Internet Casinos | | Online Poker  | Top Online Casinos | Online Gambling | Internet Casinos Directory | Internet Casinos | High Roller Online Casinos |

Comps are based on your theoretical losses. The casinos know that in the long run you'll lose more than expected sometimes and you'll win sometimes, so they base their offers on the average expected results given the games and amount you play. 

You're not going to be able to change their mathematical formulas, but there are a few little things you can do to be sure you're getting the best of what the casino marketers have to offer. 

* Ask at the players club booth for information on how the club works. In some clubs, the same points are used for cash back and for meal comps, and you'll have to choose between them when you redeem your points. At others, you accumulate cash points and comp points separately. Also, cash back rates vary widely--you may get 5 percent of your total slot play rebated as cash in one casino, but only 0.1 percent in another. Weigh the club benefits along with the availability of games you like and your comfort level with the casino in deciding where to play. 

* Concentrate your play. If you're a low-to-moderate roller, dividing your play among four or five casinos, you may build up £5 in cash back here and a buffet there, but not have enough play in any one casino to get higher-level comps. Casinos like to take care of customers who give them regular play. Focusing on the one or two places where you most like to play may bring bonus cash, room offers and more/better meal comps. 

That's particularly important in vacation destinations such as Las Vegas. It's fun to go casino hopping--I do a good deal of that myself. But save a good portion of your play for your host casino or for another casino where you'd like to stay. Higher play levels will bring bigger room discounts or free room offers. 

* Ask to see a casino host. Hosts have the power of the pen--they can write meal comps or comp your room without deducting points from your players club account. If you ask for a meal comp at a slot club booth, they'll almost always deduct points in exchange. If you've played enough and a host sees you as someone the casino would like to encourage to return, he or she can write the comp without deducting points. Be sure to be polite--you want the host to WANT to help you. You won't get the comp every time, but it's worth pursuing 6. 

* Players who have hosts might try charging all their meals or anything else they purchase at their casino hotel to their room accounts instead of asking for comps upfront. Often, a meal that you'd have to pay for early in the trip before you've played much can be comped after the fact if you've charged it to your room. I'm no high roller, but often my room is comped upfront, and then the host evaluates play before I leave to decide whether to pick up food costs too. A colleague of mine likes to refer to casino comps as "free stuff." And for those who know their basic strategy in blackjack, optimal strategies for certain video poker games and who know how comping systems work, the "stuff" really is free--the value of the comps and cash back equals or exceeds losses on the games. 

For most players, comps aren't free. For one thing, the large majority of casino customers play the slots, and the house edge on slot machines is too large for comps to make up the difference. They pay for comps with their losses. 

But even at the slots or at table games such as roulette or Caribbean Stud that have larger house edges than blackjack, Online Casino players who understand how the comping systems work can get a little more bang for their buck. That buffet lunch tastes just a little bit better when you've gotten it comped without going overboard with your wagers. 

With that in mind, here are a few things every player should know about casino comps. 

* Anybody who's playing, whether it's on the two-cent slots or at a £100 blackjack table, will get free beverages, limited to soft drinks and coffee in Illinois and Indiana, but including alcohol in Nevada and New Jersey. For more than that, the casino needs to know who you are. The purpose of comps is to build customer loyalty, and they want your name in their database for marketing purposes. That means you have to start the process by signing up for a player rewards card, often called a "slot club card." Each casino has its own club. The cards are free. You slide them into a reader at the machines or leave them on the table for a pit supervisor to pick up while you play. 

* Once you've signed up, the comps can come in many forms. Slot players build up points as they go, and the points are redeemable for cash back. At some casinos, players can get the cash on the same day they play, at others the cash comes in the form of direct mail vouchers that require a return trip to the casino. 

Cash back is by far the most popular comp, but it's by no means the only perk available. Free valet parking, meals, tournament entries, hotel stays, even airfare are available if you play enough. 

Table players usually can't exchange points for cash back. Grand Victoria in Elgin and Blue Chip Casino in Michigan City, Ind., are exceptions. Many other casinos will use direct mail to send table vouchers redeemable for cash on the next trip, but tend not to be as generous with the cash to table players as they are to slot players. For the most part, table comps are of the non-cash variety. 
For a number of years, prolific, popular gambling author Frank Scoblete published a quarterly magazine called The New Chance and Circumstance. 

It was one of my favorite magazines to write for, because it was jam-packed with information on playing the games. It was fluff-free, with Scoblete, Henry Tamburin, John Robison, articles by Alene Paone and others. 

Also in the mix was a craps player who called himself Sharpshooter. His focus was on rhythmic rolling, setting, gripping and delivering the dice so the results were no longer random. 

The New Chance and Circumstance is gone, but Sharpshooter is still rolling in Get the Edge at Craps (£14.95, 306 pages, softcover), the latest in the series of Frank Scoblete Get the Edge guides from Bonus Books. 

Sharpshooter doesn't claim to control the roll every time. He says he can influence the roll 10 to 12 percent of the time, and that's enough to overcome the narrow house advantage at craps. He says he's been winning regularly for more than a decade, with an average of 62 percent return on bankroll each trip. 

Is even such limited control possible? I don't know. Believe me, when I roll the dice, they're as random as can be. But Scoblete swears by Sharpshooter's work, as do others I know who have attended seminars he's taught. And that tells me that while there are no guarantees, this is something serious craps players will find worth at least checking out. 

Following his methods will take work. Sharpshooter says he has a half-table in his living room where he practices at least 45 minutes a day. Setting, gripping and throwing the dice his way takes study and practice. Along with illustrations of dice sets and grips, Sharpshooter includes plans for a portable practice box, so you can keep rolling even in a hotel room. Creating muscle memory, so you naturally release in the same way time after time, is a key, he says, and he details a three-week practice play to create such muscle memory. 

The basics of craps wagers are covered in early pages, although this book will be most useful to players for whom odds and percentages already are second nature. Later on, the author gives tips for gaining a psychological edge, money management, building a team. 

I found it all fascinating, although I'm not a dedicated enough craps player to put it to work. Those dedicated to the game will enjoy putting Get the Edge at Craps to the test. 
That top jackpot--£1,000 for a five-coin bet on a quarter machine or £4,000 on a dollar machine--is neither large enough nor frequent enough to account for video poker's popularity. A high frequency of smaller wins and higher payback percentages than you find on slot machines--along with a skill factor unmatched on the slots--is what keeps players coming back. 

Some games have an additional factor--a large secondary jackpot that hits much more often than royal flushes. That was and is missing on the Jacks or Better game that started video poker's rise in the early 1980s. The second highest-paying hand is a straight flush, an uncommon event in itself at about once per 9,148 hands. Even with such scarcity, straight flushes pay only 250 coins for a five-coin bet--£62.50 on a quarter machine. That payoff is neither large enough nor frequent enough to be a factor in bringing players to the games. 

It's different on many games that have followed Jacks or Better. In Double Bonus Poker, the payoff on four of a kind, 5s through Kings, equals that 250-coin straight flush payoff, and the quads come up about once per 622 hands, giving the player reasonable hope in any session. It has even larger payoffs on four 2s, 3s or 4s (400 coins, about once per 1,900 hands) and four Aces (800 coins, once per 5,000 hands). Double Double Bonus Poker, one of the most popular games around, kicks it up a notch with a 2,000-coin jackpot--half the royal flush payoff--on four Aces accompanied by a 2, 3 or 4. That comes up about once every 16,000 hands from the free web counter, 2.5 times as often as a royal. 

With the rise of multiple-game and multiple-hand machines, we're seeing more and more video poker games with large, attainable secondary jackpots. Super Double Bonus Poker not only pays 800 coins for a five-coin bet on four Aces, it pays 600 on four Kings, Queens or Jacks. Triple Double Bonus Poker pays 4,000 coins--as much as a royal--on four Aces with a 2, 3 or 4, and 2,000 coins on four 2s, 3s or 4s with an Ace, 2, 3 or 4. 

One favorite of mine is Super Aces, available on many Triple Play/Five Play and Ten Play machines in the Chicago area. The secondary jackpot here is 2,000 coins on four Aces, with no low-card kicker needed. For a quarter player, that's a £500 payoff on a hand that occurs about once per 4,200 hands--nearly 10 times as often as a royal flush. 

The full-pay version returns 99.8 percent with expert play and has the following pay table per coin bet: royal flush, 250 (rises to 4,000 coins for a five-coin bet); straight flush, 250; four Aces, 400; four 2s, 3s or 4s, 80; four 5s through Kings, 50; full house, 8; flush, 5; straight, 4; three of a kind, 3; two pair, 1; pair of Jacks or better, 1. 

Casinos often reduce the payback percentage by cutting the payoff on full houses. If full houses pay only 7-for-1, Super Aces returns 98.7 percent with expert play; drop that full house payback to 6-for-1 and the overall return drops to 97.7 percent. 
SLOT MACHINES: The one-armed bandits--which often come armless nowadays--are the fastest, most efficient tool casinos have to separate you from your money. 


Links