Interesting Promotion at the M

I received a postcard from the M where they are trying to get new players. The promo was:

1.         I get $100 in free play right away for bringing in a new player,
2.         The new player also gets $100 in free play — plus a kiosk spin (usually $5 in free play, I think, but it could be more),
3.         For every point the new player earns in the first day, I get 10x points, up to a total of 50,000 points,
4.        Good (if you got the postcard and the new player has NEVER had a card at the M) from June 1 to July 31.

The slot club is 0.3% (slightly more, actually, because they give you $3 for $999 coin-in rather than $3 for $1,000 coin-in). 50,000 points is worth $150 of free play — which is way more than the house’s expected win if you’re playing the best machines.

The loosest game is $2 9/6 Jacks or Better. There are two such machines — newly installed — in the high limit room. There is no choice as to the denomination and no telling how long they’ll last. 10x points (which is worth 3%) on top of a video poker game returning 99.54% seemed possibly like a mistake, except that it was limited to $150 max which might be a reasonable cost for a new player.

I don’t actually know if this was a mistake or not. I hooked up with a player friend, “Kevin,” who lives near Aliante — which makes the M geographically undesirable for him. Which is why he didn’t already have a card. I know some non-players for whom I technically could have played the free play, but that’s strongly against the rules there and I’m well known. No thanks. If I had to use a non-player, I would have let them play and talked them through their $105 in free play — which we would probably have played on 25¢ 8/5 Aces Bonus. If they were a non-player, any possible W2G could have been a problem for them.

As it happened, June 1 was a normal free-play pick-up day for me (they have 6 to 7 such days per month). Kevin and I agreed to go in and play the promotion on the first day it was active.

We were certainly not going to ask for clarification as to whether the 10x points included video poker or not. The booth personnel (who are also the cashiers) would likely have said, “I don’t know. Let me make a phone call.” If they did that, it’s possible that signs would have been posted saying “slots only.” If we could arrange it, we didn’t want such signs posted until after we played.

Our deal was, we would play the promotion and also play an additional 850 points which entitled us to a “free” lunch buffet. Other than the amount of my free play, we split everything based on my $850 worth of play and his $5,850. Whether this split was overly generous or not didn’t concern me. Kevin is a friend. And enjoying lunch together was part of the attraction of the “date.”

I often play for a buffet on my free -play pickup days there. There have been incidents where players who only picked up free-play without any additional play were punished for this. As a known professional player, I am hyper-sensitive about creating situations where it would be easy for them to justify restricting me.

The $205 in free play we got between the two of us more than covered the expected loss of playing $5,850 for him and $850 for me. If we got the additional $150, great, but it was still a decent play if we didn’t. (And yes, we could have lost, but the decision beforehand is made based on EV, because you don’t know what your actual result is going to be.)

I had him play $5,850 rather than just $5,000 because the M usually doesn’t allow you to “double dip.” If there’s a gift of the day you can get for 800 points and you also want the free buffet, it takes 1,650 to earn both. We only had one shot at this and if they decided to give us 10x points on only 4,150 points (which would be 5,000-850), that would cost us $28. No thanks.

We didn’t split the $150 on the day we played because I wasn’t certain whether or not we were going to get it. It could be that they “intended” it to say “slots only,” but they didn’t put that in writing. How it would be enforced down the road was an open question.

I hadn’t decided how aggressively to pursue the 10x points if they denied that it applied to video poker. It was “only” $150 (split between two of us) and you need to pick your battles. In a somewhat similar situation at the Silverton I wrote about a few months ago, we were talking about an $8,000 difference between getting the multiple points or not. I’m willing to fight a lot harder for $8,000 than I am for half of $150.

Eight days after we played, I received an email saying that 50,000 points had been placed on my card, so I sent my friend an email saying that I owed him $75 next time we saw each other.

I never had to decide how hard to argue for this. It’s possible that future players will be told “slots only” when they sign up. I don’t know. But this was a case of taking advantage of the situation before they made changes to it. If they keep the promotion “as is,” then whether we did it early or not doesn’t matter. If they restrict it later to slots only, it matters $150 worth. For me it was a no brainer to do it as early as possible.