MGM properties are revoking Noir status and freeplay from perceived advantage players

[theywontpayontuesday]

I’ve been hearing a lot about negative changes at MGM regarding Advantage Players (APs) who engage in AP games. It seems that all their offers are being revoked immediately, except for those related to table games. I’m not sure what the criteria are for determining who gets affected.

[Dan Druff]

You are correct. That is happening, but it's even worse than you think.

According to information I was given, MGM is doing the following to perceived advantage players:

- Revocation of Noir Status (if the player is Noir), and they're reduced to Platinum

- Removal of all freeplay in the local market where the action is being taken

- Removal of all comped rooms in the local market

- Removal of all other offers and promotions in the local market

- Removal of all comps from machines


These players are NOT being banned or no-offered. However, they're losing Noir status (if they have it), and they are losing everything they've earned freeplay and comp-wise. They are also being restricted from earning comps or points via machine play. Basically they're starting from zero regarding establishing future comps, plus cannot earn in the future through any kind of machines.

Who is getting hit by this?

Apparently MGM is crunching numbers on slot players, and the system is separating out the players who seem to stick to beatable machines. Then there is a re-analysis done of those players, and if they are running way above the machine's expected return, the above measures are taken against them.

This was inevitable. Most of the popular machines nowadays are AP-able, and it's gotten to the point to where there is too much information available online for would-be APs to join the party.

Furthermore, these machines are especially harmful to the casino when APs hit them, as vulturing APs run off most of the action while the machine is in a +EV state, meaning the ploppies are stuck playing at horrible return rates -- even by slots standards. This is bad for casinos, because they don't want the ploppies losing at breakneck speed. Then they never come back. Ideally for the casino, ploppies will have consistent losing, punctuated by occasional good sessions to give them hope. But this is nearly impossible on machines operating in a staggeringly high -EV state upon the reset of its jackpots.

I've heard that Regal Riches resets to worse than 25% return! Ouch!

Anyway, looks like MGM is trying to push out the slot APs, and I have to imagine other casinos will eventually follow suit.

[Dan Druff]

Here is part of an email one of the players got. This is NOT my e-mail, but it was one of the guys who lost Noir status.

Supposedly 200 people lost Noir status on the first wave of this, with more to come.

[jdog]

These players are NOT being banned or no-offered.

From reading that email excerpt, I'd definitely call that no-offered... retroactively no-offered even. This was bound to happen eventually. It's not like operators can't look at the data and figure out what some people are doing.

[theywontpayontuesday]

Only losers get free play at MGM, so if you get free play at MGM, you are a loser MGM is willing to deal with until you start winning which is what will happen with the void MGM created.

[Dan Druff]

These players are NOT being banned or no-offered.

From reading that email excerpt, I'd definitely call that no-offered... retroactively no-offered even. This was bound to happen eventually. It's not like operators can't look at the data and figure out what some people are doing.

I'd call it semi-no-offered.

I've actually never seen a version of no-offers like this. Usually it's a full ban on any kind of offers. Here they're resetting your ADT and allowing you to start earning comps/offers based upon table games only.

I agree that this was inevitable, and I wondered why it took this long. I posted earlier this year that I had "some thoughts" on easy ways casinos could thwart machine APs. I didn't post those specific thoughts because some casino execs read this forum (I can only imagine what they think of most of the threads here), and I didn't want to give them any ideas. But one of those ideas was exactly what they did here -- to analyze who is focusing almost all of their play on AP-able machines, and which of those people are winning way above expectation.

[theywontpayontuesday]

This is real and quite a lot more widespread than I thought, but MGM is more dependent on hotels for players than a lot of other casino chains. The only people I know of verifying this were people who traveled and had very large winning years. So they could truthfully claim MGM has done all this to them because of their very large wins. Your top 5-10 jackpots amount for everything you win for the year in many cases. Anyone who has these restrictions could definitely say, "the casino is mad I hit these big jackpots and that I'm lucky, so I'm no longer allowed to use a players card, get free play and trip offers, or win in drawings and they canceled all my top tier status I've already renewed" until 2026. Hopefully people playing these machines in an AP way without cards will not be a hit list for banning for "no reason" so they really won't be able to play the slots.

Not all players are banned, as I know because so far only one half of a couple is "banned from the players club" offers and benefits, so I don't know how this will go going forward about whom will be banned next. Will people be banned for giving machines to people not barred from the players club, this is Nazi Germany thinking starting because it makes no sense banning some people who play exactly like you and some this way who have bad gambling habits and actually get stupid grand slam lucky. Right now the thought projects are saying only some people are getting banned for doing exactly what you're doing, it makes no sense. It does make banned for actually winning good money the real reason because they actually got lucky to win good money, if they hadn't won good money, they would be allowed until they did. Confession, too much weed tonight.

[theywontpayontuesday]

This is a text they could send:

"Looks like casinos are starting to ban people from player's club for being too lucky and having big winning years on their card. They're canceling hotels, canceling free play offers and canceling tier statuses for them and barring them from ever using their player's card on a slot machine again." Tell me that's a lie.

[DGenBen]

It all seems very logical to me.

Casinos have machines that print money for them. That people willingly play when the average return is only 85% to 90%.

They take no salary, no benefits, no breaks, & they work for the casino 24/7/365.

But if they start monkeying around with this golden goose, they can probably extract even more money from it.

It’s not like these huge casino corporations every screw anything up. They are well known for their flawless execution.

[The Boz]

It all seems very logical to me.

Casinos have machines that print money for them. That people willingly play when the average return is only 85% to 90%.

They take no salary, no benefits, no breaks, & they work for the casino 24/7/365.

But if they start monkeying around with this golden goose, they can probably extract even more money from it.

It’s not like these huge casino corporations every screw anything up. They are well known for their flawless execution.

Here’s where the issue is. Nothing changed, the return to the casino is the same. BUT what happened on these machines is the regular suckers, I mean customers are losing at a high rate because of the math on these machines. The 85-90% is still there but as Druff said, many of today’s machines are 25% at the start and the players are losing at a much quicker rate. So their money isn’t lasting as long as it did in say the early 00’s when the IGT/WMS games had low volatility. The customer still lost but felt better because his money lasted longer.

So when the customers who keep the places printing money are unhappy because their money isn’t lasting as long, something has to change. But honestly I doubt this changes much, the Asians and others will still be watching the machines because the profits are still there at certain points. It just hurts the card builders.

[DGenBen]

It all seems very logical to me.

Casinos have machines that print money for them. That people willingly play when the average return is only 85% to 90%.

They take no salary, no benefits, no breaks, & they work for the casino 24/7/365.

But if they start monkeying around with this golden goose, they can probably extract even more money from it.

It’s not like these huge casino corporations every screw anything up. They are well known for their flawless execution.

Here’s where the issue is. Nothing changed, the return to the casino is the same. BUT what happened on these machines is the regular suckers, I mean customers are losing at a high rate because of the math on these machines. The 85-90% is still there but as Druff said, many of today’s machines are 25% at the start and the players are losing at a much quicker rate. So their money isn’t lasting as long as it did in say the early 00’s when the IGT/WMS games had low volatility. The customer still lost but felt better because his money lasted longer.

So when the customers who keep the places printing money are unhappy because their money isn’t lasting as long, something has to change. But honestly I doubt this changes much, the Asians and others will still be watching the machines because the profits are still there at certain points. It just hurts the card builders.

These are the same casinos that tout studies that players can’t tell what a machine’s RTP is because they don’t play them long enough to experience the true RTP and use that as justification to offer the lowest settings lol.

I get that some AP games can be in really bad state like Dan mentioned particularly Regal & Hex, but this is the exception. Those games will stay in a bad state for awhile, but other AP games are going to build back up very quickly. Even if someone plays a BA in the lowest possible state the arrows are going to hit relatively quickly and improve the RTP.

So overall with beatable games only being a small percentage of all machines & with only a very small percentage of those games staying in a bad state for a long period of time, I don’t think it has much impact on normal customers.

I understand why they are doing it. My point was more that once a casino gets greedy and wants to start squeezing every single cent they possibly can from an already very profitable product, there are many unforeseen possible consequences that could cause this to backfire.

A much cheaper, simpler, low tech way to do it would be to simply identify every slot player that wears a ball cap, noise cancelling headphones, & a man purse & boot them all because no slot player in history that was wearing all 3 of these items simultaneously was ever not an advantage player.

[accountinquestion]

Backroom them and break their little brittle boned arms so they can't hit those buttons.

[DGenBen]

Backroom them and break their little brittle boned arms so they can't hit those buttons.

I think I recall a similar story. A guy was pushing buttons looking for a sticky wild someone threw away & they backroomed him, & broke his arm.

He got a nice settlement though since he couldn’t look for sticky wilds fast enough anymore to beat the asians.

Or something like that. I could have some details or the whole story wrong though.

[accountinquestion]

Lol.

People clearly notice RTP over time. A 93 Indian joint vs a strip joint? You pay 2x for everything on the strip and literally your money goes away twice as fast gambling. Of course your smarter customers (who happen to have more $ to lose) notice this. LV is cool for sight seeing or those who don't care to value their money.

Fuck LV

[MisterV]

A 93 Indian joint vs a strip joint?

The tribal casinos I'm aware of have an RTP in the eighties, or so I've read.

[The Boz]

Backroom them and break their little brittle boned arms so they can't hit those buttons.

Or in the case of Dark Oz, get a few big black cocks from his “team” to satisfy his women. Because we all know those women of his aren’t satisfied by his little white man cock. Obviously they are in it for the money but certainly still want the dark meat.

Assuming he actually has enough money to keep them happy but as Tasha shows it doesn’t take much to attract them.

[MDawg]

D.Oz's Jewish white side of the family has according to him, disowned him. So he is left with the Af Am side from his wife. These are apparently uneducated one step up from the street types, easily manipulated with small dollars, leaving D.Oz the lion's share of the $2000. a week (but not every week) the team brings in. No that was not a typo.

[theywontpayontuesday]

I don't think people realize if just 2000 players get this "ban", these players may be out over 100 million dollars in like cash benefits. If players are limited to losing money for drawings, then it does turn MGM drawings into de facto lotteries, because purchase is necessary if they ban most players club members whom are winning money.

[acescracked_1210]

Lol.

People clearly notice RTP over time. A 93 Indian joint vs a strip joint? You pay 2x for everything on the strip and literally your money goes away twice as fast gambling. Of course your smarter customers (who happen to have more $ to lose) notice this. LV is cool for sight seeing or those who don't care to value their money.

Fuck LV

Tribal casino returns run the gamut... from strip-type RTP's all the way up to Reno-type returns or better. There isn't always rhyme or reason to it either, which can make it *very* difficult to figure out.

A much cheaper, simpler, low tech way to do it would be to simply identify every slot player that wears a ball cap, noise cancelling headphones, & a man purse & boot them all because no slot player in history that was wearing all 3 of these items simultaneously was ever not an advantage player.

This, or just look for players banging away on a hex or some other long-cycle play while staring at their phone the whole time and never once looking up at the screen.

[acescracked_1210]

This is real and quite a lot more widespread than I thought, but MGM is more dependent on hotels for players than a lot of other casino chains. The only people I know of verifying this were people who traveled and had very large winning years. So they could truthfully claim MGM has done all this to them because of their very large wins. Your top 5-10 jackpots amount for everything you win for the year in many cases. Anyone who has these restrictions could definitely say, "the casino is mad I hit these big jackpots and that I'm lucky, so I'm no longer allowed to use a players card, get free play and trip offers, or win in drawings and they canceled all my top tier status I've already renewed" until 2026. Hopefully people playing these machines in an AP way without cards will not be a hit list for banning for "no reason" so they really won't be able to play the slots.

Not all players are banned, as I know because so far only one half of a couple is "banned from the players club" offers and benefits, so I don't know how this will go going forward about whom will be banned next. Will people be banned for giving machines to people not barred from the players club, this is Nazi Germany thinking starting because it makes no sense banning some people who play exactly like you and some this way who have bad gambling habits and actually get stupid grand slam lucky. Right now the thought projects are saying only some people are getting banned for doing exactly what you're doing, it makes no sense. It does make banned for actually winning good money the real reason because they actually got lucky to win good money, if they hadn't won good money, they would be allowed until they did. Confession, too much weed tonight.

If I'm not mistaken, the strip MGM shops waged a campaign a few years ago (late 2010's maybe?) where they were actively trying to boot slot AP's. My understanding though is that there were so many of them that they literally couldn't keep up, so they just gave up trying.

Peppermill Reno tried something similar around that same time, and even they (with only 2 properties) couldn't keep up so they just got rid of all the more-lucrative playable slots instead. They still do plenty of business. The Wendover Peppermill shops followed suit a couple years later, though unlike Reno they left a few relatively low-value IGT machines. I doubt it's hurt their business either.

In 2021, I got approached by a security officer at Bally's LV (now Horseshoe) who demanded ID and accused me of looking for "bonus screens." Fortunately I was about 3 feet from a door so I just walked out. Had zero problems anywhere else.