I have read advice like this (paraphrased) "one session of four hours
gives you a better rating than two sessions of two hours each, all
other things being equal."
That advice in mind, I have been trying not to pull my card, because
I thought it would be a bad thing. That concept has backfired on me
fairly significantly at Harrah's Tunica. I have lost all or part of a
day's points five times this year, and every time I have had to start
from scratch, explaining my way up the ladder to prove I was playing
the machine I said (security camera check) and the amount I said
(machine memory dump). Each time I had a different supervisor, who
had variable understanding of their system and how to navigate and
fix things. Each time the manual correction to my points was the best
they could do (I think this is really true), but each time my total
daily points came up in the neighborhood of 3,000 short. I also had
trouble getting point-dependent coupons verified twice, and my
cashback ended up lower than it should have been.
This happened for the fifth time May 11, but finally someone knew why
the problem occurred and how to avoid it. I had exceeded some limit,
either in the hardware, software, or just some arbitrary value
Harrah's stuck in their system.
It seems that every time a session at the bar goes over 2000 points,
the SAS dumps it. All the periods that I lost points I played in
excess of 2000 points without pulling out my card. Pulling out the
card causes the current points to post to your account. I played 1924
points between pulls on Saturday and everything posted correctly,
although it took about 15 minutes.
Management at Harrah's Tunica say they have only ever had trouble
with points disappearing from the bar. Obviously, folks can plant
themselves there on a hot progressive for well over the 2000 point
limit. But just because no one has complained about other machines
does not mean they don't have the same programming or hardware
limitation. Many people don't even check their points, so they
wouldn't complain even if they lost some. It would be safest to
assume every cardreader in the casino has a 2000 point limit.
There was a similar point-losing problem at Gold Strike last summer
with some people playing quarter 100-play, and often two machines at
once. No one else ever lost points. I think this was the same
phenomenon, although the capacity of Gold Strike's buffer appears
much higher. So, this disease may be widespread, although it doesn't
end up affecting many players.
About that advice... while it may be true in some casinos, I was told
that Harrah's uses only daily totals to evaluate players.
Cudos and many thanks to Casino Manager Ricky Hoins for telling me
how to avoid this major problem in the future.