Free Play

Since many casinos are giving free play and /or rebate for slot losses, I'm curious to see if any research has been done on what the actual payout is on free play. You see many places (e.g. Casino Royal) that will give you $500 in free play, but no one I know has ever won anything from it. Also--it might just be me--when you are playing on free play, your expected return hits the toilets...this would be an interesting research project for some enterprising young student to track and see if the returns on free play mirrors that on when you actually put money into the machine.

Unless the machines are programmed to recognize Free Play and lock out winning outcomes (which surely would be considered fraud), I will guess that there is no difference. A pull is a pull, money or free play.

HOWEVER, the casinos do nothing without counting the bottom line. Why would they offer free play if it was good for the player?

I always play FP first. Last year I never touched my own money on a 3 day trip to Biloxi (up 12k by the end of the trip) and the same thing happened 3 years ago in Tunica (although I only ended up 1K ahead).

I have not noticed any difference between playing on Freeplay and playing with my own money. I often, just as Captain Bill mentioned play my Freeplay first and then play on (if there is a decent enough Video Poker game to play on).

What are you using your Freeplay on? If it's a Slot Machine that is not Video Poker, then it's more likely to offer a lower return than Video Poker does (although it also helps a lot to know how to play each hand of Video Poker in the best possible manner [which can be done even with the use of a printed out playing strategy chart]).

If you want to get the most of that money that is offered to you in Freeplay, if the Video Poker that is offered doesn't have a return of (at least mostly) any less than 99.1% in the Long Run, then you can be more likely to get a nice part of the Freeplay money out by playing (if it's available) Video Blackjack.

And do keep in mind that with Freeplay money, the second that the last cent of the Freeplay is played through, you can cash out whatever amount is left. So if you had $10 in Freeplay, the second that the $10 had been played through (for example this could be done by playing 8 hands of $1.25 per hand on a Quarter [$0.25] Video Poker machine), you can just cash that out and stop play entirely and walk out and take that voucher (or money) out and get paid and then you can leave the casino.

RecVPPlayer

I dont believe it is legal to program a machine to pay differently based upon free play or real play. Also, i dont even think its possible. Each machine has a single chip that determines the random number generator and payback percentage.

I stayed at the Riviera in Oct 2012 and had $750 in FP. During my 1st 10 minutes of playing I hit $3000 on video keno, while waiting to get paid I moved to the next machine and hit another $1500 (all on freeplay). I have hit many times on my freeplay but these were my biggest hits. As others have said I to believe the casinos would be committing fraud if they could identify f/p vs our real money.

There is a HUGE difference in FP and promotional machines, the Casino Royale thing referenced above is on a bank of slots that s very different from FP you can use like actual cash.

Some people on another thread said that in some casinos you should cash out after playing the free play through once, then reinsert the ticket to insure that your points are being recorded. They had noticed at some casino the points did not record after the free play was played first.

Wouldn't hurt just to be sure!!

I know that at the Four Queens, you can tell when you've played through your FP, because your points will start accumulating; you'll see the meter running.

Just blew thru $500 in FP ($50 a pop) on $ VP at Caesers...ended up making $225 off it (which I proceeded to loose, of course). I get another chance at the end of March at Paris...another $500.