Just out of curiosity, has anyone actually tried to get a room (or any other Vegas comp) by using Sydney's technique?
Since I hardly spend any time in casinos, I'm not too familiar with how all the complimentary things really work out there. I thought it was pretty interesting to watch on screen, and wondered if people really do these kind of things.
I was wondering that myself. I hunted on the web to try and learn what a "rate card" is, but no luck. I've *never* been in a casino, so it's a complete mystery to me. I've seen a few Travel Channel shows pushing the whole Vegas experience, but the comps that were discussed were free meals, casino windbreakers, and things like toaster ovens. I'm sure that casinos will go to great lengths to keep well-heeled gamblers on the premises.
A rate card basically keeps track of your spending, so if you spend $2,000 the Casino will love you and then offer things like free meals and free rooms. However I don't know how it keeps track of your winnings.
shareif you listen to the directors commentary on the DVD, Paul Thomas Anderson says himself that hes done stuff like that, but it doesnt work anymore... he said mainly hed get free meals rather than free rooms.
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yes, it does really work. as a person who used to live in a hotel, you just need to get the cord and plug it into a tv that isnt set up there. Most hotels know of the trick so they have their tvs made so that you cant do that trick. Bring your own TV, like he did, and it does work. just click to the channels up in the 90s.
shareAfter seeing this film, I now looking for more PTA ( I Haven't seen Boogie Nights!?)
I didn't quite understand Sydney's Free Room technique - I myself don't go to casinos much or at all....
Does it allow him to make a profit by gambling out of the casino? And how did it work again - I was a little confused...
Someone please explain!
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Here's the bible of craps players:
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0929387341/qid=1055550442/sr=8-1/ref=sr_8_1/002-1286718-1425637?v=glance&s=books&n=507846
"Beat the Craps Out of the Casinos: How to Play Craps and Win"
This book describes comps/rating a bit and how to milk it for all it's worth. The book is a bit out-dated though. Do a search on "casino comps" at amazon for a few more selections on the subject. You might find these titles at your library. I recommend anything by the author "Frank Scoblete" especially if you're an aspiring craps player =) He also wrote a book called "Guerilla Gambling" Which goes into detail on every casino game. Take all gambling books for what they're worth though.. Of course, no matter what book you read, it's still gambling, but you're just a more informed gambler after you read it.
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rate cards are different now-at the tables, you give it to the dealer, they jam it in their computerized thingamajig, when you get up, theyve recorded how much you spent. at slots, there is a, uh, slot for the card. the hard eight thing doesnt work anymore. its so the casino can monitor your spending and send you coupons and junk in the mail now
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I still don't see an explanation of how this works here. Maybe that's because the "administrators" keep deleting the explanations--if so, that's weird and scary. So stop it!
Anyway, I don't understand it either. If you are not winning money, how can you add it the rate card? I don't see how you can end up with so much money on the rate card without actually winning it.
Someone please explain this in a clear, simple way. Thanks.
As some of the other posters have pointed out, the technique may not work any longer. In the movie, though, the idea consisted mainly in "recycling" the money (cash in chips, then buy more chips at a different window, and get each new purchase recorded on the rate card) to inflate the amount of money actually wagered. It was important to make the "pit boss" think that the money was being gambled, thus the need to gamble very slowly. It was also important to rotate between cashier windows so that it would not become obvious that the chips were mainly being recycled.
So, for example, a gambler could start with $100 and, by purchasing chips, cashing in chips, and purchasing more chips, he could give the appearance of gambling over $1,000--while in fact retaining most of the original $100. Once it appeared that the gambler had reached a certain level, various rate card comps were earned.
Hope that helps...but again, it probably doesn't work in the new casino environment.
One thing that does work, though, is "high roller" junkets, where free rooms and meals are provided with a minimum gambling commitment, around $10,000 or so. Clearly, the "free" rooms and meals are very expensive when you consider the gambling losses that more than offset their value. Unlike the race track, where you bet against the other gamblers, when you are at a casino you are playing against the house. The house always has the odds tipped in their favor, so in the long run you will lose and they will win. The only way to beat them is to use methods like card counting--but when you're caught, you'll be barred from the casino.
All the "comp cards" that I have seen for years now are digital, but who knows, there might be some sleepy little Casinos outside of Vegas and Reno that still do things the old way :)
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I have done it recently without gambling.
Because the machines track play, I watch the big slot machines at the casinos, and find a guy or girl playing one, say a five dollar slot.
They are gambling 10-20 bucks a pull of the handle, if they are NOT using a card, I stand near the machine, then wait for them to talk to someone or go to the restroom, then I simply slip MY players card in, and wait. They rack up big money quickly,
At one casino, I got 60 bucks credit on my card inside of an hour doing this. It was insane. Then the dude hit a jackpot for like 4 grand and someone came by, paid him, then said, is this your card? and he was like, nope. And the removed it.
Good times.
HOFF in 08'
Manager of the David Hasselhoff for President in 2008 planning commission.
haha that's pretty clever
what happened when the casino employee asked if it was the guys card and he said no? how did you get it back? Or did you just say you lost it and get a new one? so you got the credit up until the guy pulled the card outta the machine?
I worked in a smaller "locals" casino in Vegas from 2000-2005, and the savvy slot players do this often. They sit and play their machine and wait for someone to come along and play at a nearby machine who doesn't have a card. If they notice someone betting a good amount they'll just reach over and insert their own card into the guy's machine. You get points whether you win or lose, so they're making points from someone else's play.
Also common for players to purposely leave their card in a machine once they are finished playing - thus getting points off anyone who happens to play that machine, at least until someone comes along with their own card. Then the next day they go to the player's club and say they lost their card. Their points are safely recorded in the computer, and the casino is always happy to print out a new card, though if you do this too often they might get curious.
Most casinos encourage employees to gamble at their casino during off hours (they want to get that paycheck money back), so most workers will have a player's club card. It's common practice for change makers and cocktail waitresses to slip their own personal cards in machines during their shifts. If the bosses check closely they might start wondering how a worker racked up so many points while they were "on duty".
"Push the button, Max!"
I have just one small amendment to offer
Unlike the race track, where you bet against the other gamblers, when you are at a casino you are playing against the house. The house always has the odds tipped in their favor, so in the long run you will lose and they will win.This is true except for the following:
All gamblers are losers; it is a mathematical inevitability. Even card-counters (assuming that they could avoid detection) cannot benefit. One computer simulation showed that a card-counter would have to live in the casino 24/7 in order to earn a 'living wage'.
shareI think there should be a big neon-light warning sign in front of all Casinos telling the players the chances of them actually winning.
I also believe all casinos ought to be partially owned by the Govt like the tax office because of the number of cases where thieves launder cash at the casino or criminals go there and lose cash which they stole from other people.
Its not too hard to tap someone on the shoulder and ask them how despite having practically no income or a low salary - they managed to spend $10k a day at a gambling venue.
You might laugh at this. But one day you might wake up to find that your banker, investment manager, accountant has swiped your life savings and lose it all at the casino - and the Govt can't do a thing to get it back.
The trick does not work anymore because the 'rate cards' are all digital.
A rate card would keep track of how many chips a player bought. You would buy your chips at the tables (or from a change lady if you played slots) and they would record how much you bought. After you bought so much in chips, they would give you complementaries (like free rooms or free meals). It was not the greatest system because you could buy a a lot of chips and not really gamble them away. The managers would keep an eye on you to see that you we were really gambling, but since you can't always watch everything going on in a casino, you could get away with it for a little while.
Nowadays, you use the digital card. If you play slots, it is obvious how much money you lose or win. The card keeps track of every single slot pull. If you play table games, it is more difficult to see how much you win or lose in a session, so they estimate. They will observe your average bet size, your averge bet, and how long you stayed at a table. Afterall, if you play just about any casino game long enough, you will lose all of your money eventually. All the pit bosses have to do is watch your average bet, what bets you are making, and tell the computer that you have stopped playing. The computer will calculate how much money you lost. For example, somebody betting the pass line on Craps has a disadvantage of 1.41%. That means that for every $1 you bet, the house will keep 1.41 cents. So if a gambler bets $10 a hand, and there are 20 hands an hour, then the computer would expect that the gambler would lose $2.82 ($10 x 20 hands x 1.41%) an hour. The computer calculates that, and the casino comps accordingly. Even if you won a lot or lost your shirt, the casino assumes you lost what the average gambler loses.
With the old rate cards, this was not possible because the math was too difficult to do by hand. So the best they could do was to keep track of how fast the player was buying new chips.
The gimmick in the movie was to get a rate card (also called a comp card, player's card, etc).
When this movie was made, the gaming machines used tokens (before that, actual coins) and I'm pretty sure you could also buy chips for the table games at the cashier.
When you did that, they marked or programmed your rate card to indicate how much you bought at the cashier. The gimmick was never to play very much and just keep cashing in and then buying more chips at various cashier stations until your rate card showed enough spending that you could get a free room. Presumably once you got your "stake" up high enough, you could get comped for a week.
I don't think it would work as well now, but it's hard to say. Everything is electronic -- slots take bills or barcoded credit slips and only print barcoded credit slips; I'm not sure if you can even take the chips away from table games, or if you have to buy chips with electronic credits at the tables and get electronic credits at the tables when you leave.
If you use a rate or player's card, the casino has an idea of what you're actually spending (ie, LOSING) and can prevent "churning" from yielding comps. It might work if you cashed all the way out to cash and then cashed all the way back in.
My overall feeling is that "comps" were a relic of the Vegas of the 1960s-80s; and once the general public figured out that you could get a bunch of freebies by gambling, they stopped doing it.
Old way or new way...you as a player are measured by "action"(total amount of wagering..win/lose or draw)and are therefore rated over time combined with the overall size of bets and total action. If one wants to measure the "spending" of a player...go watch him in the gift shop not on the casino floor! When I hear that someone "spent" money in the actual casino...I immediately label them as a loser with a losing attitude and outlook who has already conceded that they have lost....hence "spend or spent". Once all the variables are calculated...the casino in some examples multiplies the end result by 40% and this is the "comp value". Percentages and procedures may vary....check your local listings.
shareThere is a casino across the street from my house where I have a rate card, and I think the same trick would still work, but instead of taking five or six hours to pull off, it would take a few weeks.
I could go into the casino today at noon, sit down at a blackjack table, buy 300 bucks worth of chips and play for a little while. Let's say I play 3 dollar hands for an hour, I'm a decent card counter and know good blackjack strategy, so in an hour at that rate I wouldn't lose more than 50 bucks (and that would be a pretty bad hour). Then I could cash out at 250 and go home. Sometimes, like in the movie, I might even win extra money.
Then, ten hours later when the new shift of dealers and bosses come in, I could go back and do the same thing, and continue to do the same thing two or three times a day. After a few weeks, I'd have several thousand bucks on my card. Or, to be even less suspicious, I could go every other day and build it up over months and months. Since I live in Reno and there are so many casinos, I suppose you could pull this same trick with every casino, just go to three different ones every day, and a year later you'd have around 10,000 in each casino.
This could only work on the table games though, since the machines track your exact winnings and losses. But on table games they only take your card when you cash in, never when you cash out.
However, I'm sure someone out there has tried this same plan and the casinos are aware of it and have some sort of defense in place. You'd have to be pretty slick.
Ya, plus, a free room wouldn't do you much good, you already live there. That's a lot of money to spend for a few free rooms or meals.
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