You’re going on a two week vacation and back home you frequent a number of casinos. Let’s say they give you $40 a week in free play. How do you deal with that?
Some casinos, not many, will hold the money for you and let you collect it when you get back. Some casinos, again not many, allow at least some of their customers to pick up their free play any time during the month. If your regular casinos are like this, there’s no problem. You simply pick up your free play before and/or after your trip.
Some people have friends pick up their free play. Sometimes you can get this done for free by a friend who expects a similar service during his/her vacation. Sometimes you have to pay 25% or so in order to get your money. Still, collecting $30 a week is better than zero.
Some players simply ignore this and let the $80 go. They know it’s against the casino’s rules to have somebody pick up the free play for them and so they follow these rules.
Most players argue that it’s their money and they should be entitled to have somebody else collect it for them. After all, they had to play (often at a loss) in order to be eligible for the money. These players see the money as a reward for past gambling and they feel cheated if they can’t collect what they’ve earned.
Casino managers see this type of free play as a bribe to get you in to play some more. Yes the amount is based on past play, but they see it as part of an incentive to play more, not a reward for past play.
Also, in the reward packages they offer, casinos depend on breakage. If a casino is prepared to give away $100,000 in a certain time period, they can promise to give away $150,000 if one-third of the players aren’t going to come in and collect. If some of the players who can’t/won’t come have their money picked up anyway, the casino can’t afford to offer to give away $150,000. Instead they have to promise, say, $120,000. (Technically it’s the number of dollars that matter, not the number of players. Players receiving $1,000 a week are MUCH more likely to come in and pick up the free play than players receiving $5 a week.)
If a casino can successfully stop players who aren’t there from picking up free play, then they can afford to offer more knowing that the breakage factor will keep the money down to the desired level. For a given $100,000 outlay, a casino would prefer to be able to advertise that they’re giving away $150,000 rather than a mere $120,000.
In order to continue to be able to promise to give away $150,000 while actually only giving away $100,000, casinos have to crack down on the players who are “abusing” the system. Cracking down often starts with a “don’t do this again” warning. At many casinos, it escalates rapidly with the second offense.
One way casino can stop this is to make you go up to a booth and show ID before you get your money. For large enough amounts, this is done regularly. But for small amounts, most casinos allow you to download the money at the machine using your pin number. It’s more expensive for the casinos to check ID for every bit of free play and more time-expensive for the players. While this download-at-the-machine process has many advantages for both players and the house, it does allow players to thwart the wishes of the casino.
It’s relatively easy, for me anyway, to see both sides of this situation. A number of players are unable (or unwilling) to see that casinos have a valid reason for cracking down on these players. These players simplify the discussion to “all casinos are greedy bastards” and that covers the subject completely enough for them.
Players who can see both sides then take the approach of, “Okay. That’s how the game is played. How do we do this without being caught?” When they ask themselves that question, they come up with some rules such as:
1. Always make sure that when you’re picking up free play for somebody else, no W2Gs or other casino handpays are generated. At some casinos this simply means playing quarter single-line machines. Other casinos have their machines lock up at $1,000 (presumably to generate more tip money for their employees) and if that’s the case, you don’t want to be playing quarter video poker either.
2. Picking up money on a blackjack or roulette machine, when allowed, can avoid W2Gs, albeit it at a higher casino hold-rate than you find on the best video poker machines.
3. If one player is picking up money for many others, it’s stupid to pull out five or ten player cards along with a list of pin numbers and do them back-to-back-to-back all at the same machine. This can be noticeable to floor people and/or surveillance. Playing Mary’s free play off at one machine and then changing machines and playing John’s free play off and then changing machines again before getting Tasha’s free play is an easy solution. It takes a little more time and effort to do it this way, but it greatly increases your chance of getting away with it safely.
Expect casinos that are in financial difficulties to increase their diligence at rooting out players doing this. It’s easy to imagine managers of these casinos looking to cut costs any way they can.
A number of prominent casinos went belly up in 2014. A much larger number of them are in at least some financial trouble. These casinos may be expected to pull out all stops in order to keep solvent, and players who obey the arbitrary rules have a better chance to remain welcome than those who don’t.