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. 

My favorite Vegas sign

This sign directing motorists to the Asian-American Cultural Center stands directly in front of the Gold Coast  casino (above right) on the north side of Flamingo Road a little west of Interstate 15. The arrow can be seen as pointing into the Gold Coast, though it actually directs drivers to turn onto Wynn Drive, which forms the western border of the Gold Coast property.

What’s great about this sign is that the Gold Coast, the favorite casino of local Asian players, does function as sort of a cultural center, in that gambling is very important in East Asian societies. The Gold Coast has two excellent Chinese restaurants, Ping Pang Pong and the Noodle Exchange, and is always full of Asian  players. It has a massive table games area for a casino its size to accommodate the Asian players’ interest in baccarat as well as other table games.

Below is another sign, this one behind the Gold Coast off Valley View. It’s all in Chinese except for one word -- comps. It’s hard to believe there’s no Chinese equivalent, but there you have it. If anyone can translate the rest of the sign, I’d love to know what it says.

The Gold Coast is the nearest casino to Las Vegas’ linear, strip-mall Chinatown, which runs west from Valley View along Spring Mountain Road, a few blocks north of the Gold Coast. Two other locals’ casinos popular with Asian players are Palace Station, on Sahara Avenue just west of I-15, and the Orleans, on Tropicana a little farther west of I-15. Like the Gold Coast, the Orleans is part of the Coast chain owned by Boyd Gaming.

A different kind of casino

After almost three years living in Vegas, I've visited most of the casinos in the area's major tourist areas. Until recently, one of the few exceptions was the Westin Casuarina, on Flamingo Road just east of the Strip. I did duck in a couple of months ago for a few minutes but didn't play. The other night a good players' club sign-up offer and a $25 table games match play coupon in the American Casino Guide got me in the door again. The offer was a rebate in free play of up to $50 in first-day slot or video poker losses. When I signed up, I was also given a $10 table games match play coupon.

What's different about the Westin is that although it's a short walk from the Strip, it has the atmosphere of a business hotel rather than a Vegas resort. The casino is small by Vegas standards for the size of the hotel, and it was quiet and crowd-free. The only businesses in the casino are a restaurant called Suede, a gift shop and a Starbucks coffee. There's one bar in the casino, with video poker.

The best video poker in the casino is 16/10 "not so ugly" deuces wild, which pays back 99.73 percent, for 25 cents. According to vpFREE2.com, 9/6 jacks or better (99.54 percent) is also available for 25 cents. The best game at higher denominations (50 cents, $1 and $2) is 15/9/4 "pseudo not so ugly" deuces wild (98.92 percent). Playing the 16/10, I quickly lost $50 and went to the players' club booth (which doubles as the cashiers' cage) and got my $50 rebate in free play, which I managed to turn into $50 cash for a break-even session.

Then it was time for blackjack. Two tables were open, one with a continuous-shuffle machine, the other with six decks, hand-shuffled. The minimum at both was $5. I chose the latter. A sign on the table detailed the rules, which are pretty standard: Dealer hits soft 17, double on any two cards, double after split, no re-slitting aces, no surrender (for a house edge of .63 against a basic strategy strategy player. For you card counters, penetration is set by notch at about 67 percent -- two full decks cut off.

For the center-Strip area, and especially with a $5 minimum, this isn't a bad blackjack game. It's certainly a lot better than the horrific 6-to-five games at the nearby Harrah's places. It's not a game I would normally play, but with $35 in match plays, my chances of winning a little money looked good. Alas, I lost my bet with the big coupon and left a loser by $40.

For machine play, the Westin gives both points than can be converted to free play and comp dollars for use in the restaurant, gift shop and Starbucks. According to vpFREE2, it takes $10 coin in to earn a point, and 100 points equal $5 in free play, which adds 0.5 percent to the players' return. This alone makes the 16/10 deuces a positive game for those who play it well. In addition to points, comp dollars are awarded at rates ranging from 0.48 percent to 0.93 percent, according to vpFREE2. Presumably the lowest rate is awarded for at least the better video poker games, but even so the total value of free play and comps comes to almost 1 percent, with this caveat:

Through the conversation at my blackjack table, I learned that the restaurant prices are quite high. In many casinos, restaurant prices are low, to draw in potential gamblers. Apparently the Westin restaurant is more of a typical of a business hotel, where many customers are on expense accounts and more interested in convenience than value. So the real value of the comp dollars may not be as high as their nominal value, considering available alternatives. Still, the overall return of the players' club benefits is quite good.

How often I return to the Westin may well depend on the offers, if any, I get in the mail. It doesn't seem to be a place that targets locals, but if I were a visitor who wanted to stay or play near the center Strip, it's definitely a place I would consider.