The High Cost of Free Play
July 3, 2009
About four months ago I was sitting in an Encore hotel room listening to a visiting friend contemptuously describe what he felt to be a misleading casino advertising gimmick.
At some point during his travels from Florida to Las Vegas, he was made aware of a promotion that was being run by the Hooters Casino. While the precise details of the promo escape me due to a diminishing 41-year-old memory, the premise was that he was to take a coupon, present it to Hooters, and receive a generous amount of “free slot play”.
This person felt that Hooters was offering him the opportunity to get a modest amount of machine play with limited risk, at which point he could get a feel for the casino and decide whether or not to continue gambling with actual cash.
This was a fair assumption. After all, the purpose of free play is to entice one into a casino with the hopes that they will gamble long after the free play is exhausted.
Of course, in order to keep the player on-property, it is a good idea to make the free play as fun as possible. The reasons for this should be obvious. If the potential customer has fun playing for free, and they like the environment in which they play, chances are much higher that they will play for “real”.
And so, this friend embarked on the 2-ish mile walk from the Encore to Hooters to take them up on their offer.
Upon arriving at the Boobs Casino, he was presented with a small number of “promo machines” on which to play.
The rules of these promo slot machines were very simple:
Hit the jackpot or get nothing.
The free play was not playable toward winnings past the promo amount. If you did not hit a top-tier (and probably impossible) jackpot with your free credits, you got nothing at all. You were playing for a major jackpot only, and you had to hit it or quit it.
Shockingly, this person did not hit a jackpot. Not only that, but he was more than a little angry that he had walked four miles round-trip to essentially whack off in front of a fake slot machine. He left Hooters without dropping any more money, and vowed not to go back.
One might argue that Hooters accomplished nothing with this “free play” endeavor other than to completely alienate a potential customer who was checking out the casino for the very first time.
Fast forward a few months.
I am standing on Las Vegas Boulevard holding $100 in Casino Royale “free slot play” that I had “won” earlier, and even though I am overtly skeptical of these promotions (come on, I see them every day), I feel that I have little to lose by at least humoring myself.
And so I did.
Humor myself, that is.
Casino Royale
Casino Royale Free Slot Play
Clasping my two fake $50 bills, I strode up to the bank of machines marked “promotional”, fed the bills into the machine until I had 100 credits, and began pressing buttons and yanking arms.
I lost about 40 consecutive spins, got down somewhere to around 20 credits, and then began hitting 10 credit wins here and there. Before I knew it, I was back up to nearly where I started. I would have loved to have cashed out at some point and taken my winnings or parlayed them into a real session, but unfortunately, the Casino Royale free slot play was identical to that of Hooters.
There were a few impossible jackpots that I was playing for, and there was no way to carry credits forward to “real” play.
I was at the machine for a solid hour, and I simply could not lose it all. I would get down to a small amount, then hit a 10 credit win, then another, then another, and before I knew it, I was back up to 60. Knowing that none of the money was real, this actually began to get extraordinarily annoying.
I had it easy, though. A lady playing next to me had worked her way up to nearly 600 credits (from a 50 credit start), and even though she was also at the machine for an hour, she simply could not get below 400 credits.
After I had finished this seemingly pointless endeavor, and having just experienced it first-hand after walking past this promo many times, I have a few observations.
I do not think the “fake freeplay” promotions are a good idea.
It took me an hour to go through 100 credits, and when I left the lady beside me still had a few hundred credits left. For all I know, she could have been there for another 8 ½ hours. Of what benefit is it to the casino when people play a bogus machine for such a length of time? The casino is not making a dime from people playing on fake promo machines.
The counter argument would be “Sure, but they got you inside didn’t they?”.
Even though it is true that I did return to the casino for my free play, by the time I was finished, I was in no mood to play another machine. I was utterly burned out after this session, and I had zero desire to play further. I did not want to even look at another machine, so I exited the property post-haste.
I’m not the brightest bulb on the tree, but I simply can’t imagine a scenario in which this translates to real dollars.
Last but not least, these types of promotions seem to engender a certain amount of distrust and disdain from the people that play them. At least the ones with any measurable IQ. There was a fair amount of eye-rolling and a sense that they were cheated, or at the very least deceived. When you “win” free slot play, it imparts an expectation that you are going to play real slots with a real chance to win.
I feel almost certain that these machines never pay off. In all honesty, I’m not even sure if promo machines are regulated by the Nevada Gaming Commission, or if they are considered to be novelty machines only. If the latter is the case, then I cannot imagine any scenario in which they would pay.
If this is the case, the only thing you are “winning”, is a colossal waste of your time.
Of course, the question begs to be asked:
If I didn’t enjoy the game, why did I continue to play?
This is something I wondered myself, and it’s also something that I asked the woman next to me. “Are you going to play all those or are you just going to give up?”, I asked.
“I’ll probably play them, because as soon as I stand up, someone else will come along behind me and hit the jackpot”, she said.
It was because of this rationale that I continued to play the machine until my credits had expired. I’ve led an unconventional life and I have seen bizarre things that I would never have imagined or believed unless I had seen them with my own two eyes. Many of these things were far more strange than hitting an “impossible” jackpot on a machine that is probably rigged to never pay off.
Murphy’s Law indicates that the spin made immediately after you leave will be the winning one.
I kept playing (and I think most people keep playing), because even though you know it’s highly improbable that you are going to win, you still don’t discard a lottery ticket until the drawing is over.
Yes, I realize that this makes me a sucker and a buffoon, but given that I was already in a Vegas casino, I suppose this is like calling grass … “green”.
In any event, I suppose it goes without saying that I did not win my fortune.
There is also a moral to the story, which I think most people are already aware.
If you get any type of “free” play that is not based on personal comps or is not based upon the possession of a player’s card that has your name emblazoned across the front … don’t waste your time.
I do pointless things … so that you don’t have to.
Yes, convincing myself that I spent a half hour pounding on a phony machine due to altruism takes some of the sting out of my stupidity.
Please indulge me.
Written by Jim on July 3, 2009 at 6:08 pm
I got sucked into these at the old Lady Luck and the Riviera. As soon as you see the “special bank of machines” you have to play on, you know you’re screwed. My only good fortune was that the machines I played mercifuly let me lose fast.
Written by ColinFromLasVegas on July 3, 2009 at 7:59 pm
Only thing I can think of is that they get someone with free play sitting there, racking up the free play points, up and down, but never running out, stuck at the machine, keeping the seat warm, with the main idea to keep you sitting there and patronizing their casino. That is so that others that are walking by on the Strip (I would imagine these machines have to be up front to be seen through the window by them) see you sitting there, along with all those others with free plays, and the ones walking by think the machines are “loose.” In turn, they figure since you are in there winning at the machine, they can too. But they don’t know about the free play thing.
So, following that reasoning, you have become a PART of their advertising to attract others in to gamble at their seemingly “loose” slot machines. Just you sitting there, along with others, is an attraction for others to come in and throw real money in the other machines.
I always laugh at that advertising by casinos: “Loose” slot machines here. As you know, there are no “loose” slot machines. They all pay off the same. From my understanding, they have to all be approved according to Nevada Gaming Commission standards to pay off a certain amount over a span of six months or so.
Written by Comrade Stalin on July 4, 2009 at 6:55 am
Given that you are not putting money in, you are not actually gambling. Ergo, doesn’t it seem likely that the machines are not regulated ?
Written by FoolsGold on July 4, 2009 at 7:15 am
The advertisement is the coupon. Zillions of people see the coupon and are impressed. Some of them are foolish enough to actually show up and play the silly machine. After getting tired of that,some of those people put money into the regular shot machines… after all, they haven’t had much re-inforcement and will want their fix from a different needle… er, uh slot machine.
Does this annoy suckers. Yeah, but their suckers so who cares if they are anoyed. The “cost” of enticing someone into the casino is very low, so if ONE sucker shows up the casino is ahead of the game and the rest of the suckers who show up are just pure profit.
Would it be better to say ‘ free play on our silly little slot machine’? I don’t know
Incidentally, any machine that is a Novelty Machine must be labled as such and I thought, but have not checked, that any slot machine in the casino not clearly designated as a novelty item must meet the 75 percent payout that the law requires. Perhaps the casino gets around that by saying 75 percent of “No-Money-In” is “No-Money-Out”.
Written by Rex on July 4, 2009 at 8:27 am
“Given that you are not putting money in, you are not actually gambling. Ergo, doesn’t it seem likely that the machines are not regulated ?”
This is a valid question, and is probably the “loophole” so to speak, but it’s a bit of a grey area.
For example, there are methods by which you can win a “free lottery ticket” … usually in the form of a scratch off or something of the like.
Are these tickets required to have the same chance of winning as all other scratch of tickets, or can they by pulled from a pile of sure-losers?
And of course, when they say “free slot play”, what do they mean?
The implied law of merchantability may come into play here under the auspices that a reasonable person would have the expectation that all slot machines in Las Vegas have an X% chance of winning $X.
If you win a free car, it still has to come with seatbelts and a steering wheel. Even sweepstakes (which require no purchase) are governed by rules.
Of course, this is Las Vegas, and despite what people tell you — the town is more or less unregulated. “Laws” are for the little guys and the unconnected.
I would be willing to bet that these machines never pay out. At least not unless they are implicitly instructed to pay out at a particular time during a particular event.
I don’t think there is any “chance” or randomness involved.
I also don’t think the Gaming Control Board ever looks at them.
Since they have already hooked the customer into the casino, I do think it is of little value to loosen these machine up enough to keep players flush in fake credits for 1-2 hours (the lady next to me may never have finished).
It seems to defeat the purpose.
Written by Jeff on July 7, 2009 at 3:27 am
Perhaps their hope is that whomever accompanies the free slot play promotion “winner” will kill the time spent awaiting the fruitless button mashing by playing some of the real machines or table games.
Written by Glen on July 8, 2009 at 12:10 pm
The freeplay I have got at TI and some other properties was decent. You could play almost any machine and the machine kept the freeplay and winnings separated. I got $25 freeplay and turned it into $30 winnings and cashed out once the freeplay hit zero. I have played the Casino Royale game, and it is annoying.
Written by ClownHo on March 4, 2010 at 11:19 pm
Great read, thanks. I know this sounds like a desperate attempt to justify playing free slots (I never have, and doubt I will, even at CR), but wouldn’t you be offered free drinks while you’re playing? I suppose it’s quite possible the staff ignores those machines. But I could see people stringing out free slot play at CR for an hour or more if they’re sitting there w/ a friend and drinking comp drinks.