How Should You Cash the Extra Free Play?

Let’s assume your regular casino gave you $250 in extra free play for the holidays. You normally get $50 a week, and now you have all this extra money. What should you do?

There is not a one-size-fits-all answer. It depends on your situation and your priorities. Let me go through a few examples.

Professional player. Gambles as a source of income.
In this case, the $250 in extra free play is merely an increase in bankroll. Yes, you have to play it, but it’s nowhere near enough to move you into being able to play for a higher denomination. Presumably you’re already playing on the best game for you in the casino — taking into consideration things like: return on the game, slot club, how much you need to play to keep the mailers coming, how much you need to play to reach the tier level you’ve decided is best for you, and how much to play to take advantage of the current promotion should you deem it worth playing.
At the end of your normal play, if you would have been ahead $700 without the bonus free play, now you’re ahead $950. If you would have been behind $400, now you’re behind $150 because of the extra free play. You record your score, and move on. It’s nice to receive $250, but it’s hardly a big deal.
This is the way I would handle such a windfall — even a much larger windfall.

Wealthy recreational player. Has plenty of money to survive his normal losses.
This is a position I’ve never been in. More times than I can count, I’ve lost more than $20,000 in a day and been relatively unphased about it because I knew I was playing with an advantage. But playing a bad nickel game for fun? Never! So, my advice here is “theoretical,” rather than from experience.

I suspect this sort of person will see the $250 as “found money,” and hence able to be spent without the normal boundaries. Maybe take a 10-hand flyer on a $5, high variance, game like Triple Double Bonus. Probably it will be all lost, but there’s a chance for a $20,000 windfall. Now we’re talking!

Low-stakes player, trying to make intelligent decisions.
The problem was set up so that the player normally received $50 a week in free play. This limits how “low stakes” the player can actually be, because you have to play quite a bit, or quite badly, to be eligible for $50 a week in free play.
Still, with an extra $250 in free play, this player will typically take an intermediate approach between the first two. Maybe take a mini-flyer on a game one denomination higher.

There are an infinite number of ways to handle this “problem,” but we all agree that it’s a nice problem to have and wish we could have it more often.