Question of the Day - 14 November 2021

Running money through refers to the amount of money played, known as "coin-in," over a given period of time. It's a standard consideration in qualifying for comps, mailers, and other forms of consideration. Usually, coin-in thresholds -- known or unknown -- place players at different levels of compensation. Savvy players have an idea of where these levels demarcate and go in with a plan to "run through" the necessary amount. However, the calculation of how dollar amounts played convert to points earned differs and can be complicated.

Bob Dancer explains it this way. "There are a few different ways to calculate this number.

"Many casinos, the South Point for one, issue you one point for every dollar you play, and they keep your daily score accumulating until 3 a.m., which is when they change casino days. This makes it easy to tell when you have run $8,000 (or any other number) through a machine.

"Other casinos make it a little bit more difficult. If you’re playing at a Harrah’s, for example, where you’re earning one Reward Credit per $10 played, the player tracking system will indicate how many reward credits you’ve earned since the last time you pulled your card. When you put your card back in, it will tell you how many reward credits you’ve earned for this particular casino day (which is often 6 a.m. at these properties. Sometimes it will give you an annual total. Sometimes they will show you total unredeemed credits.

"It takes a bit of arithmetic to figure out that 800 daily reward credits required $8,000 coin-in in this system, but most players are up to the task.

"Some casinos figure point multipliers immediately. Some only add it at the end of the day. You have to be aware of how this particular casino does this if you’re going to be using their display to get your information. It’s not hard to play a hand and figure out whether you’re getting your points multiplied, but it does require a certain awareness that not all players have.

"Some casinos don’t provide this information readily. Some, like Boyd properties, make you play such and such amount every year before you earn any points, and each machine earns a different number of points. This makes it tougher to track.

"If you know how fast you play, perhaps 600 hands per hour, or 1,000, or whatever, you can make a pretty good estimate. If you’re a five-coin dollar player who plays 800 hands per hour, that’s $4,000 coin-in. It would take you two such hours to reach $8,000 coin-in. If you’re playing quarters at the same speed, it’ll take you eight hours.

"It requires a bit of work to determine how many hands per hour you actually play, but it’s not that difficult. At every casino which displays how many points you’ve earned today, simply write down your starting time, your ending time, the points earned, and the number of dollars it takes to earn one point. It’s not a difficult math problem to figure out how fast you played. Do this several times and you can get a good estimate of your average speed."