I assume noah_the_donkey = Noah Acres?

Mr. Acres - this thought pattern is very concerning.... what is your definition of "technically?" Do the math (as others have even accurately pointed out in this thread)!!! You are SIGNIFICANTLY minimizing the house advantage on the game.... do you think that you have just stumbled upon some stroke of genius that other casino executives have never considered?

The only justification for this type of promotion is that you anticipate increased foot traffic as a result of the 1000x odds which would translate into increased slot coin-in and/or increased wagers via additional bets on the craps table or other table games with a more favorable HA... to which I ask - have you done or reviewed research studies which confirm such a correlation?

The answer is an obvious and clear NO. I am a dual MBA/Masters in Hotel Admin student with a concentration in gaming and casino management at UNLV and it's funny that I just stumbled upon this thread... this evening we spent 40+ minutes of class time discussing this very promotion and my professor (one of the most knowledgeable and respected people in the global gaming industry who will purposely go unnamed ITT) showed the precise calculations and mathematics behind how poor of a business decision this promo is. I've read countless articles and research studies exposing the falsified myths of justifying similar loss-leaders on the casino floor (bingo rooms, match-play promos, etc) via statistical analysis. This little new promo idea of yours is no different.

I wish you the best of luck, and hope for the continued improvement in gaming profitability for the Riviera and the rest of Las Vegas as a whole. Unfortunately, with continued ill-advised business decisions by executives such as 1000x craps the recovery of the Las Vegas gaming industry will continue to struggle.....

I'd wait a while after you finish your studies and work your way up to SVP Casino before you tell someone already there how it is done. Yes, I have heard of casino executives making mathematical mistakes in their promos and getting filled in on it over the years. Yes, 1000x odds reduces HA. But have you taken everything into account?

Let's take me as an example. Go to Vegas several times a year, usually stay at 5* hotel and whilst I have been in The Riviera, it wouldn't ordinarily be part of the plan. This year, I'm going to go to the Riviera. I'm going to eat in their steakhouse, I don't very often do that without ordering a bottle of wine. Probably a few drinks before/after also. Then I'm going to play some craps, assuming it isn't 3-deep at the tables. I'm no stranger to the game, I have a major in Stats, I understand and respect the various -EV bets that exist on a craps table. But, I'm going to do it anyway. I will probably take signifcant odds behind the line, altho not necessarily 1000x and the house will make nothing out of that. But that's boring. Particularly with a bottle of wine and several G&T's working their way into my veins. It isn't going to be long before I parlay the hopping hard eight....

So, the Riviera has a choice. It can offer no promo and there is a very good chance that I won't go through the door. I might go just to try out the steakhouse, but it is far from definite. Value of me = $0

Or, it can tempt me in with 1000x odds and a steakhouse worth trying. I'm pretty much a lock to try the steakhouse now and have a dice-tastrophe shortly afterwards. The house edge on my line bet after taking odds will be miniscule. Yet I'm still going to drop $200 in f&b, spread a lot of love around the (serving and casino) staff and usually press bets so hard that I lose the vast majority of the time. If the steakhouse was decent and the craps was fun, I will be back. Value of me is now >> $0.

Is it really such a bad promo?

Nothing shines brighter than the wisdom of youth.

dmbfan41cn, I was a gaming major at UNLV too. No promotion that increases foot traffic that still has some HA (be it .002% or whatever) is a bad idea.

You also have to remember that the Riviera is getting a lot of traffic from people (probably young people like us) going busto trying to take or lay significant odds.

When people gamble, they may drink and / or simply get caught up in the gambling. How often do you see someone who may be smart but kinda has a gambling problem drift away from the most logical play when gambling? As it applies to craps, how often do you see people just sit and play the line all day? Like SimonG is saying, expect to see other -EV bets get more play.

I see someone martingaling their odds after a loss. $5 line, $100 odds - lose; $5 line $200 odds - lose; $5 line, $400 odds ... $3200 odds - lose = very busto

It's so unlikely anyway that someone takes or lays the max 1k odds for more than one roll anyway. I'd enjoy hearing a story about it though. Someone call Phil Ivey.

@dmb

im a once or twice a year vegas goer and avid craps degen. i make all sorts of place bets and press them hard and predictably, i usually end up losing. i would normally never play outside of the major strip casinos with their tilting 3-4-5x odds, but i actually would end up checking out the riviera now with a 1000x promo getting me through the door. it is true their house advantage on me is down with greater odds, but their ev is way way up.

and at the end of the day, +ev is what matters.

if something gets people who wouldnt normally play there, through the door to play at a -ev rate, how could that be a bad idea? this is found money.

to use your matchplay coupon example:

i play in AC a fair amount and the Borgata gives me a couple match plays a week.

the Taj used to, but no longer does since they started cutting back on comps (or whatever the hell the new management there is doing.)

i now play only at the Borgata, when i used to kind of alternate between the two.

this has cost the Taj thousands which have since gone into Borgatas coffers.

also:

did you lift that line off of your homework assignment? hahah

to reinforce what is being said here, i am flying to vegas from the northeast next week. i did not intend to visit the riviera, but now that i know about the 1000x odds and the single deck bj, i will be stopping by to check it out. while i am primarily a poker player, i also like to gamble it up every now and then. it is a vacation for me after all.

I'm coming in with a group of 7 this weekend. None of us would have come to Riv but now all 7 of us are at least going to check it out.

Clearly, a total failure.

Even with wine, it will be next to impossible to spend $200 in their steakhouse without 4 people. The prices are really that good, and the food is too. One annoying thing is they close the steakhouse randomly if the hotel is below x% occupied so call ahead.

dice-tastrophe is my new favorite word.

$10 starter
$30 steak
$10 sides
dessert not happening
$50? wine
G&T aperitif
cognac digestif
+tip

ok $200 gonna be tough, will give it a go though...

$5 on Pass
$5K behind

ha, I told Noah if his min bet is 50c I will do 1000x for the free dinner!

But to be sporting, if my parlayed hopping hard 8 hits, I will also take $5k odds behind.

Happy to hear this promo has and is attracting traffic to the Riv that would otherwise have never considered stopping in there. I would like to reiterate that I do in fact hope for the best for Mr. Acres, the Riviera and all of Las Vegas.

Simon's and Keno's snarky comments regarding my "youth" and "lack of experience" are asinine... I'm a 28 year old masters student not an 18 year old undergrad. The points I make do not derive from some brilliant personal epiphany I had sitting in the back of a class room. I am simply relaying them on from a professor who has 20+ years in the industry and gets paid good money as a gaming consultant for his opinion and analysis on potential promotional ideas/evaluation of the effectiveness of already running promos.

While I stand by the point of view that this promo can't and won't work, I applaud Mr. Acres and the Riv for taking action and stirring the pot... getting the Riviera name back in the mix and on the radar of visitors who would have never stepped foot in the building otherwise. I look forward to hearing regular feedback and updates on the overall results of the 1000x craps experiment... and hell - I may even stop in myself, check out the scene and toss the bones for a little while.

I'm actually quite interested to hear the outline of the prof's case (feel free to skip the MBA maths). It can't be a loss leader, because they aren't offering any bets that I can make with positive expectation. With that, why is it a poor decision? Why is it going to cost them custom/revenue/good will?

Assuming the prof is going to allow the Riviera a marketing budget, it doesn't really matter if the Riviera choose to allow watered down pass line HA as their preferred hook? It seems obvious that the promo is designed to increase footfall. It's not like a pricing rick that will attract the arbitrage crew. There's no point in a promo that will attract 1000 scroungers through the door, eat the free sandwiches, complain about them and leave (but they can if they want!) This promo is likely to appeal to 'green chip' and up table game players that would think $30 for a steak to be a deal, and will happily play at a "high but not too high" level for the Riviera to be happy.

Hang on everyone, UNLV has a masters program? I always thought the place was a glorified junior college.

And dmbfan, I'm being an a'hole because of the self-righteous and patronizing way you're trying to make your point, which doesn't really belong here in the first place. Also, Dave Matthews Band totally sucks.

I will be in Vegas the weekend of Mar 16th. I will definitely be hitting the Riviera as a result of this promotion and reading this thread.

My interest will primarily be the no-commission pai gow. If you are allowed to be banker, would you not actually have the edge vs. the other players?

Yeah, this thread is about being a gambler, not about whether the casino will profit from my gambling (they will, maybe not enough, but who gives a ****?)

I've done 100x at a few places on and off the strip. It's fun for a while. Not sure what 1000x gets me, but I do appreciate the Riviera trying it. If I ever get to that end of the strip next week, I'll def look in.

Players cannot bank the no commission Pai Gow game. If they were to allow it, and push on queen high pai gow without paying commission, you would have about a .88% advantage +/- a hundreths of a percentage point.

I am guessing the hands that you would have already pushed with queen high pai gow would not affect the overall return. If it did, you would have to figure out the average queen high pai gow hand, then figure out all of the hands it would have tied on its own.

For those playing Pai Gow for hours on end, zero commission and figuring out a way to take the bank too is worthwhile.

Pai Gow for many is just a drinking game, along the lines of "it is slow as hell, lots of pushes, sat in comfort getting top shelf for free." In which case, the best bet is a casino that will serve you the best of the top shelf drinks for free and charge 5% commission. Better than a casino offering well drinks and 0% commission.

First of all, it has +EV for the house, so you're making a false comparison to "loss leaders." This promotion is not losing money mathematically on the craps game alone, nor is it a "loss-leader," because in the strictest sense, it is not being sold "at or below cost." Enough with the semantics.

The 1000X odds is virtually meaningless, few will take it. In reality, i'd guess it's much, much closer to 100x to 200x. It's all about the free publicity, which is +EV. For those who do take it, their Martingale potential is limited because of the principal required, +EV.

As the small sample size in our thread has established, people are still going to make more -EV bets. Most likely, other loss-leader comparisons don't have a similarly self-contained ecosystem with emotion, momentum, and peer pressure like that of the craps table. Thus, +EV for the Riveria.

Do you honestly think that games with a higher house edge are going to promote gaming? It's all about the elasticity of demand. My elasticity of demand for 6/5 BJ is perfectly elastic and I refuse to play it, but I''ll degen some 3/2 double deck.

I also believe that there is a secular change in spending habits of visitors to Las Vegas with respect to gambling. People are spending more on food, drinks, and entertainment there than ever before, hence the integrated resort models. That secular change, coupled with the broader macro headwinds explain the slump in gaming, not promotions.

I wish you well in your studies and would advise you to devote some time to humility, word choice, and magnanimity.

I have tons of friends with top-tier MBAs, but the most successful ones have the best social and speaking skills, not the most prestigious degrees.

Nice post.

This promo just isn't that big a deal. In the 1980's, lots of casinos did the 100x odds, and it didn't change anything. So most of them did away with it.

The fact is that people who have $5k to put down on a single bet are not the type who want to play at a $5 min craps table anyway. No offense to those, but they are usually filled with people who know little about the game, or its rules/etiquette. Plus, if someone started betting $5k at a $5 table, it would draw a crowd, and the people the dealers refer to as "fleas".

For example, I went into a downtown casino once as my wife wanted to see the downtown. So we played at a $5 table, she was playing 5, and I was betting between 25-50 pass line with odds, and place bets. Some rather unsavory types started gathering around, pressing real close to me and my chip rack. I had no doubt some where trying to steal some chips.

After I was done, a guy came up to me and said, "hey, I was really cheering for you and I think I brought you good luck, how about $25 dollars for my effort?" When I politely told him no, he started to get aggressive about it.

I told my wife we're not doing that again, and restrict our play to places a little higher end. The last thing I want to think about when playing craps for thousands of dollars is whether I'm getting ripped off or not. So imagine someone with multiples of $5k to play on odds bets doing that at a $5 table. It's not going to happen.

It's just a marketing tool to find a way to set the casino apart from the rest of the others. But I'd be willing to bet that 99% of the people playing at their $5 tables don't start off with an entire roll of more than about $2-400 anyway.

It's sort of like the All You can Eat Buffets. If they said, you get to go back three times for free, no one would be able to eat more than that anyway. But all you can eat sounds better, so why not advertise that?

dmbfan - Pretty much every "gaming consultant" or professor I have ever met is more than willing to share ideas and open for discussion so not sure how hiding names does much. Feel free to PM me if you really don't want to but I can't think of anyone that teaches at UNLV on a semi regular basis with that kind of ego(unless one of the most knowledgeable and world renown gaming experts are your words.)

You're not doing anything to the expectation, but you are increasing variance.

a $5 craps bet with 2x odds and a $5 craps bet with 1000x odds are equally profitable for the casino

Question: Is there a limit on this? Can I place a $25 pass bet with full odds? I kinda respect that the casino has the stones to gamble with me.