Revised 2016 Strategy

[FloridaPhil]

I just told you???  

[BobDancer]

The $485 difference a night means you guys played over the 100% return the way Mr. Dancer would recommend to people here. A cheaper than retail vacation.Hardly. Other hotels in town can be had for considerably less than $500 I assume. Personally I have never paid that much for a hotel room in my life. I've stayed in some "officially $2,000 a night" suites, but would never have paid retail for them.I''m not familiar with the comp system at that particular casino. Using comp dollars for expensive rooms would probably not be my first choice.Bob

[FloridaPhil]

[quote=BobDancer]I'm not familiar with the comp system at that particular
casino. Using comp dollars for expensive rooms would probably not be my
first choice.[/quote]If we were able to convert our comp dollars into money our return would increase quite a bit.  You seem to reference this often in your books and posts.  Comp dollars in our casinos are only redeemable for in-house rooms, food or items in the T-shirt shops. We have no trouble getting all the free rooms and food we can use.  The rooms we stay at sell for $100 to $500 a night, of course we never pay that.   I'm curious as to how you suggest we might turn our comp dollars into real money?  Thank you.

[alpax]

I believe FP meant to state that the $90 a night room rate was from the bounceback mailer rather than using $90 worth of accrued comp dollars from the Wild Card club to redeem hotel room stay. Most people should know that are various factors that affect the price of the hotel room rates, such as holidays, weekends, big nearby events, 4-Diamond rating, and above all location. There must have been a big event going on for the Hollywood Hard Rock to charge $575 a night on a weekday, maybe the Miami Heat basketball team is playing? It is to each own to value the quality of life they get for the prices they are willing to pay for. It seems FP enjoys quality hotels so getting a $480 bounceback is huge for a quarter player.

I suppose if FP and the Mrs. are really desperate to make a profit, they can sell the room to a stranger for a few hundred dollars cheaper so that they can get the funds to stay at a rundown hole in the wall place a few miles away. It would be a revelation to me if that were true.

With FP's concern about converting comps into dollars, I suppose they way to do it is to high roll so that the casino will comp rooms to its most valuable players on holidays. The players in return can sell their comped hotel rooms to strangers.

There is a big demand of people who want to be at Vegas during New Years Eve, that might be a good opportunity for selling rooms.

[FloridaPhil]

[quote=alpax]


I believe FP meant to state that the $90 a night room rate was from
the bounceback mailer rather than using $90 worth of accrued comp
dollars from the Wild Card club to redeem hotel room stay.[/quote]We are not using comp dollars to pay for rooms at the Hard Rocks.  If you sign into their websites with your players club info and navigate to the book a room section, you are shown a calendar with room rates for each day.  Depending upon the day, our rate ranges from a fully comped room to a high of about $575 a night.  As the comped rooms fill up, the rates go higher. If we are flexible and book enough in advance we can get a comped room almost any time we want.  This allows us to stay there for free every other month or so. Some of the tactics Bob Dancer reportedly uses to make a profit don't make much sense to us.  It sounds like you can get real cash back in Vegas, that's not the case where we play.  How do you turn free rooms or sunglasses into cash?  Granted free rooms have value, but they don't spend unless you were going to pay for them anyway. I guess it depends upon what you consider profit. We're not into cheap hotels and we don't want to sell rooms or sunglasses. 

[alpax]

It sounds like you can get real cash back in Vegas, that's not the case where we play.  How do you turn free rooms or sunglasses into cash?


Not all casinos in Vegas or even nationally will allow you to get cash back from the points you've accrued from playing with the casino club card. It varies from casino to casino; some only allow to be spent on casino amenities and restaurants, some only allow the funds to be used for machine play, and some allow both. The number of casinos that offers cash back is very few and cash is king for a reason.

The SouthPoint (a place in Vegas that you should consider going) is one of those places that allow cashback for your points at a whopping 0.30%. The Stations Boarding Pass club (big locals chain in Vegas) not too long ago started allowing their players to get cash back.

The two big clubs, Total Rewards offers a small percentage used for the casino amenities and even less if you want to convert that into machine credits. The MGM mLife club will give you BOTH on separate balances EXPRESSComp for amenities and EXPRESSPlay for machine play at the same rate, however no direct cashback, you have to play through the machine once and the end result will be the cash you get to keep.

Since Mr. Dancer's biggest motive is to make profit, if he is not able to find a way to sell hotel rooms, food, gifts, shows, or cruise tickets to patrons because of the lack of interest or demand, he will not consider playing at the casino with such a players club program unless their mailer offer is outsatnding.

I suppose a make believe scenario where a person would be able to get cash for the points would be that a person and his/her buddy go to a restaurant within the casino (hopefully the food they serve is good too). The person has played more than enough to cover the expense of both people's meals. The person asks the buddy to pay for their share of the meal with tax and tip in cash. Without leaving the check on the table for the waitress to pickup, the person goes directly to the cashier and present the player card to pay for the meal with points to avoid the buddy from seeing. That is a good way to get near 100% conversion into cash. That cash could go back into the bankroll so the player can play longer.

[FloridaPhil]

We have to pay for drinks at the Florida Hard Rocks, but the comp points seem to be generous. The only hitch is they expire pretty fast, so you need to use them up.  With my wife and I both playing max coin quarter Airport Deuces, one of us usually hits a royal or a bunch of quad deuces and our trip is free.  Compare that with a Beau Rivage stay with loses averaging around $1,000 a trip and you can see why we switched.    A 2-3% difference in odds makes a huge difference in 3 days play.  We may be quarter players, but we play all day and there are two of us.

[olds442jetaway]

Hi Mr. and Mrs. Phil. Is max coins where you are playing 5. If so, this won't work, but if you can go past 5 say up to twenty or twenty five, just for the heck of it, after several hours of no quad deuces, Royals, or even wild royals, try betting 6 for awhile, then if still no go, bet 7...then 8 if necessary and so forth. Playing this way for 2016 has bailed me out quite a few times. As long as you start hitting wild royals or 5 of a kinds close together at some point, you should do OK even without the quad deuces or Royals. If it doesn't work, I owe you guys a dinner in Ct on your next visit. All I can say is so far so good for 2016 after back to back 50k disasters for the two prior years. We'll see how it goes as the year goes on.

[FloridaPhil]

The majority of the video poker games in the southeast are 5 coin max.   Using CS dollars or $5 has the same effect and has bailed me out countless times. I'm sure flat betting the best games with perfect hand strategy is the most profitable long term strategy from a strictly monetary standpoint, but most recreational players are not playing to pay the bills.  I get why we play the way we do and don't care about the cost as long as it doesn't make me angry at myself.  Amazingly enough, it is possible to win with no strategy at all.  This is the nature of randomness.  I do believe that you will eventually lose out over solid math based strategies.  This is the nature of math... 

[Bobdallek]

Thnaks Phil--our trip worked out well, one Royal and a couple of deuces made for a good trip. Planning on Tampa in a week or two, do you recall where the 50c Airport deuces are there?