I will reply to other posts after my red bull. I need lots of energy to talk around here.
Yeah, a whale is someone who is well-funded and recklessly throws around money. Casinos love such people. And so do certain gamblers. Like texas holdem players. We love guys (and it’s usually guys) who buy in with a big fat stack of chips, and proceed to make big bets with almost any two cards.
Casinos get a big ROI by giving away free or reduced-rate hotel rooms to whales. The money they blow will make up for the room rates (lack there of). And not just whales. Anyone who gives the casino some action. Yep, casinos outside of Vegas tend to be VERY generous with room comps. And those little casinos out in the middle of nowhere in rural areas? Even more so.
And racking up points in certain casinos isn’t that difficult. You just need to gamble higher bets for a long period of time. And the bets don’t even have to be super high. Maybe $3 or more. Pick a high payout machine with low volatility and you can stretch your money for quite a while. 9/6 Jacks or Better video poker is one example. 9/6 JOB is 99.54% payback with perfect strategy. They don’t give back large amounts of freeplay (coupons with free money!) with video poker like they used to, but many casinos are still pretty generous with the room comps.
This board is sex-positive, but we’re also trying to cut down on misogyny and “boy’s locker room” type comments. This is the SDMB, not Penthouse Forums. Post appropriately.
Save the masturbation comments for a thread that is actually about masturbation, and it’s probably best to drop the “I still want to get pv$$y” type comments altogether.
If you have further comments or questions about the rules and moderation here, try posting in ATMB or contact the moderators. Do not argue with moderation within the thread itself.
I’d venture the guess that the tolerance concerning sex-messages depends on how well they fit the topic
"Help me, I am desperate, I never had sex in my life" (one might expect sex-related posts)
vs.
“I’m so sad, my disabillity ridden father is dying b/c of flesh-eating-bacteria in his brain” (here, not so much)
so, … not tooo complicated, really…
Sports betting is slower, but is designed to
- Encourage larger bets and multiple bets at once, and
- Encourage people to erroneously think they have the edge.
Slot machines are aimed at the cheap working class gambler, to get their money $20 at a time.
Table games are aimed at higher end gamblers, from the upper middle class to the very, very rich whales.
Sports gambling is designed to strip men, especially young men, of their money.
Casinos have poker to pull in people who otherwise may not come to a casino.
Every form of gambling they offer has a target audience.
It is pretty fascinating from the inside view. I worked mainly on slots and promotions (a.k.a. spam) but my company was very open about who they would market and “cross market” to, and which games - internally. They were extremely open about finances, again internally.
There is plentry of math involved, we had at least two actuaries, and we did not even make the games. They were build by a company called Microgaming, now one of the biggest “online gaming”/gambling providers in the world. Microgaming set the odds and got their cut. We just hosted their games and promoted our casino.
And yes, granular marketing for specific games for specific customers. Pretty ruthlessly.
Although, there is some nepotism in the casino world so even though we were “independent” we were owned, via a very opaque set of tax haven parent companies by the biggest online casino owners. Our game supplier, Microgaming was also owned by the same people, also via obscure tax-haven based companies.
That whole post and especially this is super interesting. If it’s not too much trouble, I’d love to learn more about all of this and how people are targeted and manipulated. I totally understand if you can’t share.
It really is no different from “big data”; but before there was a term for it. And before there were the new(ish) No-SQL databases, we used SQL Server which tends to be slow for this type of multi-join data.
We had data processing jobs churning through multi-line SQL stored procedures - that statement alone brings a frisson of fear to my skin, SQL is hard to debug, and when you have several hundred lines of code, a nightmare.
We collected huge amounts of meta data, eg location, time/date most likely to play, type of game (high/low stakes) per time of month… you name it, we knew it.
So we knew player X was most likely an elderly woman in Suffolk, UK, and played bingo, with occasionally slot games. Mostly Thursday evenings. She got mostly bingo marketing material but always a little slot game adverts. On Wednesday evening and Thursday midday.
Slots are where casinos make the most money, so table games, roulette etc are supported but we wanted people on the slots.
So if, say, a regular roulette player played a slot, we would notice, and comp them a few hundred dollars. Send them some promo material for that particular slot. You can’t cash out promo money, you can only cash out winnings, so it was effectively just hooking the addiction, and redirecting it to a more profitable source.
As I mentioned upthread I played some poker over twenty years ago. Comps for poker only players sucked because we didn’t make them much money. I was lucky to get a room for 30% off. A couple of hotels had large poker rooms but most had just a few tables if they had them at all. They did because a lot of them had slot or table playing spouses or friends so they needed a few tables to get that crowd.
One of the guys I worked with told me that he could (in retrospect) place to the day when he became addicted to gambling. As he was walking out of the casino, and realized that the place he really wanted to be was at the table, playing poker.
Separately, I’ve read that is typical. People gamble, and are not addicted, and then at some point for some people, a switch happens, and they are addicted. There doesn’t seem to be any known way to predict which gamblers will switch to addiction.
Also different demographics tend to get addicted to different games making it even more difficult to study.
That I ate White Castle? Or paid for my white castles with change?
Why isn’t it sustainable? I know a few veteran professional gamblers who has been living in comped rooms since the early 2000s. I don’t have any kids and probably won’t have them. So no need to “leave my house behind” after I die. Building equity? There are several ways to build equity, owning a house is just one of them.
Plan B? Moving in with three roommates. If I’m considering serious relationships with women. Some women don’t dig dudes who live in hotels eventhough those rooms and suites might be much nicer and cheaper than their places. And it’s ONLY for the women. Otherwise, I don’t care. I don’t NEED a house to be happy. I just want a roof over my head.
And, hot take. People should not get houses unless they can afford them. I’m not just talking about the price tag. But having enough money for savings, kids’ education, money for home improvement/repairs, etc. Not living paycheck to paycheck. Adults needing to own a house to be considered adults is an outdated social norm that was created back when the economy was much more stable.
Here’s some info on Ainsworth must-hit-by progressives with…MATH
Also…
Cowboy Slots has several videos about must-hit-bys. Particularly the Ainsworth ones. He works in the industry and is a slot machine technician. If he is putting out any misinformation, someone in the industry probably would be happy to call him out.
White Castle is the remedial school of fast food; it is where ground meat goes when it can’t even make the grade for Sonic. White Castle is a group home for hamburgers whose growth was stunted by chain-smoking pack after pack of unfiltered Camels. White Castle looks up to Carls Jr as what it wants to be when it grows up. White Castle operates on the desperate belief in ‘Fun Size’ as an irresistible advertising ploy and the culinary thesis that if it can’t taste good it should at least be greasy and smell like it just came out of a fat man’s armpit. White Castle is to gustatory joy what the Ford Maverick was to ‘Sixties muscle cars.
White Castle is the punchline to every sad shaggy dog story.
Stranger
So do Sonic smashers. (Good, good, good!)
It may be considered a mid-priced meal, at this time, tho’
Thank you for remarking on my post, why you don’t wanna buy or live in a house.
What you gonna do when the love bug bites? No, really. I’m asking because…well, I"m nosy and wanna know. 
What a delightful gem of a post to find in an unexpected place. 
Thanks for the hearty guffaws!
Like finding a tin of Beluga caviar on the canned tuna shelf at the Piggly Wiggly.
It’s all part of the service.
Stranger
Its Friday. Did you spend 2,000?