Results 1 to 14 of 14

Thread: Using Slot Club Cards

  1. #1
    Alan, you seemed to ask me a question in a thread that says it's closed. So I'll respond here, while taking advantage of the issue by ignoring the troll's misguided remarks only made to fill in more of that exciting down time he's saddled with.

    There's a big difference in how I played my professional sessions, such as with a very large bankroll and with a very specific/very strict play strategy, vs. how I play now or when I was on vacation while I was a pro (usually with no more than 2 or 3 thousand dollars and with no particular strategy.) I don't believe you've ever been able to understand that. Hopefully, this has cleared that up.

    As a pro who played for a living, you already know I was forced to stop using my slot card only because I was being stopped from playing at two large Strip casinos. That's also when I started inter-mingling playing my other, lower limit strategies with SPS. I always welcomed any freebies that I received, I still do today & at 100% of the time, but it made and makes no sense to say any of it was money that I have/had won. It wasn't, it isn't, and the cumulative total I put in my GT columns included only money won directly from the machines. Even today, whatever I'm ahead does not include any of the slot club fluff the AP's of the world need and use AT WHATEVER VALUE THEY REQUIRE in order to report that they are ahead at year's end. In the meantime, they regularly use phantom bucks derived from playing their +EV games @ a so-called X amount per hour--one of the biggest jokes ever conceived by AP's--in order to claim they win their individual sessions, when most of the time they do not.

  2. #2
    Rob, we had that problem before, The thread has been re-opened. Thanks.

    But this is a good topic to stand on its own, so let's continue this discussion here.

    Most of us are not professionals. And while I do not add "coffee cups" and "towel sets" as part of the "return" when playing, I certainly put a value on the free-play that I earn plus cash-value items such as gas cards and department store gift cards. And yes, I would use those to offset losses and to add to wins.

    I do have to question -- again -- your statement about being stopped from playing at two large Strip casinos. Wasn't it you who said he never -- repeat: never -- heard of an advantage video poker player being blocked from a casino because they couldn't beat the casino? Yet, you were blocked? I would think that even with your average win of a little under $100,000 per year (which frankly is not much, Rob) would be nothing more than the pimple on the butt of the casino.

    Heck, on my last trip to Caesars a craps player took them for four million dollars in one session. Why would they bother with you winning just under a hundred thousand dollars a year? That's not pennies to the casino... its fractions of a penny to the mega casinos on the Strip.

    And again, you don't have to have a player's card for the casino to know you're there. Everytime you get a W2G they know you're there. The slot personnel know who you are. Security knows who you are. The eye in the sky and facial recognitiion software knows who you are.

    With or without a player's card, they will know you are there. So you might as well play with one.

  3. #3
    Alan, nice list of facts. However, you have to understand that most of what Singer says is made up. There's a good reason it doesn't make any sense.

  4. #4
    Originally Posted by Alan Mendelson View Post
    Rob, we had that problem before, The thread has been re-opened. Thanks.

    But this is a good topic to stand on its own, so let's continue this discussion here.

    Most of us are not professionals. And while I do not add "coffee cups" and "towel sets" as part of the "return" when playing, I certainly put a value on the free-play that I earn plus cash-value items such as gas cards and department store gift cards. And yes, I would use those to offset losses and to add to wins.

    I do have to question -- again -- your statement about being stopped from playing at two large Strip casinos. Wasn't it you who said he never -- repeat: never -- heard of an advantage video poker player being blocked from a casino because they couldn't beat the casino? Yet, you were blocked? I would think that even with your average win of a little under $100,000 per year (which frankly is not much, Rob) would be nothing more than the pimple on the butt of the casino.

    Heck, on my last trip to Caesars a craps player took them for four million dollars in one session. Why would they bother with you winning just under a hundred thousand dollars a year? That's not pennies to the casino... its fractions of a penny to the mega casinos on the Strip.

    And again, you don't have to have a player's card for the casino to know you're there. Everytime you get a W2G they know you're there. The slot personnel know who you are. Security knows who you are. The eye in the sky and facial recognitiion software knows who you are.

    With or without a player's card, they will know you are there. So you might as well play with one.
    I took towels, kleenex, toilet tissue, and soap products all the time and in fact, we still haven't had to buy kleenex and have about a dozen boxes left in one of the rig's storage bins. Plus I still have a few towels left that I use to wipe down the cars with after I wash them. But I never said I don't place value on the slot club or this stuff. I said it has nothing to do with whether I won or lost. Why should any of that be a part of your gambling results? You only get it if you use a rewards card, just like at the grocery store or with the airlines. You did not "win" any of it, so when I regularly reported results in my column, I felt it would be disingenuous to claim I won any more than I really did from the machines. And it has remained that way thru today, even though I'm really the only one who I report my exact winnings to.

    I've told you this before about being stopped from playing. When people like Anthony Curtis & Stanford Wong claimed they were "banned from playing BJ" on their forums or columns, as a writer who actually WAS stopped from playing, I couldnt't understand why these self-proclaimed AP's got stopped. So I went up & down the Strip interviewing casino managers, and every one of them said these people were more than welcome to come in and play. Card counting wasn't as taboo as it is today, and all these guys were trying to do is build their stock in order to make more money from the stuff they sold and from their websites and forums. My column was very effective in explaining all this and it ruffled feathers.

    In my cases, as my published letter said in GT, I was getting full RFB and used it on visits, and was winning consistently. Their reasons were that they couldn't figure out a way to make a profit off of me. They knew who I was, they may not necessarily understood or agreed that my SPS could win so consistently for me, but they chose to take what to them was the proper steps to keep me from draining them--albeit at a very small pace.

    Just as with the Silverton last year. 8 straight W2G winning visits, and after their boss acknowledging who I really was, I got stopped. How much a player wins means nothing. Do they have some "system" that might work to their advantage? That is the only thing that matters, and not some babble from a sad person stuck in Minn.

    Oh I forgot. Yes the casino knows you are playing when you get a taxable, but they have no idea how you're doing overall and in fact, assume you are losing because nothing shows them on face value that you are cheating or have any kind of advantage over them.
    Last edited by Rob.Singer; 01-16-2013 at 03:09 PM.

  5. #5
    Gee Rob, that's an interesting story. But do you think that maybe you were banned because of the petty theft? Taking towels? Really, Rob. You won a hundred thousand dollars a year and you took towels, kleenex and toilet paper. I guess it's your fault that Caesars and all the other hotels stopped putting their names on towels.

    I don't think it's appropriate to bring up Anthony Curtis or Stanford Wong. Let's keep the discussion to Rob Singer. Or me, if you like.

    As I said before, winning less than a hundred thousand dollars a year from a group of casinos is peanuts. Are you sure you weren't banned because of the towels and they just used your play as a way of putting it nicely?
    Last edited by Alan Mendelson; 01-16-2013 at 07:54 PM.

  6. #6
    I put those two guys in my column back then as they were part of the,story.

    No, I wasn't banned from Bellagio and their letter did not say it was for snatching towels and tp. It said it wad a ban on receiving offers and playing vp, and for the reason I said. Now that I've seen them do it formally and Silverton just do it verbally, it can't be that the amount of money won has anything to do with it. Bellagio & Silverton are from two different universes.

  7. #7
    We'd sure like to see the "formal" letter, Rob. Things must have been very tough on Bellagio for them to ban you for winning a hundred thousand dollars.

  8. #8
    Originally Posted by Alan Mendelson View Post
    We'd sure like to see the "formal" letter, Rob. Things must have been very tough on Bellagio for them to ban you for winning a hundred thousand dollars.
    You're getting wiser, Alan. Believe nothing that Singer says without absolute proof.

  9. #9
    Originally Posted by arcimede$ View Post
    You're getting wiser, Alan. Believe nothing that Singer says without absolute proof.
    Arc there was a time when your comments made valuable contributions here. Lately your comments have only been critical of Rob and without any substance. This is another one of them. I thought we were going to leave these personal attacks behind us and move on?

    Now, Rob did say a letter was published in Gaming Today and I wonder if any progress has been made in getting either a copy of the newspaper or that letter? If you recall, I said I emailed Gaming Today asking about archives being available online and I received no response.

    I think that letter would be fascinating to see -- or at the least see the exact wording.

  10. #10
    Originally Posted by Alan Mendelson View Post
    We'd sure like to see the "formal" letter, Rob. Things must have been very tough on Bellagio for them to ban you for winning a hundred thousand dollars.
    My website didn't include the letter--just the column about it, because it was in the paper. I did call GT and it's just too far back for them, plus my long time editor there moved on several years ago...right after I quit, in fact. And I didn't win $100k there, where'd you get that from? I did hit a $25 royal there but that was after Wynn sold it and I went back in. I know you can only see players being banned from their game because of winning millions but that isn't the case, esp. when it's a pro player who's a known personality around town with consistent winning and RFB pillaging is going on. I'll have to leave it at that because of all the years that have past. It's a shame we didn't meet at the start of my career so you could have followed what I did in my column and on my website as it unfolded,

  11. #11
    What, no supporting evidence? Just like there's no supporting evidence for any of Singer's claims. If anyone believes a magazine did not have their data saved on a computer in the 21st century, I've got a bridge I can let go real cheap ...

    BTW, I think pointing out when a person is not being honest is a "valuable contribution". Have you seen those papers promised in October? Didn't I point out you would never see them? Was I right? The only reason to think my comments are not valuable is because you want to believe some things Singer says are true. Sorry to disappoint you.

  12. #12
    I think the "Bellagio Letter" has to be filed along with the "Where is Jimmy Hoffa Buried" information. Many claims but nothing verified. It doesn't mean that the letter wasn't written and it doesn't mean that any one of the claims about Hoffa's resting place isn't true. We just won't know for sure. So perhaps we should just move on? In the overall scheme of things it doesn't matter much. does it?

    Except Rob can no longer say that video poker APs don't get blocked from playing. This also gives credence to Rob Singer's reported statements about how he has been blocked from playing in certain promotions. What's good for the goose is good for the gander, so to speak.

    Still if Rob could ever come up with that letter it would be something that would be very interesting. Would Bellagio be so "tight" that they wouldn't let him play and win some money?

    Rob, I used the number of "one hundred thousand" because your average yearly income that you reported comes to a bit under 100-thousand per year. Probably your net gain at Bellagio in any year was less than $100k because I am sure you also played at other casinos. And this makes Bellagio's decision to ban you even more unusual. Does Bellagio ban players who have a net win of seventy thousand a year or fifty thousand a year or thirty thousand a year? Actually, this really isn't about you and your experience -- it's really more about how Bellagio treats "small winners" because in the scheme of things that's really what you were -- a small net winner at one casino.

  13. #13
    Alan, back then Bellagio was owned and run by Steve Wynn, not MGM or Harrahs or anyone else. If you've ever heard his interviews you'd know that he doesn't believe any gambler can win. When you look at what AP's like to claim you'd see they don't even say they can win 50% of the time. But I won almost every time and that just didn't fit his model. Occasionally on here you get stuck inside your own belief system about what should or should not be in gambling: how to you, who absolutely lives for the comps and all the slot club stuff and starts anxious thread after thread about it, it's unfathomable for anyone not to always use a slot club card, when it was a must move for a professional player like myself to do so if I wanted to be able to continuing winning; you couldn't comprehend how even with my play strategy, I could stand to lose over $30k in a single session when every gambler playing the high stakes I did will obviously get stung every now & then on the way to an overall winning year; and now you don't understand how and why some players--not many--get stopped from playing by casino management. I've explained it all and that's all I can do. It doesn't matter what you want to believe or consider or any of that. I'm simply explaining the answers to your questions. Like I said, it's just too bad you and I hadn't met when I was in the prime of my vp career. You'd have seen it all unfold boldly before your very eyes, and you would have marvelled at and loved all of it.

  14. #14
    And there was a Hoffa sighting in Rob's storage shed Alan

Thread Information

Users Browsing this Thread

There are currently 1 users browsing this thread. (0 members and 1 guests)

Tags for this Thread

Posting Permissions

  • You may not post new threads
  • You may not post replies
  • You may not post attachments
  • You may not edit your posts
  •