The following is a true story, other than the names of the gamblers. It happened at Harrah’s Atlantic City a number of years ago. Since I’ve played little at this particular casino, and always as a tourist rather than a local, I might have some of the details wrong. But the gist of this story is accurate and might provide fodder for thought and discussion.
Amy and Bo lived not too far away from Atlantic City, and drove to visit this casino perhaps three weekends a month — except when they were on cruises (which they enjoyed a lot) or were otherwise busy. They played single-line $1 Double Double Bonus mostly, but sometimes went for the $2 game or perhaps $1 Triple Play.
While they played mostly an accurate strategy, the game there has a 1% house edge. Over the course of a weekend, their average loss was about $800. This was an average, but the swings in this game are fairly large. Occasionally they’d hit one or more royals, or aces with a kicker, and ended up several thousand dollars ahead — but when that didn’t happen, their actual weekend losses were on the order of $2,000 or so. As I said, this averaged out to about $800 in the soup for each weekend, for two or three weekends per month.
Harrah’s, of course, considered Amy and Bo to be excellent customers. Players to be rewarded. Players to be pampered. (If you’re willing and able to sustain repeated losses this size, you’ll get pampered too.) Amy and Bo each received regular bounce back free play. I don’t know the actual amount. I assume it was about $100 apiece per week.
At this casino at this time, though, you didn’t have to play off the free play immediately. You needed to download the free play to your bank during the relevant time period, but it would be fine to leave it sitting in your bank until you were ready to play it off. At most Harrah’s casinos today, once money goes into your bank you have a relatively short period of time to play it off. Perhaps 24 hours. Perhaps 72 hours. It varies by casino and sometimes other things as well. But back then, at that casino anyway, you didn’t need to play it off so quickly.
Amy and Bo were social people and over time got to know several gambling friends whom they trusted and also played at this casino. If our two players went cruising for one or more weeks, they’d have these friends visit a kiosk and move the free play into their bank. But the friends wouldn’t play off the free play. The money would wait for Amy and Bo to return.
Harrah’s discovered this was going on. (This wasn’t too hard. Free play downloaded with no play at all is a fairly simple move to spot.) The host took Amy and Bo aside and told them not to do this anymore. If they stopped now and didn’t continue the practice, it would be considered “no harm no foul” and officially forgotten about by the casino. After all, these were two valuable customers to the casino. But, if Amy and Bo didn’t heed this warning, they were told there would be consequences.
Amy decided this was nonsense. They had earned the free play, after all, and they were the ones playing it off. No fraud whatsoever. So, they continued their practice, and were warned a second time — a little more forcefully.
Before I continue, what do you think should happen? Were Amy and Bo within their rights and the casino unjustifiably enforcing silly rules, or were Amy and Bo out of line? Players disagree on this, so whatever your opinion is on the subject, there will be some players who agree with you and some who don’t. I’ll give you my opinion, but I’m not trying to imply that whatever I think is the only correct way to look at the matter.
Players tend to look at this type of free play as a reward for past play. Casinos tend to look at this free play as an incentive to get the players in for another visit. For a cost of $200 (i.e., $100 each), Amy and Bo will typically lose $800. This is a nice trade off insofar as the casino is concerned.
But if Amy and Bo cruise for four weeks and have the free play saved in their respective banks, when they come back, they’ll be getting $1,000 in free play ($200 for each week they were away, plus another $200 for when they came in to collect it). Their losses will still be $800 for the weekend. Harrah’s isn’t in the business of giving players $1,000 when their expected losses are $800. Once or twice, maybe, but Harrah’s wants to make a profit.
Eventually Harrah’s restricted these players and they no longer received weekly bounce back money. They could still come and play, but now their benefits were reduced. After a year or so of “behaving themselves,” perhaps this issue could be revisited.
Amy was quite put out by this and wasn’t shy about letting people know it. (Which is how I happened to hear about it). She felt she was being treated unfairly. She earned that money with her play. She should be able to decide how and when to redeem that money.
Once Amy and Bo had been warned a few times, they should have known they either had to follow the rules or get restricted. My opinion is that they needed to make a determination. Is this particular casino “special” so that they don’t want to “burn it down?” If that answer is ‘yes,’ they need to follow the rules. If that reason is ‘no,’ they can take what they can for as long as they can.
Amy and Bo tried a third option. Yes, they thought Harrah’s Atlantic City was special. And they kept having friends move free play into their bank when they went cruising. This option didn’t turn out well for them.
What do you think?
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Harrahs probably did those people a favor. Now they didn’t have to go in there and continue losing money.
Suffice it to say that once you expect a casino to conform to your expectations, you’re in for acute disappointment!
Maybe have the friends play the fp for a percentage?
Amy and Bo should simply do whatever makes them happiest. Based on description, they are likely to be frequent gamblers. If they don’t like Harrah’s offerings (in aggregate, including bounce-back), they should take their business elsewhere … odds are, Harrah’s will try to woo them back before long, as will other local casinos. Chase the best offer.
From my prospective as a reader but taking into consideration how it “usually” works, I am not sure if the story was told as it actually happened. I am more on the side of believing that friends were sent to pay off the free play and that’s it. I think this is something the casinos absolutely don’t want but it happens all the time since the invention of those kiosks and terminals. Perhaps it wasn’t even done with the knowledge of Amy and Bo or they figured out later that their family members played it or called it “borrowing” by saying….hey, can I play it off I will give you the money when you come back next time etc etc.
No 1 it’s always the casino that makes the rules and it’s the casinos liberty to stop any activity within the property, by eplaining why or even by not telling. So if I was in that particular situation and interested to continue receiving the freeplay bonus money, I would definetely book my cruise ship vacation during times when I don’t play at the property and would miss some couple of hundred dollars of free play bonus cash.
I also receive quarterly mini bonusses and because I live in Europe but will not fly to Vegas just to play off those few bucks I usually have them expire. I think that’s the way it’s supposed to be. If the particular casino that gives me that money regularly would find out that I wasn’t even there when somebody played off the cash I am sure I would not this offer anymore in the future.
Even if the Amy and Bo’s versio of the story is correct it’s still not ok in my opinion because players cards usually have a PIN code to make sure that only the actual patron can access the account and see the points , freebie offers etc. Therefore I would think in the long run Amy and Bo are better off to accept the stern warning as a message go by the rules.
From Switzerland
Boris
In my opinion, this falls under the Golden Rule, whoever has the gold makes the rules. Harrah’s gold, Harrah’s rules.
Not OK. I get multiple offers daily, and I understand hating to miss the goodies. Many years ago I gave a players card to a friend who lives close to Vegas, not for the purpose of using Free Play, but to keep my points active, as they would expire after a certain time, like 6 months, of no play. She and I thought she’d just put my card in, play $20 or so worth (I actually mailed her a card and a $20 bill), and that would keep my points alive. But it ‘felt’ wrong, so I told her to forget about it, which she did. Mostly I’m a rule follower. What goes around comes around, etc.
But, honesty aside, I actually worried that if ‘they’ (casino management) cared to follow up, their computer could catch that 1) I wasn’t a registered guest, that 2) my playing $20 on any random day didn’t fit my usual profile–a 3-5 day stay. Too much trouble/risk to worry about, and it would be on my conscience from then on. Probably sounds silly to most people, but that’s just me.
And, those offers are to get us back in. We’ve already ‘bought’ them via previous play, but that’s not how the casino looks at it. They count on the sucker factor…get ’em (us) back in to keep donating to us until they prove otherwise. JMHO.
“Harrah’s discovered this was going on. (This wasn’t too hard. Free play downloaded with no play at all is a fairly simple move to spot.) The host took Amy and Bo aside and told them not to do this anymore. If they stopped now and didn’t continue the practice, it would be considered “no harm no foul” and officially forgotten about by the casino. After all, these were two valuable customers to the casino. But, if Amy and Bo didn’t heed this warning, they were told there would be consequences.
Amy decided this was nonsense.”
100% on them. Akin to being told not to walk on that pile of debris because there’s a hole under it, then doing it and getting pissed that you ended up in the hole.
I think both sides could have done better.
Amy and Bo were told numerous times not to do what they were doing anyway or else bad things would happen. They continued to do it, and bad things happened. FAFO, as the kids say.
On the other hand, Harrah’s decided that not getting a dollar today was worth giving up getting 5 dollars in the future. So what if Amy and Bo save up their freeplay until it got to $1k or whatever, and then they lose an average of $800. Over the long run (certainly over the next year or so) Harrah’s will still be profiting off of them handsomely. But no, they couldn’t handle the prospect of not completely maximizing their take, and they might have lost a couple good customers, and perhaps some of their friends too. Typical short-sighted corpo-mentality.
They should take their business to Borgata. Borgata has better video poker, and is more generous with comps and free play
They may have been happy with the old Harrah’s. But since El Dorado took over Caesars the Total Rewards program has become a joke to many players. I used to stay exclusively at Caesars properties when visiting Vegas, which I did 4 to 6 times a year. These days I’ve moved across the street to MGM properties. Better machines and more generous comps. And I like the dining venues better. Right now Caesars is giving me no reason to return.
As for the couple in question – they knew they were doing wrong but they did it anyway. Why blow a good thing over chump change?
Interesting story. My wife and I are always mindful of who is using whose card. At times we sit at the same machine together, where we have more fun at a combined higher stakes. Often, one of us wins or earns a promotion the other doesn’t, and that person has to claim the promotion. My guess, is there is more to this story then the version relayed by Amy and Bo. There is also Harrah’s version, and the truth lies somewhere in the middle. We can say from our experience, our casino hosts would go out of their way to figure out an equitable solution, and make everyone happy. However, everyone needs to remember, no matter what rewards program or membership a person has at a casino, they owe you nothing! The casino can revoke that at any time, for any abuse of their program or promotion, any poor behavior, or almost any reason. There is no way Harrah’s is sweating over $1,000 dollars in freeplay, because eventually if their theoretical loss went down due the use of on freeplay the promotion would automatically go away. So there is more to this story. Great story though.
I am a long time patron of Harrahs A.C.Normally I would side with the players, but it’s their business,their rules,and you were warned.Sorry.
Why is it so hard for people to follow rules anymore? They were warned twice, and that’s one more than I would have gave them. If they don’t like it, then walk away, stop being a baby and grow the hell up, is it that hard to understand, especially when a host warned them of the consequences.
I mean isn’t it a very unlikely chance to meet a casino patron if you get to visit a town just for 2 weeks and spend a few hours at a property of your choice? It happened to me several times. Let me tell you about.
I saw that guy at first at the Gold Coast during a multiplier day and he was switching players cards. At first I did no actually pay attention and wasn’t even curious why the heck he was doing it. But now I know.
A few months later, during another trip , I saw the same guy doing it at Santa Fe Station. At that time there were 3 different banks of deuces wild bonus progressive games and 2 of those banks were good and the other one was not. That guy suddenly showed up and started playing a bit just 2 machines to my left. I recognized the guy immediately but not his behavior. But when I saw that the had different players card that he used I remembered exaclty that he was doing the same thing at the Gold Coast months back.
Look, my job is not acting casino police so I did not say a word. But I knew what was going on. There is another very popular casino spot for locals that I wish not to mention at this time. Over there people also are doing that and I know of 2 people that were finally banned of all promotions and then started talking bad about that place after their mailers and fliers did not come in as expected anymore.
I personally find it unfair towards the casino that is offering bounce-back money or gifts but what bothers me more at this time because it affects me most is the fact that many casinos stopped offering multipliers for videopoker players. I love videopoker but 98.90% games without any offers are just a bit expensive to play in the long run. It’s sad to see this but it makes perfectly sense to me from the view of a casino operator because you have to pull the plug on people gaming the system and taking advantage of things they are not entitled to.
From Switzerland
Boris
I like the Golden Rule Chris mentions!
Rules are rules. A player I got to know and whom I thought to be intelligent (MIT undergraduate and Harvard MBA), whose principal game was full pay Pick-em (99.95%), was caught using cards of his friends to use their free play when the friends were not persent. He was warned twice and banned from the casino the third time.
Dancing Bob
The situation you described is probably beeing done 100x or perhaps even 1000x daily all over Las Vegas. The problem is that the casinos are not using more secure methods and techniques to ensure that a person using a players card is actually the person that’s legit. There are ways to make sure it works, by for instance using finger prints as an additional way of identification.
There may be readers that say I am going to far. The same people should not be surprised if the free play party soon will come to an end just like the vp points multipliers that have been reduced heavily since covid. People gaming the system and not going by the rules are actually the ones responsible if the casinos respoind accordingly.
From Switzerland
Boris
They caught a break being warned a second time. Many players wouldn’t even get a first warning. I think they blew it. I’m sure they had options with that host that they didn’t even investigate for when these infrequent absences come up. Instead, they overplayed their hand with a bad bluff – and got called.
And greatly disrespected that Host for doing so.
Good Hosts stick their necks out for players, especially ones like Amy and Bo. The Host was more than tolerant. They don’t deserve her generosity.
Long ago, 20 years ago or so, casinos actually gave cash back. I go into casino A who has a 1% cashback rate, I run $10,000 through and I can cash out $100 in actual cash. Casinos didn’t like that because there was no incentive for the customer to come back, among other things.
With mailed offers, you typically have to play to same level to keep the rewards coming. Play once, get a mailer, cash it out and no play then and no more offers. It works out close to the same but feels like you are losing something if you don’t play on your current trip.
I think one of the main reasons casinos went away from cashback was because it was too easy for the customers to figure out. With mailed offers, the casino can have 30 different criteria for mailing you a freeplay reward. With straight cashback, it is one simple factor. How much did you play,
It’s the same old battle. Casinos want to give away as little as possible while seeming to be generous to keep and attract customers. The customers want to get as many perks from the casino as they can while still appearing to be a good customer.
Unfortunately, it’s not like the old days where a casino host could smooth over some of the issues. Both sides share in causing the current state of affairs. I think the casinos are the more greedy of the two.