CS strategy

[onemoretry]

Royal droughts are, indeed, extremely painful. I once went slightly over 200,000 hands without one, and was starting to wonder if I'd ever see another one. That was over an eight or nine month period of time.

The period of time involved is not really relevant, though, it's the number of hands that tells the story.

Reports of royal droughts of weeks, months, etc., with no mention of the amount of play don't tell us very much.

[billryan]

I'm about 65,000 removed from one, but mailings, sign up bonuses and cashback have me near even. Factor in the meals and shows and I'm sitting pretty.

[FloridaPhil]

[quote=billryan]I'm about 65,000 removed from one, but mailings, sign up bonuses and
cashback have me near even. Factor in the meals and shows and I'm
sitting pretty.[/quote]Are you saying there are enough give aways and free food lines in Vegas to make up for the loss of a royal?   In other words, if you never hit another royal will you break even? 

[billryan]

At my level of play, yes. However it isn't scalable.
A low level player in Vegas who exploits comps and takes full advantage of mailings and cash back can play pretty much break even without hitting royals.
As an example, $1400 coin in weekly at one local joint gets you $20 cash back and $35 in food comps.
$1,000 weekly I another place gets you $15 free play and $10 food comps.
A third gets you $3 cash, $6 food and a quarterly free play coupon of.about $25 free play and an equal amount of food. That offer is the same if you play $1,000 one week or $1,000 every week so players who play once a quarter make out 13x better than weekly players.
Trick is to find and exploit the individual casino promos.
Something that would be a lot of work without a network of similar players.
As I said, most of these only work at lower play. Doubling your coin in doesn't double the advantage.
If your mail offers stays the same for $1,000 in as it does for $13,000 in, you actually lose part of the edge by playing more. Sometimes, you are better off being a small fish in fifteen places than a bigger fish in one.

[pokerpokerpoker]

Damn, with all that free food, I would be a whale. Maybe even pushing 400.

[onemoretry]

Sometimes, the "royal thing" is the other way around. Last May, playing 50 line nickels at Harrahs Laughlin, I had eleven royals in around four hours play. It worked out to an average of one per 9200 hands.

[FloridaPhil]

[quote=billryan]A low level player in Vegas who exploits comps and takes full advantage
of mailings and cash back can play pretty much break even without
hitting royals.[/quote]Interesting.   I would guess there are a lot of retirees in Vegas playing VP and living pretty well off it.   If you don't need royals, every $1,000 jackpot could be pocketed.  Do the casinos discourage this sort of thing?

[billryan]

   Casinos fall over themselves trying to attract older players. Some now promote special events for 50 year olds, although most still do 55 and over.
I suspect the number of people who actively exploit the promotions, as opposed to participating in them isn't that many. For every person who runs $25 in freeplay through a machine once and cashes out, there are a hundred who lose the $25 and then some of there own.
I doubt one in 500 pays enough attention to realize they will get the same mailing from a casino with $5,000 coin in as opposed to $15,000 and that the same $15K in coins played in three casinos will get you two more offers than playing it all in one casino will.
   

[billryan]

Damn, with all that free food, I would be a whale. Maybe even pushing 400.

I gained over thirty pounds my first year here. It's hard but adjusting my diet and just not taking full advantage of comps and I'm down almost forty now, for a net loss of ten pounds in 18 months. More to follow. Much more ,hopefully.

[Eduardo]

The secret is to only place small orders while the RNG waiter is dishing up fried appetizers and when you can sense he's getting ready to bring out a steak, you order big.