Riviera new rules

The Riviera just changed everything about players club rewards
this week.

WAS; 3 tiered players club.
10,000 points/year = gold card
40,000 points/year = platinum card

IS: 25,000 points/year = gold card
100,000 points/year = platinum card

WAS: reels, $1.00 coin in = 1 point
VP, $2.00 coin in = 1 point

IS: reels, $2.00 coin in = 1 point
VP, $4.00 coin in = 1 point

WAS: base card, 300 points = $1.00 cash back
gold card, 300 points = $2.00 cash back
platinum card, 300 points = $3.00 cash back

IS: NO MORE CASH BACK, JUST FREE PLAY
base card, 100 points = $1.00 free play
gold card, 100 points = $1.50 free play
platinum card. 100 points = $2.00 free play

I am a VP player & current platinum card holder. It used to take $80,000.00/
year to maintain platinum. It now takes $400,000.00/year. Thats a
huge jump & no cash back.

They have closed the players club and show ticket booth. You now go to
the cashier for everything. There is a player's revolt going on right now &
the players club/cashier/ticket booth tells me things are changing by the minute.

All I can say is "Wow, that's bad!" And thanks for the heads-up on this!

RecVPPlayer

Huh? I can understand the frustration if you are Platinum, but for everyone else this seems like an improvement. Even with the loss the cash back, the return % has now increased for both the base and gold levels.

According to what I am now able to calculate from this all, it looks like the Base Players' return has increased from .167% Cashback to .25% in Freeplay (although I do know that that is worse since Freeplay MUST be played through at least once before it can be cashed out -- and so that lowers its value to basically not more than [and likely less than] about .125% based on a game being 50/50 at best), while it now takes $100,000 of coin-in to get to Gold Card status (as opposed to $20,000 of coin-in previously) and that level would now get .375% in Freeplay as opposed to .25% in Cashback (but that's an additional 4 times the amount of coin-in that it takes to even get to that level).

And then with Platinum Level, where it previously got .50% in Cashback and took $80,000 of coin-in to get to that level, now it takes $400,000 of coin-in to get to that level and the Player now gets .50% in Freeplay (which again is worth less than about half of its face value).

And so as I previously said, that basically is not a good thing for the players to deal with this.

RecVPPlayer

What game are you playing that is 50/50 at best? Play your FP on 9/6 DDB, for example, at 98.9% and your 0.25% return is now .247%. So as I said, for eveyone besides Platinum, this seems like an improvement.

Anytime the casinos change their slot club workings it will never be a good thing for the players.

What I meant by that is a gamble in general with a decent game with perfect play -- but as you see I did say "basically not more than [and likely less than] about .125%" and then below that (for the Platinum explanation), I did say that the Freeplay was "worth less than about half of its face value" since I'm well aware that there are variables with Video Poker which include the game's overall return and Variance as well as a player's accuracy rate.

RecVPPlayer

I'm sorry RevVP, you're not making much sense here. Even playing an 80% game, the new system is better than the old for base and gold.

Grasp,

At least from what I've understood from the past, Freeplay is actually more like Matchplay and so it is not the guaranteed sure thing that cashback is.

Since Freeplay has to be played through on a machine at least one time before the player can extract whatever cash is left out of it, what the player can end up with can be worth less than half of the face value of the Freeplay in sure thing money return.

So what I mean by this is the following: As opposed to receiving the guaranteed amount of cashback (such as going from whereas you go from where $600 in coin-in previously got the Player at Base Level $1 in cashback -- that is .167%, it has now become $400 of coin-in now gets $1 of Freeplay (which is potential but not actual money) which is not guaranteed money -- since the Player could lose it on the hand that has to be played through the machine.

And so if the Player with Freeplay uses it for the play of Video Poker (and this then possibly may depend on which game they play), this can either allow the Player to get more than their bet in return, Lose the bet or possibly Get Their Bet Returned to them, not only is it not guaranteed pay, but also it can depend on the likelihood of ending up with some kind of paying hand which differs from game to game.

What I mean by that is that for example, with 9/6 Jacks Or Better, the Player will end up with on average 54% of losing hands whereas with Full Pay Pick 'Em Poker, Players on average will end up with losing about 66.8% of their hands.

So therefore, the relative value of Freeplay can end up being a lot less than cashback even if players are offered theoretically more "money" in Freeplay.

So in the end, as I'm understanding it, Freeplay can be worth less in potential return than actual cashback can be (although this depends on how much of a difference there is between the cashback rate and the Freeplay rate).

But also I should say that at least in this example, with the Gold and Platinum levels, it now takes $100,000 of coin in as opposed to $20,000 of coin-in (25,000 points now Versus 10,000 points previously) to get to the Gold Level status and 100,000 points ($400,000 of coin-in played through) now versus 40,000 points [$80,000 of coin-in played through] previously) to qualify to get to the Platinum level.
And then once players do get up to those levels, then they end up with Freeplay money which can very well be theoretically worse (that is worth less) than actual guaranteed cashback plus also I accidentally miscalculated for the worst and for the Gold Level it was a previous .333% Cashback rate [$600 of coin-in got you $2.00 in Cashback] versus a now .375% Freeplay rate (which again is not guaranteed money at that rate and it could end up getting the player less money than had the player received the actual cashback rate).

And then even worse for the Platinum Players, not only do they now have to play through $400,000 to get to that level, they also now get .50% in Freeplay instead of .50% in guaranteed cash.

So I think that this change is worse for all levels since I think that the somewhat more (if any) amount in Freeplay I think won't really make up for there now not being any cashback offered.

Therefore, basically, for all intents and purposes, the Freeplay that is now being offered is worth less than the cashback that previously was offered besides the fact that for the two higher tiers it takes a whole lot more coin-in to get to those higher tiers.

RecVPPlayer

Coach....not to sure what u said there...but I believe you!