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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.

For more details and a schedule of Bob's free classes, visit www.bobdancer.com.

April 14, 2009

Slot Club Points in the Face of Struggling Casinos

Several casinos are reputed to be in financial difficulty. How does this affect players with comp or cash back balances? The simple answer, of course, is to cash everything out now. That may or may not be the best strategy.

It really depends upon what your financial outlook is. Are you a person who is always looking for a good excuse to spend your assets? If so, the chance that you might lose out because a casino might go bankrupt might well be enough to justify spending (i.e. cashing) your points immediately. These people don't typically have a lot of points to spend because they regularly find reasons to spend what they have.

On the other hand, if you're a person who looks for a good excuse to save your assets until later, you may well come up with a different conclusion. Successful video poker players tend to be thrifty people. To accumulate and retain a bankroll requires a large amount of saving. If you're one of these people, spending all of your points immediately might not be such a good idea.

First of all, even if a casino goes into bankruptcy, there's a good likelihood that it will appear to be "business as usual" as they continue to operate. Behind the scenes they'll be trying to find ways to stay open, but cutting off their customers is unlikely to be the first thing they do. These casinos need players to continue to come in and gamble in order to have a chance at survival. Scaring their players away is not the way to accomplish this.

Second, it's frequently not easy to spend your comp points intelligently even if you want to. Some casinos have limits on how much you can redeem at once. At Station Casinos, for example, if you have any "new points," (which means they've been earned after February 2008), these may be redeemed for free play --- which is an excellent option, to a degree. If you have any "old points," these must be spent on something else. "Travel Bucks" are an option, but you have to be at least Platinum (75,000 points or more over a calendar 3-month period) to be able to cash up to $4,000 in Travel Bucks, and President (225,000 such points) or higher get to cash $8,000 a year in this manner. If you have more points than that "in the bank," you have to spend them on other things, or over more than a year. And even if you are entitled to spend up to $8,000 in Travel Bucks, are you planning that much travel?

Station offers up to a 75% discount on buffets if you use points. We find this to be a "quick and easy" option. We are currently using "old points" there for this (where we still have millions), but if we didn't have old points we'd likely keep enough new points to use on this sometimes. Cashing in new points for free play is not as good as having some points we can use for a 75% discount on a decent meal.

If you have $2,000 in unredeemed comps, spending that much on a "meal to remember" may be an option for some, but not for me. I already get too much "free food" every month, and I don't drink (which would be an easy way to increase the size of a meal tab). I'd rather keep the points for some unspecified "something" in the future, but I understand that others may not come to this conclusion.

Some people use casino cash back and comp balances as a form of savings account. They aren't particularly good at saving money, but they know that whenever they go to the casino there will be money and comps available. Could it go away if the casino goes under? Of course. But the casino going under is a long shot and spending it right away makes it disappear completely. For some it's better to have the "savings account," even if there's some risk associated with it.

If you're a Harrah's customer, they have a number of things in their catalog to purchase. If you have your eye on an item worth 120,000 points, for example, it might take you months or longer to earn that many points. Getting rid of them before that precludes you from being able to get what you want.

Even if you have no specific use for your points, it's possible that all of the things available for your current level of points are "worthless junk" in your opinion. (How many casino logo hats do you need anyway?) All of us who frequent casinos already have too much of this sort of thing. Saving your points must be a better option than spending it on this sort of thing.

Back when Harrah's allowed you to purchase Visa gift cards, this was a reasonable option to burn your comp points --- if you were willing to pay the requisite premium. That option has gone away. You can still purchase Macy's gift cards, but those have a similar sort of bankruptcy risk as the casinos themselves and not everybody is willing to shop at these stores. Several different not-in-Las Vegas Harrah's properties have regular opportunities to turn points into either free play or gift cards at 50% of face value.

Even if it makes sense to keep a reasonable balance of unredeemed points at the casino, it makes little sense to keep a lot of points there --- but the definition of "a lot" will differ from player to player.