A claim worthy of a politician

This being election season, we are hearing all kinds of partial truths, statements taken out of context, and outright lies. Unfortunately, politicians aren't the only ones who engage is various degrees of prevarication. So do gaming establishments.

The Rampart is a casino in Summerlin, a high-end suburban area west of downtown Las Vegas. One of its advertising slogans is that its points "are always worth 5X more." At the Rampart, 1,000 points = $5 cash back.

Presumably, the word "more" refers to the competition. The casino nearest the Rampart is the Suncoast, part of of Boyd Gaming's Coast Casinos group. Not far away is Station Casinos' Red Rock Resort. The Coasts and Stations are, by far, the two leading groups of locals' casinos in the Las Vegas area. The Coasts share a players club, B Connected, with Boyd's three downtown Las Vegas casinos (as well as a number of properties outside of Nevada). The rules for earning and redeeming B Connected Points are the same at all of these properties.

Fortunately for purposes of simplicity, base points at the Boyd and Station properties are earned and redeemed at the same rates, and 1,000 points = $1 cash back at both. So, at first glance, the Rampart's advertising appears to be correct; 1,000 points at the Rampart are worth five times more than 1,000 points at its main competitors.

But that isn't the full story. To know how much points are worth, you must know how much they cost, not just what you get when you redeem them. That cost is usually expressed in terms of how much coin-in it takes to earn a point. Here's where the Rampart's claim begins to fall apart. At both Stations and Boyd casinos, base points are earned at a rate of 1 per $1 of coin in. At the Rampart, it takes $2 of coin-in on video poker to earn one point. Beacause the Rampart's points cost twice as much, it would be more fair at this point to say its points are worth 2-1/2 times the competitions'.

But this is not the full story. At Stations, all players earn 3 times points every day. At Boyd casinos, Sapphire players earn 2 times points every day and Emerald players earn 3 times points every day. So a top-level player at Suncoast and everyone at Red Rock earns six times as many points per dollar played as a video poker player at the Rampart.

To make a fair comparison, we need to look at the cash back per dollar of coin-in, not per point (because Rampart video poker players get fewer points per dollar of coin-in than players at the other casinos). As we have seen, the Rampart gives $2.50 cash back per $1,000 of coin in, based on 500 points earned. At Stations and Boyd (for Emerald players), the rate is $3 cash back for $1,000 coin-in, based on 3,000 points earned.

So, taking into account the cost of earning the points (up to six times as high at the Rampart as at the other casinos), the Rampart's points not only are not worth 5 times as much as much as the points at the other casinos, they are not even worth as much (for all Stations players and Boyd Emerald players).

The bottom line is that cash back as a percentage of coin in at the Rampart is 0.25. At Stations and Boyd (Emerald players), it's 0.3. And that is the standard way of expressing the value of points, which allows a relatively easy comparison between systems at different casinos. (Sometimes the rate at a given casino varies by game or other factors). The value of points for most casinos can be found on VPfree2.

In deciding which casino offers the best deal, the value of points is a major factor. Another is the return from the game you plan to play, also available on VPfree2. Both the Suncoast and Red Rock have video poker games with signficantly higher returns than the best game at the Rampart, the cost of playing at the latter can be more than just the difference in the value of the points. Of course, casino promotions and offers to individual players can alter the comparison on any given day, but discounting these factors, the Rampart doesn't stack up to its competition in Summerlin.

In the spirit of the campaign season, I'd given the Rampart's advertising claim "four Pinnochios" or a "Pants on Fire."