There are many casinos with promotions where the player can earn extra drawing tickets during certain periods, such as 5x tickets during 4 p.m. to 6 p.m. on Fridays, or perhaps 10x tickets all day Tuesday.
To the player, whether 5x drawing tickets is worth more or less than 2x points depends on the value of each. You can usually figure out exactly how much 2x points is worth and it will always be an estimate of how much 5x drawing tickets is worth.
To the casino, 5x drawing tickets is essentially costless. It does require a trivial amount of computer programming to set up the system to award the extra tickets, although this can usually be assigned to an existing employee who isn’t overworked. But 2x points costs actual money. Whatever combination of cash, free play, or comps that the casino offers based on your play, doubling that amount for certain periods generates real costs.
The value for drawing ticket multipliers can vary by player. If you’re not going to be present during the weekly “Friday at 7 p.m.” drawing, for example, 10x (or any other multiple) of drawing tickets is worthless to you. If you are a bigger-than-average player at a particular casino, drawings are worth something to you and extra drawing tickets have real value.
With all this as a background, at about 6 p.m. on a recent Friday evening, I was playing a bar-top progressive at a small casino. Over the loudspeaker, I heard the announcer exhorting all players to go to the kiosk to activate their drawing tickets by 7 p.m. for the 7:15 drawing.
The drawing wasn’t worth much, but since I was going to be there anyway (assuming the progressive wasn’t hit before the drawing took place), so when I went for a bathroom break, I activated my tickets as well. I could clearly hear the drawing over the casino’s loudspeaker and would have 2 minutes to claim if my name was called, so why not? It had to be worth something (even if I didn’t know exactly how much) and I was already there. Even if my equity was only worth $10 or so (which was probably the case) and would not have been worth a special trip, since I was present it was worth the 15 seconds it took to activate. (Had the line to activate my entries been lengthy, I would have blown it off.)
The announcer continued over the loudspeaker that this month, as proof that this casino loved its players, all players would earn 10x drawing tickets every day.
I smiled at this. To me, it was obvious that if everybody was earning 10x drawing entries all the time, this was a worthless promotion. This just meant that instead of earning a ticket every $100 coin-in, as was the usual case at this casino, for this month you earn a ticket every $10 of coin-in.
Assuming I played $20,000 in coin-in so far that week, I’d have exactly the same percentage of tickets if everybody was on the $100-per-ticket basis as I would if everybody was on the $10-per-ticket basis, or $1-per-ticket if they wanted to offer an audacious “100x tickets for everybody” promotion.
Still, I heard the bartender chatting with a player a few seats down about how this was really great for the player. They both agreed that the 10x drawing entries was a good thing for the players. The player said that he normally didn’t enter the Friday night drawings, but since his play was worth ten times as much this time, here he was. Wishing to remain relatively inconspicuous, I saw no advantage to joining the conversation.
I would have thought it was essentially common sense that if everybody was getting 10x drawing entries all month that this was worthless, but clearly this particular player thought it was a great deal and was playing more because of it!
I have a really good handle on how smart players analyze casino promotions. I’m continually amazed how these same promotions are analyzed by not-so-smart players!
And, of course, if this guy was playing more than he otherwise would, that decreased the value of my entries! That means that this was not a promotion that gave me value at all, but rather one that removed value from my play. Go figure!
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Once you realize that most people are horribe at math and even worse at probability and statistics, the world gets easier to take. This was a great promotion for this casino since it is increasing play and doesn’t cost them one thin dime.
I am a out of town visitor ( Mn) to Vega. Drawing your name can happen to anyone. I’ve been present at Sam’s Town on consecutive trips and had my name drawn for YAH two trips in a row. $500 each time.
The math by Bob is almost right, but not quite. You get one drawing entry for every 10 pts ($20 for VP) only if you earn multiples of 100 points. If you earn 90 points, you get zero entries. If you earn 190 points, you get 10 entries and not 19 as Bob states. I am a frequent player at this casino and took a pass on the drawings for the exact reason Bob stated, even though this was a better than usual drawing.