Why Play When It’s Not Worth Very Much?

Sometimes on holidays, the South Point offers 2x points — which means 0.6% because the base is 0.3%. This is equivalent to 6x points at the myriad of casinos that offer 0.1% base points.

This past July 4, they offered a Hot Seat promotion instead. This is a promotion where approximately 20 players an hour are randomly awarded $100 in free play from 8 a.m. through midnight. Let’s look at this a bit.

At 8 a.m., there might be 200 players in the casino — so each active player has about a 1-in-10 chance to win $100 in an hour — which means $10 per hour. At 8 p.m., there might be 1,000 players in the casino, so the promotion is worth $2 per hour at that point. Both my 200 and 1,000 numbers are wild-ass guesses. Still, they are the best estimates I have, and I need some basis to figure out how much a promotion is worth.

Is this better or worse than 2x points? This part is simple math, but many of my readers aren’t comfortable with doing this calculation. Let’s say you’re playing 800 hands per hour. If you play quarter single line, 800 hph comes to $1,000 coin-in, and 2x points is worth an extra $3 per hour. If you play $2 single line, 800 hph comes to $8,000 coin-in and 2x points is worth an extra $24 per hour.

Neither of these numbers mean you are necessarily a favorite when you play. It depends on which game you are playing. If you’re playing NSU Deuces Wild, which returns 99.728% when played perfectly, the numbers above pretty much represent expected dollars per hour if you play the game well. If you’re playing a lesser game, the casino may well still be a favorite no matter which promotion you are playing. If you’re playing a game that returns more than NSU, the numbers above are additional expected profit over and above what you’re already earning.

Using the information in the preceding paragraph, you can extrapolate to figure out what your game is worth. If you play smaller stakes, then the Hot Seat promotion, where every player who plays at least $1 per minute has the same chance, is the more valuable promotion. If you play for higher stakes, then the 2x points promotion would be worth a lot more.

I play for higher stakes, so clearly the Hot Seat promotion isn’t worth too much to me in terms of dollars per hour. And, yet, I hammered the promotion — playing more than ten hours. Playing ten hours straight used to be a walk in the park for me. I’m 71 years old now. It’s a struggle to play that long and still be alert. And yet I did.

The question becomes:  If the promotion wasn’t worth very much, why did I play it so hard? At first glance, this doesn’t seem to make much sense.

The answer is that I already committed to play $83,340 on both my card and Bonnie’s sometime during the month because we liked another promotion going on — namely play and redeem $8,334 worth of points and get a $50 Chevron gas card or $50 Walmart gift card — maximum ten per player. This is already similar to 2x points, because usually that much play earns you $25 in cash or free play and in July you get a $50 gift card.

So, it now becomes a matter of: If I’m already planning to play that much during the month and playing during the Hot Seat promotion gives me “something extra” which I wouldn’t receive playing at other times during the month, getting something extra is obviously better than getting nothing extra.

This still doesn’t address the alternative costs. Other casinos might be having good promotions as well on July 4. If my expected earnings were “a lot” at other casinos, this could easily surpass the perceived value of the opportunity at South Point. If it were important to Bonnie to go somewhere that day, that could easily be more important as well. Each person needs to make his own decision based on his own life.

As it turned out, I played ten hours at South Point and two hours somewhere else where they offered a little something that I felt was worth going for.

My results? To me, this is the least important matter in the whole affair. The critical part of the situation is the analysis that goes into the decision. Many people, however, want to judge the decision after the fact by the results. This does not give you useful information, because you don’t have this information before you make the decision. If I don’t include my results, you can bet someone will ask, “How did you do?”

So, on July 4 I was called once for the Hot Seat promotion for $100, and I lost considerably more than the value of the gift cards I earned. Oh well. That’s gambling. I care much more about expected value than I do about actual results.

If the circumstances are the same at some future time, I will likely play the promotion the same way — possibly modified because I’ll be older then and maybe won’t be able to play so long.