I annually submit articles to the American Casino Guide and in payment get an ad and a free book, worth less than $20 retail. The book has coupons in it, but I rarely take advantage of them. Same with the Las Vegas Advisor’s Pocketbook of Values. Either may be picked up at Huntington Press, 3665 Procyon, just north of the Rio.
Back in the early-to-mid 90s I survived in Las Vegas on coupon books. “Ginny” (my girlfriend at the time — I didn’t meet Shirley until 1996) and I each must have earned between $3,000 and $5,000 a year in both 1993 and 1994 simply cashing coupons. It’s not glamorous, but it works. At the time it was mostly $7 for $5 and $3 for $2, along a few $10 for $5 thrown in. But if you played thousands of these, it added up. Dealers sneer at you when they see you every day cashing the same coupons you cash every other day, but the money keeps dribbling in.
The gambling coupons in the ACG and LVA POV are easily worth a few hundred dollars if you chase them all down. Maybe if Shirley could go into casinos we’d both get the books and do it together, but I’m kind of “couponed out,” and I don’t bother. Perhaps one day later in the year I’ll do a coupon run and collect them all, but you can bet it won’t be when the temperature exceeds 100 degrees!
Except I heard that there was a once-a-year-per-person 3x point coupon for the Palms in the ACG book. This is a different kettle of fish. This coupon is easily worth more than $2,000 to me in Expected Value.
What makes the Palms coupon a good deal for me are the weekend drawings. Frequently these represent good value. In July, there are drawings on Friday, Saturday, AND Sunday — and if you play before Friday at 7 p.m., your entries are good for all three of them.
It is not easy to win drawings there. On the weekend of the 9th-10th-11th I had 825 tickets ($82,500 in coin-in if you played on a machine with 1¢ or 5¢ as the lowest denomination — $206,250 if you played on a machine with 25¢ as the lowest denomination) for Friday and wasn’t one of the 10 winners. I used a 2x coupon on Saturday and had my ticket balance was 2,800 on Saturday and I wasn’t called. On Sunday my balance was more than 4,000 (because I played more on the 2x day after the Saturday drawing and before Saturday midnight) and I got called third for $1,000. (First, second, and third play a bonus game where the average prize is $1,800.)
Other weeks I’ve earned more than 3,000 tickets and have been shut out. At the same time, players with 50 tickets sometimes win, and 600-ticket winners aren’t uncommon. You never know, but on average, the more tickets you have the better your results. In July you’re competing against bigger numbers than usual because most players received a 2x points coupon that is good on any one Saturday or Sunday of their choosing. While that isn’t a factor for the Friday drawing unless they limit their play to the five hours after 7:00 p.m. on the previous Sunday, there are a lot of extra tickets in the virtual drum on Saturday and Sunday. Still, perhaps three-fourths of the relevant people used these 2x coupons during week 1 or 2 — so when I played on week 3, there weren’t a lot of these coupons to contend with. Should you decide to compete in week 4, there will be fewer yet of these 2x coupons that you’re up against.
If you want to earn a lot of tickets, the best game is 8-5 Bonus Hundred Play. The game returns 99.17% with strong play, and with a 3x point coupon, it’s worth 99.92%. To me, it made sense to me to play $500,000 coin-in on Friday the 22nd. This would take nine or ten hours, but likely I’d have the most tickets in the drum on all three nights.
With a 99.92% game, my expected loss for $500,000 of coin-in is $400 after collecting the 3x points. Since my expected win at the drawings are about $1000 per night, this strikes me as a good deal. I know from experience that the machine can easily up $20,000 or more if things run badly. I also know that $100,000 royals are occasionally dealt. If losing $25,000 in one day would be devastating to you, stay away from this play. If you can deal with those swings, this is one-hell-of-a-good deal.
This same deal is good through the end of the year, but since July has three weekly drawings and most other months have fewer, I figured it was best used there. A buddy of mine agreed with my logic but there was no way in the world he was going to risk losing $25,000 by playing 25¢ Hundred Play all day. So he decided to use his 3x coupon next Friday playing a more modest amount than I do, and also use his 2x coupon the following day. He figures this gives him the best chance with a moderate level of risk. He also was happy to avoid playing the week I was hammering the machine.
How did I do? I lost $8,000 at the machines, earned $3,600 in free play, was called twice in the drawings for a total of $2,250, so my net loss was a little more than two grand. I’ll get some of that back over the next few months because my mailers will be larger in the near future than they have been in the recent past.
I ran slightly saltier than average on the machine and was only called twice rather than the three times I was predicting. Still, if I could do it over again, I would! It’s a good play, but I won’t be eligible again until next year — if the same coupon is in the 2012 ACG book.
There are always those who suggest that since I lost $2,000 instead of my prediction of winning $2,000 that it was either a bad play or my calculation was wrong. Neither is correct. Gambling requires you to make decisions and actions before you know the results — and the after-the-fact results don’t invalidate the before-the-fact decisions. It’s like I learned from cashing those $7-for-$5 coupons years ago. You never know whether you will win or lose the net bet, but if you keep making that bet over and over again, the results are always positive. And it doesn’t matter if the bet is exactly the same each time (as it was cashing the $7-for-$5 coupon at the Stardust) or different each time. Keep making plays where you have the edge and you will like the results eventually.
If you do this next week like I suggest, you’re competing as much against the other players as you are the casino. When you have 5,000 tickets in the barrel, you have better chances than anybody else at getting called. (With no guarantee you’ll be called even once!) Since only 10 people get called, if you can increase your chances, you’re hurting everybody else’s.
If you do get called three times, be prepared for snide comments from players who showed up every night and didn’t get called even once. As far as they are concerned, it’s unfair that you get called three times. Never mind that they have 147 tickets and you have 5,000. To them it’s unfair.