Not all players comped equally

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Whether comps come in the form of meals, hotel stays, cash back, free play or anything else, players who are the most valuable to the casino have always been given the most incentive to return.

Along with wagering totals, the house edge is taken into account. Given equal bets, a roulette player is worth more to the casino than a blackjack player, and those who make the really bad bets at craps are worth more than either.

So it goes on electronic games, and that brings me to a question from a reader, who asked via e-mail, “Can you tell me why they now penalize video poker players by awarding us less points than slot players?”

Video poker players do get fewer points per dollar than slot players. In one system, slot players get a point for every $4 wagered, while video poker players get a point per $8. It then takes 100 points to redeem for a dollar in free play, so the slot players are getting 0.25 percent of their wagers returned as free play, while video poker players are getting 0.125 percent.

Let’s do a comparison, using $800 in wagers to make the arithmetic easy. Say you’re playing a penny slot that returns 87 percent — about the norm in the Chicago area. Per $800 wagered, the house expects to keep $104. In the rewards system detailed above, you’d get back $2 in free play.

What if you played 8-5 Jacks or Better video poker instead? Given expert play, the game returns 97.3 percent, meaning an average of $21.60 in losses per $800 wagered. Even if you don’t play that will and spot the house an extra 2 percent, the losses per $800 of $37.60 are still well short of the slot player’s average deficit. You get only $1 in free play, but your overall bottom line is still better than if you’d played the penny slot.

The difference narrows if you play higher-denomination slots with higher payback percentages. And video poker in this market is not as high-paying as it used to be. Still, slot players are more valuable to the house than video poker players. That’s why casinos expend more player rewards resources to keep them coming back.

John Grochowski is a local free-lance writer. His “Casino Answer Man” tips air at
5:18 p.m. Tuesday-Friday on WLS-AM (890).