Category: Advanced Strategy

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An Interesting Blackout

Bob Dancer

This is an article about slots rather than video poker. I know this will irritate some of my readers, and if that describes you, perhaps you had better skip this week’s blog. But I know that enough of my readers find “all things casino” interesting enough that they will allow me some grace in selecting my topics. Plus, this week I haven’t learned anything new about video poker and I did learn something new about slots I’m going to share with you.

I was playing Wolf Run Eclipse (WRE) at a Boyd property on a 10x point day. WRE is an IGT persistence slot machine that sometimes gets positive for the player. It has four or five separate meters, depending on the version. One of the meters is the “Grand,” which I have never hit in the thousand or so hours I’ve played this game — so I ignore it. When I started playing this time, the meter read ten thousand dollars and change, and if and when I ever hit it will be very nice, but I don’t pay any attention to it when I try to determine whether the game is worth playing.

The game has three meters that start at 5 free spins (mini, minor, and major) and one that starts at 100 (mega). I have hit the mega three or four times, but I generally ignore that too unless I need a “tiebreaker.” Each meter rises periodically until it is finally hit, in which case the player earns the number of free spins that are on that particular meter.

These progressives aren’t identical. The mini meter gives you one column (out of five) of wilds every spin. The minor meter gives you two such columns. Both the major and the mega give you three such columns.

The mini meter, in addition to being the least valuable, hits more frequently than the minor, which in turn hits more frequently than the major.

I have a formula I use to determine whether or not to play. It has different multipliers for each of the three lower meters. The “strike” numbers are different for different denominations. In most casinos the 1¢ and 2¢ denominations are tighter than the 5¢ and 10¢ of the same game on the same machine.

On the day in question, I was playing 1¢, 800 coins for an $8.00 bet. Had I found the same meter numbers on the game for 10¢ 80 coins or 5¢ 160 coins (both also $8.00), the latter would be better bets because they have a higher return to player (RTP). But this time the 1¢ version had the higher meters, so that’s the one I played.

I shaded my strike number a little for three reasons: 10x points, the mega meter was at 110 rather than the reset value of 100, and while I was going to be playing for the minor, the major was at nine — which is higher the reset value of five. 

As I played, I hit the mini four times and the minor and major continued to rise. By the time I hit the minor (which turned into a W2-g) the mini had risen high enough that it was worth continuing to play. So, I did.

When the mini finally hit, I noted that if it returned $860, I was even for my play at that particular casino for that particular day. This was a score that was definitely possible — probably even likely. 

As it turned out, after all the free spins were spun, the bonus was worth $845 — so I lost $15. I knew I had actually won because I had played for more than a half hour hammering an $8 machine. At 10x points, this generated a lot of points. I don’t count those points as profit until I redeem them, which I didn’t do on this day.

After the $845 was revealed, the machine calls it a “massive win” and starts to add that amount to my existing $700+ in credits. While in the process of this happening, my machine went totally black, along with the adjacent machines on either side. All three were IGT slot machines — and all three were different games. All the other games in the casino that I could see continued to work.

A slot manager came by to look at it. He probably had a message on his computer that told him three machines went dark. I asked him if this was likely to be a long-lasting problem. He said probably not, but the outage wasn’t planned and he wasn’t sure.

I wasn’t in a huge hurry, but I’d been planning on going to dinner. I wanted to retrieve my $1,600 ticket and be on my way. There was no way I was going to leave it behind. I knew the casino didn’t do this on purpose and was willing to give them a little time to fix the problem — but I didn’t want to wait all day.

After about ten minutes, all three machines began to reboot. I expected that when my machine came back on it would continue to add the $845 to my existing credits and I could be on my way.

That’s not what happened. 

When the machine came back on, I still had my $700+ in credits, and the mini bonus began to play again! There were more than 30 free spins. Some were for more than $100 each, and many of the spins turned out to be worth zero. 

As the bonus round played out, I started thinking about what I would do if it turned out to be less than $845? The machine was probably on camera, and they could verify what the bonus had been worth previously. Would they honor that? I also mused what I would do if the bonus round turned out to be worth more than $845? 

Before I worked out all of the ramifications, the bonus round ended, and it was worth exactly the same $845 this time as it was worth last time! I was surprised. 

The slot director came by and asked if everything turned out okay. I told him that it had replayed the bonus round, all 30+ spins, and the result this time turned out exactly the same as it had before the blackout.

He told me this was exactly the result he expected. At the start of the bonus round, he told me, the computer program decides how much this bonus round is worth. Once that number has been decided, it’s just bells and whistles for the bonus round to end up providing that exact number. The player doesn’t know how big the bonus will be until all the spins play out, but the machine knows and figures out a way to get there. 

I think this slot director is correct. I just hadn’t realized it before he said it. The machine has a specific RTP to give out, and it does.

This is very different from the way a video poker machine works. In video poker, the player chooses how to play each hand. Each machine holds more than the designated RTP because video poker players make mistakes. 

But slot players, taken as a whole, don’t make mistakes. They just hit the button and take what they get. The skill in this kind of slot machine is to wait until the meters are high enough before playing. But other players have played this machine to get the meters that high. So, the machine holds as much as it is supposed to — the casino makes money — and the knowledgeable players also make money playing this game.

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Shutting Out the Noise

Bob Dancer

Generally speaking, I prefer to play video poker and slots without interacting with anybody else. To be sure, this is a personal preference and not everyone agrees with me. 

I’ve found that if I’m chatting with somebody while playing video poker, my error rate increases. I never make a lot of mistakes, but the edges we’re playing with these days are so small, even a few mistakes are too many.

I don’t know why, but I can listen to music or spoken words and still play accurately. It’s when I have to engage my brain to form a response to somebody else that it interferes with engaging my brain to play accurately.

I can control whether I initiate conversations with others. It’s harder to control whether others start talking to me.

One device I use to discourage others from talking to me is that I frequently wear a large, over-the-ear, headset while playing. Sometimes I’m listening to music. Sometimes a story or podcast. Often, I’m listening to nothing at all. Someone seeing me wearing my headset generally can’t tell what I’m listening to — if anything.

If someone I know and like sits near me while I’m playing, I’ll typically nod my head in acknowledgement. It’s kind of a, “Hi. How are you doing?” acknowledgement without wanting or expecting an answer. This presents them with an opportunity to say something, if they wish, but not the necessity.

Should someone begin a conversation with me, or I need to interact with casino personnel, I’ll signal them to hold on a second, turn off my headset, and lower it from over my ears to around my neck. Then I’ll speak to them for as long as is appropriate. It almost never devolves into a situation where I continue to play and chat at the same time.

I’m not shy about telling people, accurately, that I need to concentrate when playing video poker. I try to be polite, yet firm. Even though I’ve been playing this game for more 30 years, there are hands I need to think about. If I always played 9/6 Jacks or Better, I know that game cold and probably can chat away with no loss in accuracy. But I play different games at different casinos, and, among other things, need to focus on which game I’m playing now. If I’m chatting with somebody else, I might not recognize a problem hand when it comes along. 

There are a number of players who know me. Over 25 years of teaching video poker classes, more than 100,000 players attended one or more classes. Many of them still frequent casinos and when they recognize me, sometimes they come and say hello. That’s fine. I don’t mind a break of a minute or two. 

There’s another reason for earphones. Many casinos these days pipe the music up to unhealthy levels. Circa, in downtown Las Vegas, is one of them. With good earphones on, the noise level is much lower.

Casinos differ widely in the type of overhead music they provide. While I enjoy classic country music, I have no appreciation for many other types of music. I know other players who have no tolerance for country music at all. The advantage of earphones is that you can replace whatever is “standard” for the place where you are playing to something you prefer more.

I’m in the casino to work and not for entertainment. But if I find I can make my working environment more entertaining and productive at the same time, so much the better.

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An Interesting Case Study

Bob Dancer

Someone told me about a casino, but swore me to secrecy about writing its name, or even the state it is in. If too many strong players knew the details about this casino, the casino couldn’t afford to continue the excellent benefits it now provides — which ruins the play for all players. But I can describe those benefits.

These benefits are for “semi” high rollers — that is, it requires $40,000 coin-in monthly if you’re a slot player, or $80,000 coin-in a month if you’re a video poker player. While these amounts aren’t for everybody, there’s a significant number of players who could play that much if they were profitably motivated. 

For the video poker players, the best game is NSU Deuces Wild. In addition to a 0.05% slot club, along with reasonable comps, if you play the $80,000 coin-in a month you receive $100 in free play, twice a month. This is a slightly positive game — not worth travel expenses unless you lived in that city or had another really good play close by so you could “double dip” when you visited that city. Most players will play lesser games than NSU, and play them badly, so the casino makes out okay even with this promotion.

Slot players, however, receive $1,000 in free play, twice a month, along with a 0.1% slot club and reasonable comps. This is more than a 5% return.

If you know nothing about playing slots with an advantage, this is not a good deal. The slots at this casino return about 91% on average. Playing games with an expected 9% loss to receive 5% in benefits isn’t a winning play.

But what if you knew something about slot machines?

I’m going to describe a hypothetical “Orange Bob” machine. This machine has mini, minor, and major meters that each reset to five spins — and then they rise when you get particular combinations. When the meters are at five, five, and five, the game returns 75%. Nobody with a clue would play it at that level — but there are many clueless players at this and other casinos. 

Whenever the mini, minor, and major meters increase by one unit, the return on the game increases 0.5%, 1%, and 1.5%, respectively. If you come across a game where the meters are at 10, 10, and 10, the worth of the game would be the 75% it started at, an extra 5% because of the rise in the mini, an extra 10% because of the rise in the minor, and an extra 15% because of the rise in the major. This turns it into a game that returns 105% and is well worth playing — especially since if you start playing now, the meters will continue to rise until you hit one or more of them. 

Also, assume that while the exact numbers I cited in the previous paragraph are only known to a few players, there are a lot of players with a general idea. These players have their own “strike points,” when they estimate a game is positive. These players search the casino for such opportunities — so a lot of the time you find a good situation when somebody has just given up on playing a game when it’s positive.

It could be that this player who leaves the machine in a good situation has no idea of what makes the game positive. It could be that this player ran out of money. It could be that this player had to catch a plane and could no longer stick around until the relevant meters went back to reset values.

The game can be played for five different denominations, with five different “number of coins” for each of these denominations. The range is from a $1 total bet to $50. 

Players seeking to play $40,000 coin-in per month will avoid the lower denomination/coins combinations, simply because each time you find the play you might get anywhere from 10 to 500 spins. You won’t find playable situations very often, and if you’re only playing $1 or $2 per spin, you’re not going to come close to reaching your $40,000 coin-in goal.

There are numerous games similar to these Orange Bob games, and if you know about enough of them, you can do all right.

The interesting part about this, that I never considered while playing video poker, is that you can play “on the come.” 

Normally, without the free play, you would wait until the machines (with expected meter rise before you hit it) were higher than 100% before you started to play — assuming you were attempting to play these machines at a profit.

With 5% in benefits, however, you can start to play when the machines (with expected meter rise before you hit it) are at 97% or so. Yes, you’re giving up 3% to the casino, but the casino is giving you 5% to do so. So, it’s not a bad deal.

If you’re looking for 97% or higher games, and most of your competition is looking for 100% or higher games, you’re going to find a lot of opportunities to play. Even with everyone and his brother checking the machines all day long, you’ll find plays because you’re willing to play at lower starting numbers than most of the others do.

I find this an interesting concept.

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Leaving After Hitting a Jackpot

Bob Dancer

A friend of mine, “Sam,” plays advantage slots. He was describing a recent experience on a Buffalo game. There are literally dozens of varieties of Buffalo games — some beatable by knowledgeable players — some not. It’s not my purpose today to discuss which ones are beatable — and how. I understand that this upsets some of my readers who want me to tell them more about beating slots, but that’s not what I want to write about.

One feature of most of these games is that, in addition to the “regular” way of winning, if you’re dealt three gold coins, you get eight free spins. While those spins are being played, you can earn an additional five or eight free spins by being dealt two or three gold coins, respectively. Sometimes you can accumulate 40 or more free spins during this process. 

During these free spins, the wild card symbols get multipliers. Your biggest scores come when you get one or more buffalos in the first column, wild cards with multipliers in the second, third, and fourth columns — and if you’re really lucky, more buffalos in the fifth column. The wild card multipliers work on other symbols in addition to buffalos, but usually it’s the multiplied buffalo symbols that provide the biggest wins.

It was one of these free spin situations that prompted Sam to talk to me. He was playing less than $1.50 per hand and after 56 free spins that started with three gold coins, ended up with an $1,800 jackpot. While other numbers in the game screamed “Play!” to the knowledgeable player, Sam decided to quit. After all, he argued, a jackpot this size is rare on games played for stakes this size. Hitting two or more such jackpots close together is rarer still. So, he decided to lock up his win and quit. 

He asked my opinion on his decision.

I told him I would have continued to play. While these machines return a certain amount over time, “time” is measured in the hundreds of thousands (or more) hands. His recent jackpot has nothing to do with the short-term expectation on the machine. Since the indicators said to play, I would play. I walk all over casinos looking for such opportunities.

Sam also plays video poker. On several occasions, he has hit a royal flush, four aces, or other sizeable jackpot and continued to play. He accepts that in video poker one hand doesn’t influence what is coming next, but somehow, he thinks it’s different in slots.

Video poker is a game of skill, he correctly argues. There is skill in identifying the pay schedule and in playing every single hand. Slots, argues Sam correctly, are largely luck. Although there is skill in determining if various progressives on a slot machine make the game worth playing, and leaving the game after certain things happen, the basic playing of the game requires no skill at all. You hit the button and take what you get.

While most slot pros quit playing a slot machine when one or more progressives on the game are reset, hitting one of these free spin bonus rounds doesn’t count as a progressive being reset. These free play bonus rounds simply give you ammunition to continue playing. 

Sometimes a jackpot is hit during the free spins, and in those cases, you usually should quit playing after the free plays are finished. At a minimum, you should re-evaluate and see if conditions remain ripe for continuing.

I never thought of this as a particularly subtle point, but Sam is a knowledgeable, winning player and he had it wrong. So, I decided that some of my readers could benefit from a discussion.

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Change in Point Structure

Bob Dancer

The ROW casinos, the Caesars Rewards properties in Reno, recently changed their point structure. For some of the machines that contain the loosest video poker, Tier Credits (TCs) and Reward Credits (RCs) are now earned at one point per $20 coin-in versus the former $10 coin-in. Although the ROW consists of the Eldorado, Silver Legacy, and Circus Circus equally, for practical purposes this new rule only affects the Eldorado because that’s where the loosest video poker machines are. 

They did a similar change about two years ago. Many players boycotted these casinos because of the change and after two or three months, the former $10-per-RC system was reinstated. It’s possible this will happen again, I suppose. We’ll see. These casinos seem to struggle to attract players. Tightening the slot club can’t possibly be the way to attract more players.

Although this specific change only affects one property, and most of my readers are not players at this particular location, similar downgrades happen at other casinos all the time. The question becomes: How does a player evaluate whether to continue playing there or not?

The Caesars Rewards system is complicated — and each property has slightly different rules than its sister properties. The difference between RCs and TCs is not quickly grasped by many players. In many cases they are earned at the same rate, but they aren’t the same. RCs may be redeemed for comps, sports bets, or, at a two-for-one rate, free play. TCs can’t be redeemed, but determine whether you are Platinum, Seven Stars, or any of the other tier levels. 

The old $10-per-point system made RCs earned by playing video poker worth 0.1% in comps. Cutting that in half means that they are now worth 0.05% in comps. That’s not a big change. If you normally play $20,000 in coin-in in a day, the $20 in comps you previously earned now becomes worth $10. If you redeemed the RCs for free play, the $10 in free play you used to get now becomes worth $5. Other than being ticked off that it’s not as big as before, that’s not enough of a difference to cause most players to quit playing.

But what about if they had 5x or 10x points? Well, that could be different. This casino used to have Mystery RC multipliers every Monday, with a limit of 30,000 RCs. Whatever multiplier you receive, it will now take twice as much play to earn that limit. Time will tell if that is going to be cut back on this promotion or not. 

There are TC multiplier promotions as well. In addition, there are daily TC bonuses. Players earning 1,000 TCs in a day get a 1,000 TC bonus. Players earning 5,000 TCs in a day get a 10,000 TC bonus. That’s the biggest daily bonus offered. Whereas it used to take $50,000 coin-in in video poker to earn the maximum daily bonus, it now takes $100,000. For most players, this is out of the question.

If you play enough to earn a lot of TCs, for every 250,000 you earn, you receive one Seven Stars Experience Credit. There are a number of things you can redeem these for. The most attractive to me is $450 in free play at properties in Las Vegas or Cherokee. For the same play, Reno video poker players will end up with fewer Seven Stars Experience Credits in 2025 than they earned in 2024.

The basic Seven Stars target of 150,000 is harder to get. I find it valuable. The major benefits are five $100 food credits, one $1,200 travel to any other Caesars property including $500 in resort credit, and a highly discounted 7-day cruise for two on Norwegian Cruise Lines. Most properties have some sort of a daily benefit if you have Seven Stars status. 

These properties all have monthly mailers giving you free play, rooms, and resort credits (which are not the same as Reward Credits.) These are generally based on your average daily theoretical. If $1,000 worth of play gives you the same ADT as it did before (even though it gives you half as many RCs and TCs), then the mailers shouldn’t change. We’ll see.

The bottom line, for me anyway, is not the number of dollars coin-in required to get a RC. It’s the promotions and the mailers. If the promotions and mailers stay the same, I’ll continue to play at the ROW, at least sometimes. If they get slashed as well, I won’t. 

The change in the rate of RC and TC being earned is a much smaller change than reducing the pay schedule by one unit. I’ll put up with NSU Deuces Wild with the lesser rate, but if they cut that game by 0.8% to the pNSU game, I’ll likely stop playing there.

It’s the package of benefits (the game, the slot club, the promotions, the mailers) that matters to me, not the individual components of it. Any reduction in benefits is unwelcome, but small reductions are not necessarily showstoppers.

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I’m Playing the Wrong Game

Bob Dancer

Perhaps 10 years ago, I was playing $10 NSU Deuces Wild alongside “John,” a player I had known for quite a while. He was dealt four aces with a three, and complained bitterly, saying he’s playing the wrong game. He’d been playing $10 Double Double Bonus (DDB) not long before and that hand would have been worth $20,000. Playing NSU, it was worth $200, or maybe $800 if he could pick up a deuce after he threw away the three.

I commented that he’s lucky he wasn’t imagining he was playing Triple Double Bonus (TDB). In that game, he would have missed out on $40,000 instead of the measly $20,000 he missed out on while speculating his payout playing DDB.

He was not amused.

Later he ended up with AKQ of spades alongside two deuces. That was worth $1,250 in this game and wouldn’t have been worth anything had he been playing DDB or TDB. “Maybe the video poker gods are trying to make it up to you,” I teased.

John didn’t enjoy my mocking him, but he took it in stride. We had a relationship in which teasing the other was par for the course.

John was not a professional player. He had basic strategy down pretty well and didn’t bother with the fine points. He often played games returning less than 99% even if he played perfectly, which he didn’t. He owned his own business and even if he lost $50,000 or $100,000 a year gambling, it didn’t make a lot of difference to his lifestyle.

He believed that he was the unluckiest video poker player ever and periodically found evidence to support this belief. If he was playing Hundred Play and drew to three of a kind, he knew connecting on four separate quads was the average result. 

From here, it was a small step to believe he “deserved” four quads and whenever he ended up with three quads or fewer, he felt he was being cheated. Even when he drew five or more quads from this starting position, he felt it was a case of “too little too late.” In his mind, these occasions barely made a dent in his overall “unluckiness.”

These beliefs took the sting out if his losing sessions. After all, in his mind it wasn’t his fault! He was mostly playing correctly, and the machines weren’t cooperating.

While he had attended some of my classes, he didn’t want me correcting him while we were playing. Which was perfectly fine with me. He believed my strategies were developed for people with average luck, or better than average luck. 

He was correct, of course. The strategies I use and sell assume that every unseen card has an equal probability of being drawn next. The strategies also assume that all players have average luck over a long enough time period. We all have lucky days and unlucky days. Just because a person believes he or she is luckier or unluckier than average doesn’t make it so.

Convincing John of this was impossible, of course. His theories allowed him to continue to lose year after year and still believe it wasn’t his fault.

So, our teasing was mostly lighthearted. He always claimed that I was a “luck sack.” I’d counter with “luck favors the prepared.” While neither of us ever convinced the other, we remained friendly for decades.

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Encounter at Dotty’s

Bob Dancer

I was playing at a Dotty’s, a local chain of small casinos. The best game for me is 9/6 Jacks or Better. Without going through all of the slot club benefits and promotions, the one that is most relevant to today’s story is the “Big Bonus.”

In this promotion, all W2-Gs become drawing entries, and 10% of these entries get a 10% cash bonus. That is, if a $5,000 W2-G is drawn, the player who hit it will get a $500 reward if he collects it within a month.

Although the inventory of each Dotty’s varies, the most convenient Dotty’s for me has the game for $2, where you can bet anywhere from five to fifty coins and still get the full 99.54% return on the game. Since I want to get W2-Gs, I need to play for at least 24 coins ($48) per hand, yielding $1,200 for every quad, but I usually play for 25 coins ($50), yielding $1,250. I record the game on my gambling log as a $10 game.

The nature of 9/6 Jacks or Better is that you tend to lose during a session unless you hit a royal flush. 

Another promotion in effect at Dotty’s is the machine bonuses. For the stakes I play, these come around every five to ten minutes. The first five are always, in order, $1, $1, $1, $5, $2 — which are negligible amounts when you’re playing $50 per hand. These bonuses then increase to $10, $20 or $25 each time if you continue to play for more than an hour. These amounts are not so negligible. Suffice it to say, I usually play for at least a few hours when I come.

Most of the players in the place are playing for far smaller stakes than I am and very rarely, if ever, receive a $1,200-or-higher jackpot. Since I get them regularly, some players assume I’m killing the game, whereas in fact I’m usually losing. 

On this particular night, after I collected my fifth or sixth W2-G (and I was behind perhaps $2,000 after being paid), a lady approached me and asked if she could invest with me. She and her husband were homeless and playing keno hoping to strike it rich. Since I was obviously doing well, she wanted to pay me $200 for a share of my next jackpot.

I wanted no part of this particular arrangement. I told her that if they were indeed homeless, the last place they should be is in a casino, and the odds on the keno game they were playing were prohibitively in the house’s favor. I told her I was losing this night (I’m not sure she believed me) and many of the benefits I receive were deferred. I’m sure she understood I was telling her “No,” but I don’t believe she understood what I was talking about when I said “deferred benefits.” 

I was earning slot club points (which were cashed and mailed to me once a month), the Big Bonus drawing wouldn’t happen until next Wednesday, and the machine bonuses are paid in slot club points. The $40,000 royal flush was unlikely to be hit on this particular night. I had the bankroll to wait for it — but this lady didn’t.

I wanted to give her $20 or so to “go away,” but several other players were watching the exchange. If I started paying all players with a sob story, I would have been deluged with these stories. There are few winners at Dotty’s and the clientele tends to be less affluent than those players who play in the larger casinos. Paying players playing losing games and are always broke is a bottomless pit.

The lady and her husband went away and that was the end of this particular incident. The aftertaste of it remains with me, though. I’ve frequently been asked for money in casinos. I usually politely say “No,” and continue with what I am doing.

I know that most players lose in casinos, and many can’t afford their habit. And the ones I see don’t include the spouses and kids at home.  Yes, I’ve found a way to beat the casinos, but coming face to face with the ones who can’t, especially during the holidays, is a sobering experience.

Since I’ve been doing this for decades, I’m somewhat immune to these feelings. But not totally immune.

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It’s a Matter of Time

Bob Dancer

Timing is an important part of successful gambling. I include doing things in the right order. I’m going to list several examples. There are a lot more.

Some casinos require you to swipe your card at a kiosk before you play in order to get a multiplier or some other benefit. Some casinos don’t. Good players learn which is which.

Sometimes promotions begin or end at a particular time. If you’re going to start early, some casinos automatically activate your card once the magic time arrives. Others require you to remove and re-insert your card after that time in order to get the benefit.

If a promotion officially ends at a particular time, sometimes you will continue to get the benefit of that promotion so long as your card remains in the machine. 

Drawings universally have times associated with when you can earn entries, when you must activate your entries (if you must), and at old-fashioned drawings, by when do you have to have your tickets into the drum. Also, they usually have some sort of “must be present within so many minutes” should you be a lucky winner.

Casino slot clubs with tiers have time periods during which tiers must be earned. Being a few thousand points shy of the next tier is a shame if you just let the end of the earning period elapse without thinking about whether the higher tier had value for you.

Most players play at more than one casino. Often one or more of them will have some sort of time-related promotion going on. If you’re relatively indifferent between which casino to play at, you should play at the one whose benefits will expire soon.

It’s not exactly time-related, but frequently casinos have promotions where if you earn xxx points you get yyy. If you’re not interested in receiving the benefit, then it pretty much doesn’t matter whether you earn that many points or not. If you are interested, however, make it a point to collect that many points at least. If 5,000 points are required, for example, don’t be one of those people who earn 4,825 points and don’t check how close they are.

At some casinos, if 12 months (or some other time period) elapse since your last visit, all unredeemed comps and points disappear. To prevent this, some players zero out their points at the end of every trip. At casinos I visit regularly or sem-regularly I don’t do this, but I never let enough unredeemed points accumulate that it would be a real pain if I didn’t get back there in time. Even if my intention is to return to this casino every six months, for example, there will come a time that I don’t make it back. 

Some casinos have “next day free play,” where your play today earns free play starting at noon tomorrow and lasting 90 days. Let’s say the casino day ends at 6 a.m. and your free play becomes available at noon. If you’re not pretty sure you’re going to return with three months, don’t play after 6 a.m. the last day you’re there, and stick around until noon before you leave so you can redeem accumulated free play. 

Casinos will often have some sort of multipliers on a Monday or Tuesday, which tend to be the days where they have the fewest customers. If you can, arrange your trips so you can take advantage of this.

Casino restaurants, as do non-casino restaurants, often have happy hour specials where if you eat before the dinner rush you get discount pricing on several food or beverage items. If you’re flexible, your comp dollars will last longer if you take advantage of such specials.

Sometimes you can double dip on promotions timewise. I’ve seen cases where one promotion ended at 3 a.m. and a point multiplier started at midnight. For a three-hour window, both promotions were in effect. If you’re a “must be in bed by 10 p.m.” person, then you won’t be able to take advantage of this specific opportunity.

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A Cold Night in Reno

Bob Dancer

On Monday, November 11, Bonnie and I flew to Reno to play at the Eldorado, one of the three casinos that make up the ROW, which is the only Caesars Resorts property in Reno.

We go often enough to get monthly mailers, so those offers were part of the reason we chose to go then. Plus, Mondays in November offer mystery Reward Credit multipliers between 4 p.m. and midnight.

The multipliers don’t seem to be much of a mystery. It’s a frequent Monday promotion there and the last dozen or so times we’ve been there for this promotion, as Seven Stars video poker players, the multiplier has always been 7x and the limit is 30,000 Reward Credits. In the Caesars system, this means you get your original points plus 6x more — so 4,285 or more base points earn you an extra 25,715 Reward Credits. That’s $257.15 in comps (or sports bets) or half that amount if you convert it to free play. 

Slot players get bigger multipliers and higher limits than video poker players do, but you have to pick one or the other before you start. While I play both games there, I play mostly video poker, so that’s the one I pick. Our offers also entitled us to some Resort Credits, which basically means Bonnie got to go shopping. (Reward Credits and Resort Credits sound the same, but they’re not. You cannot convert Resort Credits to free play or sports bets, but you can use them for other things Reward Credits are good for.)

I went upstairs for a nap. I was tired and didn’t need to play until later in the day. I didn’t set an alarm. I knew I wouldn’t sleep all day and since I play $50-a-hand machines there, it doesn’t take long to maximize the promotion.

Around 4 p.m. I woke up shivering. Although Reno itself was around 30 degrees outside, I set the room temperature to where we like it before I started my nap. But it was much colder than that now. Maybe 55 degrees. 

There were a few lights in the room still on, but the other light switches wouldn’t work, and the thermostat seemed broken. We looked outside the room, and most of the lights in the hallway were out.

We decided to descend the stairs to the casino level. I figured that the casino would have its own generator and even if the hotel were blacked out, the casino itself was the cash cow of the organization. Surely the casino would still be going despite any city power outage. I was so confident in this that I left my heavy jacket in the room. Bonnie is 81 years old and I’m 77, but we figured going downstairs wouldn’t be a problem. Surely this issue would be fixed before long.

Down on the casino floor, nothing was working. There were a few lights on, including some slot machines, but none were operational. The slot machines provided some warmth, so we sat down next to some to wait things out. Nobody knew for sure what had happened, but the casino employees were pretty sure this was a blackout over a part of the city and not specific to the ROW properties. Slot techs and floor people were manually turning off machines one at a time, but we talked them into leaving the machines close to us turned on so as to provide warmth.

Restaurants were closed as well, of course. We needed to eat. The only restaurants I know about in Reno are in other casinos. 

I don’t have comps at any other casino in Reno, so I figured we’d pick a place a few miles away, call to verify they were open, and catch an Uber or Lyft. We’d have to pay retail for food in a casino (a novel experience for me), and maybe the lights would be on in a few hours and we could Lyft back. We hooked up with a player we knew and took a Lyft to the Peppermill. 

Even though it wasn’t far from the casino to the Lyft to the new casino, it was cold outside. I do wish I had brought my jacket with me.

Over dinner, we discussed where to sleep if the problem didn’t get resolved soon. The other guy with us was enough of a player at Atlantis (about a mile away from the Peppermill) that he was able to get the casino rate for two rooms at $80 per night. The host said she’d be there only until 11 and and since we needed her help to get the rooms at that rate, we shouldn’t wait until after that.

We called back to the Eldorado about 7 p.m. and the operator said the power was on in her area and she thought the entire problem was solved, so we headed back. 

When we looked into High Limit slots, there were players playing, so we figured we were okay. I sent Bonnie up to the room and got to work gambling. I was playing $10 NSU, and in 20 minutes hit a $1,250 wild royal. It took 20 minutes to be paid. Not all machines were totally connected to the player system, and on some, any cash out at all required a hand pay. So, the slot employees were slammed. I was having doubts that I could get in my play for the promotion before midnight. The only way to guarantee it was not to hit any more taxables, but that would mean a loss of $10,000 or so, which wasn’t very attractive either.

Eventually, machines opened up in the High Limit slot area and when I hit a W2-G, I could move over to an adjacent machine and continue my play while I waited to be paid. I shared the “extra” machine with another player, who was also using it for overflow purposes. Fortunately we didn’t hit our jackpots simultaneously.

I finished playing at 11:30 p.m. or so and headed up to the room. When I got there, it turned out that when I had gone to the high limit slots area leaving Bonnie to go to our room by herself, the elevators weren’t working yet. So, she walked up 11 stories! 

As she started her journey, she connected with a casino employee who walked with her. Bonnie is an octogenarian with a cardiac history. This walk could have turned out to be fatal for her, but everything turned out okay. She didn’t want to bother me with this information while I was playing, so I never knew. Afterwards we had a talk about priorities. Yes, taking the time to help her could have caused me to miss out on part of the promotion, but her safety is much more important than that.

I don’t blame the ROW for this blackout. It hit much of the downtown area. This was a Reno infrastructure problem. It’s a fairly rare occurrence, and it just happened to bite us when we were there. Other than not getting our Monday night meals comped, and throwing our schedule off a bit, there was no harm to us.

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Halloween Aboard the Bliss

Bob Dancer

Bonnie and I each earn at least one highly discounted Norwegian Cruise Line (NCL) cruise per year because of our Seven Stars status within the Caesars Total Rewards system. Cruising to the Mexican Riviera out of Los Angeles is our default trip. I have extended family in Southern California and we use the cruise as an excuse to get together. We’ll show up a day early, treat everybody to dinner, and one of them will provide a place to sleep and transportation to and from the ship. It works for all involved.

This year, we cruised on the Norwegian Bliss. The first of our two cruises was a 5-day affair immediately after the Bliss repositioned itself from its summer run in Alaska. Schedule-wise it worked for us, and in another month, Bonnie will go with her daughter and enjoy the seven-day version of the trip.

We’ve been to the ports. Sometimes we get off the ship, and sometimes we stay aboard. For us, we use it as an excuse to go dancing every night. And, of course, now I know a bit about slots, I look forward to visiting the casino. When I was strictly a video poker player, I avoided ship casinos. Not anymore.

The Bliss has the best casino at sea I’ve ever experienced — out of possibly 80 separate cruises. Perhaps other ships have the same or similar features, but this is the best for me so far. The top feature of it is that two-thirds of the casino is totally non-smoking, and the smoking part of it is behind sealed doors. Although some smoke drifts through when people open the doors to the sealed area to enter or exit, it’s by far the best cruise chip casino arrangement I’ve enjoyed so far. There are machines and table games in both areas. Although I walked through the smoking area once to see what was there, I avoided playing there. The cigarette smoke is much more concentrated in that sealed room than in a regular casino. Even when I could find no more playable machines in the non-smoking area, I left the casino rather than check out what machines were then playable in the smoking area.

It used to be that NCL would give you a green casino player’s card along with a separate card you could use to get a free drink in the casino. You were supposed to be playing when you ordered the free drink, but they didn’t always check very closely. These cards no longer exist.

Now you tap your room keycard on the machine (very similar to the way you can pay for things with your smart phone at some locations) and you’re logged onto that machine. When you’re done playing at that machine, you can either cash out into a TITO ticket or tap your card again and the money will go to your account.

The next time you play (it could be in a day or two — it could be at an adjacent machine), if you have money in your account, you can simply download it at the machine. On this particular trip, I was able to build credits to an excess of $2,000. I downloaded $200 of it and carried it between machines in a TITO, which I find much easier to deal with. If it went to zero, I’d download some more. If I hit a sizeable jackpot (but less than the W2-G threshold), I’d put all the money on my card and download another ticket for $200 or so. If I dropped a ticket and lost it, I’d rather it be for $200 than $2,000.

On the last night of the cruise, I turned slot points into free play, played them off, and collected all of the money in my account. I was told I could leave both slot points and money on my card and the next time I sailed on NCL both the money and slot points would be there safe and sound. I’d be willing to risk that if I were sailing on two back-to-back cruises, but not if, as in my current case, it’s going to be a year or so until I return.

Just as in an out-of-town land-based casino where I plan to return again and again, I know for certain that at some point I’m going to die or otherwise not be able to return and redeem accumulated points and money. I’d much rather that money be in my estate and distributed according to my will than being left in the NCL account forever. I’m not sure what the NCL does with abandoned cash and slot club points, but I’m sure it doesn’t go to my heirs.

The third feature I appreciated was that there were nine Super Star machines in the non-smoking area, each including Ultimate X, among several other games (like Super Times Pay, Spin Poker, and several other video poker games, and Keno).  

The Ultimate X games came in Triple Play, Five Play, and Ten Play — and each had five separate denominations — and each of those came in Double Bonus, Double Double Bonus, and Deuces Wild. That’s 45 separate games to check per machine. To fully load such a game requires 10 coins per line — five coins to collect money as you normally do in video poker and five additional coins to build new multipliers.

These games could return 95% or so to the player if played perfectly with ten coins per line. (Playing perfectly is extremely unlikely due to the difficulty of the strategies and the fact that strategies aren’t published for pay schedules that bad.) If you can find a game with unredeemed multipliers, you play one dealt hand and each time you do so you’re playing at least a 105% game, and it can exceed 1,000%. The latter number is rare and usually occurs when a 10-coin-per-line player was dealt a flush or full house and left the game immediately afterwards.

Over the five-day cruise I found 300-400 playable situations on this game. I certainly wasn’t the only person checking, but the good situations kept getting created over and over again by the not-so-knowledgeable players. When you have this many opportunities and always played at an advantage, it’s close to impossible to end up behind. And, with a little luck, you can end up way ahead. Over time you’re going to hit 4-of-a-kinds and royal flushes. Those are always good, but when you hit such hands with a multiplier, they’re even better.

There were playable slot machines as well. Some rather new ones that many players didn’t know how to exploit, and also some oldies-but-goodies like Scarab. This is a game that is well known, and I never check in Vegas because so many players know about it. But on a cruise ship? I checked regularly and found several playable situations.

My biggest score ($1,000) came on a slot machine, as well as my biggest losses (about $400, twice). Overall, though, I was easily ahead on both video poker and slots. I need to juggle my time so that I can eat and go dancing with Bonnie, but there’s still time for me to go check out machines in the casino a few times each day. I didn’t hit any W2-Gs this time even though I was playing machines where they were certainly possible. Maybe next time.

Next year around this time the Bliss will be assigned to the Mexican Riviera route again. That’s good news for Bonnie and me.