This is sort of a continuation on a thread in the Total Rewards forum about my ADT rant.
A bit of background, my typical visit to Vegas is normally 5-6 days/nights, quite long for a Californian. I probably go 3 times a year.
I'm in sort of a unique situation with CET. I live fairly close the Harrah's Southern California, and when I stay there, I play a lot, and I earn the bulk of my tier credits there (Around 50k-80k per year) Why is this a unique situation? Well, my comp rooms in Vegas will never cease even though I hardly play at the Vegas CET properties. Most likely because I play enough at the San Diego property. If I didn't play in San Diego, Vegas room comps would have disappeared long ago (it has happened during a stretch where I didn't visit San Diego Harrah's for a year)
When I stay in Vegas, I utilize both CET, and a Station's property like the palms or red rock.
An example would be I stay at the Rio for 4 nights and then the Palms for 3 nights.
But in reality, I'm playing every single day at the Palms/Red Rock/Palace Station (their video poker paytables are just so much better)
I would NOT play at the Rio, even on the days we're staying there. Maybe I'll put $20 in a machine if we wanted some drinks or waiting for takeout. We would go to the diamond lounge as well. And then we just went to the Palms to play, It's right next door.
But because I still play at the Stations properties during days that I don't even use Station hotels, they treat me extremely well for it in the way of comps.
This is my personal strategy for Maximizing comps. There are other strategies I use, but those are mostly common knowledge and is miniscule compared to what I already described.
Too bad the Rio/Palms are closed for now. It just makes it a bit more inconvenient to pull the car out of a CET on-strip property to get to Palace Station/Red Rock/etc.
Not only do I get the higher payback rate at the station casinos, I also enjoy the locals crowd a bit more vs the tourist crowd.
But I enjoy the hotel rooms at CET and their restaurants a bit more, so this way we get the best of it all, while maintaining higher comps.