I spotted a Free Play Whore ... they’re back

I was checking the market conditions on some bonus slots (at an unnamed casino); I turned to check the other side and there was a Free Play Whore (FPW) sitting down and hanging away. Our eyes then lock.

Cali casinos offer great free play mailers and offers. For example, Thunder Valley easily offers $400 twice a week ($800 x 52 weeks is $41,600 per annum). You add in Reno, Tahoe, and other North Cal casinos and a FPW could get $100K a year in free slot play (FSP) from points, mailers, promo’s, point multipliers, etc.

So what do FPW do? They have to put in huge coin-in and generate substantial ADT stats. Their game of choice is MH’s for the necessary coin-in. They will also play any bonus slot even if it’s marginal; they desperately need the necessary coin-in and make it up on those rare juicy plays.

So what is a marginal play? Suppose the play is $470 on a $500 Minor on an Ainsworth MH. They will jump on at $465. I play them at $490 (don’t worry, these will crack at $499 when I play them). Same thing with Big 5 Safari and their clones. Another example is Scarab, if there are enough wild symbols they will play it. They will bomb anything with a heartbeat. So if there is bank of 6 Scarabs (6 x 5 is 30 possible plays), all the marginal plays will be hit one by one.

Anyway, the FPW spotted me and then left the casino in disgust. When they play marginal games, they need the occasional juicy play to make up for the losses. I take down juicy plays leaving the marginal plays. I am a strong believer in the Pareto distribution. There’s no point for them to keep banging their head on marginal plays without great plays so they leave.

I was there on a recon mission ... I had no plans to stay after checking the market conditions. I was just passing through.

I’ll use Thunder Valley as an example to explain FPW’s.

So it’s an easy $400 in free play twice a week or $800 a week or $40K+ per an annum. Who doesn’t want $40K+ free play per annum.

First, coin in to points depends on the game. VBJ & VP is $2 coin in per point. Slots is $1 CI = 1 point.

2nd, It’s FP & Comps. 5X points on Tues & Thur from 5 pm to 10 pm so lots of FPW’s & hustlers at these times. Btw, you will eat very well at Thunder. When redeeming points into free play, just remember you have to do it in $5 increments.

3rd, you have to generate huge CI per month. One guy ran $400K CI a month a few years ago. You have to show losses and wins from W2G’s are shown separately. These FPW’s are pulling their player’s card out during bonus rounds, etc. to create bogus or phantom losses.

Bad news, Thunder did updated their software so it still tracks you during a bonus round unless it times out.

4th, random Thunder Strike that must hit by $150K. An Asian slot hustler named Timmy won a jackpot at over $100K so lots of hustlers also want to win an easy $100K+.

FPW’s are mostly fighting over MH’s, RD’s, Buffalo Diamonds, WoF 4D, etc. The best play-all game is a roughly 99.3% Video Poker game that only a few people know of. So on 5X points promo, it’s roughly 99.8%. However, practically all the FWP’s are slot players.

The problem is Thunder knows which machines they play. And if they make too much, out they go.

In summary: generate huge coin in per month on mostly marginal plays, play as much +EV bonus slots to offset real losses, create bogus losses, etc and you too can have $400 FP twice a week.

One last point: A lot of these FPW are low brow, brute force players. With the exception of the rare VP folks chasing roughly 99.3% opportunity, these low IQ players tend to miss out on good plays. For example, during one summer, Thunder had an Interblock stadium near Thunder Bar with live BJ, etc. There was a huge play if you knew what to do. Maybe 1 other person knew the play. No FPW’s were present because it was either too hard or they lacked experience.

Putting the $400,000 coin in a month into it’s proper perspective. Btw, this guy worked 6 days a week.

$400,000 x 20 bp is worth $800 Free Slot Play (the $3,200 in mailers plus $800 gets to $4K or the magical 1% — with 5X multiples day of 1% plus 80 basis points from mailers and you see where the juice is coming from)
$400,000 x 40 bp is worth $1,600 of comps or overpriced casino food (comps are 5X more on multiplier days)
I am ignoring bonus offers, discretionary offers, multiplier days, promo’s, etc
The guy got free rooms so staying at Thunder wasn’t a problem.

$400,000 is roughly $100,000 a week
$100,000 over 6 days is roughly $17,000 a day.
Image trying to find plays that could generate $17K coin in a day at a average wager between $1.60 to $4 a spin, respectively.

Now, you see why so many FPW’s gravitate toward the MH’s and destroy the MH market for the rest of the hustlers. These FPW’s are almost always going to undercut the market, e.g. jump in before the correct number. So I am saying it’s a bad number, but they are going to play it anyway ... their economics are vastly different from us.

So the key is for them is to make up the losses on profitable plays. These FPW’s are not afraid of high variance plays so they will make back some of their losses back on say the Blue banked games on Buffalo Diamonds, etc. It’s high risk, high reward, and high coin-in with lots of seat time.

The Achilles heel is that they need to play MH and that forces them to be in the casino for long periods of time. They also need to find the occasional big wins from bonus slots to stem the temporary bleedings.

If you want my opinion, what I just described isn’t a job, but more like a prison sentence. For many, it’s their way of life and making a buck in the casino.

Got a text message from my buddy: the two Cash Bulls (Major is under $1,200 & Grand is under $16K) at Thunder got hit by Coin-In Sluts (I call them Free Play Whores).

This is also true at Harrah’s that also has Cash Bulls. You will rarely find good numbers since the the FPW are jumping on them so fast. Once it hits or is close to a certain number, they are on it and you could set your clock to it.

Coin-In Sluts or Free Play Whores ... same difference.