The funny thing is, the casinos themselves claim to offer assistance to addicts- I wonder if they do so voluntarily, or if its a law? :rolleyes:
I don’t think it’s that scary. We go to Reno about 4-5 times/year, 3 nights per visit, with a budget of about $2k per trip. Sometimes we win, sometimes we lose–it doesn’t affect how well you’re comped. Our hotel gives us free* rooms occasionally (not every trip, and hardly ever on the weekends). Once or twice a year we’ll also get a certificate for cash and/or a free* meal.
*“Free” meaning over and above what we earn through comps. Really, really, free.
So it sounds like your MIL makes many more trips than we do, but is getting comped at comparable levels – so she’s probably betting less.
I don’t know. To my uneducated ear, it doesn’t sound like you’re getting comped at the level she is, based simply on what she’s saying. She’s regularly getting money ($75-$100 per day for Friday through Tuesday).
When she lived in Louisville, she was always talking about how she took people to dinner for free on the boat. (And she just calls it “the boat” which annoys me, but that’s another story.)
She has some sort of card? that she can spend at the casino for free drinks/food/whathaveyou. She has said before that there is “no way she can use” all the freebies.
I mean, I’m willing to believe she’s just delusional about how much they are actually giving her, but it doesn’t sound like the same sort of comping that, say, my parents used to get after visiting Vegas.
Whether you win or lose on a specific trip probably doesn’t affect how much you’re comped, but the fact that you set aside $8-10K per year of an entertainment budget to go to Reno and gamble probably does.
You are probably in big trouble and better have a sit down with her in the very near future. If they are sending her cash money to be redeemed on the boat in order to get her to play she either won a lot of money which presumably she would have bragged about or she is a huge loser, which she would probably be embarrassed about and keep from you. A free weekend at the hotel is about the biggest and best comp available in that area. Four day stays are very unusual unless there was something special that got canceled and the hotel would have been empty otherwise (very, very unlikely.)
It is possible your spouse knows all of the facts and is not telling you but more likely s/he is in the dark also. This is a very common scenario and you really have to get going on this. I hope those who say not to worry are right, but I am afraid they are whistling in the dark. Good luck.
Comps are based on how much and how long you play, not on whether or not you win or lose. Reno and Las Vegas can afford to be a lot more generous than Illinois, Indiana or other states where the tax burden is 5 times higher or more than Nevada. Thus it does not matter whether you win or lose but if you play a lot you are almost certainly a big loser.
Or it could be that wanting to go back to work is a good sign. Maybe she recognizes that she’s gambling too much and hopes that a job will help keep her off the boat.
I’ll bet a lot of retired folks get hooked on casinos out of boredom.
No, winning/losing doesn’t affect comps, because the payout depends on the game, not the person playing.
What does count is how much you spend and what demographic you’re in. Remember that survey you filled out to get that little customer card? All your demographic information is fed into a computer and you are assigned into marketing groups. Depending on what group(s) you fit into and how much time/money you spend in the casino, you’ll receive different offers. For example, if you tend to come on weekends, you’ll get offers for free dinners on Tuesday night. If you come twice a year in the fall and spring, you’ll receive offers to get you to come a third time. Etc. etc.
If you can do it a few times a year and it fits in your budget, no worries. It’s quite a different thing when you’re feeding off retirement savings that will never be replenished.
I left out all the comps we *earn *at our level of play, as opposed to “free stuff”. In a weekend with the $2k budget we can earn $150 in comps, easy, which can be applied to room or meals; plus we always get half-price rooms, on nights we have to pay at all.
So I think your MIL’s annual budget, spread out over 100 trips, is <= my annual budget, spread out over 5 trips.
Which is why it’s possible for a player to win reliably at it.
Card counting still works a bit. It’s just harder to get to a deck with a good count, and hard to keep it there for long. As recently as 10 years ago, a team of MIT students made a hell of a run at blackjack using teams of players. That mechanism doesn’t work any more, either, but I wouldn’t put it past some other really smart people to figure out another way to beat the casinos.
But, yeah, those are really the only two options, and I suggested them to point out how unlikely it is that granny is doing anything but paying dearly for her gambling.
I’d just like to point out that it IS possible to take advantage of bonus schemes and come out ahead. I’ve done it, earned a bit of petty cash from gambling in online casinos.
It used to be that I could go to each casino once per month, make $2,500 worth of bets. By playing Blackjack at optimum strategy with about 99.5% return I’d lose $12.50. But I’d also earn a bonus of $100, so I’d come out $87.50 ahead. I don’t do it anymore. Most of them have stopped offering the bonus, and the ones that do are no longer worth it.
It’s also possible to do the same thing playing Video Poker, though it takes a lot longer.
I’m not saying that MIL is doping this, but it is possible to come out ahead if you know what you’re doing.
Pretty much only the deuces wild with full-pay tables. Those are the only ones with an expected return for perfect strategy above 100%. I think you can get as high as 100.7 or so depending on strategy and perfect play.
Hmm… That almost sounds worth it. How much do I have to drop in the casino to win a trip to a sunken city? 
Update: I asked my husband about the rooms and he said that she’s getting (or claiming to get) the free rooms at least once a month from the casino near Louisville.
Yes, but not from the casino.
Also there are a lot of mugs who think they can play poker. If you are actually good, it makes more financial sense to bet via the Internet.
I notice that Steve Wynn spent a couple of billion building the Wynn in Las Vegas recently, and is now building a sister hotel. Meanwhile there is a massive new development (5 billion plus?) called the City Centre going up.
All this is largely financed by gamblers. If there was a smart way to beat the casinos, they wouldn’t be making so much money. There won’t be another ‘Ed Thorpe’ blackjack surprise.
Here’s my comp experience. I go to the casinos in Tunica MS about 4-6 times a year, with a gambling budget around $500 to $800 each time. I play table games, not slots. I regularly get mid week room offers from the lower end casinos (1 or 2 nights), and occasionaly from the mid-level ones. The fanciest places have nothing for me. Ususally get free buffets, rarely a steak dinner or a show. There is some fluctuation due to seasons and local competition. I have never got a weekend room comp.
A couple times I’ve gotten lucky and left town with maybe $1000, and the next visit they’re more generous (nicer suite, etc.) but not really much more.
Your soul and firstborn. 
Sorry, I was too lazy to look up where that place is… Bahamas? Something like that. Oh Ok. I looked it up. Yes. Bahamas. Atlantis
As another data point, the wife and I haven’t paid for a room in Las Vegas in close to 3 years. We always get a comped roomm weekend or midweek, free meals, free drinks (in addition to the usual drink service), and we never have a gambling budget over $1200 for a trip. The key is to find a mid-level hotel and join the Player’s Club. With a little play, you will get more offers than you can possibly use. I generally play table games for the minimum bet, and the wife hits the slots. Just because they go often doen’t necessarlity mean they are losing. It’s probable, but not a sure thing.
When people in this thread say they have a gambling budget of $x, what does that mean?
Does that mean you lose that much on the trip ie you stop when you’ve lost $x? Or does it mean you start with $x as your stake, and you play with that till it’s gone or it’s time to go home? Or something else?
As the regularity of attendance increases, the probability of losing approaches 1.