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Bob Dancer writes a video poker column for beginners to experts. He also writes a column with Jeffrey Compton, "Player's Edge", featuring information on promotions at various Las Vegas casinos. Player's Edge is published each Friday in the Neon section of the Las Vegas Review-Journal. Click here to send Bob Dancer an e-mail.

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Aug 22, 2006

Busted

In 2004 and 2005, Shirley and I played at Harrah's Laughlin on a monthly basis. Their $10 10/7 Double Bonus games were highly attractive. We'd play $200,000 apiece each time we went, and maintaining Seven Star status (which requires $1 million per year for video poker players) was a piece of cake. Their slot club didn't offer a lot of benefits, but for $10 players, it doesn't take much from the slot club to make a 100.17% game a decent play.

In December 2005, however, Harrah's Laughlin removed the $10 games. They kept $5 games for a few more weeks, and $2 games a bit longer, but eventually they were all removed. A pity, but it wasn't a big surprise. If no Vegas casino figured it could make a profit with these games, it was only a matter of time before Harrah's Laughlin came to the same conclusion.

We still wanted to find a reason to play down there as Shirley has several relatives in the Kingman, AZ vicinity --- about twenty miles from Laughlin. The casino had NSU Deuces for $2 and lower, but $2 single line is rather boring for us.

One game we looked at was 10¢ Fifty Play 9/6 Jacks or Better. This game costs $25 per fully-loaded hand and, let's face it, Fifty Play games are FUN. The problem is that the game only returns 99.54% and Harrah's slot club is a not easy to figure out.

One nice thing about the game, though, was the Fifty Play machines were set up to give base points per $5 of play, rather than per $10 of play like all of the rest of the video poker machines at Harrah's nationwide. In addition to base points, they gave you one bonus point per base point. Whether this makes it a good deal or not depends, of course, on how much these points are worth.

Harrah's offers deferred cashback, where they mail you "checks in the mail" based on your play. My "best guess" is that the cashback on video poker is at 0.08%, but with double points, this makes it worth 0.16% of coin in. We spend on total points (which is base points plus bonus points) on Visas Gift Certificates (a $1,000 gift certificate costs 135,000 points). Calling this "cash equivalent" (a stretch), means that we get 0.30% in cash equivalent, in addition to the cash back. Adding this up to 0.46% and playing a 99.54% game means that the situation is essentially "breakeven". Slightly less, of course, because I'd much rather have cash than gift certificate.

Sweetening the pot is the fact that Harrah's Laughlin pays us both $99 to come down once a month to play, we get thrice-monthly $100 bounceback coupons (separate from the $99 offers), plus we each still receive $75 monthly cash coupons from the River Palms (next door to Harrah's) based on our play there more than a year ago on now-gone 5¢ Hundred Play NSU Deuces Wild machines.

Finally, once a month Harrah's offers "triple base points" for one day --- usually a Tuesday or Wednesday and in August it's been twice a week. While this doesn't affect cash back, since the base points are doubled to start with, this adds another 0.30% "cash equivalent" if we play during those days. If you swipe your card for triple points BEFORE you try to cash the relevant $100 coupon, they'll point to the wording on the coupon that prevents you from doing this. But if you cash the coupon first and THEN swipe your card for triple points, you can collect both.

On our June 7, 2006 Triple Points visit, we discovered that they no longer doubled the base points. This was annoying, as it would cost 0.08% in cash back and reduce our cash-equivalent by 0.16% on Triple Point days. This could easily end up being a showstopper. Fortunately they decided to triple the number of bonus points awarded per base point. This adds 0.08% cash equivalent to the equation, because the old system essentially offered double bonus points.

We decided to play there in July and August (by which time Shirley will have qualified for Seven Stars status. (I play heavily at Bally's, which is part of the Harrah's system, and so meeting the $1,000,000 per year requirement is no problem). I decided not to write about this until after our yearly play was done so as not to generate more competition for the machines than we want.

Finally, they have a piddly daily drawing, where you get drawing tickets for 4-of-a-kinds and a few other hands. On Fifty Play, quads happen frequently, and sometimes I can get adjacent machines which keeps me busy playing while waiting for the floor people to bring along drawing tickets. Over a course of eight hours, I'll gather 400 tickets or so. We had rubber stamps made up for this casino some time ago, so filling out the tickets isn't time-intensive. With this many tickets, one or both of us get called approximately 50% of the time.

They draw three names for 2,000; 5,000; or 10,000 bonus points. Based on my 0.08% cash equivalent for bonus points, this makes winning worth $45. Also they give you 2-for-1 tickets to their shows (worthless, in my opinion) and two free meals in their Mexican restaurant. The food is welcome as Harrah's makes you use your points for meals no matter how much you play. Finally they give you an entry into their every-three-months drawings which offer some nice things. Assuming there are 270 entries (90 days times three winners a day) and that 240 will show up, even a 1-in-240 chance for some nice prizes is pretty good --- especially if you can win more than one of these chances. Perhaps the entire package is worth $100 apiece.

In May, there was a discussion on the Internet about whether players should follow Bob Dancer if he wastes his time on $50 drawings. I protested that I rarely enter such drawings. One player who read the Internet discussion "caught" me entering (and winning) the June 7 drawing. He laughed, but was hardly in position to throw stones as he was entered as well. (We saw him win in May).

So I guess it can be said that at least SOMETIMES I enter small drawings. I didn't write about this one until after I had finished playing there for the year as I didn't want to encourage anybody else to compete with me.