I don’t want no scrub
On our honeymoon in Reno, I was sick as a fucking dog, and spent about 80% of my time in the room. My wife spent a lot of time with me, but played a lot of solo blackjack at $5.00 tables - over 3 or 4 days, like 20 hours+. Through conversation, her sad story (wife forced to gamble alone on honeymoon) became known to the pit boss, who comped us a couple of buffets and credit for one of our room nights. Not sure what hotel. though.
The sucker is the one who intends on leaving a casino with money. If I’m going to gamble anyway, the comps will keep me at the same hotel.
That was my experience at Mohegan Sun Casino many moons ago, I presume they still use it. Sort of levels the comp playing field and takes the guess work out, but does take out the human element. All the rewards points I got I took as free gas for the trip home, as well as many others were doing likewise.
Oh, I forgot to mention: when Daddy would WIN at Keno, he would tip the Keno writers, and he was always generous with the cocktail girls.
Like I said, he was just a very nice, very sweet gentleman.
~VOW
I knew there was something funny and weird about that name. I looked it up.
Why would they name a casino after what keeps your dick hard?
The retired Pit Boss is here.
In general, casinos will comp about 40% of a player’s “Theoretical” – that is the amount a player is mathematically expected to lose for his level of play.
The theoretical loss of slot players who insert a card into the machine can be tracked to the penny by the software.
Table game players (BJ, Craps, Roulette) are rated by the floor supervisor for their time played, average bet, and amount of win/loss. While the formula used to get to it may be much more complicated, a good rule of thumb for table game players is that they are expected to lose at the rate of one average bet per hour … so a person playing $10/hand will lose, on average, $10/hour and casinos, on average, will be willing to comp those $10/hand players at the rate of about $4/hour.
The win/loss isn’t much of a factor unless it is an unusually large amount; the boss wants somebody who won a lot of money to stick around, and might want someone who lost a large amount to come back in the future, so bosses have some discretion with these players, whereas the bean counters tend to rule with their 40% of theoretical in most cases. Bosses who write more comps than that are likely to be called on the carpet to explain their decisions.
Many casinos comp players of the slow-moving game of PaiGow Poker at about half the rate of other table games.
Poker players get much less, typically just a buffet for a few hours of play. Poker players don’t lose money to the house.
Notice that a blackjack or craps player betting $100 a hand will, in the long run, lose at the rate of $100 per hour. A person playing the quarter slot machines, feeding in the typical five coins per play, will lose at the rate of $80 to $90 per hour.
Tunica is a town in Mississippi
Back in the early nineties I had a colleague who went to Atlantic City on a regular basis and, according to him, he was classified as a “high roller”. He explained to me (I can’t attest to the veracity of this) that there was basically a “star” system for high rollers (One star for the lowest level, five stars for “whales”). He played roulette and he played just enough to insure the one star level. He also played a “system” which appeared to me to be designed to lose as little as possible (a lot of hedging on his bets). It seemed to me that his status as a “high roller” was far more important to him than how much he won. He was kind of a pathetic guy, but he would talk very proudly about how the pit bosses and dealers all knew his name and treated him with respect (he did not get much at work). He also seemed to know exactly what was due him in comps and never had to ask.
Thanks for the post. How do they track how much I am betting at Blackjack when the pit boss only looks at our table about once every half an hour? Is someone watching the table cameras and inputting bets or something? I did have a membership card but when I’m playing fast paced blackjack I wonder how they are tracking my betting…
Mostly it’s just a matter of experience – it’s what they do for a living.
Most players rarely bet anything other than the table minimum; that makes it very easy to gauge the average bet for the bulk of players.
Players who vary their bets a lot and/or widely will attract the bosses attention because that is how card counters play. For those players the boss just makes an estimate of their average bet. While the game seems fast paced and confusing to you, the floorperson has seen it all hundreds of thousands of times and it only takes a quick glance to get the information he needs.
Also, each time a dealer makes change for a player he has to call it out and be acknowledged by the floor supervisor, who will look to see that the change is correct. There are many things that call for a quick look at the table and anything that is different is likely to be noticed. You are being looked at more often than you realize – and an experienced floor supervisor will see things in a two second glance that a typical player would never notice even if he was paying attention. Casino dealers follow very strict procedures specifically for this purpose; everybody deals, handles cards and money, etc., in exactly the same way, so anything that is different jumps right out at an experienced observer.
Typically, a player sits down and puts some money on the table. The dealer spreads the money in a certain way, stacks the chips in a certain way, then calls out to the floorman “Change $XXX.” The boss looks, says “Ok.” and comes over to get the players card. He will enter the amount of buy-in and the initial bet. Then, each time he looks back at that table he will see if the player is changing bets and will adjust the average if needed. When the player leaves, he enters the win or loss and the time played on the rating card or computer. If the player left with chips, he will also count the chips remaining in the rack and adjust his “hit sheet”, a paper on which he keeps the total of chips on each game for which he is responsible.
There are people who try to beat the system, claiming they were betting more or playing longer than their rating says; it’s not hard to spot them. Some (incorrectly – remember the ‘theoretical’) think they will get less in comps if they win, so they try to hide the chips when they are winning – that’s when the hit sheet comes in handy – you find a bunch of chips missing and generally the dealer will confirm “Yeah, the guy in the red shirt was rat-holing.”
Mistakes sometimes happen but all in all the casinos do a pretty good of estimating a person’s play – it’s what they do for a living.
@ethelbert That’s why I mentioned the comparative losses of a $100 BJ player and a quarter slot player; although they lose money at nearly the same rate, the BJ player will be treated like a high roller and the slot player will be just background noise. And BTW, roulette system players are the most consistent losers in the joint. The house advantage is so big that the game grinds them down too quickly for them to have any chance to get lucky over the course of 8 or 10 hours of play. Casinos really will send a limo for roulette system players.
I think Daddy was embellishing his results quite a bit to his little girl. Keno is not a good bet for the player. Live Keno has a house edge over 20%, which is huge. More typically he would come back with nothing.
He knew the odds. He enjoyed “way tickets” and he made more money than he lost. Over the years, he had many tax returns that included forms for gambling income. We used to tease him that he should change his occupation from “retired” to “gambler.”
If he WASN’T winning, he must have been robbing banks.
~VOW
There’s another:
4) Be the organizer of an event that involves a lot of people (convention, seminar, annual meeting) that you might decide to hold at the casino hotel.
That will get you way more comps.
Winning at long-term keno play is the same as winning at long-term lotto play - impossible.
I don’t know what was going on but I assure you that he wasn’t winning at keno. It is literally impossible to regularly win at keno.
You are more than welcome to have your own opinion, but I know what I know.
And I would appreciate it if you’d keep your opinion to yourself, I don’t like to have my father accused of lying or anything so unseemly.
He won a LOT at Bingo, too. I suppose you’re going to tell me he lied about that as well?
You may THINK you understand gambling, but you didn’t know Daddy.
~VOW
We don’t know your father but many of us do know gambling statistics well enough to say for certain that no one wins over the long-term playing those types of games. That isn’t an opinion. It is a mathematical certainty.
These types of stories are fairly common. Either the person in question was much better than you think about highlighting their wins and minimizing their losses or the gambling was just a cover for another money-making activity. Those are the only realistic explanations.
My department…Valet Driving…is a Service department. Only my general manager or asst. GM is authorized to issue comps due to substantially less-than-acceptible service.
For example, we strive to bring out our valet-ed vehicles in 5 minutes or less…if a customer waits for something like 15 minutes, they don’t have to pay for parking.
He has also comped dinners and room nights for…ah…extreme conditions.:dubious:
He must also deliver a report to the House to justify the comp; rejected submissions are covered by the operating budget.
On a similar note, my grandma once won $2000 in nickels playing nickel slots. She “insisted that she keep the nickels” as that was her game of choice, we heard about the nickel win for years and years- even after she was flat broke. How anyone could go through 40,000 nickels is beyond my comprehension… oh wait, that’s 440 lbs of nickels that was being carried about by an 80 year old woman. Yep, not much truth to this gambling story.
However, one thing my grandma never did talk about was being comped anything while playing nickel slots- so stay away from that section of the casino.