Originally Posted by
Ozzy
Getting 800-900$ month has been getting increasingly difficult at most stores the last few years. Not so long ago getting multiple times that amount was fairly pedestrian with little risks involved. Times have changed for better and worse, adapting to changing environments is necessary in order to prosper in today's changing market.
I agree with that. I guess I should have also specified that I was referring to pre-Covid numbers.
Just prior to Covid, I was working mail (mostly maintaining at one, because it was profitable even maintaining) at two casinos, personally.
1.) One casino required a greater amount of coin-in than did the other, but the mail made up for it. At one casino, you'd run through $10,000 on a Video Poker game that had a return north of 98% and would see something in the neighborhood of two grand in Free Play (per card) over the next six months. I did not maintain offers at this casino as it would not have been profitable.
What ended up happening at this casino is that the overall value of mail didn't really change, but the terms of what I call, "Supplemental," offers did. When I say, "Supplemental," I mean the Free Play offers that were in addition to the normal, "Range," of dates. The change in the terms is that most of them started to become a little section that had one of two, "Pull Tabs," or some such, to decide the amount of Free Play...before that, it was usually some kiosk thing you did. The problem is that the casino actually
did check ID on that, so that's what ended any card running there. It would have still had an expected profit, but not such that it would have been worth the time with those offers gone.
2.) The other casino would be over $400/month in mail, all included, with only $1,000 coin-in at 98% Video Poker needed to maintain. "Maintain," means you do $1,000 coin-in every time you do a Free Play pick up on a card. I maintained two cards at this casino and just let any other cards taper off the amounts by the normal (and very predictable) schedule. I haven't done any cards there post-Covid because I used to practically live on the casino's doorstep, but now I am farther away from it, so I don't want to have to commit to picking up each mail within a fairly tight date range. For cards not being maintained, the $1,000 would actually get you more than $1,000 in total mail! LOL. That's over a six-month period, though. The best part about maintaining cards is that a multiplier day almost always fell in the date ranges, which added 2% to the Video Poker and made it +EV by itself.
PA Skill Games have also been spreading and represent 100% risk-free money. There's also been some decent online casino stuff. I do some vulturing here and there, but I don't really want to be committed to doing anything inside of the date ranges. I also don't like being in the first casino (which is now the closer one) as long as running the coin-in requires.
In total, the beginning of the cycle for both of these casinos was either just north of $450 or just South of $450. The second of the two casinos even had much better mail to get than that, and relatively easily (but requiring more coin-in), but it only worked if the card belonged to someone well out of the area. They were obviously trying to attract people to come back to the casino when they were in town, but not really giving those offers expecting that there would be someone picking them up every time.
I'd be surprised if the mail at Casino #2 has changed a ton, but I don't really know. The coin-in/offer levels I am aware of are no longer justified by the travel unless I do more cards each cycle point than I am comfortable doing or want to do.
Anyway, compared to what some other guys are doing on the card running front, I am a rank amateur. Even as a rank amateur, I still know that $450 mail is readily achievable...you just have to know that the mail at a place is good to begin with and, "Test," to find the sweet spots on the coin-in side of the equation.
Also, with six figures coin-in required for $400 a month (as Singer reported), anyone even remotely in the know would simply say, "The mail there sucks."***
***CLARIFICATION---The mail there might not always suck if one finds the best sweet spot coin-in:free play, but $400/month mail on six figures coin-in isn't what anyone would consider a promising sign. On the other hand, if the $400/month represents the top-tier of offers and the coin-in required to get that is extremely well under six figures, then maybe it's good. I definitely wouldn't want to test it, though.