Free Food, Free Booze, Free Love and Free Lunches.

Okay. I give up on this "free" or "comped" stuff. Its maddening.
We all know casinos often offer Free Fun Books filled with coupons worth a grand but the average visitor rarely uses even half the coupons and most of them ate half-off one for ordering two or something. Or half off an appetizer for ordering a high priced meal.

We also know that "soft" comps means the casino is comping you to the item but not to what you might have to otherwise pay for the item. Rooms go at arbitrary rates and the hotel prices the rooms with the knowledge that sixty percent of them will be comped.

We know there are all these point systems and point multipliers and special this and special that. Now you don't even have to be in the casino, you can play at home via facebook and accumulate your casino points.

The town is awash in freebies and discounts and everyone keeps telling me there is no such thing as a free lunch but if you look in the archives for photos of NY and Chicago bars you see just about every bar on the block offered a free lunch and from the photos or the menus displayed its rather obvious this was a substantial feed, not some paltry plate of solely salty appetizers.

We hear of razor thin margins on table games but darn for a 0.23 percent game, those casinos sure give away alot of cars.

So when you get right down to the real nitty gritty, after the free rooms and free booze and free buffets and free fun books and free multiples of points and free play ... where do all these freebies come from? Ain't no way that 0.23 percent game supplies it. Heck, in order to wake up, I usually need a stinging shower to get all the booze out my pores and I probably use gallons and gallons of water so the hotel loses money right there and then. So how do they really get to give away all this free stuff?

I think its from the thousands and thousands of 24% slots.

If you dip $1 at 0.25% enough times, it adds up.

That plus all the 7% edge bets, the players not playing at 100% optimum and so forth.... there's where it comes from. It's just that at the bottom end you may well end up contributing much less than the casino costs to get you in there. That's okay, there's ten of you fleas, and nine of them are over betting for every sharpie who conserves their bank roll and plays the game back on the house.

I've thought about this before. With the value of comps considered I normally come out way ahead, especially if the Hilton paid my airfare. I've wondered before about how many slot and Big 6 and keno players probably contributed to my comps. I'm don't think that I'm (usually) the one paying for them. I mean, I've been known to play through some pretty significant amounts of money at Baccarat, but I normally come out ahead even without the comps, and, like I said, when I don't, the comps usually more than make up for it.

Don't forget that the losses from a single "whale" probably make up for all the fleas.

They don't give away cars at the craps tables :)

As I like to say, everything you see is paid for by the difference between what the losers lost and what the winners won (with a recent addendum: "...plus, where applicable, whatever overhead they get on the tickets for whatever Cirque show is running there").

Don't forget about whatever cut the casino gets from the poker tables.

Quote:

Now you don't even have to be in the casino, you can play at home via facebook and accumulate your casino points.

Am I missing something? How can you get club points on Facebook? (Or are the Facebook-based ones limited to online-only sites like, say, DoubleDown and SlotMania, as opposed to Total Rewards?)

>I think its from the thousands and thousands of 24% slots.
Okay. Yet slot players get the best comps.
>That plus all the 7% edge bets, the players not playing at 100% optimum and so forth.... there's where it comes from.
True. Even at a razor thin margin there are non-optimal bets and non-optimal strategies.

>how many slot and Big 6 and keno players probably contributed to my comps.
Yet sometimes those Keno players and Big 6 players win. And they do get comps too. So its not all umpteen zillion advantage to the casino in that darned Keno room. And if the Sharpie at the Baccarat table knows his spouse is in the Keno room, he makes sure the casino knows to link the accounts so as to keep him happy.

>Don't forget that the losses from a single "whale" probably make up for all the fleas.
Whales usually get a heck of a lot of comps and often win.

>They don't give away cars at the craps tables
True. All casinos need to offer a "mix" of games so as to have the atmosphere of a casino and so as to take care of the needs of companions and have the ability to not be left behind as tastes change. Yet, even if the car is awarded by the slots department, the casino has a united bottom line. "Casinos" such as Dotty's who try to run only one cream-skimming slots department get the law after them. Burger Bars who run a cream-skimming slots department have to actually get both revenue and profits from the burgers and have only limited licenses for the slots so they have to be real Burger Bars.

So, yes. The Free Lunch and the Free Cars and Free Airline Tickets come from somewhere, probably the high house edge areas. All merchants have Loss Leaders and Strategic Planing to capture future market trends by positioning themselves now, but I dread the day when slot players all get up and wander over to a 100x craps table. Look what Steve Wynn had to do to his expensive Port Cochere. He had to turn it into some sort of Trendy Day Pool/Trendy Night Club that required booze merchandizing and DeeJays rather than Dealers.

Casinos keep talking about that lighting bill and the water in the middle of a dessert. Obviously it has not checked investors who keep pouring money into casinos in Vegas though casinos are now everywhere in the USA and seem to be cannibalizing some other casino's customers. In Florida investor groups have been jockeying for "casino licenses" even before the enabling legislation is passed.

People used to make jokes about Seattle with its Latte Shops being all over the place, soon it will be the whole USA that has a casino on every block. Already Atlantic City is offering 3 dollar craps at 10x odds only to find that Pennsylvania still undercuts them and shaves an hour off the travel time

>Am I missing something?
Maybe, but its more likely that I am.
> How can you get club points on Facebook?
Stations Casinos has a captive website WeLuvLocalsDotCom with online fun games that are linked to players club cards.
Southpoint just started an online poker room linked to its rewards card contingent on later legislation but now linked to its player cards for fun games of some sort. Silverton is the highest rated casino in Troy Feet's (Feet.us) Facebook operation known as LocalsGamingDotCom that rates locals casinos and offers slot like games reporting the players hours to the casinos so as to deliver Facebook players to various casinos. Its presently a start up venture more oriented to marketing than to gambling. (His initial listing of Roulette wheels in Vegas showed an ignorance of the fact that if a wheel has a double zero it also has a single zero, so gambling doesn't seem to be his strength, marketing is). It might best be described as a Gambling Promoter in a town that is used to Concert Promoters and Club Promoters and Coupon Promoters.

The Venetian's Ice Skating Rink starting November 21st was first announced via Facebook and the Venetian's website, not their mailings.

Quote: heather

I've wondered before about how many slot and Big 6 and keno players probably contributed to my comps. I'm don't think that I'm (usually) the one paying for them. I mean, I've been known to play through some pretty significant amounts of money at Baccarat, but I normally come out ahead even without the comps, and, like I said, when I don't, the comps usually more than make up for it.

I think this is what The Evil Empire has been all about. They were constantly providing hotel rooms but always lowering their costs. They were constantly supplying FreePlay but always varying the amounts and timing to a finely adjusted "just enough to entice that particular player".
So sure, their policies and computer programs and endless staff meetings all resulted in an ability to offer comps that didn't cost them much but had a high rate of return.

Yet it still boils down to "free" stuff has to come from somewhere.

Its true that the Free Cars are available to all who swipe their cards, yet slot players are the most numerous and so can be thought of as "paying" for the Free Car. (Paying both in numbers and in house-edge). Heck, we even know that many of those card swipes are performed by proxies who swipe the cards for everyone in their retirement home.