I never figured out why people debated the subject listed in the title of this article. Of course there was noise. To my mind the presence of sensors, human or otherwise, is not a necessary requirement to knowing whether or not there is noise. For whatever reason, some people want to take the other side of this argument. (If you are such a person, leave me out of the argument. Just assume I have a closed mind on this particular subject.)
Let’s take this into the casino. I was leaving the Silverton Casino about noon on Labor Day. A friend, “Sam,” was complaining about his results. (A video poker player who complains? What a shock!) Seems like he didn’t connect on the promotion, so as far as he was concerned, the promotion didn’t even exist. In my opinion he was spouting nonsense.
Some background first. Silverton is having a type of hot seat promotion beginning at 10 a.m. on weekdays in September. Several times an hour the casino awards money to one of their players, selected randomly. Every active player has a chance at winning the prizes.
It’s no surprise that Sam didn’t win one of the hot seat prizes while he was there. There were a lot more players than prizes given. But let’s look at why he was playing at that particular casino on that particular day.
In Las Vegas, many casinos offer point multipliers or other promotions on holidays. In addition, all casinos offer regular promotions. In addition, each player who wishes to receive a mailer from a casino needs to play a certain amount during the month. Let’s look at what several casinos were offering on Labor Day:
M had a mystery multiplier. Any player who wanted to play this month earning 3x points (worth 0.90%) was going to get it some Monday during the month, maybe this one. Maybe not. You couldn’t know until you went there and swiped your card.
South Point was offering 2x points (0.60%) for likely the only time in September.
Silverton was offering 2x points (0.60%), there were Monday senior drawings held at 1 p.m. and 6 p.m., and there was a weekly drawing scheduled for Saturday. There was also the Hot Seat promotion already mentioned.
Palms offers its PEW (Play Earn Win) awards on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays (which is a type of point multiplier as you get the sometimes-nice gifts and keep your points. At retail value, the gifts add about a half percent) and you’re playing for drawings on Friday and Saturday. (If also offers one or two Megabucks pulls, based on your level of play. If you’re making a special trip to the casino for these pulls, you need to start making better choices.)
Gold Coast offers seniors a 100-coin bonus on four fives on Mondays and you’re playing for a drawing on any subsequent Saturday.
Sam’s Town offers 5x points to everybody (worth 0.50%.) and they have drawings on the weekend.
These are some of the casinos I follow. I’m sure that many other casinos were offering some incentive to play that day as well. This list is meant to be suggestive of the choices on that day and it’s by no means exhaustive.
Figuring out which casino to play at on a holiday is not a trivial matter. If you’re eligible for senior promotions, your choice might be different than if you’re not. Are you going to be at the drawings on the weekend? Sometimes casinos allow you to “store up” your drawing entries for use anytime later in the month, and sometimes all your tickets expire this Saturday whether you’ve entered them in the drum or not. Sometimes one casino holds a drawing at 7 p.m. and another at 8:15 p.m., so it’s feasible to attend two or more in one night. Sometimes two casinos hold the drawings at the same time so you can’t do both. If you’re an out-of-towner who is just playing for whatever you can earn today, your choices are a lot different than if you’re a local who can pick up a lot of other goodies down the road.
Do you have your month’s worth of play mapped out? At least approximately? If you only play an hour or two a month at a couple of casinos, this planning isn’t too important. But a lot of local players plan on playing 10 or more hours each at three or more casinos so as to keep the level of mailers they want. These players need to do some planning.
If most of your play is done while some promotion is going on, your results will be better over the course of several years than if you do your play haphazardly. The Hot Seat promotion that Sam didn’t collect on this time might pay him $500 twice a year. He just doesn’t know when. But if he was going to play one hour that day, playing after 10 a.m. where he had a shot at the Hot Seat and playing so his play was done before the first senior drawing at 1 p.m. was likely a better plan than playing when he didn’t get these extra chances for profit. (It is possible, I suppose, that since so many other players were playing in the same time period that if he played between 2 and 3, for example, while he would lose out on the first senior drawing he would greatly increase his Hot Seat chances because there were fewer people competing against him. This is the kind of choice/guess you need to make beforehand because whichever way you go you can’t simultaneously know how well you would have done had you made the other choice.)
Collecting on a particular promotion this time is frequently a matter of luck. (Not always. Collecting on 2x points requires no luck at all.) But choosing where to invest your time and money in order to maximize your chances for profit over the course of the month and the year is something that requires both skill in analyzing promotions and effort in terms of taking the time to gather the information and figure it all out.) And whether you end up collecting on a promotion later or not, using the expected value of a particular to help you make good decisions is an intelligent way to gamble.
Some of you might have made a decision that Labor Day was a good time to take your family off to Lake Mead or somewhere else. I can understand that decision, but it’s not for me. Shirley accepted early on that holidays provided unique opportunities for advantage play and we’ll take our vacations on non-holidays. Although I certainly don’t always win (Like Sam I was a net loser this particular Labor Day), Shirley knows that on average we’re able to take nicer vacations because of her flexibility.