I’ve been to Atlantic City on fewer than 10 occasions. I’ve taught classes at three or four different casinos there and have been there for one or two Seven Stars events. As a player, though, I haven’t played there much. I’ve found Las Vegas, where I live, has better games for me. So why travel 2,500 miles to play lesser games?

That changed in November of 2025. Based on our play in Cherokee, I suppose, Bonnie and I received significant play-up mailers from Atlantic City. A play-up promotion is one where if you play a certain number of points, you receive certain benefits. While we received different offers, I think mine was to play 10,000 Tier Credits and receive $1,000 in free play — repeatable up to 10 times in the month. Plus rooms, food, and some extra Reward Credits.

When we first got the mailers, it was hard to judge whether it would be a good deal or not. I didn’t know what machines were currently available. I didn’t know if they had Next Day Bounce Back (NDB), and if so, at what rate. Did they have any NDB multiplier days? I also didn’t know if they were having any Reward Credit or Tier Credit multipliers. The offer was for any time during the month, and so if we could double up on other promotions, so much the better. To max out the promotion, we’d have to play $2 million coin-in. Since we wanted to do it in three or four days, this meant $25 video poker.

Jimmy Jazz wrote about the promotion and figured it out based on 9/6 Jacks or Better (JoB) — a 99.54% game which requires $25 coin-in to earn one Tier Credit. He concluded that it wasn’t a worthwhile play on those machines. A friend did the same promotion at Caesars Atlantic City a few months before Bonnie and I did and it turns out they have $25 9/6 Double Double Bonus (DDB), a 98.98% game that requires only $10 coin-in to earn a Tier Credit. That game allows us to do the promotion in 40% as much time as on 9/6 JoB. Before the play-up money was received, playing $2 million on 9/6 DDB cost considerably less than playing $5 million on 9/6 JoB. The value of the play-up was more than the cost of earning it. DDB does come with bigger W-2Gs, which was not a factor for me, but may well have been one for Jimmy Jazz. He lives in Michigan and they have a very different state income tax situation than I face in Nevada.

So, we signed up for the promo — went there — and lost a considerable amount. We “forgot” to hit four aces (with or without a kicker) and neither did a royal flush appear on the machines we were playing. We had the edge, I believe, but this time we ended up with a very expensive result. That’s pretty much the nature of DDB. If you don’t hit the big hands this time, you won’t like your score. Still, if they offered us the same promotion again, I’d try it again. 

Based on our play in November, we started to receive mailers for January and February. We each receive $1,000 in weekly free play — plus a free hotel room and more food than we could possibly eat — but of course that free play is only available if we go to Atlantic City. Getting $4,000 free play a month apiece might sound like a lot — but it doesn’t come close to what we lost in November. Still, it’s too much to pass up. As is true on the calendar, the free play week begins on Sunday and ends on Saturday — so if we’re there on the weekend, we can pick up two weeks of free play per trip. It’s a five-hour flight from Las Vegas to either Philadelphia or Newark, which for me is not a lot of fun. If you’re driving, Philadelphia is one hour away from Atlantic City, while Newark is two hours away — but flying into Newark is considerably cheaper than flying into Philadelphia.

On my first such trip there in January, we arrived in Newark at about 6 p.m. on a Saturday — and the trip home left Newark at 7:30 p.m. Sunday. After renting a car I arrived at the casino at about 9 p.m. Saturday night, which was plenty early enough to collect the free play before midnight. Future trips, though, will be lengthier. Weather can delay flights at this time of year and conceivably there could be traffic issues. Getting to the casino too late loses $2,000 in free play. That’s too much to risk cutting it close. If I plan to arrive on Friday night or Saturday morning, that mitigates most of the risk.

Plus, I don’t want to “hit and run,” meaning playing just the minimum amount to pick up the free play and then leaving. (Maybe sometimes, but not all the time.) Casinos offer the free play in order to get you to come in and play — and if you don’t play, some casinos cut you off. My mailers in March and thereafter will likely be larger if I play after picking up the free play. Since there are three separate casinos in Atlantic City that are all connected to this program — Caesars, Harrah’s, and Tropicana — it makes sense for me to walk around all three of them and see what I can find to play. 

These three casinos are not next door to each other. I’ll have a car, so traveling among them is not a big issue, and there is also a free shuttle that runs in a continuous loop among the three casinos. For our trip in November, we didn’t have a car, and we learned it can be a fairly lengthy wait before the next shuttle comes.

Since our normal practice is to spend up to two weeks at a time in Cherokee, it makes sense for us to bookend our Cherokee trips with Atlantic City visits. While these two cities are about 650 miles apart from each other, they are both in the Eastern time zone — three hours earlier than Las Vegas. As I write this, I haven’t yet made the 2½-week trip from Las Vegas to Atlantic City to Cherokee to Atlantic City to Las Vegas — but one is scheduled soon. If we’re still getting Atlantic City mailers in March and beyond, we’ll do this trip more than once.

This makes for a long and intense gambling experience — which is definitely not for everybody. I thought such trips would be over for us because of the tax situation, but I’m glad we found a way to continue.

Author’s note: After I wrote this, I scheduled a trip starting on Saturday, January 24, to do the Newark to Atlantic City to Newark to Cherokee to Newark to Atlantic City to Las Vegas trip I mentioned above. Beginning January 25, there was a huge snowstorm affecting many parts of the country. Because flights were cancelled and I still wanted to get to all of those locations, I ended up with a much longer journey than I had planned. I’ll write about it in a few weeks.