Campus_chic13 writes:
<< So what level of play is likely to generate some decent freeplay mailers pretty much anywhere I go, without overplaying too heavily at casinos with smaller maximum offers? >>
This is a key question for any ambitious player, of course. You've received some good answers, but I'll add my two cents.
It's true what they say, you should learn from mistakes, preferably other people's. This highlights the irreplaceable value of forming information networks. One player's experiment can profit the whole group. You probably don't have the time to try out every casino in the travel destinations you're considering, all on your own. Nor would you choose to take on that level of risk, given a good alternative.
I'm focused on plays that have the potential of producing offers adequate to give me a worthwhile return on my time. That pretty much rules out quarter machines. Rarely, you'll find a 50 play quarter or 50 cent machine that will do the job for you. But for the most part, you'll be looking at $1 to $5 machines. At the $1 level, you'll probably want 3, 5, or 10 play machines, because single line will just be too slow.
If you have no information whatsoever on a particular casino's marketing programs, you'll want to begin by sizing the place up. Read the vpFree2 database by all means, but it's only a starting point and not always complete or accurate. Go to the player's club booth, and get a copy of the brochure. Go through this carefully, and make sure you understand the program in full, including the benefits of higher card tiers. If the brochure doesn't make everything clear, ask the staff to explain the rates of point accrual, what points are good for, comps, free play, or both, and the rate of conversion. Find out about any other valuable perks of the program. Sometimes this is like pulling teeth, because staff don't know themselves. The bar for hiring in many casinos is set very low. So take information you receive with a grain of salt. Walk around the casino, and take inventory of what games and denominations are available. If the biggest game in the house is a single line $1 machine, honestly, you're USUALLY wasting your time there. You have to ask yourself, do I want to put in the time necessary for the coin in that's going to generate a good offer? And since this is obviously a low roller place, what's their top offer going to be? Are they likely to be giving away, say, $150 per week when that's bigger than their target customer's whole trip bankroll? There are definitely exceptions, but this is an important guideline. Also, walk around and see what other customers are actually betting. Some casinos may have a couple of higher denomination machines, but if they hardly ever get play, it may be irrelevant to their marketing.
Determine if the casino offers multiplier days. If you don't see them advertised, ask. Be sure to find out about any cap on the number of multiplied points you can earn in a day. Sometimes the caps are quite low, making the multiplier days not very valuable. There have been plenty of reports on this board about people getting backed off for playing too heavily on multiplier days. But as a new customer, you'll probably want to take advantage of any good multiplier day for your initial play. You're rarely going to be penalized for this. It can dramatically lower the cost of your play, or even give you a nicely positive game.
You also want to find out if free play will be made available direct to machine, or if you'll need to show your smiling face at the booth each time to collect.
Having done your homework, you want to make some estimate of what you might be able to get in the way of offers, and given the games offered, what it's going to cost you (in expectation, statistically) to try to get it. And how much TIME you're going to have to put in. The way I handle things personally, there's going to be a considerable variation in how much action I'll give on an initial play, depending on how valuable I think the casino might be. If I think that the offers might be lucrative, I have no problem giving away $100, $200, $300 in expectation. If the likelihood of getting good offers seems poor, and the games are lousy, I'm much less willing to give action. I might still give $3000, $6000, $8000 coin in as a probe. If I get a proportionately good offer in response, maybe I'll go back and give a bigger play, to see if I can scale up the response.
At a casino where I have prior information that offers may be good, or that caters to and successfully attracts a well-heeled clientele, and that has decent games, or that has point accrual that makes the games decent, I may give a much higher level of action--often $30,000 to $50,000 coin in.
Or in many cases, I'll give action somewhere in between those ends of the spectrum.
Yes, this approach carries a risk of losses that most people would find painful. If you're going to aim for substantial free play offers, I think that you need to be prepared to accept the risk.
These are general guidelines. Understand that they'll turn out to be completely wrong in some cases. There are casinos that look like desperate little grind joints that turn out to have surprisingly generous top offers. Then there are plenty of fancy places that give away hardly anything, no matter how good your play. So it would pay to know that the Western Village in Sparks gives no free play to anyone. You'd probably find that out if you just went to the booth and asked them flat out. This is an example of how it never hurts to ask. (Talking with hosts is a delicate dance. But booth staff are low level employees, and there's probably no down side to asking even the rudest questions.)
A sometimes-important question is, should I give a local or out of town address? It's easy enough to appear to reside wherever you like, by renting a private post office box. These have addresses that are indistinguishable from apartment numbers. If staff ask why the address is different from what's on your driver's license, you can say that you just moved, or better that you're bicoastal, because of your work schedule. The question of local vs. out of town address is particularly important in Las Vegas, where the two categories of player often get dramatically different offers. As a rule (another broad generalization here), you'll do better at Strip casinos, and fancy places that consider themselves honorary Strip casinos, with an out of town address, and do better elsewhere with a local address. But an unfortunate syndrome with the Strip casinos is that they dramatically overvalue hotel rooms. That means that offers will include free rooms, but the free play will be cut excessively to pay for this. And another unfortunate syndrome is that offers for locals are often broken down into an excessive number of small installments through the month, such that it's going to be very hard and inefficient to redeem them all.
Outside of Las Vegas, giving a Las Vegas address is often not a good idea. Casinos correctly assume that Las Vegas is full of hustlers and sharps, and will look at you with a jaundiced eye if you say you're from there.
I don't want to go into specifics here, but in shopping for offers, an important factor is understanding if the casino goes solely by coin in, cumulative theo, ADT, or the the like, or gives great weight to actual results. In the latter case, going for a big swing can be very profitable, but clearly you need to be prepared to gamble.
Sometimes you think that you have a casino all figured out, and then you get surprised with a special offer. We had one place that sent out a set of 12 scratchers for Christmas last year. We didn't figure they'd be worth much, but they turned out to average $300 each. The trouble was it was impractical for most people to get to this sort of remote location every day for 12 days in a row.
Caesars in particular has been very good in the past, but I'm mostly leery of them until they get their bankruptcy worked out. This board is full of reports of players' officers getting slashed to small fractions of what they were used to. And other problems. There are exceptions--some venues are probably still very decent. But I'd recommend broadening your horizons beyond the biggest chains.
If you're planning a trip to northern Nevada and would like more specific information, feel free to contact me.