LOL, this is nothing new. I have been doing things since the 90s that gave casinos grounds to hijack my money.Originally Posted by redietz
It's just the cost of doing business. You always attempt to calculate that into whatever you're playing while considering the risk versus the reward.
There have been multiple promotions over the years where, in theory, you should risk your entire bankroll, liquidate assets, and take as many loans as possible in order to take full advantage of the situation. I.E. A 100% UNLIMITED Loss rebate, but in reality, you know there's a good possibility shit can go wrong.
I don't know when I first started multi-accounting, but it was in the 90s when Gamblers Bonus had a cardless players system when I ramped up to 50-100 accounts. I estimate that at the time, there were over 400 locations with Gamblers' Bonus Machines.
You didn't need an ID to sign up and make an account; you would simply grab a GB sign-up form with its unique code, find a machine, enter the code on the machine's GB keypad, make an 8 number login, and a 4-digit pin(. You couldn't use the same login or pin numbers; the system would reject it.), fill out the form and hand it to the employee(bartender, 7-11 cashier, cange person at the supermarket). Your account would be semi-active right away, but it would take 2 to 10 days before you were able to redeem any bonus money. Oftentimes, you would get a free $10 just for making an account. You had to use diffrent names, DOB's, addresses, and phone numbers since an employee at GB headquarters would manually enter the information and fully activate your account. You didn't need to use real names or real information; however, that could pose a problem if they suspected that was the case and they locked your account.
Getting the accounts was the easy part, but remembering the 8-digit+ login and PIN numbers while at the gaming locations without looking at notes was the hard part. I just used an alphanumeric system associated with the names of football teams, superheroes, states, and other easy-to-remember things.
Why so many accounts? Many GB locations had a play X amount and get that amount added to your account. Some places were daily, some places were 2 times a week, some places were once a week. There were other good bonuses, but that's a story for a diffrent time.
The most common was to play $25 and get $25, the 2nd most common was $50 for $50, but some locations would have $100 - $200. At some locations, the EV was worth full value as they had over 100% Video Poker. Even the places that didn't have full pay machines, you may have only been giving up 1%. Of course, you wanted to over-tip, ensuring that the employees turned a blind eye if they noticed you were multi-accounting. It wasn't hard for them to figure out you were multi-accounting, since whenever you logged on, their printer printed out a small receipt with the person's first name on it. They could also see the person's name in some of the systems. Fortunately for me, I seemed to know a lot of John Smiths.
You could play at multiple locations and get multiple bonuses added. You could cash out your bonus money at any location. One of the problems was that you could only redeem $25 per day on low-level accounts. High-level accounts were up to $150. Even with multiple accounts, you could end up with quite a bit of extra money that would take multiple days to cash out.
Another hard part, and the most important part, was finding the locations that were running the play X get X promotion. As I said before, I estimate there are over 400 locations spread throughout the town there may have only been 25 different locations that were running the promotion, if that, it could have been much less.
Some places would stop running the promotion, while others would start up. Some places went for years, some places only did it during the holiday season.
So what was this worth at the peak? Well, I guess it depended on how many accounts you had and what levels they were at, and how much they were giving.
I remember one period where I was solo, focusing only on GB bonuses, where they were running a lot of $50 for 50's during the holiday season. I had approximately 10k in EV and made approximately 10k during that week. It lasted a few weeks, and by the end, I did fairly well. Of course, there was extra time spent collecting bonus money.
With driving time, it took about 30 hours per week. No, that's not groundbreaking money, but to me, it was enjoyable like a treasure hunt and basically free money.
What does this have to do with getting your money and accounts hijacked? Occasionally, Gamblers Bonus would do a purge of accounts at a particular location once they figured out that location was getting hit hard with multiple accounts. Of course, some of my accounts would get locked, and I would lose out on thousands of dollars. The cost of earning that money was negligible; it just sucked, and you shrugged it off.
I had no control over that, as there would be guys who would come in and play multiple accounts on the same machine, one after another, and even stiff the bartender afterwards. In my case, Im sure some of the bartenders knew what I was doing, and yet they all comped my food and didn't seem to care as I tipped well and didn't make what I was doing obvious; therefore, the bartenders could also claim ignorance. Some of the bartenders would tell me about other locations that were also doing the promotions.
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