It's early morning in Las Vegas, Nevada, and you have been hammering the casino hard at blackjack for hours. At least the blackjacks have been dropping like you're controlling the cards. It's not only that – you are having a fantastic run of form at the craps tables, not seven-ing out like the other amateurs.
It's as if you're controlling the dice, but you're not. Something else is going on. Even at the roulette table, things are going your way. You're dropping C$50 bets and tripling your cash to C$150.
You're charmed, and Lady Luck is clearly with you. You feel around in your pockets, and you got a stash of purple and black chips – that's big money. It's as if you're on top of the world, and things couldn't be better. Next up, a gentleman approaches you at the tables and offers you a complimentary room upgrade. He tosses in show tickets to the upcoming Floyd Mayweather fight.
Want some more? How about a fully paid dinner with Kobe steak, fine wine, and delicious desserts at the on-site Japanese Steakhouse? And if you hammer the casino a little more, they may even reimburse you for your airfare to Harry Reid international airport. Things are looking swell!
It's one thing to whoop the casinos at their games. It's another thing to get your paws on high-quality free stuff from the casino. It makes everything so much sweeter and more enjoyable. It doesn't matter if you know how to count cards; it's getting the comps that matter. These are the rewards for your wagering activity.
Comps are an ingenious way for casinos to show you how valuable your patronage is to them. If they keep you coming back, the long-term law of averages suggests that you will end up losing. That's what they know, but it's up to you to prevent that. Once the tables turn, it gets ugly fast. Banish that thought because we're going to focus our attention on the prized player's card. It's the most helpful piece of plastic at the casino because it lets management know who you are and showers you with incredible gifts.
The player's card aligns your activity with a casino host. These guys and gals will do everything in their power – it's considerable – to leverage your situation to the maximum. You'll be showered with lots of free stuff like comps, room upgrades, dinners, shows, and other delightful offerings. The best part of this deal is that you don't need to know anything about game theory, bizarre gaming strategies or be an expert at mathematics or statistics.
The author of Comp City Max Rubin, does a fine job explaining everything you need to know about this topic. He talks about how to leverage playing power through casino rewards programs. It's all about perception, nothing else. He states, and I quote:
'Your first bet and last bet are your most important bets…. make sure when you sit down and begin wagering, it's at the top of your betting range. Be sure to announce it so that the pit boss can hear you. They open your rating on that first bet, and you want it to be a good number—also, buy in for a little extra. Even if you have no intention of losing all the money, it looks good for you to appear to be somebody who will. Same thing as your last bet. Dealers and their bosses have only a hand or two as reference points for your average bets.'
Right! You're all set and ready to go. But before you start reaping the rewards of your gambling activity, be aware of the different casino comps available. This is like situational awareness in the casino.
There are different types of comps, notably soft comps and hard comps. Think of soft comps as privileges you get that don't cost the casino much. These include meals at the buffet tables, coffee shop dinners, entry to nightclubs, complimentary rooms, or upgrades.
But many comps cost the casinos hard cash. These include airline reimbursements, shopping gift cards, and tickets to big fights, concerts, or shows. You see the difference? Casino hosts are much more likely to offer you soft comps than hard comps.
With soft comps, you can enjoy tremendous rewards from the casino. You can gamble modestly, using basic strategy blackjack to beat the dealer. You still get comps to keep playing even if you don't beat the dealer. Other benefits include complimentary trips to Las Vegas. You may not get the airfare compensated, but you get everything free while in Sin City – how awesome is that? All you have to worry about is getting to Vegas – once you're there, it's plain sailing to casino central.
The Casino Whale – High Roller Par Excellence
Here's the deal: once you are firmly established as a high-roller, you can enjoy tremendous benefits from the casino, and I'm talking cold, hard cash. Money! You even get to play with zero money down, and that's a good deal. These are known as Freerolls or free-rolls. These invitation-only events allow you to compete in prestigious tournaments, including craps, poker games, blackjack tournaments, and, believe it or not, slots too.
With freerolls, you compete against other players just like yourself, and you can win a windfall in cash. That's jackpot pay-dirt, my friend. According to Rubin, freeroll tournaments have huge value. He says you can have upwards of C$2000 in expected value coming your way, and these tournaments are a lot of fun to play. You can enjoy a free room, and competition is usually soft. To maximize returns on soft fields, you want to have a strategy in place.
Rubin says that most players play by the seats of their pants, but you shouldn't do that. A good resource to consult in this regard is Stanford Wong’s Tournament Strategy. He wrote the book decades ago, but it's just as relevant today as it was then. With gambling, your goal is to whittle away the house edge as much as possible, bit by bit. That's how winning is done. As long as you are ahead of your opposition, you're not on the back foot.
There is another avenue you can take, and it's known as the rebate game. If you wager high amounts, you get free money through this approach. It's essentially the casino reimbursing you a percentage of your losses. Pretty cool. Let's take an example to illustrate how this works. If you have a prearranged deal in place with the casino such that you would get 8% back on your losses up to C$100,000, you can lose up to C$100,000 and only have to pay the casino C$92,000.
That's C$8000 of losses that they eat, not you. That's thanks to the rebate plan. Steve Cyr, a famous casino host in Las Vegas, is all about rebate plans. He says, 'Most people think that's not such a great deal, but some smart guys know how to play it.'
The rebate period typically runs for 24 hours. According to Steve Cyr, some savvy players know how to take advantage of that fact well. Some guys come into the casino and lose C$100,000, get back C$8000 or more, and then bid farewell to Las Vegas.
When these guys return to the casino the next day and scoop up C$100,000, they get paid out with a check. Then they take their check to another casino and get it cashed at the competition. Of course, they're also taking advantage of the rebate deals from other casinos. It's a pretty miserable feeling receiving a call from your competition with a host who wants to know if he has permission to cash your casino's check.
It may not be good for the casino host, in this case, Steve Cyr, but it's excellent for you. The rebate game can be lucrative if you game the system like a casino whale. According to Cyr, you should always play where the casino appreciates your action (your betting). For example, if you drop C$5000 at an off-the-strip casino, managers will appreciate it much more than the high-roller suite of the Bellagio or Caesar's Palace.
Some degree of arrogance has crept into the cultural zeitgeist of Las Vegas these days. It's gotten to the point where you only get rated if your bets are in the range of C$25 or C$50 for each hand you play. It would help if you played at least three hours daily to qualify for a rating assessment. Cyr adds you should expect to get comped about 10% of what you lose, or approximately 30% of your mathematically expected losses.
So here's the deal, put your gambling bankroll on deposit. That means you should put everything that you are potentially going to gamble but don't bet – on the table in front of you. The casino hosts can see how much they stand to win. Don't go overboard with comps, though – remember how much they are worth and how much you can lose chasing them down. As a final note, Cyr adds – 'People love to brag about getting comped… A guy tells me he lost C$10,000, and got comped. I tell him, I hope you did.'
