Contributing expert Jean Scott writes:
The short answer is this: I could never respect you in the morning if you didn’t use a slot club card, not only at all casinos, but at all times! As I wrote in The Frugal Gambler 10 years ago, "Playing gambling machines without a slot club card inserted is like taking handfuls of dollars and throwing them out the window."
As I explain in my books, it’s smart to focus on one or two core clubs at casinos where you like to stay, eat, and play, so that your best comps, offers in the mail, and benefits from your host (if you have one) are concentrated there.
However, it’s also wise to have your slot club card inserted anytime you play a machine, which means signing up for the slot club at all the casinos where you play. Why? Lots of reasons. First, simply by joining, you get into that casino’s "system" and can receive all kinds of offers in the mail, even if you never play there. (In my books, I give several examples of what my husband Brad and I have received from casinos where we rarely, if ever, play.) Second, if you play even a little at a casino, you might surpass the trigger point at which the casino automatically extends a comp or a free gift to you.
Third and most importantly, any time you play in a casino, it’s critical to have your play tracked. Why would you want to turn down anything the casino wants to give you? When you feed coins into a slot (or bills into a bill changer), you accrue benefits -- comps and/or cashback. If your card’s not inserted, you get nothing.
Try this as an experiment: Next time you’re in a casino, pay for your meal in the usual fashion. Then see if you might prefer to hand the cashier a piece of paper given to you at the slot club booth, rather than hard-earned greenbacks from your wallet. Then go to a video poker machine and see if you might prefer using those hard-earned greenbacks to try to hit the royal flush, instead of paying for a meal that you could have gotten for free. And while you’re trying to hit that royal, see if it doesn’t feel better knowing you’re earning more points toward more goodies that you can use to save money for your machine play.
Jean Scott, better known as the "Queen of Comps," is author of The Frugal Gambler and More Frugal Gambling.
