This past July, the South Point ran a “$600,000 Money Madness” promotion for the second time in 2015. A very similar promotion was run once in 2014. It’s reasonable to predict that we will see this promotion again sometime down the road. They have the software to run this promotion, so they just might run it once or twice a year for the foreseeable future.
(You are reading this after July has ended, but in this column I will explain my thinking prior to the actual start of the promotion).
I hadn’t studied the rules this time, but I believed it would be very similar to the way they ran it in March. The way they ran it last year was a bit different. The current version had two casino-wide progressives running at all times during the month. The smaller one started at $1,000 and had to be hit before $2,500 — after which it reset to $1,000. It was predicted to hit about three times a day. The larger progressive started at $10,000 and had to be hit before $25,000 — when it reset again to $10,000. In addition to the winner, all active players using a player’s card would receive $25 when the larger progressive hit.
This is not my favorite type of promotion. I’d much prefer double points once or twice during the month. During such a promotion I know what I’m going to get. In the Money Madness promotion, it’s not a simple calculation at all.
If I showed up there and the large progressive was at $24,500, it’s an easy decision for me to sit down and start banging away. I might be the lucky person, but even if I’m not, I’m guaranteed to receive $25 in free play when it goes off.
The problem is that it almost never gets up to $24,500. Sometimes it ends at $12,000; sometimes at $17,000; sometimes at $14,500; and sometimes at $21,000. You never know. And it’s not without effort to come by this information. The casino is walking distance for very few people, so almost everyone has to invest at least some time and travel expense in getting there.
What you do know is that if they are giving away $600,000–which means $20,000 in bonuses every day (Almost. July had 31 days this year–and every other year as well.) The only way to get a piece of that $20,000 a day is to sit down and start playing.
Some casinos advertise a certain amount that they are giving away — and the actual amount doesn’t come close to that. That isn’t the case at the South Point. Michael Gaughan (owner of the South Point) has three rules for a successful promotion: 1) Give away what you promise; 2) Have lots of winners; 3) Kiss: Keep it Simple, Stupid. If he promises to give away $600,000, it’s going to be very close to that amount, if not more, before it’s over. It would be nice if more casinos were this honest about how much they were giving away.
Let’s say you’re a video poker player who usually plays $20,000 coin-in a month there. On double point days, you would receive an additional $60 in cash or free play. Since there won’t be double point days during the Money Madness promotion are you still going to average that much when you play? Who knows for sure! But you WILL receive a certain amount of EV.
Your gain will probably be limited to nothing at all, or maybe one or two $25 bonuses. Very occasionally (perhaps once every 20 years or so), you’ll be the lucky one who hits it when it’s at $17,000 or $24,000 or whatever other number it reaches. Your AVERAGE may be the same, but the VARIANCE during the Money Madness promotion is much higher.
Over a normal playing career, it’s difficult to have “average results” with a promotion like this. You either get very little or, very occasionally, a whole bunch of money. You’re definitely not going to get a steady $60 a month from this promotion.
For some players, that makes it a show stopper. Since they usually end up with zero in this promotion, they conclude the promotion isn’t worth anything.
But that’s not my conclusion. I’m happy with average results. So far, in the three times they’ve had this promotion, I’ve collected $25 six times. This is a typical result — save for the few people who’ve collected thousands of dollars.
I may or may not hit one of the big progressives next time. But it doesn’t matter much to me. I’m playing a positive game — and my bankroll isn’t threatened. So I will keep doing it and very likely good things will happen “sometime somewhere.”
There are players who are concerned with balancing their books on every play. If they are down a few thousand dollars on a machine and the casino takes the machine out, they think this is a disaster because now they will never be able to catch up on that machine. I don’t think that way. I don’t worry about on which machines or at which casinos I’m ahead or behind. I just keep plugging along, only playing when I have the advantage and taking what I can get.
So even though the $600,000 Money Madness promotion isn’t my favorite one, I still play more or less my normal amount there. And if others don’t, that just makes it more likely that I’ll be the one collecting one of the big prizes.
There was an extra bonus this year on this promotion, likely unintentional on the casino’s part, which I will explain in a couple of weeks.