in a mailer with additional free play and other benefits, making this clearly, but not spectacularly, an advantage play. (For players who got a postcard and/or more than $20 in mystery free play, the promotion itself is an advantage play.)

One caveat: Playing through more than $1,200 “dilutes” the percentage value of the free play, making the promotion less valuable. A typical quarter player probably needs about an hour and a half to earn 600 points, but a dollar player needs only a quarter of the time. Playing longer may or may not be worth the extra benefits, but there’s no way of knowing until next month’s mailer arrives.

A promotion at the Silverton is more mysterious than the Eastside Cannery’s mystery free play. The Silverton has mailed pull tabs to many of its customers. These little cardboard squares have a tab on the front that must be pulled at the casino, in an employee’s presence, to reveal what the player has won. In addition, all players can earn 1,000, 5,000 or 10,000 points in a day to receive a pull tab. The tabs for the different point totals are kept at the players’ club in separate boxes, and presumably the ones for the higher totals have better prizes.

My spouse and I received pull tabs in the mail even though we have played very little at the Silverton in recent months, since the casino took out what had been its best video poker game, $1 16/10 “not so ugly” deuces. We took our first week’s tabs to casino last Saturday. She won $50 in free play and I won $25. We found a good play on the quarter 1/9/4 “pseudo not so ugly” deuces progressives near the Flare (could they have meant “Flair”?) Bar. With the jackpot at more than $1,500, this game, which has a base return of just under 99 percent, was nearly positive. We decided to go for the 1,000 points and another pull tab each, about an hour and a half’s play for me, less for her. She won another $10 in free play; I won another $25.

The value of Silverton points, nominally 0.2 percent, is not the same to all players, because they can be used only for comps, not for cash back or free play. So if someone has no use for the restaurants or rooms there, or already has more points than he can use, the points are worthless. For the sake of discussion, let’s say our progressive was break-even with slot club benefits considered. My wife’s $50 in free play added a full 5 percent to the game’s return for the $1,000 coin-in needed for another pull tab. That’s like a bank account paying 5 percent not a year, but instantly -- a very strong advantage play. Even my $25 increased the return to 102.5 percent, nothing to scoff at (keep in mind that these figures represent the long run return for playing under these circumstances, not necessarily the result of a single session.) The second set of pull tabs yielded $10 for the spouse and $25 for me, in both cases in free play. So for the first day at least, the promotion turned out very well for both of us.

It would have worked out well even if the progressive had just been hit. They are, however, worth 0.2 percent to those who can make good use of them. The best games in the house, not counting our juicy deuces progressive, are 9/6 jacks or better in dollars and a quarter progressive, with the base game paying back 99.54 percent. Add the slot club points but not anything for the progressive and those games return 99.74 percent. The promotion would have been highly positive for us had we been playing jacks instead of the deuces progressive.

The next day we were able to go back and use the second pull tabs we got in the mail. This time my wife got a bottle of wine and I got $25 in free play. It’s hard for us to put a value on the wine because neither of us is a wine expert, and its value to us is probably negligible because with so many casinos giving out wine these days, another bottle is something we don’t really need. The pull tabs we got for earning 1,000 points each were for a free buffet (worth about $15) and for dinner for two at Mi Casa, the Silverton’s Mexican restaurant. It’s hard to put a value on that one because the tab itself doesn’t make clear what’s included, but I’m guessing it’s worth $25 to $40 -- not bad at all. We’ll definitely be back at the Silverton this week with our next set of pull tabs.

Although the amounts of free play, free bets, match plays and other cash equivalents most players receive might not seem like much -- $5 here, $10 there, an occasional $20 or more -- over the course of time it can make a substantial difference in the bottom line.