Compensation II

CINDY: Most casino players who play even minimum bets will get some form of comp from the casinos they frequent.

ABBY: Comps go with the territory of casino playing. We can consider these rewards for your past play or inducements to continue your play into the future. Even medium rollers can get comped rooms, comped food, gifts and so on. The higher the roller, the more valuable the comps due to a simple fact; high rollers lose a lot of money to the casinos.

CINDY: What games come with what comps might be a logical question to ask, right? Here most players can be confused for one simple reason – they don’t ask the pit person or their host what a game’s edge is and how much they get in return for playing the way they do.

ABBY: Just think this way: ask and you shall receive – an answer hopefully. Most players don’t really ask. They just live in a state of comp hopefulness. Please ask what your play is worth to the casinos and what you’ll get comped based on such play. The worse your host can do is tell you they won’t tell you – but there are many casinos in the world and changing one to another is not a crazy thought.

CINDY: Okay, what about the most popular games? How are you judged when playing them? Let’s look at one of them. Roulette on the American double-zero wheel (0, 00) comes in with a house edge of 5.26 percent. Every bet you make is put through that house edge to come up with your compensation.

ABBY: Let us say, you make some inside bets of $10 each, say three of them, coming out at $30. Now, you also make an even-money bet of $10 and a dozens bet of $10 as well. Now, you have $50 riding on the next decision. At 5.26 percent house edge, your expectation over time is to lose $50 X 0.0526 which equals an expected loss of $2.63 per spin. Now you play four hours (an amount of time the casino loves you to play per day) and your expected loss is $2.63 X how many decisions in four hours.

CINDY: Maybe there are 40 decisions per hour. Plug it in and you get 160 decisions X $2.63 loss per decision and your expected loss is $420.80 per four hours. Your comp will be based on that $420.80. How much will they give you in a comp? Maybe 30 percent to 50 percent if you are a steady customer they can rely on to come to the property.

ABBY: Of course, couples can be judged together – most casinos will do that, especially if it comes to a comped room or meal. Slot players do this all the time in terms of their rooms and food.

CINDY: There is a bit of a wrinkle today when it comes to roulette and blackjack; the games are somewhat different than in the past. Blackjack rules have become tighter and the casinos’ edges are therefore higher than in the past. Roulette now has added the triple-zero game (0, 00, 000) which has an extremely high house edge that is 7.69 percent.

ABBY: Losses will grow – what about comps; will they grow too? Maybe, maybe not. Again, you must ask the casino.

CINDY: And remember again, those house edges will hit you – never forget that thought. It is THE thought in casino playing.

This article is provided by the Frank Scoblete Network. Melissa A. Kaplan is the network's managing editor. If you would like to use this article on your website, please contact Casino City Press, the exclusive web syndication outlet for the Frank Scoblete Network. To contact Frank, please e-mail him at fscobe@optonline.net.