Does it matter how bad you play?
Quote: SOOPOOAnother thread discussed comps being awarded based on the concept of expected loss x some percentage. The expected loss would be number of hands per hour x average bet x house edge, I assume. But would a casino rate a poor player (someone who never hits 16s, say) at a higher rate than someone who plays perfect basic strategy? My last pai gow foray the guy to my left was what I call a 'chandelier' player. (Someone who will obviously lose all the time and thus the casino can afford the nice chandeliers). He'd always keep a flush 'to be safe', misplayed 2 pairs often, etc. If I was the casino I would give my pit boss a way to add some factor to increase his comps in the hope he would come back more often. Do casinos do this? Or is it just a x b x c?
Yes, they do, if you're a player who bets big enough to warrant more extensive scrutiny. A $25 bettor, almost certainly not. High rollers get a rather extensive dossier compiled on them, in order to more precisely calculate theo. It does make sense--some huge bettors play shockingly badly, and others play at least perfect BS (and a very few of those players will actually be counting).
I briefly knew someone who worked in surveillance whose sole job for a while was to monitor individual players to assess their skill level. He had nothing but scorn for the players he observed---"99.9% of players play the game like morons."
That's a good one!Quote: SOOPOOMy last pai gow foray the guy to my left was what I call a 'chandelier' player. (Someone who will obviously lose all the time and thus the casino can afford the nice chandeliers).
Quote: SOOPOOMy point was that the $25 dollar player should have been counted as a $75 player or so. I think your answer says that he will be counted the same as me. If I were the casino I would give my pit boss some discretion at any level to try and get a more accurate EV for the casino. (And thank you for not mentioning I used 'bad' instead of 'badly'.)
You'd probably have to watch a player carefully for several dozen hands before you got a sense of how good a BS player he is, and then calculate what his actual theo should be. For us non-black-chip betting fleas, from the casinos POV, it's better just to use some standardized average HA--say, 2%, get an estimate of the player's average bet size, and call it good. It's not worth the time to scope out just how well the green-chip bettor is playing.
Of course, this means that the low-roller can earn comps at three or four times the rate that he "should", if he plays perfect BS. So two people playing perfect BS, one with an average bet of $50 and one with an average bet of $200, might very well earn the same comps for their play because the latter player will be more heavily scrutinized.
How good you play, yes. In craps, there are prop and fire bettors and there are Don't+odds - the latter don't get rated on their stack as high as the former. In Blackjack, there are telltale signs of a strict basic player, like double A8, split 99, and signs of advanced strategy, like surrendering 14v10, on/off insurance, and others. In PGP, I have no idea, AIUI it's a game that can't even come close to even, so is more popular with tight types than APs.
At what limit a player will be looked at depends on the casino and other factors (how many other players, are they busy with a whale nearby, et cetera), but at some times, any amount that warrants comps, even $25, can do, if you are lucky/unlucky in that regard. They still have to look at you to see what you bet, and it's pretty easy to tell a bad player from a decent one by his play on just about any stiff, and it's not just the move that matters, but how it's played. For instance, I can make basic/+1/+3 moves half awake, drunk and talking on a phone, while a new player will be thinking and hesitating; the difference between automatic play and a lucky guess is very obvious to even the most casual of observers.
