Shirley and I just returned from a week-long Caribbean cruise on the Norwegian Sun. The cruise was “free” from the Palms, meaning that we “only” had to pay $521 in port fees and taxes — per person. We’ve taken a large number of cruises to many destinations, and this particular one was the only one that came up on NCL when we Googled “2011 Square Dance Cruise.” It’s a minority priority, to be sure, but it’s ours.
The casino had typically bad games. Using Jacks or Better as an example, if you played 25¢ – $2 denomination you got the 7-5 game (96.15%), but if you wanted to play $5 denomination you got the 8-5 game (97.30%). You could play Bonus Poker, Double Bonus, Double Double Bonus, Deuces Wild, and others as well, but the returns were all in this miserable range. These machines were not close to being tempting to me, so it was a no-brainer not to decide not to play at all. Later on I changed my mind.
They’re having a promotion that if you pay $250 now, you’ll get to spend that $250 later on any 6-day or longer future NCL cruise — plus they’ll give you $100 right now off the charges on your card. Since we know we’ll be earning at least three NCL cruises from Harrah’s in 2012, this was a good deal. I’m not a huge fan of cruises, but Shirley is — and when Mama’s happy, everybody’s happy. (Not entirely happy. I would have strongly preferred to be in town on 11/11/11, but we were in the Bahamas on that day.) I purchased two of these $250 packages.
Even better, instead of $100 right now per package, they’ll give you $125 in casino “must play it through at least once” free play. To me this was a smart play. Even on a 97.3% game, $125 x 97.3% = $121.60 in EV — which is much higher than the guaranteed $100 I could get. If I wanted to play lower stakes, $125 x 96.15% = $120.20. This is still much higher than the guarantee of $100, but it is $1.40 less in EV than playing for $5 stakes.
Playing for lower stakes yields a lower variance, of course, meaning (among other things) that there is a higher probability that I’ll actually end up with more than $100 per package this time. Regular readers of my column know that “this time” means squat to me. Since I play $25 or more per play more than 100,000 times each year, playing for $5 coins wasn’t a big deal. I can understand that if people normally play for quarters or dollars, they might prefer to play the “safer” 7-5 game. Plus, if they get great pleasure out of playing video poker, playing $250 for quarters (i.e. two packages of $125 free play each) gives them 200 plays rather than the 10 plays you get if you play for $5 coins.
I ended up collecting $125 out of the $250 I started with. Oh well. It was still a good play. After she finds out my score, Shirley tells me I should have played for quarters rather than $5. Had I been clever enough to hit a 4-of-a-kind ($625) or better (1,250 or $20,000), she would not have complained. I rather expect that sort of after-the-fact comment from Shirley. And she knows her “complaint” will fall on deaf ears. After 15 years, this is just one more form of dancing we periodically go through.
They also have a deal where you can sign up for an NCL credit card, receive $50 shipboard credit now, and after you’ve used it once (and paid off what you owe), you’ll get $150 towards a future NCL cruise. We each got a card and used each to pay off the $250 fee we incurred earning the $125 free play apiece. There’s no annual fee on the cards and we earn 2% of purchases on NCL towards future cruises. This means we’ll each get another $5 towards another cruise by paying off $250 on each card.
(If you’re somebody who carries a credit card balance, getting a new credit card may not be a smart play at all. I have no control over who reads my columns, but my assumption going in is that part of casino advantage play means that you are gambling with discretionary wealth. Paying 16% or so for credit card debt is a sign of people who have negative bankroll. You need positive bankroll to gamble with.)
Insofar as NCL is concerned, these promotions “force” people to book another cruise on NCL. In addition, there have to be people who earn this credit and never redeem it — meaning the promotion in that case would be costless to the company. Since we anticipate we’re going to be getting these cruises “for free” from casinos, we are quite willing to be forced. We believe we’re going to be going on enough future NCL cruises that the money credit we’ve earned on these two promotions is as good as cash.
Should we for some reason NOT receive future NCL cruises for free, the credits are fully transferable. It shouldn’t be too hard to find someone who can use $250 towards port fees for, say, $240 or so. If that doesn’t work, how about $225?
It’s a rare situation where I would play $5 8-5 Jacks or Better — but this was one of them. For ten hands only.
In the past, when your cruise was booked through NCL’s “Casino at Sea” department, they gave you a card entitling you to free drinks while you were in the casino. (For Shirley and me this was only bottled water — but others we know got stronger drinks). On several cruises, I would take both cards to the casino and get two large bottles of water for a $1 tip. On the Norwegian Sun, we still got those cards, but drinks were only served at the machine while you were playing. Since we never play in the NCL casinos (save the type of exception noted here-in — which we may do again on future cruises), these drink cards are now useless to us. Whether this is the way this particular ship does it or whether it is a cruise-line-wide change of policy, we don’t know at this time.
As on land-based casinos, promotions are constantly changing. Taking time and energy to find out what’s currently available is a smart way to go.