You Want Me to Play to Lose $100?

I was playing 25¢ Five Play 9/6 Jacks or Better Multi Strike at the South Point during their “Half Price Amazon Gift Cards” promotion in November. A friend, “George”, sat down next to me. And later still his wife joined us.

I didn’t notice how much George put in to start. Early on he hit a $1,000 royal flush on the bottom line and then later a $250 four-of-a-kind on an 8x line.

After a while, George’s wife commented that her shoulder was bothering her. George took that as a suggestion that she wished to leave and went to cash out. I noticed that he had $3,095 worth of credits on his machine.

I suggested he play a few more hands (at $25 per) and likely he’d get his credits lower than $3,000 sooner or later. He was aghast. “You want me to play to lose $100? That makes no sense to me. Why should I do that?”

The reason is that if the ticket is $2,999.99 or less, you can cash it out at the ATM machine. If it is $3,000.01 or more, you must take it to the cage. If it is exactly $3,000, I’m not sure.

For a ticket over $3,000, they ask to see your ID and your player’s card and they call over the slot shift manager to verify that you came by the ticket lawfully. Once all the i’s are dotted and t’s crossed, they pay you.

Players should try to avoid this if they can. The South Point, like almost every other casino, restricts players who win too much. Having your name on the list of someone who cashed out for more than $3,000 can’t do you any good. It may eventually affect your welcome. I actually don’t know for a fact that it does matter, but why risk it?

Assuming you’re a reasonably strong player, you never know how close you are to being removed. In my opinion, taking precautions to stay slightly more anonymous is the better play.

Could he have refused to show his ID? Probably. There are no legal requirements for showing ID for cashouts of less than $10,000. But video poker players who regularly get W2Gs are used to showing their ID in a casino. For us, it’s not a particularly big deal. For table game players who play unrated, this could potentially be a big deal. But playing unrated is no way to get Amazon gift cards.

To me, this was not “losing $100.” George was approximately half-way through the $83,340 coin-in he was planning on playing during the month to get $500 in Amazon gift cards. 

The score on every video poker machine goes up and down. Five Play Multi Strike has a higher-than-average variance, so your score goes up and down even more. 

It doesn’t matter, to me anyway, what my score is today. I’m concerned about a much longer time horizon than just today. If George played 20 more hands (earning 500 additional points) and his score dipped by $100, that would be a better time to cash out and that would mean he had 500 fewer points to earn for the month.

If it happened that he hit another $1,000 royal flush right away (not likely, but possible) or if it took more than five minutes to get his score below $3,000, I wouldn’t have said anything if he wanted to cash out. After all, his wife “sort of” asked to go, and happy wife-happy life.

Note:  I passed this by “George.” He said this time they did ask to see his player’s card, which they took away and presumably made a photo copy of it, but not his ID. He said it took about 10 minutes. He commented that his biggest takeaway from this is that next time his credits get about $2,500 in this casino, he should simply record the score and cash out. If he wants to continue playing, he can just insert however much he wants. It avoids the “problems” outlined in this article.