Change for Gold Coast Seniors

Mondays have been “Young at Heart” (for seniors 50+) at the Gold Coast for some time. Some benefits stay constant, but the rewards for video poker players changes from time to time. Beginning November 1 they removed their senior drawing and 5x points for video poker players and replaced it with a 100-coin bonus on four natural fives (no wild cards, bottom line only on multiple line machines, $100 maximum bonus).

Overall this isn’t a terrible tradeoff. On a game like Jacks or Better, the promotion adds 0.4%. On a game like NSU Deuces Wild, the game adds 0.3%. If you play at the Emerald level, (0.3% every day), these bonuses ADD to what you already get. The previous promotion only added 0.2% for these players because the 5x points (totaling 0.5%) was a MAXIMUM amount no matter what level you were at. The new promotion, for some players at least, more than makes up for the loss of 5x points and goes a long way toward replacing the drawing.

It was somewhat surprising to me that the casino was really jumping with video poker players on Sunday November 7 when they were giving 5x points, but largely dead when they had the four fives promotion on Monday November 8. I played from 9 p.m. to midnight, connected on the promo twice (a rare occurrence to be sure), and the slot shift boss was telling me that these were the 6^th and 7^th bonuses they’d paid all day and they’d paid a similar number the week before. I would have thought that they’d have three or four times that many. What gives?

Part of the answer lies in what else was happening in the video poker world. Sunday was a day when “nothing special” was going on promotion-wise, but Monday had gift cards at the Palms (in addition to video poker bingo) and senior day at the Silverton.

To be sure the Sunday promotion was open to all ages and the Monday promotion was only open to 50+, but usually more than half of players in a casino qualify for the senior category. Also, how the two promotions compare is affected by your tier level. If you are Ruby level, 5x points and the four fives promotion have approximately equal EV. If you are Sapphire level, four fives is a little better. And if you are Emerald, four fives is a lot better. Overall, four fives is a better for the players mathematically, but clearly (looking at head counts) many players don’t see it that way.

Although four fives is worth more than 5x mathematically, there is a huge difference in terms of frequency and certainty. You’ll connect on four fives every 5-8 hours, depending on how fast you play. If you’re going to be playing 2 or 3 hours on Monday, you’re probably not going to collect the 100-coin bonus this time. If you were getting 5x points, you’ll get a small bonus on every hand played.

Over the course of 4,000 hands (the approximate frequency of four fives in some games), the additional 0.2% (i.e. the difference between the daily 0.3% for Emerald and the 0.5% for the 5x point promotion) would have been worth an extra 40 coins. To me it’s no contest between a promotion that gives me an extra 40 coins over 4,000 hands versus one where I get an extra 100 coins. I appear to be in the minority about this.

Many people seem to prefer the guaranteed 40 coins versus the theoretical average of 100 coins for the same amount of play — but which probably isn’t going to happen today. Players who can figure this out and are able to take a long-term point of view to their gambling find this obvious. Others, not so much. To me this is a variation of my “today’s score doesn’t matter” mantra that I’ve been preaching for years. One wag recently called my preaching “ear banging.” I thought that was a clever expression.

Another player told me that he preferred to play Five Play machines, and since this bonus only played on the bottom line, this was equivalent to a 20-coin bonus for him. That’s true, of course, so long as he insists on playing Five Play. But why do that? Winning players learn to swing with the punches. If one promotion pays better on a particular type of machine, those are the machines to play.

Players differ in their flexibility on this. If you want to take a “if the promotion doesn’t work really well on the machine I usually play, then screw it!” attitude, fine. That’s your choice. As for me, I’ll look for ways that I can benefit from what is being offered. Which is why in the ten casinos I play the most at, I play a total of seven different games, and at some casinos am playing a different game this month than I did last month because of promotions.