Thats a good day to do all the gambling you can muster. Those high rollers win car and probably still out behind

I got an e-mail from Isle casinos (I visit the Isle in Pompano Beach....an El Dorado property) about linking my Caesar Rewards accounts with El Dorado and.....it worked!

I was able to upgrade my status at Tropicana in AC and upgraded my status at the Isle.

Check it out.

Most Isle properties have now extended the tier levels till Dec 31st.
So for those who are at a higher level but wont make it this year it "might" be worth waiting till Jan 2021 to link the card to your Diamond/Seven Stars card.

I mentioned recently how the comp offers tend to work, but I had some examples in the mail that might make it more obvious. So, in both cases you can see that you get a free thing for showing up (a bicycle in vegas, a TV in laughlin) and then you can play toward more (two bicycles/scooter/harley or nicer tvs).

It's a tad off-topic because really your status as Diamond/whatever isn't what matters but your ADT (and if anyone is interested I don't mind going into how to get that number inflated, but it isn't rocket science). But, there was some interest when I posted before and the world is still a bit on hold with COVID so I figured the slight tangent isn't a huge problem.

Not a problem at all; I'm finding this info really useful. Actually just stopped by a CET property and put in an hour of $600 bets at BJ, just to see what offers that brings. My concern is that my account may be flagged due to milking 7 Stars for years by putting in the minimum play on full-pay VP and coming out a good bit ahead with the mailers. But we'll see.

Do you concentrate your play at CP itself, or other CET properties? I was wondering which of them had the best BJ rules (S17, DAS, surrender).

Yes and no.
In Vegas, now, I try to focus my play at Caesars (and that is where my host is), but I've stayed at every property except Harrahs at one point or another. However, the more concentrated my play has been, the better offers I've had.

All else being equal, you naturally want to play at the places with the best rules. S17, DAS, RSA, late surrender and obviously 3:2. Interestingly, not all CET properties, even in Vegas have this. Ballys is the least expensive min bet to get these rules (50) and Caesars is the most expensive (200). Cromwell and Flamingo also have good rules.

If you have to lose a rule in a shoe game, losing RSA is actually better than losing S17 (eg. Rio is S17, DAS, Surrender, no RSA); Harrahs also has this but it's 8-deck instead of 6 which makes a measurable difference on this rule).


But, I also play outside of Vegas. I'm in SoCal, so I play at Harrahs So Cal, Laughlin, and Tahoe, none of which have all of the good rules, but their promotions are sometimes much better. The good thing about these places is that you can be an important player to them for much less money. At Caesars Palace you can literally have a guy next to you betting 5k a hand. Just being a black chip player at the other casinos makes you one of their top players and it means that you can get added incentives (Eg. a folio for your room that is spent BEFORE reward credits).

Caesars always claims that concentrating your play doesn't help, but the anecdotal experience of myself and anyone I've ever talked to is the opposite. You WILL get offers from where you play and the more you concentrate your play there, the better offers you get.
But, depending on your goals, there might be other things that matter. For example, if I take my girlfriend (who doesn't gamble) with me, she's going to like Tahoe a lot better than Vegas. Airfare + Suite + Tahoe environment might be positive Life EV for me compared to a Augustus Room + Better rules in Vegas.

Lastly, I should mention Free Play because ALL IS NOT CREATED EQUAL. $100 in Free play in Vegas is more valuable than say $130 Promo chips in SoCal because of the way they do it. In vegas, it's play till you lose, so $100 free play is worth almost $100. But, promo chips (like soCal) are not. If you win, then they'll pay the $130, but they'll take the promo chips. So $130 in soCal promo chips is worth less than $65. It might seem like a small thing, but if your goal is to take advantage of all that Caesars is offering, you don't want to misevaluate the worth of various offers.

If you don't get the promo chips back when you win, shouldn't you just bet them on a long shot? It seems like they'd be worth much closer to face value in that case.

They would be, yes. But often they are restricted to ~even money bets.

Even money bets (although blackjacks still pay 3:2).

Alright, I have some time, so let me share some thoughts on tier credits, reward credits, comps, etc.

First, presumably everyone in this thread thinks Diamond has some value outside of comps that come from play, hence its existence. Assuming you want to play to get there (there are credit card options or FC options), there are much more efficient and inefficient ways to get there.

Example, in March this year Laughlin had a 10x tier credit few days. A person could have gone and earned 1400 tier credits and had diamond in a day. In June, Caesars had a 5x tier credit promotion and so you could earn 2500 TC and get diamond in a day.

Speaking of 2500 TC, that is the magic number at which you are most efficiently earning bonus TC. There is a bonus at 500 and 1000 but those are significantly worse. There's also a bonus at 5000 but it is no better than 2500. So, if you are trying to efficiently take advantage of bonus credits, that is the number you want to shoot for.
Compare two scenarios:
Earn 500 in each of 5 consecutive days: Total 3125 TC
Earn 2500 in one day: Total 7500 TC

For the exact same 'coin in' you are getting way more than twice the TC. (There are ADT benefits to playing this way as well, but for now I'm just focusing on the efficiency of bonuses).

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Most comps, though, are based on ADT, not on your status at the casino. So, getting this ADT as high as possible is what matters if you're trying to comp hustle. The obvious point is to concentrate your play as much as possible. Having zero days can really hurt you. But, if you're going to be at a casino 5 days, it really doesn't matter whether you do all of that play on one day or all of that play spread out. They're taking all of your play and dividing by the days. So, aside from not having zero days or avoiding using your card when Caesars doesn't know you're there, there's not many tips I can give here.

100% of these tips hinge on the fact that people, unlike machines, are not perfect. A video poker machine will always calculate your ADT correctly if your card is in and it reads it. But, a pit boss cannot do that. They have to do some guessing, estimating, rounding, etc. And, while this can sometimes hurt you, it can often help.

While ADT should NOT care about buyin amounts and CET denies that this impacts your rating, anecdotal evidence from a number of people suggests that even if you're going to bet $100/hand, buying in for $10k is better than buying in for $1k.

First obvious tip:
The slower the game, the BETTER for a non-advantage player. Since we're talking about comp hustling, I'm going to focus on value from comps, not value from an edge you can get in a game.
So, this shows up in a few different ways. Hand shuffling over machines helps more than you'd think. Hand shuffles can take 8-12 minutes per hour depending on how many shoes you play and how fast the dealer is. This is a big difference over a machine that might take about 30 seconds to change out a shoe.

More important than that, though, is the number of hands per hour you're getting. This has a number of factors: Dealer speed, how much dealer and players are talking, number of other players, speed at which other players are playing.
A fast player and dealer can hit 240 hands/hour while a full table of people drinking and partying can be sub-60.
Consider a .28% edge for the casino and $100 bet. The difference between playing fast heads up and playing normal with a full table can be giving the casino an extra $50 per hour in EV. And, what do you get for this EV? Your ADT will be approximately the same. Pit bosses can take note of the speed of play, but again, most of the time it's not what they are focused on. Generally speaking, you're giving up more EV than you're being rated for when playing fast and heads up and giving up less EV than you're being rated for when you play slow at a full table.

Beyond the number of other players, which will fluctuate, the actual dealer you're playing with can make a huge difference. Some dealers are twice as fast as another and that means you're giving up 2x the EV for no benefit. If you took a couple minutes before you started playing and found a slower dealer, you'd benefit. Then, within the game, there is a big difference between a dealer focusing exclusively on pumping out as many cards as possible versus a dealer who is trying to deal while telling you about her favorite restaurant. As an added bonus, distracted dealers make more mistakes. One edge that even non-counters / non-hole-carders can obtain is by NOT making mistakes yourself WHILE catching mistakes that dealers make. Dealers are NOT perfect, particularly when they're tired at the end of their shift. If they overpay you or pay you on a push, literally one bet can be worth MULTIPLE HOURS worth of EV.

Finally, pit bosses don't have the time or energy to track you every single time you step in or out. So, if you randomly spread to 2 hands rarely, you're probably not getting credit for it. Conversely, if you sit out a few hands an hour to make a call, go to the bathroom, 'feeling unlucky' etc., then it never gets tracked, but you're saving EV while your theo is still increasing.

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Above are ways you can play fewer hands but get rated the same. The second way to inflate your theo is for you to get rated for higher bets. If pit bosses are unsure of your average bet, they'll often ask the dealer, but a lot of times they just use their own eyes and so if you're cognizant of when a pit is watching versus when she is distracted, you can dramatically alter your bets. If the pit sees you playing 2 hands of $200 and you're really playing 1 hand of $100 your theo is going to be 4 times higher than your EV warrants.
Similar, pit bosses usually have a recency bias. This is important for long sessions. IF you play for 4 hours and your first 3 hours are betting $100/hand but your last hour is spent at $400 a hand, there's an extremely good chance you get rated for 400 or at least 300, when in reality your average bet was $175. This actually works for counters and recreational gamblers who use any sort of progressive betting. End when your bet is at the maximum. This is the very last thing that a pit has to go on before entering your play and it will rate disproportionately in her mind. This can be particularly effective if you end your play when the breaker is at the table. If the dealer who has the table sees you bet 100 for 3 hours, but the breaker is there for 20 minutes and sees you bet 400 the whole time, the breaker is more likely to tell the pit that your average bet was $400.

Just like dealer selection matters, pit selection matters too. If you play enough, it benefits you to start learning which pit bosses rate you more than you deserve and which rate you worse. At a strip casino, I can literally get 3x more credits by simply choosing the table with a friendly pit versus another table with a stingy pit. That's a huge difference but you'll only be able to exploit if you keep track of your play, credits received, and pit issuing them.

Finally, being friendly and talking to the pit can be helpful. You don't want to be super noticeable and you don't want the pit hanging out at your table the whole time, but some good banter at key points in the session (For example, when you want him to noice your higher bet) is valuable. Also, when you're leaving, you can just ask them how they rated you. If you think the number is unfair, or even if it is fair but you'd like it to be higher, there's NOTHING WRONG with making your case. If the pit says 150, you can always say, "C'mon man, I've been chasing losses for hours now and getting up to 2 hands at 400, there's no way I'm at 150." He isn't going to change it to 800, but if you get him to boost it to 200 then you've just gained 33% more theo.

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Casinos vary in what they'll return to players, but it's not unheard of to get about 33% of your theo back in the form of comps from Caesars. Not that this needs to be explained, but if the casino expects you to lose $100, they're willing to give you $33 in the form of tracked comps (rooms, food, flights, etc).
So, you can see already that if somehow you could convince the casino to rate you 3x higher than you actually are giving up, then you'd be getting all of your losses back in the form of comps.
But, they won't necessarily just offer this. Closed mouths don't get fed. You need to get mailers from the casinos you play at. You need to be strategic with which offers you accept. You need to get over your trepidation and walk into a host's office and ask them to comp something off of your bill. You need to spend your RC BEFORE asking for a comp. If a host says they cannot comp something, ask them how much more play you'd need before they'd be able to comp X.

Lastly, hosts can comp on theo, BUT they can also comp on Actual. If you have a rough trip, even if you only generated $500 in theoretical, but you lost $7000, that is the time where you should ask for the moon. They might normally only want to give you $167 in comps for that play, but if they see -$7000 and you're asking for $300 in comps, they're very unlikely to say no.
Like poker, gambling is one long session. You might not feel like a $300 comp matters that much when you just dumped $7000 but money is fungible and it doesn't matter to you whether they give you $300 when you win or when you lose or if they just mail it to you unannounced. Take any money you can get whenever you can.

Finally, you have the untracked comps. These are things like drinks, valet, show tickets, etc. As long as they have any value to you, you might as well take advantage of them.

Great post, thanks. I just recently got a host. If I'm trying to get room charges comped, should I walk into the office and ask whoever is there? Or is it better to text my host and ask her directly?

Also, can you elaborate on strategically accepting offers?

Assuming it is an executive host (I forget what the lower level people are called but they really can't do anything but book rooms for you), it's always worth building a relationship with them. Call/email introduce yourself. When you're at their home property, find a time to stop by and get to know them.
If you aren't already getting rooms for free, they're almost surely not going to be able to offer it to you up front, but they can look at your play and rate it later. I usually just go and ask the host on duty, particularly if I don't have a host at that property.
But, if it is the host of my home property, then sure I'd probably start with that person. For a room it's unlikely to matter, but if you need something special like a cabana you're requesting or a limo ride to the airport, it can be helpful to have a pre-existing relationship with them.

As far as being selective with offers, it really comes down to the fact that most people cannot play all of the time BUT usually have some control over their schedule. Not all offers from casinos are created equal. Some examples:

A local casino offers 15x RCs on Sunday, but suppose you don't get your room comped sunday, then you might pay much more for the room than you got with the comps. If you instead took a lesser comp on Monday, but got the room for free, that might be much more valuable.

In Laughlin right now there is one week where I'd get $680 in free play and another week where they'd give me a $100 shell card lol. Obviously the former is worth much more than the latter.

Similarly, I have one week where I can get a free TV and another week where I can get some Tommy Bahama beach chairs lol. For me, the former is obviously worth much more than the latter.

Last one: Suppose you accept a promotion for bonus Great Gift Wrap Up points but you know damn well you won't be available at the end of the year to go and get a gift. What have you actually accepted? Nothing.

A lot of time people decide when they're going to play and then look to see if they have any offers while they're there. By looking ahead and scheduling in a way that you can take advantage of the best offers, you'll fair significantly better than the person who isn't trying to get the best value for their trip.

i've had really good success walking into the diamond host office at CP with a smile on my face and being very specific about my request of getting a room comp. Was professional and very direct and even without a thought she said sure. Even when I was just a FC member. OTOH, i had very bad experiences trying to talk to a "host" over the phone.

As far as the previous post DUCYdonk posted up, there is a way to even extend your diamond status once you are a once time FC member. (for free)

I was a FC member in 2015. This was the only year I had it, but i've had diamond for 5 years straight after. If there are interests in further discussions about this, PM me and if there's enough interest i'll start a thread about how to game the system if 2p2 will allow it (it's all above board). Otherwise I'll answer PM's direct. Of course, with the new quasi-aspiration nonsense levels with diamond, it might not have as much value as it used to have as this method will get you the base 15k diamond card.

if resort fees > FC costs, then it's worth it to get the FC.

at one time i thought the FC cardholders were allowed into the Diamond lounge for free when there was no 15k tier credit minimum? just needed a Diamond card?
(then they switched to 15k tc min and now 25k tc min to enter for free)

Why all the secrecy? Just spill it here.

Because loose lips sink ships? Why risk ruining it for himself by posting it on a public board and having the wrong person read it. Anyway, if it's the card matching through various places scheme it's already been detailed here.

great post but one thing is wrong- video poker machines will not calculate your ADT. they're programmed with a house edge the casino enters for everyone. so if you play perfect strategy at 9/6 jacks or better you'd actually get comped based of a higher rate than your adt.

^^ Yep definitely true. You just can't manipulate them into thinking your average bet is higher than it actually is, or that you were playing while you weren't etc. Good correction! And, on the right machines, with promotions, VP can become an advantage play. It's not one that I do, but it can be done. My understanding is that the best machines are getting harder and harder to fine, but I guess that's true of every game!

How do you know it's not just counting your coin-in or your tc, which is the same thing?

bc they're programmed differently based on the rules
9/6 jacks comps less than 7/5 for example

Those machines are usually in the High Limit area and are clearly marked with placards as far as tc. Have you seen something that says they still don't count your coin-in for adt? Or use the tc anyway, just with a different multiplier to get coin-in?

Comp hustlers should take note that while the machines can track exactly how much you bet, they can't tell where you got the money from. Here is a good advantage play - borrow some money from a buddy and play it though. That way, you can score some TCs without any risk.

I LOL'd way harder than I should have.

But, for an actual comp-hustle benefit to machine players, you and a spouse playing on the same card will help a lot. But ... maybe don't try to hit a royal when (s)he isn't around!

To clarify, do people get jackpot payouts even when playing when someone elses players card?

Sent from my SM-G986U using Tapatalk

I am not a machine player, so I don't want to answer with any degree of certainty, but it is my understanding from other advantage players that this can be a big problem, so much so that it affects what draws you should make in VP when on someone else's card.