"Escape to Total Rewards" Contest - Rigged?

"Rigged" may be too strong a word, but the current Total Rewards contest seems to be designed to favor early players to the exclusion of later players. Not only do players not have an equal chance of winning, but anyone playing after the first ten days of a ninety day contest is barred from winning most of the prizes.

To promote their Total Rewards revamp, Caesars Ent. is running a contest called "Escape to Total Rewards." There are three components - a random drawing sweepstakes, a randomized instant win generator, and a virtual piece collection game. It's the third of these that is interesting. The officials rules are here:but I'll summarize how I believe the game works:

Each player starts with a grid made up of six categories; each category has eight "game pieces." The first seven pieces in each category are generic, and the player has an equally likely chance of getting any one of them. The last piece in each category is "unique," and is limited in the total number across all players. If a player completes a category (gets the seven generic pieces and the limited unique piece), he wins varying amounts based on the category. After submitting codes collected from Facebook and the like, the player may play the game 11 times a day. Each play, a script randomly returns a game piece for the player's board, and pieces accumulate for the entirety of the contest. Essentially for one play, the game randomly chooses one of the six categories and gives the player the piece for the next available spot on his board for that category, up until the last piece. If the player needs only the last piece of a category, the game first checks if there are any of that piece "left," or if the predetermined number of players have already claimed that piece. If all instances of that particular piece are claimed, the player gets an extra entry to the sweepstakes instead. (If there are pieces "left," the game then makes a determination subject to a range of probabilities as to whether the player gets the "unique" piece, but the "rarest" piece is still available 1 in 6 times.)

The least valuable prizes can be won by thousands of players, but the most limited category had only 116 of its unique pieces available. The contest is designed to run from March 1 until the end of May, but looking at the published list of "Recent Winners," all but the two most available categories have already been exhausted. This strikes me as very peculiar for such a promotion - the major prizes are already gone to those who started playing as soon as the contest started, and there's little reason for anyone just now finding out about the contest to participate (assuming they read and understand the rules). It'd be like if McDonald's released all the "Boardwalks" and "rare" pieces in the first week of their summer-long Monopoly game, and then published that fact.

Does anyone interpret the rules differently? Has anyone here played the game? Am I missing something? Or, if I'm right, why design a contest like this? I suppose it doesn't matter to Caesars whether the early players win all the prizes, but promotions like this are typically random, and this game makes such an effort to appear random that I wonder why a gaming organization would design and run such a beatable game.

I guess I'm not seeing why this is unfair. Many contests have limits on the number of tickets sold or earned. Wouldn't that clearly favor the people who got in early if they ended up running out?

The Palms regularly runs drawings that you can enter in every day for the entire month. The people that go there starting on the first have an advantage over those that just start going on the 25th. Would you also call that contest rigged?



McDonalds is exactly the same to me. If they have enough pieces to last 20 days, it is possible that all boardwalks are found within the first 2 days. McDonalds doesn't gaurantee that a boardwalk piece will still be available on the last day of the promotion, when they are gone, they are gone. Why can't CET be doing the same thing? The odds of getting X piece is a certain percentage. How fast they are won depends on how many people play. How fast boardwalk pieces are found depends on the number of people buying stuff at McDonalds. These seem exactly the same to me.

Quote: soulhunt79

The Palms regularly runs drawings that you can enter in every day for the entire month. The people that go there starting on the first have an advantage over those that just start going on the 25th.

This is different - the early players don't just have an advantage; the first couple hundred serious players win the prizes before the other players even enter the contest.

Quote: soulhunt79

McDonalds is exactly the same to me. If they have enough pieces to last 20 days, it is possible that all boardwalks are found within the first 2 days. McDonalds doesn't gaurantee that a boardwalk piece will still be available on the last day of the promotion, when they are gone, they are gone.

I would be willing to bet that McDonald's distributes the rare pieces throughout the promotion period. It's not as though they send out all the pieces on Day 1; game pieces are printed and shipped every day, and I would assume that among each day's shipment is a relatively consistent number of rare pieces.

The other key distinction is that the odds of getting a rare McD's piece are less than one in a million. The rarest piece in this game is 1:36 (once all generic pieces have been collected). As a player can play eleven times each day, that's not a "rare" piece at all.

One couldn't expect to win Monopoly by showing up at McDonald's on Day 1 and buying a million hamburgers. It's too costly, and you're still statistically unlikely to win anything. This game costs nothing to play, and the odds of success (for the early players) are rather high.

Maybe CET knows all of this and doesn't care. I don't know that it affects the bottom line one way or another who actually wins any prizes. This setup just strikes me as peculiar, and I'm curious to know why this game is so different from otherwise similar contests.

They actually ran a similar contest during their last promotion of "Great Race to Rewards." The difference was the MAIN promotion was accessible to everybody: Visit 6 unique TR Destinations and receive 60,000 RCS. If you visited at least 3, you got something. It took a while to get accounts credited (see a previous thread) but they did honor the promotion. There are also two casino promotions going on with this during March, one was last weekend, the other at the end of the month. It appears as they are giving quite a few trips away in the casinos.

I started trying to achieve the higher prizes during the Great Race and started this one as well. It was obvious to me that the last piece was only attainable by constant devotion to the computer and frankly, it wasn't worth it to me. I'm sure they have it set up for higher Diamond players and Seven Stars to win, so if you want to call that rigged, then I guess it might be.

I actually won a trip to Vegas during the Price is Right promotion they ran about 6 years ago. The main event was a special showing of the Price is Right Live, with Todd Newton. Instead of picking players based off pricing games, they chose them "at random" before the show even began. Most of the main pricing games had a good mix of players, but the Showcase Showdown was between two players, one from Joliet, IL, the other from Tahoe. Both were CLEARLY high rollers, and the guaranteed prize to one of them was paid trips to 2 casinos and a trip to Paris. Yeah, I'm sure THAT was a random selection.

Ironically, the Million Dollar spin was chosen by a random drawing done on the stage. The first guy chosen was the one who lost the Showcase Showdown, who subsequently won the Million dollars. While I believe he wasn't random for the first game, it was obvious the second time it was.

I have actually won 3 prizes on this contest already, $10, $25, and $50 in RC's.

I have also won three prizes. 25, 10, 75 in RCs

I just needed three more game pieces to fill up my game board for the free trip....maybe next month since now the only icon I win on the daily spin is the TR logo.

Quote: JamieV

I just needed three more game pieces to fill up my game board for the free trip....maybe next month

That's the point of my query: I don't believe you will ever be able to get those last pieces, except for the most common and still available "Dining" and "Entertainment" categories. I've gone over the rules quite a bit, and I don't see anything to indicate that you'll get another chance "next month" either.

I belive your right. In that case...you can still earn up to a total of 300 RCs for typing in silly codes. Not too shabby eh?

Thus far I've only got a $10 RC winner. I started late but have been pretty faithful about playing every day.

Total Rewards just posted this on Facebook:

Quote:

Hello Escape Players!

Thanks for all your feedback. We recently uncovered some fraudulent activity that affected the game (Rest assured that your Total Rewards accounts were NOT affected).

We're happy to report that we've resolved the issues, AND the good news is that between now and the end of the promotion, we'll be adding back game pieces and instant win prizes from those fraudulent players to ensure that our most loyal players have a fair chance of winning.

There is still over a million dollars in prizing still to be awarded so GOOD LUCK!

Congratulations to Clifford O. from Reno who completed his full board this week.

Thank you for your patience and thank you for playing!

Sounds like someone set up a ton of accounts to eat up all the rare game pieces.

There's more discussion about this on the Slickdeals thread. But there were days where you got nothing but rocks and there was a day when almost anyone could get at least one board filled.

Quote: JamieV

I have also won three prizes. 25, 10, 75 in RCs

I just needed three more game pieces to fill up my game board for the free trip....maybe next month since now the only icon I win on the daily spin is the TR logo.

I started only a few days into the contest, got 7 of the 8 pieces on each section, and then won the $10 in RCs. Every single spin since then has only been another entry into the Sweepstakes drawing. I was playing 11 entries a day faithfully, but got bored of just getting more entries only and nothing else. I guess now that I know it's possible to win more than one prize, I'll keep trying.

I've won dining, hotels, and the Macy's and Home Depot redemption codes. The most I'm expecting is to fill the entertainment category and get a Best Buy redemption code. That and almost 400 sweepstakes entries.

I completed the 'Entertainment' line today for a $20 Reward Credit prize. Carnival Buffet here I come! :)

Toes:

re: "Oh Gravity, thou art a heartless bitch!" - Dr. Sheldon Lee Cooper

Just watched that one the other day. The Mrs. thinks this is the
funniest show EVER, I mean Real LAUGH OUT LOUD funny.

I think it's a good show, but my goodness...

We've been watching the DVD of the 1st Season.

Quote: calwatch

I've won dining, hotels, and the Macy's and Home Depot redemption codes. The most I'm expecting is to fill the entertainment category and get a Best Buy redemption code. That and almost 400 sweepstakes entries.

Yeah I got the Macy's one too and just bought a golf shirt.

IF this is supposed to get you to try and use Macy's again
in the future, it is going to do just the opposite for me.

- World's slowest website

- $ 9.95 shipping for 1 golf shirt. SERIOUSLY ?

Conclusion:

Macy's on-line sux.

I filled the game board today. I win either $1000 in cash or a $3500 trip package.

Caesars Total Rewards isn't bad if you're just trying for just a few free rooms. However, I do NOT recommend putting any money on deposit with them, considering their debt load, and their history with big players. If you play and win, then cash out your chips fast. Do NOT leave money on deposit with them as I feel that it is not safe.

MGM/Mirage, I believe, has a better comp program, and it's safer to leave money on deposit with their casinos. I also like the Sands group.

-Keyser

you can use the macys gift code to order a physical 15 dollar gift card and they will ship it to you for free. Then you can just take it in to your local macys or give it away. No 10 dollar shipping charge.

Quote: fredericky

you can use the macys gift code to order a physical 15 dollar gift card and they will ship it to you for free. Then you can just take it in to your local macys or give it away. No 10 dollar shipping charge.

Thanks, I'll try that - - the Mrs got one too so if this works
you just saved her $ 10.

Quote: edvosik

I filled the game board today. I win either $1000 in cash or a $3500 trip package.

Very cool. How many entries to the sweepstakes
do you have. That would give me an idea how
long you have been playing the game, which is
what I am curious about.

Thanks...

That is awesome. I am three game board pieces away from filling the board but I don't think it will happen.

Quote: JohnnyQ

Very cool. How many entries to the sweepstakes
do you have. That would give me an idea how
long you have been playing the game, which is
what I am curious about.

Thanks...

I've got 616 entries. Its easy to play 11 times a day.

Once I filled up the first column and got my 10 RC's I have only gotten sweepstakes entried for the last three weeks.