Yes, some casinos are fighting the economic downturn by increasing promotions. Good way to keep old customers and attract new ones. After all, customers are the lifeblood of all casinos. Yet, some casinos are fighting the economic downturn by decreasing slot club benefits, the one thing that will drive away even many long-term loyal customers. 

Here are some specific details: 

The Venetian is continuing its on-going practice of frustrating customers by trying to micro-manage their slot club system. Go to their Web site for their new ironically-named “Resort Loyalty System” which cuts point values the biggest percentage I have even seen since slot clubs began!   

Some casinos are now basing their bounce-back (BB) mailers on whether you win or lose, i.e., Hard Rock and Gold Coast. They have every “right” to do this, but it does not make their customers happy. In fact, many will play about the same amount every month (or every quarter, depending on the qualification period) and then when one time their mailer amounts take a big plunge, they are given a because-you-won answer. Many vow they will never play there again. The old timers will remember the time, and not that long ago, when casinos just looked at your action and rewarded you accordingly. They figured everyone wins at least part of the time, and they knew that if they cultivated the customer and encouraged him to continue to play, they would usually still make money on him in the long term. Bean counters are big on looking at the short term! 

Some casinos go to even more extreme measures. Sometimes Wynn doesn’t just cut your BB amounts; marketing will cut off your mailer completely and disqualify you for any events like drawings and tournaments. Casinos sometimes try to identify skilled video poker players but they often have no idea just how to do this. Looking at short-term results can have them making a lot of misjudgments. A drunk who doesn’t know a paytable from a coffee table can win more on some days than the most skilled player on earth. Actually someone who is unknowledgeable about video poker strategy will usually get more royals than a knowledgeable player. And the biggest example of casino ignorance – and one I have seen more than once – is 86ing someone who gets dealt a royal on a multi-line machine – as if there is any skill involved in this.

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Tried to find a decent VP paytable at Venetian/Palazzo and couldn’t find anything below a $25 machine? 

Just walk across the pedestrian bridge to Wynn and you will find good video all over the place, starting at the $1 level. There has been 9/6 JoB there for a long time, but recently they have added NSUD (Not-So-Ugly Ducks, which has a 1,2,3,4,4,10,16 paytable).   The database at vpFree gives some information on machine locations. Subscribe at vpFREE-subscribe@yahoogroups.com.

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Do the slot decision-makers at Venetian/Palazzo know how desperate and unknowlegeable they have looked all month? First they offer a juicy (for the players) promotion - 3x points on Wednesdays. Then I am guessing they are surprised that it brought in “too many” players. Don’t they know that even the most casual local players have learned to look for bonus point days? 

But did they sit down and discuss sensible action – perhaps changing the promotion to 2x instead of 3x - or just pulling the promotion? No – they ravaged all the $1 and $5 Jacks or Better video poker so that someone had to play at least $25 a hand. They must have been surprised that there were so many players who could continue to play at these higher stakes. So now they have done another series of paytable cuts – and there is nothing below $25 machines, which require $125 a hand and up.

I wonder if the powers-that-be have ever gambled themselves. Do they have any idea at all how gamblers think? I think not, because this series of wild cuts has been a public relations nightmare. In less than one month the Venetian and Palazzo have alienated thousands of good customers, all this during a time when most wise casinos are working hard to keep their numbers up.  I don’t know what caused these conjoined twin casinos to make such drastic VP cuts. On the first 3x promotion Wednesday, did the video poker players just get lucky with jackpots one day, even though 9/6 JoB is a less-than-100% game and a long-term loser for even the most skilled player.   If that was the case, stripping out all the lower-level good paytables was just the opposite of what wise casino decision-makers would have done. They would have downgraded the games at the higher limits,  for 2 reasons. First, just a few big royals could hit their bottom line much harder than even a bunch of low-level jackpots. Second, on the whole, the higher the level a video poker can afford to play the higher his skill level would be and he would lose less over time, therefore being less profitable than a group of lower-level recreational players which will include many who are not highly skilled.

I know casinos fear “advantage” video poker players – but this fear is largely unfounded. For one thing, many skilled players have limited bankrolls and that limits their impact on the casino’s bottom line. Also, they bring relatives and friends with them to the casino, players who are not skilled and more than make up for the “damage” of the one skilled person. 

More importantly, there is an extremely small percentage of extremely skilled players who can “beat the casino” in the long term.   Many desire to do this, but few have the extreme discipline it takes to succeed. They won’t stick to the best VP games, often choosing ones that are “more fun” and even straying to the slots at times. They aren’t flexible enough to seek out the best promotions or knowledgeable enough about the math to exploit them. They don’t practice and study enough to play accurate strategy even if they choose the “good” games.   In short, being an “advantage” video poker player is HARD WORK. And most people are in a casino to have fun not to work! 

We know a casino has to make a profit – we players understand and accept that. However, Sheldon, you need to bring in managers who know how gamblers think. You need managers who understand the math and don’t panic over short-term results. You need managers who know how to treat customers with respect and don’t mess with their minds with constant changes. 

We are sad, but we won’t get mad – we will just go away! 

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I would like to recommend that you read my fellow LVA writer's blog if you are interested in many facets of Vegas, casinos, and gambling in general. I am always pleasantly surprised by the wide variety of topics he discusses -- and I love the photos he includes. Someday I am going to learn how to put photos in my blog! 

His latest blog entry talks about the Venetian/Palazzo and I would like to add some details about the downgrades in the VP inventory. I had discussed this in my June 10th blog entry and have checked out the inventory in both casinos since then and can confirm that there are no 9/6 Jacks or better below the $10 level. In the high-limit slot salons at both casinos you can find single-line $10 games (that's $50 a hand for a max bet) and $10 machines in the multi-line format. And the game denominations go up from there. 

Watch out for the "tricky" $5 machines in the high-limit room at the Venetian. They fooled us with their 9/6 JoB paytable - until a friend told us to look at the downgrade of the royal flush payoff! We had started playing them until this friend clued us in. I probably would have had a heart attack if we had hit a royal and didn’t get the full $20,000 like we expected. 

Earlier today David wrote another entry, about the $100 rebate of losses offered by Station Casinos to new local players.   He suggested one way to play for this deal was to choose a quarter full-pay VP machine and play until you had $100 or more profit or quit when you had lost exactly $100. He said he really wasn’t sure what the optimal strategy would be. I’m not sure either, but I believe I have seen discussion on this subject in the past and some suggested it would be best to play a higher denomination machine (perhaps like a $5 slot machine or a more volatile VP game like DDB) to try to score a bigger jackpot win. They said that paytable EV was not as important here.   Perhaps some of our readers will chime in here with some comments on these strategies or other possible ones.

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I just got information that you need to be a registered guest to take advantage of the tax stimulus check bonus I talked about in yesterday’s blog entry and perhaps you also need a personal mailed invitation. My host did not give me these details when I checked with him earlier – so I will need to research this further. Stay tuned – I’ll give you the details as soon as I find them out myself.

In the meantime, I am going back to my rule: Don’t publicize a promotion unless I have personally checked out the details!!

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