'We want the hardcore gambler ...'

The above is an unusual, almost heretical, statement by a casino executive, yet it was made by Noah Acres, the Riviera's director of player development (more about this ironic title later), in material aimed not at industry insiders but at new players at his casino.

The reason such statements are so rare is that the "gaming" industry has taken great pains to paint gambling as just another form of entertainment, one with minimal negative effects on the communities where casinos are found. Casinos stress that they love winners, but what they really love are ignorant players who win by dumb luck. Anyone who knows enough not even to win but just to lose less than most is considered a threat by many if not most gaming executives.

Of course, the ugly truth about gambling is that it ruins lives. Not many, as a percentage of those who gamble, but undoubtedly thousands each year in the United States. The extent to which the gaming industry is responsible for creating, enabling and increasing addiction is beyond the scope of this post, because it is beyond my knowledge of these issues. But I do know that the industry does everything it can to disassociate itself from anything hinting at exploitation of addicted gamblers.

The context of Mr. Acres' statement was an information card on a promotion at the Riviera offering new and some inactive players a $1,000 loss guarantee. There's nothing new about this kind of promotion but in five years in Las Vegas I have never seen one this big.

The idea is simple. You sign up for a players' club card and go play a slot or video poker machine until you have had enough or lost $1,000. If you are unlucky enough to win, it's as if the promotion didn't exist. You cash out as usual and that's it. If you lose, you get half your loss back immediately in the form of free slot play and half on your "next visit" (if you take advantage of this promotion, be sure to ask when the second installment becomes available and how long your have to use both installments of your free slot play).

Before we went to the Riviera, my wife and I listened to a discussion of this promotion on the radio program "Gambling with an Edge." Based on the discussion among hosts Bob Dancer and Mike Shakelford and guest Richard Munchkin, we set a goal of winning $2,000 or busting out trying. Losing, say, $300 would be taking advantage of only 30 percent of the value of the promotion. We made sure to get to the casino early in the evening to give ourselves plenty of time to run through $1,000 each.

Several types of slot, video poker and virtual table game machines have been excluded from this promotion. We both decided to play video poker at the highest denomination available, $1 single line. My spouse opted to play double double bonus even though the pay table, 8/5, is horrendous (we looked it up later and found the payback was less than 97 percent). This game offers a lot of opportunities for big hits, including $2,000 for four aces and a kicker, meaning that if she got lucky, she could reach $4,000 without hitting a royal flush. The downside of this strategy is that if she didn't get many four-of-a-kinds she could go down quickly. Of course, with the loss guarantee, the downside risk was greatly reduced. I took a more conservative approach, playing the best game available, 8/5 bonus poker (slightly over 99 percent payback). I knew I'd need a royal flush to hit $2,000, but I planned to alter my strategy a bit to increase the chance of hitting a royal (but in the process decrease the statistical return of the game). I hoped that playing a game with a higher return and less variance would keep me alive longer, giving me more of a chance to hit the royal. Another factor is that I am more comfortable playing bonus poker than double double bonus, though I have played the latter in tournaments.

In retrospect, I think both decisions were defensible, but my wife's was better -- and not just because she wound up hitting four aces with a kicker (after hitting four aces without, which kept her going awhile). I wound up losing $1,000 in less than two hours. At that point she was up a couple of hundred. I went and got my first $500 in free play and ran it through the machine. We decided I'd take advantage of some opportunies at other casinos and come back in a couple of hours. A half hour, maybe 40 minutes later she called me and said she had hit the four aces with a kicker. She was down only about $200, so if she quit right then she'd lock in a $1,800 win. The alternative under our plan was to try to win more or lose a full $1,000, and there probably wasn't time for that. So she "settled" for a win that was $200 short of her goal.

The reason her strategy was probably better than mine is because she had more chances to win. She also had much more of a chance of losing, but the entire loss would be reimbursed. Of course, had she actually lost, she would have played the free play much more conservatively because at that point any losses would be hers, and real.

Now, a word about the title of that executive who said he wanted "the hardcore gambler." To the unititated, "director of player development" might sound like someone in charge of educating players, making them better. But this is the last thing the casinos want. The development in this title refers to the casinos' business, not the quality of its players (unless quality is defined as losing more).

As for Mr. Acres, I think he's got quite a challenge ahead of him. The Riviera, one of the oldest casinos on the Strip, is, by today's standards, a dump. Think the Tropicana before its recent makeover. Furthermore, it's in a really bad neighborhood, by Strip standards, stuck amid closed casinos, failed projects and that butt of jokes, Circus Circus.

The loss guarantee will bring tourists in and maybe some locals. But whether they'll come back is another issue. The Riviera has introduced some better-than-usual games, for the Strip, including single zero roulette. But the games mostly aren't as good as those available in locals' casinos. I'll be back to play my second $500 in free play, but after that Mr. Acres and his colleagues will have to come up with something else to hook me as a regular.

I wish them luck in trying to revive the Riviera, and I'm afraid they're going to need it.