Didn't this exact situation happen last year?

I think Total Rewards is just screwed up at the beginning of each year.

Rob Singer does bring up a good point, though. Playing for 2300 tier points is incredibly sub-optimal, unless you absolutely don't care about points. You needed to run just $2,000 in action to get to 2500. Even if you ran it on $1 video poker, that's just 400 hands, and would take you less than 30 minutes. I don't understand how someone who played $25 video poker on the same trip ($125 per hand) couldn't run $2,000 more in action, even if you were losing a lot at the time.

There is a huge difference in tier points for those 200 base tiers you'd be running:

2300 tiers = 3300 total tiers after bonus
2500 tiers = 7500 total tiers after bonus

WOW!!! Those 200 tiers would have gained you 4200 MORE simply by running them!

The only way I could understand it would be if you absolutely, positively didn't care about tier points, but then we wouldn't have that thread if that were true.

Also, Alan, haven't you said before that you severely curtain your VP play nowadays once you hit 150,000 tiers, due to the immense law of diminishing returns at that point? So wouldn't you want to get to 150k tiers faster, for that reason?

(Full disclosure: I did something also sub-optimal on January 1, only running 1600 or so tiers on the Texas Holdem Fold Up game at Harrah's. But there was a reason for this, as I was physically out of time, and had to leave, and wasn't able to return that day.)