I was just wondering what people have to say on which player's club they feel is better between the two. I know that there are many variable's such as free shows and restaurants and what not, but basing it strictly on free-play and room offers, what do you consider to be the best of the two and am I missing a player's club that I should consider.

I prefer MLife just for the better VP game selection and the hotel offers.

I use mine for room discounts and I have them all.

Before recently, I would've said Total Rewards hands down. In 2012 I earned Diamond & they offered tons of comped rooms. One I was Platinum I don't remember ever paying for another room out of pocket. I stayed at Paris for 6 nights free, that was the longest comp. I used the express check ins which were great & the diamond lounges were awesome for free top shelf booze. But, from what I understand, they've changed it to where once you attain Diamond it only lasts for 6 months before you have to reach it again. Probably because of the CET bankruptcies, they appear to be tightening up their rewards system so I'm focusing my efforts on MGM.

I don't have any experience with how generous MGM is with comps.

I have both cards as well, and found that the MLife offers seemed an overall better value considering they have newer/better/nicer hotels in their portfolio.

I haven't been as active in LV the last couple yrs and that's the reason I'm asking.

Does Mlife actually give you any status credit for poker? The big advantge of Total Rewards for me was that it was possible to make Diamond just from poker, while MGM poker comps weren't even really integrated into the Mlife system.

People who say TR is better because they get more free rooms should keep in mind that the quality of the free room is generally worse since it's a CET property. A discount at Aria is worth more to me than a free room at Bally's.

total reward has gone down the ****ter. platinum doesnt get any of the benefits it did before. mlife has to be better by default now

I stayed at a Junior suite at Bally's for 11 days during the WSOP last year for about $30/night and thought it was very nice, after having played maybe 5 days of poker at a CET property over the previous year. I've never gotten a room offer from an MGM property that I would consider worthwhile.

What do you want to do and where do you want to stay?

Summary:

If you want to stay cheap, it's TR. If you want to stay nicer or play in nicer poker rooms, it's MLife.

Advantages of TR (from my experience):

- More likely to get a free room (but at a dump)
- More casinos on the North Strip (MLife has just Mirage)
- TR credits can be used all over (their rewards club is much more cohesive across all properties)
- The website is great

Disadvantages:

- The rooms suck at the low-end places
- The internet is atrocious at the low-end places
- Comps not good for non-slot players in my experience
- IMO, Caesars Palace is the single worst property on the Strip, dollar for dollar, in terms of value for gaming and hotel spend.

Advantages of MLife (from my experience):

- Hotels are much, much better on average. Even dated properties like Monte Carlo and NYNY are better maintained than the mid-level Caesars property
- More high-end choices of dining and accommodations
- Aria and Bellagio are better poker rooms than anything Caesars has
- Tend to give resort credits for decent players which have to be used on a given trip, not as big on building up an account balance. This means you're more likely to have a chunk of your food and bev covered every trip.
- I find they are more likely to give me more when I ask, whereas TR is very, very formulaic.


Disadvantages:

- The website is total ****. I find have consistently better hotel and comp offers by calling the casinos directly. TR doesn't work this way - what I see on the website is generally what I get.
- The program is much more casino by casino. When I mention I have to call to get my best deals, I don't mean I can simply call MLife and have them look up all of my hotel deals - I have to individually call each casino. This means potentially calling 2-4 places to figure out your "best" deal. Further, I find that their sharing of player experience across properties is not as good as it should be.
- Certain properties don't rate blackjack <$25 a hand
- Tend to give resort credits for decent players which have to be used on a given trip, not as big on building up an account balance. This resort credit generally has to be spent at where you are staying, not other MLife resorts. If you don't want to spend the money there on the trip, you're SOL.

Also, I'm not a big status player, so I can't really comment on the value of higher tier statuses (that may matter to some).

I know platinum is worthless now that you have to pay resort fees, as is noted by JHair.

I want to thank The Rumor for the best comparison breakdown of Mlife vs Total Rewards that I have ever seen.

I pretty much agree with everything he's said, and some of which I'd have never thought of. I/we (wife) have both, and are slowly weaning off of TR and sliding over to Mlife because of the better property conditions. My wife is a big slots player, so she will rack up a lot of comps based on this. We've merged our Mlife account, and TR we did n't bother since you can combine them at booking anyways.

If you play moderate size in the pit or machines it is TR and it isn't close. If you are a big baller making two or three trips to LV per year, it's the opposite.

Sorry, I should have mentioned. Total Rewards used to basically throw the book at me whenever I wanted to come out there. They treated me really well up until their recent change of strategy. Now their offers are not generous at all, and almost condescending, resulting in me comparing the two companies objectively. Obviously mlife becomes better in this regard.

If all your action between these two companies is in Vegas, it's a no brainer, give it to MGM. If you have a tr property in your regional market like me, it gets a but fuzzier, but even still mlife makes more sense imo.

I concur the JH comment about local casinos potentially impacting your choice - I don't have MLife or TR where I live so that is not a factor for me.

You can also just get multiple copies of the same card at TR. If you're both playing machines, use the same card in both if you have any chance at all of getting diamond.

I don't think you can do this at table games, but you can use multiple copies of the same card in a slot for TR.

The wife is a big factor in my move to MLife. If I'm going with my brother, I really don't care about the hotel, I just want a room in a good location with two beds.

This gets into my comment about personal preference.

One other addendum I would make - if you're going to spending a fair amount of money at the property and you won't be doing much gambling, MLife is a clear winner since they'll give you gold for spending much more easily than TR will give you diamond.

They'll rate your play together at table games. Makes sense, being that you're sleeping in the same room.

I've been told before that you can't use multiple copies of the same player's card in the electronic tracking system for table games.

Now, perhaps if you're at the same game they could combine your bets into one rating.

That's what I meant, when you're sitting at the same table. Pretty routine for myself and the wife to sit down, buy in, split the money in half and start playing, and they'll count it together.

One thing to note is that m life wipes out your points every October 1 so if you're close to a new tier try to hit the target before that date. I was 95% of the way to gold after my last trip to lv in May and, had I known this, could easily have made a quick one day trip to Detroit in the summer to hit gold. The fact they do this is buried about 17 points down the FAQ on the 3rd page in of the m life website though so I wasn't up to speed on this.

Any chance total rewards just simply stops accepting all the bonus points with the whole debt/fiasco they are in? Im certainly not big time at all but i do have about 600 dollars worth i could use towards restaurants, hotels, cash in, etc. and am starting to think maybe i should start using them sooner than later.. I rarely play slots and never use the points but was shocked when the lady at the counter told me how much i had accumulated, i even asked her again "did you say 588?" lol. I dont really care either way but somethings just telling me they are going to do away with it or make their value a lot less than they currently are at points wise.

Slot club experts please chime in.

Well, from what I understand, you have to fellate an orangutan before getting MLife Platinum.

It's fun to make **** up on the internet.

Slight correction, you have to let the monkey perform the fellatio on YOU.

I have no junk or face anymore - but I skip all the Buffett and taxi lines and my 30% extra tier credits while I Degen away keeps me cool at night long after the Luxor A/C never started working

588 reward credits = $5.88