Introduction to the Credit Game

Hello! I’m Dr. Lou Antonius and I’ve been a professional gambler for more than a decade. Before I got into gambling, when I was a relatively broke college student, I always had some side hustle to make or save money. Extreme couponing? Did it. Online surveys for money? Been there, done that.

My longest-lived side hustle, however, has been using credit cards, banks, and rewards programs effectively. Over two decades, I’ve earned countless flights and hotel rooms for free or at a steep discount and made and saved tens of thousands of dollars. A nice side effect of my activities is that I’ve cultivated a pretty decent credit report and credit score, leading to even more money saved, thanks to lower rates on home and auto loans and car insurance.

There’s a lot of overlap between gambling to make money and using credit cards to your benefit. The end goal for both is to make the best play, but many factors must be considered and analyzed in detail, because it’s not always obvious what the best play is. Skills gained through experience, including intuition, awareness, scouting ability, and a hefty acquired knowledge base, are critical to success in both endeavors.

Over time, this blog will cover a variety of subjects: credit cards, bank accounts, hotel and airline rewards programs, and Vegas-centric information as it applies to all of these.

There are three important things I want to clear before addressing specific subjects in detail:

1. Information changes over time, but usually at different speeds. Some credit cards, rewards programs, and so on have existed for a long time and have changed very little. Others are fleeting and decisions about them must be made quickly. Inexperienced and unknowledgeable people are more likely to make poor and/or rash decisions that may not be optimal.
2. Everything is contextual. For instance, if getting free flights isn’t important to person A, but is the most important thing to person B, then each likely needs to have a different plan, although neither of those plans is de facto better.
3. You get out what you put in. You might only use the information and methods I’ll convey in my blog a couple times per year or you could apply them on a daily basis. That said, a little bit of effort goes a long way. It doesn’t take much work to make simple changes that will yield considerable benefits.

As a result of the above, my first few blog posts will focus more on the requisite background knowledge that everyone needs to begin to make the best decisions about how to approach credit cards, banks, rewards programs, and offers from each of these.