The Rio is one of the casinos in Las Vegas owned by Caesars Entertainment, formerly Harrah's, known to advantage players and other knowledgeable and value-oriented gamblers as The Evil Empire. Caesars' other Vegas properties are on the Strip and cater almost exclusively to out-of-towners. The company and its mostly second-rate properties are known for lousy games, chintzy comps and high prices, especially compared with the locals' casinos. It's been widely rumored for some time that the company would like to unload the Rio, and it has been marketing the property to locals for the past couple of months.
The Rio is part of a geographic cluster of three casinos west of the Strip on Flamingo. The others are the Palms and Gold Coast, both of which offer much better video poker but rather unattractive (to me) blackjack. I was surprised to learn a few months ago that the Rio offers a decent version of the game I prefer, double-deck with a $25 minimum. The main thing that makes the Rio's game attractive is the good penetration provided by most dealers, which makes up for the petty rule prohibiting doubling after split. I also like the absence of a side bet, which can slow the game down considerably, and the relatively liberal rules on spreading hands (playing two hands is allowed at any time with a bet of least twice the table minimum).
One of the few good things about Caesars overly complex yet stingy comp system (called Total Rewards) is that it is relatively transparent. I have asked about my comp balance a couple of times at the players' clubs. From this experience I have concluded that my blackjack play at an average $50 bet is worth less than $2 an hour in comps. But a couple of months ago I was surprised to get from the Rio not just the free bets that some other casinos send their table games players, but an entire mailer offering free slot play, gifts and hotel room nights. Conspicuously absent were any dining offers.
The three $20 free bet coupons I received for a one-month period required that I go to the cage, which exchanged each one for two $10 coupons to use at the tables. I was delighted to discover that these coupons were "play 'til you lose," not "one bet only, win or lose," like most other free bet and match play coupons. The dealers at the Rio let the coupons ride on winning bets and pushes, greatly increasing their value. The typical coupon is taken by the dealer after any hand except a push.
My most recent mailer also included "mystery" free slot play. I was surprised to see this because I had never played any slots or video poker at the Rio and had not played any video poker at any Caesars property in probably a year. At any rate, I was expecting a minimal amount, $3, maybe $5. I was surprised to get $10, although I had to earn it by standing on line at both the players' club and the cage, which took the coupon I received at the club and issed me a ticket to put into a machine. This is an unbelievably cumbersome and labor-intensive process that would break down if the Rio had a significant number of local customers trying to get their free play at any one time. (By comparison, free play at most casinos is loaded on players' accounts and avaible for download on most slot and video poker machines.)
Another problem is where to use the ticket. The best games in dollars at the Rio are 8/5 bonus poker and 9/7 double bonus, with 9/6 jacks or better at $5 in the high limit room. The dollar games in particular, at just over 99.1 percent return, are not competitive with those at the nearby Palms and Gold Coast, which have a wide selection of games returning very close to 100 percent.
I recently took up the Rio on an offer of two free room nights. The Rio is an all-suite hotel, and my room was large and comfortable. I was put off when making my reservation when the agent tried to charge me a $10 "processing fee," which is unbelievable chutzpah in view of the Caesars billboards in Vegas attacking other operators' resort fees. I protested this fee and it did not wind up on my bill.
On the plus side, the TV channel lineup included MSNBC, which in my experience is rarely available in Las Vegas hotel rooms, although Fox News almost always is. On the down side, Caesars squeezes the lemon when it comes to in-room coffee, making K cups available at three for $8.
A couple of brief news items concerning the Rio: 1. KJ, a new seafood and dim sum Chinese restaurant, has opened where the small bowling alley was, between the poker room and Carnival World Buffet. I'll review it when I earn enough comps for a dinner, in maybe three or four years. 2. A new, supposedly faster, beverage service system divides tasks of taking orders and delivering drinks between new "beverage ambassadors" -- a number of them male -- with electronic tablets and the traditional cocktail servers. The order-taking ambassadors are not allowed to take tips.
I first played blackjack at the Rio not expecting much except a game I could beat in the long run. Although the Rio remains uncompetitive with the locals' casinos in many crucial ways, it has provided me with surprising value and likely will remain on my rotation as long as I'm allowed to play blackjack there.
Saturday, January 28, 2012
Monday, January 16, 2012
A good use for comps at the LVH
Comps, or complimentaries, are the things casinos give their customers to keep them coming back -- meals, room nights, show tickets, etc. Casinos use a variety of systems for tracking play and awarding comps, but there has been a trend in recent years to award slot and video poker players with points that can be used for comps and, in many cases, cash back or free play.
The Las Vegas Hotel and Casino, until early this month the Las Vegas Hilton, has a system that's a little unusual. Slot and video poker players earn both comp dollars and points. Comp dollars can be used only for stuff such as meals and show tickets. Points can be used only for free play. This system replaced one a few months ago that awarded only comps, but those comps could be converted to cash. Now there's no way to get cash back from the LVH except by running free play through a machine and cashing out what's left.
In the case of my wife and myself, the comps have been accumulating faster than we can use them for food or entertainment. But we've figured out a way to monetize them -- not necessarily dollar for dollar, but in a way that should be very beneficial in the long run.
One of the reasons we've been regular players at the LVH is the casinos' regular schedule of tournaments. Typically each month there are tournaments with prize pools of $35,000 and $75,000. We are sometimes given free entries to the smaller tournaments and sometimes offered the chance to buy entries for $19 or $39 in comp dollars. Because these tournaments often pay at least $50 to everyone who participates, this is a positive-equity play. This is true even if each comp dollar is worth an actual dollar.
In our case, comp dollars are worth only a small fraction of their face value because we get dining coupons in our monthly mailers from the LVH (and many other casinos). The LVH's restaurants are excellent, but we just don't get many opportunities to use our comp dollars there. So this moth, for the first time, we decided to use $119 each in comp dollars to enter the LVH's $75,000 tournament, which we played in this weekend. I was told the tournament had about 300 entrants, which would make each contestant's equity $250, less the cost of entry. (Equity in a tournament or drawing is the average amount to be won by each participant, determined by dividing the total amount of prizes by the number of participants. If there's a cost of entry, that must be subtracted from the result.)
A couple of other things made this an attractive proposition. Each participant in the tournament was guaranteed $50 in free play, so it couldn't be a total loss. And play during the tournament weekend would give us extra entries in drawings. I don't know how much we won, but whether this was a good use of our time didn't depend on that. Whether a tournament or drawing is worth taking part in must be determined in advance, before you can know how much you'll win. Making a good judgment requires having an idea of what your equity would be. It's often not possible to determine the exact amount because the number of contenstants isn't known or can't be determined. But if you have a rough idea you can determine whether this expectation is worth the time and effort involved. This time, you probably will win a lot more or less that your equity. But in the long run, that's about what you can expect to average in the tournaments and drawings you enter. So that's what you use each time to make a decision.
The Las Vegas Hotel and Casino, until early this month the Las Vegas Hilton, has a system that's a little unusual. Slot and video poker players earn both comp dollars and points. Comp dollars can be used only for stuff such as meals and show tickets. Points can be used only for free play. This system replaced one a few months ago that awarded only comps, but those comps could be converted to cash. Now there's no way to get cash back from the LVH except by running free play through a machine and cashing out what's left.
In the case of my wife and myself, the comps have been accumulating faster than we can use them for food or entertainment. But we've figured out a way to monetize them -- not necessarily dollar for dollar, but in a way that should be very beneficial in the long run.
One of the reasons we've been regular players at the LVH is the casinos' regular schedule of tournaments. Typically each month there are tournaments with prize pools of $35,000 and $75,000. We are sometimes given free entries to the smaller tournaments and sometimes offered the chance to buy entries for $19 or $39 in comp dollars. Because these tournaments often pay at least $50 to everyone who participates, this is a positive-equity play. This is true even if each comp dollar is worth an actual dollar.
In our case, comp dollars are worth only a small fraction of their face value because we get dining coupons in our monthly mailers from the LVH (and many other casinos). The LVH's restaurants are excellent, but we just don't get many opportunities to use our comp dollars there. So this moth, for the first time, we decided to use $119 each in comp dollars to enter the LVH's $75,000 tournament, which we played in this weekend. I was told the tournament had about 300 entrants, which would make each contestant's equity $250, less the cost of entry. (Equity in a tournament or drawing is the average amount to be won by each participant, determined by dividing the total amount of prizes by the number of participants. If there's a cost of entry, that must be subtracted from the result.)
A couple of other things made this an attractive proposition. Each participant in the tournament was guaranteed $50 in free play, so it couldn't be a total loss. And play during the tournament weekend would give us extra entries in drawings. I don't know how much we won, but whether this was a good use of our time didn't depend on that. Whether a tournament or drawing is worth taking part in must be determined in advance, before you can know how much you'll win. Making a good judgment requires having an idea of what your equity would be. It's often not possible to determine the exact amount because the number of contenstants isn't known or can't be determined. But if you have a rough idea you can determine whether this expectation is worth the time and effort involved. This time, you probably will win a lot more or less that your equity. But in the long run, that's about what you can expect to average in the tournaments and drawings you enter. So that's what you use each time to make a decision.
A good year
2011 was my second year as a professional gambler. Although I haven't yet added everything up, I can say that I earned more money last year than I ever had in a "legitimate" job -- by a long shot. Counting the car I won in a drawing but not comps, I cleared more than $100,000. Of course, my job comes without the usual benefits -- health insurance, paid vacation, retirement -- but does come with show tickets, gifts of all kinds and all the restaurant meals I could eat. Perhaps the best benefit is that I don't have to answer to anyone and at the places I do business I am treated like a valued customer, not an employee. The biggest downsides are the uncertainty, the frustration caused by losing steaks and the sheer amount of time required to succeed. In the latter regard the job is like that of a medical resident -- seven days a week, 10 or more hours a day. Not all of it feels like work but the amount that does seems to be growing. My main goal for this year is to make about as much money as last year but to take less time doing it.
During 2010, my first year as a pro, I occasionally had doubts about whether I would be able to make a living, long-term, by gambling. I now believe I have found a mix of methods that works for me and should continue to work for the foreseeable future. I am also convinced that, despite the long-term trend of casinos worsening the games they offer, there will be opportunties to make a living gambling for years to come. Two years of ground-level observation of casino operations has taught me that to attract and hold the vast majority of their customers, casinos must offer opportunites that can be exploited by the few people with the time, understanding and motivation to take advantage of them. One of the analogies I use to help people understand what I do is that of advantage player (long-term winning gambler) to super coupon shopper. A big part of my job is keeping track of "sales" offered by casinos in the form of point multipliers, free play and the like. I even use actual coupons from the casinos and other sources to obtain free bets and other "savings." I guess supermarkets and many other businesses have very careful customers they lose money on in the long run. This is definitely true of the casinos, at least in a highly competitive market such as Las Vegas. I intend to continue being one of those customers this year.
During 2010, my first year as a pro, I occasionally had doubts about whether I would be able to make a living, long-term, by gambling. I now believe I have found a mix of methods that works for me and should continue to work for the foreseeable future. I am also convinced that, despite the long-term trend of casinos worsening the games they offer, there will be opportunties to make a living gambling for years to come. Two years of ground-level observation of casino operations has taught me that to attract and hold the vast majority of their customers, casinos must offer opportunites that can be exploited by the few people with the time, understanding and motivation to take advantage of them. One of the analogies I use to help people understand what I do is that of advantage player (long-term winning gambler) to super coupon shopper. A big part of my job is keeping track of "sales" offered by casinos in the form of point multipliers, free play and the like. I even use actual coupons from the casinos and other sources to obtain free bets and other "savings." I guess supermarkets and many other businesses have very careful customers they lose money on in the long run. This is definitely true of the casinos, at least in a highly competitive market such as Las Vegas. I intend to continue being one of those customers this year.
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