Playing 75 hours in a year gets you a Pearl card which gives you free self parking. You get free self parking and free valet with a Gold card and 150 hours of play.

I actually got a Pearl card without poker just by spending/gambling enough money in the casinos and upgraded to Gold with my poker hours. I must have spent more than the number of comps I lost so I just won't spend that type of money again and I'll get my money back that way.

I sat next to an old guy recently who said he would stop tipping because if the poker room employees don't take care of him then he is not going to take care of them. Dealers probably will get tips reduced at least a little bit. Personally I won't do that but it's also easier for me because I actually spent money outside of poker rooms and I can save money by just not spending like that anymore.

Just talked about this issue for the first time in the Bellagio poker room today. Was sitting next to a guy who visits occasionally; he said he checked his comp balance today and was told he had none; just lost his entire balance of about $150 about 2 weeks ago according to the shift manager. Said manager also said there was nothing he could do about reinstating them, but did give him a $20 meal comp for today.

Anyone have insight on what you need to do to for the comps not to expire? CET points are easy -- if you earn at least one credit, then the expiry is reset to 6 months from that date. You can even do this remotely -- I managed to earn 1 credit through their WSOP facebook poker app, and that was good enough to save all my points.

If I show up and play 15 minutes at MGM poker room A, does that reset the expiry date at that poker room? All poker rooms? What if I just earn normal MGM tier credits -- will that suffice? Someone else mentioned a FIFO (first in first out) system where you have to *redeem* the points you earned within a year. Any further insight would be very helpful.

I'm not 100% certain, but if I am understanding the Bellagio shift manager correctly, there is no renewal like CET has - points will expire a year after earned for everyone.

He said they should be using the FIFO system, so your oldest points are used first, but they couldn't tell me when my next ones expiring would be. I figure I should be able to figure it out roughly on my own though, as I have records of my hours of play.

I have about $600 in comps now, so I'm planning to check my records and figure out in what time period I have played my last 300 hours; that should tell me about when I have to worry about any expiring. I am planning to start using them more regularly though, and not save them like I had been doing.

It doesn't matter if you play in the rooms. I still have comps in the rooms because I have played in the rooms several times in the last few months. And they still took away the comps I had gotten more than a year ago. This is worse than what Venetian decided to do. I didn't lose any comps there when they started expiring comps because I had played there several times.

Only way I'm aware of having comps not expire at MGM properties is to use them.


Doing those things will definitely not help you keep your older comps because I've done them. I live in Vegas and played in the rooms regularly when this happened. And I got enough tier credits to get a Pearl card without needing any poker room hours to get it.

this blows. so i expect to have my comps severely stripped. lame

In case it wasn't clear, they kill ALL your comps that are over a year old. It makes no difference if you played in the room zero times or three-hundred times in the last year.

I played in some of these rooms just days before my comps were taken away. They were still taken away.

For MGM poker comps (this Bellagio, Aria, Mirage, and any MGM owned poker room) they will now expire 1 year after being earned.

Your oldest comps are spent first when you redeem comps.

So if you played 4 hours of poker at Bellagio on 8/1/2015, then you must spend those $8 in comps by 8/1/2016 (give or take a day/week or two as no one has been able to tell me how a year is calculated in the MGM systems and how frequently a purge occurs - daily, weekly, or monthly).

If you have $96 in comps by earning $8 in poker comps (4hrs played) on the 1st of every month, and you go to get a comp voucher for $20, they will first take $8 (earned 8/1/2015), then $8 (earned 9/1/2015), and then $4 (earned 10/1/2015). After this transaction your next risk of losing comps will be losing $4 in comps on 10/1/2016 (give or take a few days/week.)

I hope that explains the current system. I'm typing on my phone so sorry for any typos. This is how it was explained to me in several rooms. Not all of the floors know all of this info and all of this was told to me by multiple sources who seemed confident in knowing the new situation.

Still angry at the lack of warning given to players. Even if they started a 2+2 thread, I would have considered this an attempt to inform their customers. Stupid MGMists! (Or is it MGMites? MGMers?)

Not everyone? I would bet that it is much closer to no one because what you are proposing to do is ****ing ******ed. Are you also going to stop tipping the cocktail waitresses? After all, as employees of MGM, don't they represent the company, too? It makes as much ****ing sense as your proposal to stop tipping the dealers.

Not only is what you're proposing to do ****ing ******ed, but you've actually even managed to propose an action that is even worse than what MGM has done to its customers.

That's quite an accomplishment. Well done

Thank you Any other ideas other than to just eat the loses?

You could still ask to get them reinstated, there is a possibility it could happen. Could also raise a stink everywhere possible, like people have about the parking charges. It would be nice to protest in particular to whoever made the decision, if anyone could figure that out for us.

Exactly. Try contacting some news organizations as well. Perhaps their consumer reporter if they have one. Could make a good story of how a big corporation is screwing the little guy. I'm sure the initial uproar when the story broke about the parking charge had a little something to do with MGM ultimately deciding not to charge locals for the remainder of the year, don't you?

I doubt that a news story will get them to back off of putting expiration dates on comps, nor should it, but it could have the effect of reinstating them temporarily and giving notice about the expiration.

Anything is better than your initial reaction of wanting to take your revenge out on the lower-level hourly employees that you encounter in the casino.

Probably something like that happend:
Somebody in accounting at one of the MGM casinos looked over some numbers and noticed something that he didn't really understand and reported it to his boss. That person then asked a casino manager why it is that way and got told that they always did it that way. Follow up question was along the line of how bad it would be to stop doing it that way and was answered with a shrug. Now the boss of the accountant sniffed the chance to save the company some money, which would present himself in a favorable light. He reports it to management and next thing we know, comps expire after one year.

IMO, there is a big difference between expiring all comps within a year, going forward, with warning, and suddenly expiring all older comps, with no warning. The first is disappointing, but understandable. The second is pretty underhanded and worth getting upset about.

I have no problem with them doing this if they gave ample warning, but the way they did it is just scummy and speaks volumes about not caring about customers. I almost spent most of my comps at Aria this past March, but didn't because I was told they didn't expire. Obviously not.

I find it odd that you still want to even play there after they treated you like this.

Agreed. If they would have just let us know ahead of time, I would have been fine with it. But to do it under the radar where even poker room managers didn't know is shady.

This is 100% true. It's how they did it that bothers me. The rule itself makes perfect sense, especially from an accounting point of view.

MGM owns about 1/2 the poker rooms on the strip and several of the main ones, specifically Aria and Bellagio. To put in full time live poker hours in LV and not play at any MGM properties, you are limiting the amount of games to choose from. Especially with higher limits, Bellagio has lots of games and Aria too.

I'm not going to punish myself further by not playing there. Remember the Venetian boycott? It didn't work because when your income depends on it, you cross the picket lines.

Yup. It's rarely some secret evil plan... just some clueless managers 3 levels removed from actually being on the floor and understanding customers. Plus, the MGM execs got to hit those PGP (Profit Growth Plan) goals, which were just increased by $100 mil. Who cares about customer satisfaction & retention? http://mgmresorts.investorroom.com/2...To-400-Million

Well there is definitely something going on with the entire M-Life reward system. I just got an email from the affiliated MyVegas Facebook game saying the properties will not be able to issue new cards for about 3 days, from July 31-Aug 2. Wonder if we'll even be earning comps at that time. I sure hope they merge all the poker comps with the main system so they can be used anywhere.

would you be still so hopeful if they said yes, they will merge but you will only get 25cents/hour and the comps expire at midnight every day?

tbh im a little salty about the whole situation. but they cant issue cards from july 31-aug 2? thats interesting...since i will be there starting july 31st! conspiracy time.

Meh poker players are the worst and complain more than any group of gamblers I've ever met. Lol at complaining that comps from ten years ago are expiring. **** you guys.

I'm pretty much joking but come on we know that poker players are net losers for the casino why pick this mountain to die on

Yep this, and it pains me to think that not only are people who are probably making more money than me allowed to keep their jobs over this, but they are probably being rewarded for doing so as well.

If we could get a new company on the strip that knows how to treat customers and is not so far in debt up they are under pressure from short-term investors to play accounting tricks like these they could become a major player in Vegas very quick.