One of the wonderful benefits of going to Vegas on a gambling trip is the special deals offered to you by the casinos. Known as complimentaries, or “comps”, the object is to entice you to gamble more money at the tables, and hopefully come back time and time again.
Complimentaries can take many forms – whether it’s the free alcohol that is served throughout the casino, cashback incentives, free room nights, meals or show tickets, and sometimes even free airfare – comps are enough justification for gamblers to take a trip to Vegas, rather than perhaps a trip to Hawaii, the Bahamas or some other exotic destination. On top of that, it’s generally a lot more exciting than sitting on a beach somewhere sipping a margarita.
But many gambling experts tell you to avoid playing for comps – and for good reason – often enough the value of the comps are not worth the amount of risk you take at the tables or the slots. The fact of the matter is, at nearly all casinos the best you can hope for in comp value is about 1-2% of your play – so if you risk $100 gambling they’ll give you a dollar. Think of as getting a coupon for a 2% discount – most of us wouldn’t even bother to redeem a coupon giving us 10 cents off of a $5 purchase.
On the other hand, you must also remember that the $1000 you’ve taken to Vegas as your gambling budget may often be played many times through – as I mentioned in Part 3, I once took $100 and made it last through nearly $20,000 in bets.
For that $100 investment, I would have earned $200-$400 in comps in a casino – not bad, that would have covered my room stay and my meals quite easily – provided that $100 had been played at the slots. However, I played mostly blackjack, which usually has a comp return of about 0.2%, thus worth about $40 – so for a $100 loss I got a free night plus a buffet. Had I paid cash for the room and the meal, it might have cost me $40 at most. So that’s $60 I paid for entertainment!
When it comes to online gambling, the returns are MUCH lower – if the experts tell you to avoid playing for comps at a real casino, they would positively insist that you not even consider it when it comes to online gambling.
My travails on the Net gambling scene covered quite a few 먹튀검증 gambling operations, and the absolute best rewards program I could find gives you back 0.1% – that’s right, a penny on $10 – in comps. Actually, there are a couple of places which give you back 0.3% if you play the slots – but that is a horrendous imbalance when compared to a real casino. In essence, my $100 played in the example above would have earned me – you guessed it – $20 in comps at the blackjack table. A free meal for $20,000 worth of action.
Basically, we can sum it up in this manner – if you’re a big gambler, there’s no reason why you shouldn’t get something for nothing, and thus it might be a good decision to play at a casino which offers the rewards programs. But if you’re a small player, you (and I) have a tendency to play longer in order to reach the incentives that are being offered – and that is a big no-no unless you are way ahead.
I am certain the gambling operations on the Net today will increasingly turn to offering better reward programs instead of cash bonuses in order to attract gamblers – and they will realize they can offer a far better reward program than ANY casino is currently doing – but in the meantime stick to the objectives outlined in the previous installments of this series, and concentrate on maximizing your money. When you’ve made a nice little sum you can then bankroll your trip to Vegas and earn much better comps then!
