Card Pulling at the Revel

The Revel in Atlantic City is offering an outrageous 100% loss rebate. Whatever you lose in slots, video poker, or electronic table games during July is rebated in 20 equal weekly free play installments from early August through mid-December.

There have been reports of the Revel kicking out players for being on some “list”. There have also been reports of players being kicked out for playing on other people’s cards — or even for simply offering advice to others. I’m not in position to verify these reports. It does seem clear, however, that the casino is vigilant in terms of making sure players are playing by their rules.

But let’s say you checked and they denied there is such a list; that even if there were such a list, you aren’t on it. You are only going to be playing on your own card and not assisting anybody else. What then? Is there any way to scam the system?

One poster on the vpFREE Internet bulletin board suggested the following method: Playing Ultimate X, wait until you’ve earned multipliers that average 4X or greater on every line and then pull your card before you initiate the next deal. He suggested that doing this costs you little and artificially exaggerates your losses. Let’s look at this strategy.

1. In Ultimate X, the average multiplier is approximately 2X. It costs 10 coins per individual hand to play and you only get paid based on 5 coins times the multiplier. If the multiplier were always 2X, then playing 25¢ Ten Play Ultimate X would be just like playing 50¢ Ten Play. But the multiplier isn’t always 2X. It varies and can be as large as 12X per line.

2. The attached chart was copied (with permission) from www.wizardofodds.com for 7-5 Double Double Bonus Poker. I don’t know if this game exists at the Revel, but with the return barely exceeding 96%, this is in line with the pay tables that are reported to now be found there. For the rest of this article, assume you can find this game for 25¢ Ten Play at that casino — which implies a $25 total bet per Deal. Even if this exact pay schedule isn’t available at the Revel, for the purposes of this article, it’s close enough.

3. As an example, let’s assume you are just starting out (meaning no previous multipliers are available) and are dealt two pair–queens and fives–along with an extraneous four. Don’t even think about holding only the queens (That would be a terrible choice. Even in regular DDB it’s a bad choice, but here you get bigger multipliers for two pair than a high pair, plus if you get a full house you get the maximum 12X multiplier). Hold the two pair and hit the draw button. Let’s say you end up with two full houses and the other eight hands do not improve. (This would be a better than average result — but not greatly so. You actually average about 0.8 full houses when you draw ten times to two pair. Often you end up with zero full houses. Sometimes you end up with three or four.) Your score on this Deal would be (2 x 35 for the full houses) + (8 x 5 for the two pair hands) = 110 credits ($27.50 on a quarter machine). You started out paying 100 credits so you earned a small profit ($2.50) on that deal.

4. On your next deal, however, you’re going to have ten multipliers. On eight of the hands you’re going to have a multiplier of 3X (adding up to 24X) and on two of the hands you’re going to have multipliers of 12X (also adding up to 24X). The sum of these multipliers is 48X-meaning that your win could be 4.8 times (48X total multipliers divided by 10 hands) what you would have received with no multipliers. Disregarding the lousy pay table, this would give you an almost even bet if you were paying 24 coins per hand (5 coins per hand times an average 4.8 multiplier equals 24 coins per hand), but you are only paying 10 coins per hand so you have a distinct advantage. The $25 bet on your next Deal will end with an average score of about $57, which means $32 net profit after your starting bet is subtracted.

5. If you pull your card at this point, before the next deal, the $25 you bet won’t be counted towards your total, but your expected win of about $57 won’t be counted either.

6. If you remove your card before the deal every time when the sum of the multipliers is 40X or greater, it will definitely work to exaggerate your recorded losses and minimize your recorded wins.

7. That said, there are some strong reasons to stay away from using this technique. First of all, sometimes you will get W2Gs when your card is still in the card reader and sometimes you will get W2Gs when your card is out. How are you going to explain this to the attendants? This will look pretty weird. If they weren’t already suspicious of you, you will now probably be watched closely.

8. It’s difficult to pull your card surreptitiously — especially if some employee (or camera) is specifically looking for you to be doing just that.

9. If you practice this technique for several hours at a casino that has shown itself to be vigilant in throwing out players who are attempting to scam the system, I estimate the chances of you being kicked out of the promotion at approximately 100%!

10. However, the casino could well let you continue play — while digitally recording on surveillance tapes your antics as evidence. You are playing a losing game, after all, so why not let you play and continue to lose? Then when you’ve lost all you are willing to lose, the casino could tell you that you aren’t eligible for the rebate because you were cheating. If you want to take it to court or the New Jersey Casino Control Commission, the casino would have a strong case. When they show the judge and jury surveillance tapes of you removing your card hundreds of times, it would be difficult for you to convince anybody that you weren’t trying to scam their system.

In theory, the card pulling at Ultimate X will work well at exaggerating your losses. At the Revel, it will also virtually guarantee that you’re not going to collect the rebate.

This possibly remains a great promotion for the player — if you’re willing to play large denomination slots without trying to take advantage of the rules. Whether you like it or not, the casino is hyper-paranoid about players trying to cheat on their rebate offer. If you give them no reason to suspect you are “cheating” (as defined by them), you’ll be fine. If you do give them such reason to suspect you, you’re not going to like the results.