Players Club Tiers

Hey All,

I'm just a guy who enjoys Vegas and I'm willing to lose a chunk to get different parts of the Vegas experience.

I play here pretty often and have cards at most places but haven't yet picked a home casino. I won't play at MGM or CET because I here you have to be a pretty big player to get comps from them.

Which places outside of these two groups will be easiest to get into the first earned players club tier?

I play some slots for the Vegas experience but mostly BJ.

Any advice on the easiest place to join a new tier? Any and all knowledge here would be helpful.

 

Are you 100% staying on the Strip or is Downtown an option for you?

 

It's not true that you need to be a big player to get comps at MGM or CET. If you're a $15 to $25 player at the tables you should at least get some free room offers for properties like Luxor, Excalibur, NYNY and Monte Carlo. Ultimately the color of your card doesn't matter, it's how much are you worth to the casino. Which means what's your average, how long do you play and which game is it? For slots and video poker it's all about coin-in. Through MLIFE it's rather easy to move up tiers via spending as about $1000 gets you to Pearl without wagering a dime. The same spending now gets you the Sterling Tier at Cosmopolitan.

The upside to MGM and CET is that they own multiple casinos meaning you can gamble at any of their sister properties or eat and charge it to your room no matter which hotel it is as long as it's in their family of casinos.

For low rollers without a lot of upfront comps, the value is in going to the players club desk or host on duty before check out and see what he/she can knock off your bill. Even if you're a small time player this is worth it. It take 5 minutes to get something knocked off even it's just your visit to the coffee shop...it's something. Get what's coming to you.

 

"Willing to lose a chunk" isn't the right attitude: you should still continue to gamble what you would normally gamble - it doesn't make sense to bring along an extra couple of grand to lose so that the next time you go to Las Vegas you might get that $90-100 room free for 3-4 nights.

The big thing is that you need to concentrate your play somewhere so you can build up loyalty to that property and then they'll want to bring you back.

For MGM and CET you don't have to be a big player to get free rooms: I only gamble $200 a day and get free room offers from Aria. The "catch" is that I play and play all day and night so I cycle my money through slots and get a lot of play out of my money.

Your "problem" is mainly going to be that you play mostly blackjack - nobody, be it MLife, Total Rewards, the Downtown properties, etc, comps blackjack players much of anything unless you are betting huge amounts: the house edge is just too small... like if you are playing $25 a hand at a table with only a 0.5% house edge then that means they only make 12.5 cents a hand off you. Since most places only return about 35% in comps that means you need to play close to 2,300 hands just to get a $100 room comped for a single night... at 60 hands an hour that means you would have to play 38 hours in a day.

Now note that this level of play, $25 a hand, will get you comp rooms off-strip, but the key there is: those rooms are worth a lot less and so they are easier to get free. IE: if you stay at The Fremont, where the rooms typically run $20-25 a night, then using the same model as above you only need around 10 hours a day in play to get enough comps built up to cover the room... and getting a tiny crappy room for free isn't really going to be giving you that "experience"


All that said, to answer your question: if you want to get free rooms but are going to stick with blackjack then you just need to go to the smaller properties off strip and Downtown.

 

Not true, run a couple hundred a day through the slots at CET properties and you will get offers for free rooms.

 

I've been going to Vegas for 40 years and there are days reading this board I feel so out of touch with what is now a "big player". To me, $15-$25 a hand, is a big player. I guess I'm just out of touch.

But, to the OP, try downtown.

 

It's all relative to the time and location. When many properties like MGM, Aria, Bellagio are all $15 or $25 minimum for good blackjack rules then it would not be a big player.

However downtown you are sure to get a few people watching you in awe that you're betting that much. I remember a couple years ago betting $50-75 hands at the Fitz (pre-D) and my cousin and I had about 8 people watching our table and wispering about how much we were betting. It was pretty funny. Then a very pretty working girl sat down between us playing $5 hands and trying to get her foot in the door with one of us.

 

I've been tempted to go to Downtown for this. I was surprised to find out the minimums were as low as $25 for the HL rooms at Golden Gate and The D. I really enjoy the atmosphere at Golden Gate. I wanted to stay at The D on my next trip but my GF and I keep getting offered comp rooms at Cosmopolitan so that kind of made that decision for me. You can sometimes find $10-$15 3:2 games at Cosmo but it's 8-deck shoe. I'm not quite ready for $25 games on a regular basis yet I often go $10 pass with single odds at craps all the time placing 6 and 8 when I feel it.