free play offers

[notes1]

Interesting discussion, guys. It sounds like you do $4,000 coin in per day. That's almost ten times more than my low roller days. Your Diamond was well earned, Notes.
 faa, i think getting the most free play is important to help offset all the negative games i play. i only go to the casino on the days i get the most.  i typically play 2 days per month, and put thru about $9-10k each visit. this earns an additional 1000 points from CET, which is how i got diamond status. i could care less about any status, the sole determing factor in how often/long i play is loses. actually, playing wihin one's budget is likely the way most people play.  the vast majority are going to lose, that is the reality. i notice you also play within a set budget, good for you.

[alpax]

faa, i think getting the most free play is important to help offset all the negative games i play. i only go to the casino on the days i get the most. 

That is the same mindset I have as well. The cashback on playing VP is minuscule at the local Indian casino so I try to play in between two free play periods (Saturday - Sunday midnight) on a single visit. The amount is also based on a curve so I try to play a little bit more than the common penny slot players to get more value.

One of my locals got smart. They put in a dead period from midnight to 7am on Sunday before the week's free play become available.

Caesars is ADT so I would not recommend doing what I wrote.

[olds442jetaway]

That works out pretty well for me Alpax. Most of my sessions begin later in the evening and end early in the AM, so I can combine the offers as well. I also get extra swipes on the kiosk games. Where it hurts me is this. If I hit 33 status points in a gaming day, I get a hundred bucks in free slot play. That is a lot of coin in more like 15k for one session. Once in awhile I hit that 33 number, but it resets at 6 AM, so I never get the hundred bucks. If I started my play earlier in the day and ended it before 6 AM the next morning, I would have received the hundred in free play several times over the last several months. Oh well, better to stay even or better and not overplay just to try and hit the magic number.

[alpax]

It would be pretty tough to get to 15k coin in a single session with 5 quarters per hand. I know this because I play 20 quarters at a time (40 quarters the following hand until I lose if I hit 3oaK or better on Jacks). It takes me about 4 hours to reach that. To have to do that back to back days would require at least $2000 credit line with the casino to play it through it safe.

Mathematically it is worth while to do it in the long run based on the premise that the promotion will last as its expectation value is more than a half a percent. We did see good things come to an end recently. I would pursue the higher bets, but it is easy for me to say such.

[olds442jetaway]

yes, 15k a session is very difficult to achieve and sometimes can cost about 1k in an off day. The only way I can do it is to play Martingale Clone and play on Double Down Stud where I can play 1,000 hands per hour and play for 10 hours. It is just not worth the expense or toil and effect on one's health at my age. I am sticking with CS for 2016 and trying to make bet 5 my single coin bet mostly on job. If I do use Martingale, it is very mild and only use it when I have to up my next bet based on the 4 or more hits. That gives me about 6k in coin in for a fairly long session, but not 10 hours. On a bad day, that translates into a 300- loss. Bad, but manageable.

[DaBurglar]

is it just me or are others seeing another reduction is free play offers? no change in amount put thru the machines. My CET free play at the 3 AC properties, Caesars-Ballys-Harrahs  has pretty much evaporated the past 4-5 months due primarily to my oVERall decreased video poker activity, combined with the fact that what remaining video poker play I have, i have been slaughtered so quickly and thoroughly that very little coin-in registers and thus I get nothing.It makes me totally miss the days back in the 1990s when you could simply go to a host, ANYHOST, and have them look ONLY at your total losses for the day/week/month  and then have him award you accordingly.Now, I plop a couple hundred ($200) in at Caesars, it is literally chewed up and swallowed by the machine(s) in 15 minutes, at a $1.25 per hand (single line quarters), that is a first run of 160 hands......after that first pass and a AC-only  DUD rate of 65-70% I may be left with 120 bucks so i launch the next 96 hands, after which I am left with 60 bucks or so......then I fire off my last 48 or so hands, which peter out after about 104 more TOTAL hands in the dying gasp of the last part of the "session" which inevitably involves a brief  "rally" where your last 15 bucks seems to somehow last longer than the previous 180 bucks ever did.........So what does that leave me with........160 hands plus 96 hands plus another 104  equals a total of 360.....that yields a whopping $450 coin in, give or take.     with my original stake of 200 I have seen a phenomenal "return %" of 55.5555555%!!!!!!!!!!Guess I w ill not be getting any more free play until I hibernate for 4-6 months ala the Sagacious advice of Mr. B Dancer!

[olds442jetaway]

$ 450- coin in won't even buy you one point at Mohegan Sun. If you are playing 99 percent machines, 4500- coin in won't buy you a point either. However, so far for 2016, I have played in all areas of the casino and several different games on both nickels, quarters, and even dollars for a short time. THE MACHINES ARE ACTING JUST LIKE PRIOR TO AUGUST 2011. What that means is I am very close to even or maybe a little better. How long will it last? I guess we will find out. If anyone else goes, I would love their feedback to see if it is just my play and a short term blip up, or have they done something else in an attempt to get the vp players who have all but vanished back.

[DaBurglar]

$ 450- coin in won't even buy you one point at Mohegan Sun. If you are playing 99 percent machines, 4500- coin in won't buy you a point either. However, so far for 2016, I have played in all areas of the casino and several different games on both nickels, quarters, and even dollars for a short time. THE MACHINES ARE ACTING JUST LIKE PRIOR TO AUGUST 2011. What that means is I am very close to even or maybe a little better. How long will it last? I guess we will find out. If anyone else goes, I would love their feedback to see if it is just my play and a short term blip up, or have they done something else in an attempt to get the vp players who have all but vanished back.Wow olds, sounds like you are on an actual hot streak!   Good for you, keep at it!    Boy, I cannot remember the last time I was on successful run like that!      One thing about when I show up in your neighborhood (fox  and Mohegan) to play poker, the drive from springfield is long enough that it does not leave me much time to do anything besides play the poker that was the reason for me making the trip in the first place......the whole issue we discussed earlier about rooms being sparse and expensive  means that I do not have the chance to mess around with video poker in between poker sessions.    If I had a room to crash in, I could try it.......

[FAA]

DB, the lack of credits during a cold cycle, which can last the whole session, is very infuriating. Not only did they shake you down, you got zilch in the process. I hit two quads inside an hour at C last night, after which I abandoned gaming to charge my phone and read, considerably less stressful activities. My commute is not bad, so I can step off the gaming gas.

[notes1]

here is a cold cycle. my only gambling session for the month, i went to cherokee for one longgg night of play. when i arrived, i went the first three hours, with only one quad, 8's. later on, lost over $400 between quads. the way i play, that is over 40 different machines, at quarter max, losing $10 between quads. events like this, make me wonder about the machines. needless to say, i lost my a$$. the only good i got, was some excercise from moving around so much.  on another note, went last month and got a room on site for a friday nite, have not had that in years. this time, i got a mini suite upgrade, never happened before in nearly 10 years of play. ever since they started lowering their free play offers, i noticed the casino was not as mobbed as it had always been. they did open a newer, much smaller place closer to geogia border.  i just think that because their payouts (paytables) were always bad, people still went because they could get more free play than anywhere else. with the reduction in offers, the bad payouts are hitting folks hard. for those who have never been to cherokee, it has always been one of the busier casinos i have ever been in and that includes some in vegas. they have a monoply over  a muti state region.