Originally Posted by
Alan Mendelson
If you're getting hand pays with a W2G it doesn't matter if you're using a card or not because they know who you are.
Stop being paranoid about winning small amounts. I really doubt any casino cares. I think too many APs claim they've been backed off because they think it's some kind of badge of honor. Honestly out of all the millions of casino players how many have been backed off?
Spoken by a guy that has no clue about advantage play or advantage players. Obviously blackjack advantage players get backed off regularly. Hell at the really sweaty joints, like El Cortez, South Point, Valley Forge in Pa, just to name a few, any winning player gets backed off. THAT is how paranoid some casinos are.
The good player learn from these backoffs. The one's that refuse to learn have short careers, whether that be professional or recreational career.
Now machine AP's for the most part, have been exempt from this kind of casino paranoia. But that is changing. Casinos are identifying and cracking down on machine AP. Here in Vegas that crackdown has been led by Boyd. It is also occurring in Pennsylvania and probably other locations I am not familiar with and will grow. I fear the future for my machine AP brothers will involve having to decide to play unrated and lose that part of the advantage, which in some cases is what makes the whole play +EV. There may come a time when AP's have to stop chasing the handpay jackpots. Machine AP's will be grinder type players and someone like mickeycrimm is already well positioned.
One of the ways a casino or casino chain cracks down on AP's is to have a bogus promotion, that will draw advantage player, and then identify everyone who shows up and put them in some sort of database that is shared. This was common with blackjack players a few years back (haven't seen much recently). And this was one of my first thoughts yesterday when I read Axelwolf's April fools promotion at Rampart. If it wasn't April fools day and that promotion has been real and at a boyd property, say, Suncoast, I would have said Watch out.
Anyway, in answer to the OP's question, there will come a time in the not to distant future where machine AP's will have to decide whether it is worth it to play rated, just like blackjack players have had to make that decision for a while now. That time, may not be right now, but it is fast approaching.