Wally Mart!

It's that time of year again. South Point is offering half-point-price $50 Wal Mart gift cards for the entire month of November. There's a maximum of 10 you can earn. Here's the math:

It normally takes 8,333 points to earn $25 worth of comps or cashback. However, for this promo, that many points earned will get you a $50 gift card. The effect is to raise the slot club return from 0.3% to 0.6%.

The best games (with a couple of minor exceptions) are the NSUD found all over the casino, in .25 and .50 denominations. If you play this game perfectly, you can achieve the optimum result of 99.73%. So assuming you went full Bob Dancer on this one (and I'm sure he will), your expected loss from $83,330 worth of play is $225, for which you'll receive $500 worth of Wally Mart.

Hey, it's a positive expectation play! And South is a nice place to stay, play, and eat, with the only reasonably priced operational buffet in town.

That is a good promotion.  I knew they were going to have this right after I was there in Oct.  Oh well.  I personally like the wheel spin better.  But this is a close 2nd.  

And that buffet is better than I remember it.  I didn't like it years ago.  

The wheel spin and the other similar kiosk games they periodically offer have an interesting twist. For whatever reason, the prize money tends to clump up toward the end of the month--perhaps they allocate X dollars and resolve to give it all away no matter what. So the last time I was there, they had a wheel spin "$500,000" promo that you got at the kiosk. Prizes ranged from 2500 points (the worst; worth $7.50) to $50 free play. Earlier in the month (in the past), I had averaged about $15/spin. But this time, it was two days before the end of the month, and I got $50, $50, and $25. I watched other players while I was waiting; they got $50 more often than not.

This also seemed to be the case when they had the promo where you did the wheel spin at your machine after accumulating X points (2000?). I think last month's promo was this style, but I'm not sure. In any event, the go-to strategy seems to be to play there at the end of the month if possible when these promos are in effect.

The Wally Mart cards promo is a bit more flexible, in that there's a daily limit on the number of spins you can earn in the other promos. With the Wally Mart, you could earn all 10 (the monthly max) cards in the same day if the mood struck you.

I remember you posting that a while back too and I definitely want to test that. (Plan to next time they have it hopefully)  One time (don't rember the part of the month) I was getting damn year the lowest every time per spin.  Then another time (again don't remember) I was averaging like $15 a spin (that is basically over 3x points then). Those easily could have been early and middle of the month so you may onto something there for sure.  And when you think about it, it probably makes a lot of sense.  They can't go blow their wads in first two weeks of the month (not knowing what traffic will be like the second half of the month) and go way over the $500K or whatever it is but then at end they need to hit that published number.  That is good info.  

I typically like to do about 10K through a day so that is why I like that promotion.