Stations Contest - How to get 400% in EV via Basic Strategy The Stations Great Giveaway contest is $25 per entry.
Buy two entries and get a third free so $50 investment in
cash or Station Bucks for the max of three entries.
16 places in LV to sign up and play. You can put entries in
at any of the 16 casinos at any time and for any/all weeks
at any time. You can put all 17 weeks in at once if you want.
No pointspread contest. Prizes for weekly winners and for
season long winners. There is a NO LOSE guarantee. If you
put in all your picks each week and fail to win a weekly or
season prize, you get your entry fees back in the form of
machine free play. That's a pretty good start right there.
The Great Giveaway has a format that lends itself well
to advantage contest/tournament play so you can increase
your expected return by using a few simple Basic Strategies.
What makes the Great Giveaway a contest where you can increase your
expected return with a basic strategy? The prize structure is the main
thing. Getting the third entry free if you buy two is another. The NO LOSE
rebate and proper play for the Fiddle-in-the-Middle are the others.
RULES:
[url]https://greatgiveaway.sclv.com/Rules.aspx[/url]
There's 2 million in prize money guaranteed so at $16.67 per entry
there would have to be 120,000 entries for your entry to be merely
break-even in contest equity. Forget $25 per entry for this calculation,
that's not what you'll be paying. Those paying $25 per have a
break-even point of 80,000 entries. Total entries range from 40,000
to 70,000. My best guess is approx 50,000 this year. Just an estimate.
The amount of 2Mil in prizes is definitely debatable. This assumes all
weekly and season long winners take the prizes and not the cash option
and that all those who fail to cash in any way redeem their NO LOSE
rebate. This never happens so the actual amount they will probably
payout may be closer to 1.5M - 1.6M. Those options are all available
to be exercised though, so for those playing to maximize their EV it
would be OK to use the 2M figure to determine our theoretical return.
PRIZES:
[url]https://greatgiveaway.sclv.com/Prizes.aspx[/url]
At $16.67 per entry and with positive EV, you want to buy as
many as you can. The more entries, the more theoretical earn you
get. There are many that buy just one entry. At $25 each they still
have plus EV, just not as much as those paying $16.67.
The key is to go for Most Losers right from the start. This is not a big
revelation to those that have been doing this awhile but it's not obvious
to a lot of people just how much it increases your return.
The winners and losers payscale is not balanced. More money goes to
the winners side. The percentage is 60% to winners and 40% to losers.
That is on the weekly and season prizes only. On the Fiddle in the Middle
and the NO LOSE rebate, your losers entry has the same value as someone
going for Most Winners. The rough estimate of the pct of the pool a Most Losers
entry is shooting at is 45%. This is based on observation of the number of
perfect and 1 loss weekly entries over an extended period of time. My estimate
is one in five entrants start off going for Most Losers. Competing against 20% of
the field for 45% of the prize money is obviously far superior than competing
against 80% of the field for 55% of the prize pool. How much better is it?
It's 326% better. If you're doing that well, then the other side is doing
not so good. They are laying a price to earn the same dollar back that
you are getting paid off at nice plus money. This is before we even add
in the positive base contest equity (more money paid out then taken in)
that every entry enjoys.
The NO LOSE feature is just that. If you fail to cash for any weekly
or season prize you get your entry fees back in the form of free play.
You must get scooped. In other words, if you cash on any of your three
entries you do not get a rebate even if you have other entries that did not
cash. This rebate has been estimated and factored into the 2Mil prize pool.
Analyzing their pay scale, it appears they have allowed for $850,000
in rebates (34,000 x $25). I actually think that would be the low end of how
many would be eligible but possibly their entry count has gone down over the years.
When I won this contest (yes, I did get the top prize one year) the contest count was
44,000 entries. More competition has emerged since then, so Stations may have lost
some entries to the other contests around town.
Ways to maximize your return:
Pay with points using either Station Points or Jackie Points
- I paid with Station points. 50,000 pts gets you all three entries
Redeem your NO LOSE feature
- if you whiff on all three entries, go activate your rebate at a kiosk and
play it off by Super Bowl
Buying three entries
- $25 gets you one entry, $50 gets you three - math doesn't need
explaining here
Going for Most Losers
- doing this from the start is a big chunk of the overall EV
Reversing Field
- at a certain point, usually around week 9 or 10, you should take
a look at your entry and decide if you have any realistic shot at hitting the
pay chart. If not, it's time to reverse field and starting going for winners so
you can get close to 50/50 by the last week and have a shot at the
fiddle-in-the-middle money. That usually pays $100-$200 over the years.
Note that this gives you good equity on the weekly most winners payscale now.
If players who started the season going for wins (the majority of entrants) now
reverse field and start going for losses, that helps thin the field of those now going
for winners so you have way the best of it again. Starting out going for Losers
pays dividends here as well. A lot of people do not know enough to reverse field,
but a decent pct of them do, and this just helps add to your weekly EV.
This way of playing the contest will get most of what's possible out of it
and it's had great success for myself and friends. It has been 15 years or so
since I won a house this way. 10 years later, one of my best friends from out of state
was able to enter and he won the house the very same way in his first year.
The following year an AP friend of mine also won the Most Losers house, so that's
3 out of the last 15 or so Most Losers winners coming from a very small circle of
friends using this basic strategy. It will take a win pct of 70%-74% to put
you in serious contention for first place so keep that in mind as the season
progresses and report back if anyone is near that pace after week 10.
[url]https://www.mygreatgiveaway.com[/url]
