When 5x points isn't really 5x points

So, yesterday, a casino that my girlfriend and I were staying in had a "Mystery Point Multiplier" promotion where you swipe your player's card and receive something between 2x and 10x points.

This particular casino already is tight on cashback (0.167%) anyway, and normally do not include video poker in these types of promotions. In this case, the "Not valid on video poker" disclaimer was missing from their ads, however. They have a nice bank of full-pay machines, including a 25 cent 10/6 DDB with a progressive sitting at about $1,350 to start the day. They also had an offer a free buffet after you accumulate 5 unadjusted points (100 points = $5 cash back), so we we're going to spend some time playing regardless of whether we were earning a point multiplier.

Anyway, I checked with a guy at the cashier in the morning before the promotion started and he said that video poker play was not eligble. Oh, well. I went off to work, figuring that we'd play at least our five points when I got back and more if the progressive had not been hit. My girlfriend decided to ask someone else when I was at work and she was told that video poker was eligible. I told her to wait until the player's club opened and ask someone there since they would probably know more about the promo than the cashier. The player's club told her "no".

So, I returned after work yesterday afternoon and we swiped our cards. My girlfriend got 2x and I got 5x. So, we went to the player's club to activate our multiplyer and I asked the question again. This time, I got an affirmitive. So we now had two yeas and two nays. The only way to know for sure was to play.

So, we sat down and the progressive was still there and was $1,369 now. We were going to play on our own cards at least until we received our buffet points, so the easiest way to determine whether we were getting our point multiplier was to play at the same pace and see if we were accumulating points at different rates.

After about 10 minutes of play (we we're hitting deal and draw simulataneously so we had the same coin-in), we were able to determine that I was accumulating points about twice as fast. The probalem was that I'd played there enough to have a pretty good feel for how fast I accumulate points there and it sure didn;t seem like I was accumulating 5 times as fast. I was playing a little slowere since we were synchronizing our draws, but I would still expect to be accumulating them faster than I was.

I've tracked my play there before, I'd unless something had changed very recently, I had a pretty good baseline at 0.167%. My girlfriend should be getting about 0.33% and I should be at about 0.84%. So I tracked our play for for five full points (starting and ending on the same countdown number).

Turns out I was getting 0.36% (2.16x) and my girlfriend was getting 0.22% (1.32x). So we were getting a multiplier, but nothing close to what we should be getting and it wasn't even proportional, based on our 5/2 ratio.

I did go back this morning and the 0.167% cashback was still the same. So I was able to verify the baseline, and that my math was correct in calculating our multipliers.

I'm starting to question whether my EV expectations are really valid on other promotions, and whether I need to start doing more due-diligence and testing future promotions everywhere and not just going on faith that what I'm told I'm receiving is really what I'm getting.

Has anyone else seen these types of shennanigans? Is this a common tactic that I've just been not detecting all this time?

Quote: scoob

Has anyone else seen these types of shennanigans? Is this a common tactic that I've just been not detecting all this time?

It's very unusual to receive a partial multiplier. It's completely standard for casino employees to spew misinformation.

I think it's important to maintain a general awareness of your promotional earnings and other details. Then if anything appears suspicious, you can analyze more carefully. But you don't need to track everything to the fourth decimal place at all times.

I have seen some promotions where they say in small print"casino reserves the right to adjust the normal points rate on a daily basis".Basically they lower the base rate on the day of the promo so your 5x ends up being2x or so.Trump plaza has done this in the past.

Quote: gpac1377

It's very unusual to receive a partial multiplier. It's completely standard for casino employees to spew misinformation.

I think it's important to maintain a general awareness of your promotional earnings and other details. Then if anything appears suspicious, you can analyze more carefully. But you don't need to track everything to the fourth decimal place at all times.

Thanks to a gaffe in the poker room (you weren't supposed to have any multiplier for live poker), Harrah's St. Louis poker players used to get a partial multiplier a lot. You normally got 75c an hour there (17 Tier (and Reward) Credits/hr + 58 Bonus Reward Credits/hr), but the multiplier multiplied only the portion with the 17 Reward Credits earned. So if you had a 4X multiplier for the day, you would get 4*17 + 58 = 126 Reward Credits/hr ($1.26).

some times VP is set to 2x bonus no matter what the slots are set for.

I think Silverton does something like that-- VP is 1x, slots are 2x, so if you go there on a 5x day, you're really only getting 2.5x on slots, relative to your normal amount.