No more *free drinks* ????

i was playing at Casino Royale's bar top video poker in june and was charged when i ordered a drink.
to be honest to this day i'm still confused why i was charged,,,

 

I agree, to a point. The major problem with that idea is that it requires a human being to make a judgment call. The bean counters hate that. Bureaucracy wants a cut and dried, numbers-based, no deviation allowed template. Having people actually use their brains and make a call is anathema to them.

 

Someone please correct me if I'm wrong, but I'm pretty sure the way it works is that the way it goes is something like this...

- Sit down at the machine, insert money (and player's card, if applicable)
- Start playing
- On bartender's arrival, order a drink
- Drink is served to you
- A bill is placed in a glass in front of you
- You put a tip for the bartender in the glass, ignore the bill and carry on playing
- At some point while you're playing, the contents of the glass will be scooped up by the bartender
- They'll keep their tip, and discard the bill for the drink
- The same process will be repeated for the next drink(s) while you're playing

 

Ah, yes, the ongoing epidemic of "gotta-fit-into-a-formula"-itis.

There can be a hybrid of this qual/quant model, where a player must have given the casino a fixed amount of dollars in profit in order to qualify. For instance, there could be a hard rule where players that get invited are only players who lose/have theo of upward of $1,000 per year. That way, there's at least a baseline guarantee of a certain amount of profitability before the liquor starts flowing without questions.

 

so this is what happened.
bf and i got to Casino Royale, he wanted a dollar Michelob.
i didnt want to sit there and wait for him to drink so insert money into machine.
played for like 5 min, bartender comes over and ask if i would like anything.
i order a drink
bartender comes back with my drink and said "$6" and stood there and waited for us to pay.

 

I've spent a lot of time at Casino Royale and any time that I was not recognized or did not yet have my money in the machine and ordered a drink I was asked "Are you playing?" Pretty standard anywhere. So I'd say: 1) they recently installed a system that didn't like your play, 2) the bartender saw or thought you weren't playing full coin, or 3) you ordered something which couldn't be comped. The three times in the last two decades where I experienced what you described I simply said "I thought it was comped" followed by "I don't want it."

 

we paid him but just thought it was odd.... i actually forgot about it until i saw this post

 

Well now I'm curious. Six dollars is an easy comp. Was the money at least twenty? Were you playing five coin? Casino Royale is notoriously low-rent for the Strip, if you spend more time trying to catch the bartender's eye than playing it might have gotten you flagged. When a place sells dollar beers eight at a time to some jerk who is going to carry them to his friends at Harrah's the bartenders can get pretty judgmental. But anyway, it's always advisable to ask if it's comped and I think acceptable to push it back.

 

i did put in a $20. and i was playing 5 credits but i think that machine was a 5cent machine. maybe that was the issue.

i actually wasnt there looking for a drink, if i was, i would have gotten one with when my bf ordered. he came and asked so i ordered one coz might as well if its free (or we thought it was free when he asked).

 

I'd put it on the nickel machine. I spent ten years of Vegas trips scamming for drinks before I actually learned video poker and earned them. Once I made my money and didn't need the free drinks is when I started getting them.

 

I bet MSS is next. Don't waste your time traveling down there to see just to be disappointed. Plus it is already crowded.
You're welcome.

 

I was at Cosmo in April and had no trouble hitting the drink tickets. Heck, I sometimes felt I was getting too many and I began taking them and passing them to people. This was playing $1 denom JoB.

 

He shouldn't have charged you, but in any event, you can always say, " I thought it was free, i dont want it" , it happens.

 

They have to compete with the 3 for 1 happy hours and ten for a dollar cherry bombs on Bourbon, lol.

 

LOL

 

Or just ask. Say something like:
"We usually get free drinks when we're playing other places. Do y'all not do that here?"
Knowing Casino Royale they're probably used to getting abused by people not playing so they are leery. Or maybe they don't comp drinks at the bar there.

 

I think they do coz 2 months prior I was sitting at the exact same machine playing the exact same game betting the exact same and the offered a free drink. Oh well... just wanted to share my experience

 

The more I hear about these monitoring systems and personally observe what's going on at a lot of bars I'm starting to support the idea.

The great majority of people who have experienced using these have been saying that it's not an issue to get enough credits to earn a drink. Many state they actually get more drink tickets than they can actually use.

I've seen a lot of abuse at the bars of people being served premium drinks and spending 90% of their time sitting there watching baseball or soccer while playing 1 hand of video poker, keno or blackjack every 20 minutes or so.

If the casinos need to do this to continue to offer free drinks to the people who are playing I support that.
1 possible alternative is no free drinks for anyone.

I would have to imagine that these systems also have adjustable settings to when a player qualifies for another ticket or drink. That would be the key. Where does any particular casino decide to "set" the threshold?

Even if the monitor was set at say $100 coin in to get a ticket that's easily achieved on .25 VP as it's only 80 hands.
Even someone playing relatively slow is probably knocking down 300 - 400 hands per hour. 320 hands per hour which I would deem really slow would get them 4 drinks. A premium drink every 15 minutes........No problem there.

 

lol it can cost me 100 while I wait for the drink to arrive!!

 

I'm a decent player, no Whale status but enough to get couple nights at the bellagio comp'd

I do enjoy playing as we stroll up n down the strip, checking out the diff casinos , sit down throw in a $20 while we rest n see where that 20 takes me!! That sort of thing!