One of the things that came up during the Gambling With An Edge radio show was how casinos view table games. Slot machines are the casino’s money makers. Table games are offered because of public demand. They still have a house edge, but from a business standpoint many casinos would be happy to replace all but their high limit table games with slot machines. This impacts how they treat table games in terms of comps and tier advancement.
Here are a few things to consider.
Achieving Mlife’s Pearl status requires 25,000 Tier Points. That is:
$25,000 coin in on VP
$7,500 coin in on slots
About 11 hours of $100 per hand blackjack.
Or just $1000 in dining, entertainment, spa or lodging expenses.
Note that with the purchases you only get tier points. You do not get comps.
Also when playing $25/hand blackjack at Mlife properties, you get 550 Tier Points per hour. You get the same number of tier points for spending $22. If you use Foursquare and TopGuest you can get 500 Tier Points simply for doing a Foursquare check in at an MGM property.
Mlife gives you 4% of your theoretical loss back in the form of Express Comps. Additional comps go into your Primary Comps balance. You need to go to a host or Mlife representative in order to access those. I’ve recently discovered that some Mlife reps do not appreciate it when you mention Primary Comps (a rep started interrogating me when I mentioned Primary Comps and said that guests weren’t supposed to know about Primary Comps), so you might just want to ask them if you have any additional comps available beyond your Express Comps. Mlife Hosts also have a bit of flexibility when it comes to discretionary comps, unlike Total Rewards hosts. This is really helpful if you lose a lot quickly or if your actual loss is a lot greater than the theoretical loss.
I still enjoy playing table games. That is where I do my serious gambling. But I know that the comps I get from my table game sessions won’t come close to those from my slot and video poker sessions even though I am usually playing for much higher stakes at the tables. I also know that I’m going to advance my tier status a lot faster by playing slots and video poker than I will by playing table games.
Online casinos offer enormous bonuses which you can take advantage of. These bonuses are not a part of the land based casinos. Who wouldn’t love to have free money? Online casinos have this amazing way to offer rewards.
But comps, especially rooms and food, cost the casino much less than face value. So giving 40% of theo probably would only cost them about 10-15% of theo, at least for these comps.
True.
You should also consider what else you might be getting. Free rooms and special offers are based on your play and aren’t considered in your Express and Primary comps. I consider part of your theo to go towards that, too.
I stopped playing at Harrah’s properties for a while after I took them up on a comped suite offer and they refused to comp anything else until I had played enough to cover the suite. That was a long time ago and they don’t seem to do that anymore, but you do need to factor the value of future offers into the equation.