 |
Promotions Online Casino Gravy
Stalking the Wild Promotion
Where do you learn about promotions? You learn about promotions in so many different places that the best advice I can give is always to look everywhere. Read everything. Scan the local newspapers every day, then go back and whip through them again, looking for advertisements. Read the ads closely to see what's going on. You might find that a casino is giving double points to slot club members during the Monday Night Football game, hoping to entice the women to play the slot machines while the men are watching football. (Stereotyping and sexism are alive and well in casinos.) Oftentimes, the only place to find really current information is in the newspapers, because the locals who read them are a large market for the casinos.
The second best place to look for promotions and coupons is in the free tourist magazines, also known as "freebie mages." Most gambling towns have one or two, but Las Vegas supports about a dozen of them. You can generally find them in racks at the airports around the rental car counters; I grab any I see so I can get right into my research only five minutes after arriving, and so I have something to read while we wait for the free shuttle to take us to our hotel. You can also find the freebie magazines around the casinos, often near the bell desk. If you don't see them, ask; sometimes there's a rack somewhere else. (Also look for racks of coupons. You'll see these racks at the rental car offices and counters, tourist information centers, and in motel lobbies.) Some of the freebie-mag companies have deals with the hotels to put their periodical in the hotel rooms.
Advanced Promotions
Every time I pass a casino, I read the marquee. Casinos like to advertise special promotions on the signage in front: this week they're paying 2-1 (instead of 3-2) for blackjacks, or they're only charging a 3 % commission (instead of the usual 5 %) on the bank at baccarat, or they're giving away $50,000 in a cash drawing.
Every single casino I go into, I look around for banners advertising something special. I always snoop around the slot club booth, too, where there are often brochures, leaflets, and the like that inform you about current promotions.
Another way to learn about promotions is to cultivate local contacts. Locals know a lot about promotions all over town. I always try to talk to the people playing video poker around us. Most of the time the people are visitors who don't know diddly, but occasionally someone will tell me that she's playing here at Casino X today, but tomorrow she'll be over at Casino Y, which is giving out free sweatshirts for four-of-a-kinds.
One of the best places to learn about promotions is in the Las Vegas Advisor. Their research department follows all the casino events closely, their writers know how to analyze returns and strategy, and the monthly format is good for alerting you to what's going on or coming up. Another good place to find them is in a weekly tabloid called gaming today, given away free on Tuesdays in most race and sports books.
Terms
Though some promotions keep going and going and going (usually the less valuable ones), no promotion lasts forever and many are very short term. If it's extremely positive, a promotion might wind up being cancelled almost before it gets going, because the locals in the know hit it hard and burn it out.
I've seen promos that awarded cash bonuses on royal flushes, but the bonuses were so valuable that teams of video poker professionals monopolized them. A two-person team can tie up a good machine for as long as a promotion lasts by playing 12-hour shifts. Once in a while a great promo comes along that's worth upwards of $50 to $100 an hour to the players. Needless to say, these deals don't last too long, as the casino figures out fast that they're getting the short end of the stick. But if you're lucky enough to jump on one when it starts, you can reap the benefits.
|
 |
 |