The Dumbest Casino Promotion For Suckers

There's been some sweaty-palmed discussion of the new Riviera "$1000 guarantee" promotion on vpFREE this week, and it's typical of those wide-eyed, stumbling vp players to get so giddy over something so stupid. Of course, arci will never be able to sneak out the back door long enough to get to this one - nor will he ever get to LV again while he can still walk - but he can still apply some of his phantom bucks to it.

The promo has to do with getting a rebate for you vp or slot play losses, up to $1000 worth, in 2 visits--50% today and 50% in a month or something like that. We both had eye Dr. appts. in LV Friday so I decided it would be a good time to go there and visit their new British Pub for a beer and a snack. It's advertised as authentic, I lived in the UK for two years, I'm disappointed with Crown & Anchor on Tropicana across from Metro Pizza, so I wanted to see if this place got it right. They did.

On the way out I got a club card, was told about the promotion (which made little sense to me) and I played for maybe 15 minutes on a dollar 7/5 BP machine. Gee, I thought, another negative machine which equates to another loser, and as Bob Dancer likes to say, when my first hand out came out a FH, all that meant was that I LOST five bucks and won nothing!

Well, 15 minutes later and after four threes I was up $210, so I OPERATIONALLY cashed out and we drove home. The math....it didn't want me to--it wanted me to keep playing so the machine could MATHEMATICALLY take away my investment because I was stupid enough to be playing a negative machine!

The promotion? For it to mean anything at all to anyone, you have to hope to LOSE, and that is not how or why I play inside casinos. But I can certainly see why the AP's get so excited about this type of thing. They actually EXPECT to lose more often than not, so they are easily manipulated by such promotions and get played like fiddles by the casinos all the time.

On the Wizard of Vegas blog a rep from the Riv posted. They are not getting that many people taking them for the whole thousand, but mostly in the 100-200 range, which is the recreational player. This has been watered down significantly but that way it is more likely to hang around. Not worth a trip to go by itself but worth a stop if you happen to be in the area.