Wednesday, July 15, 2009

Progress

There are some signs of movement in my experimental "all Harrah's all the time" program, in which I am trying to see if I can get Harrah's to notice that I give them mobneys, and they should give me generous kickbacks.

As previously mentioned, last week when I first looked into the situation and started learning about "reward points" and "tier points," I found that I had 369 of the former and 21,501 of the latter on my account. Today I am showing 1069 and 22,793. Movement! Whee! It takes 4000 tier points to earn platinum status, which seems not only feasible but easy at this rate. Diamond status for 11,000 seems likely out of my reach, unless I really play nowhere else for a long, long time, and I would hate to give up playing at the Venetian, Palms, Planet Hollywood, South Point, Mandalay Bay/Luxor/Excalibur, etc.

This is probably still not as much credit as it should be. They are allegedly giving us 28 tier points per hour of poker play, and I've put in 37.3 hours in Harrah's property chairs since then, which should translate to 1044 additional points, or a current total of 1413, plus whatever I might get for flushing $30 down a Harrah's toilet losing a total of $30 in their stupid slot machines at three different casinos. (I did the $20 at Imperial Palace as previously noted, then, at Cardgrrl's suggestion, dropped another $5 each at Flamingo and Bally's.) Perhaps the reported 28/hour isn't quite right, or maybe there is some lag in getting the hours updated.

The rewards credits aren't going up as fast because I've finally started using some of them to get free meals, which I hadn't done before. Under the old system, one had to go to the poker room management and get comps written out, which was a bother, so my credits mostly went unused. Now that I've discovered that I can just go to one of the restaurants and have the check covered by my rewards card when it comes, I'm a lot more likely to use them.

In any event, it seems that the system is responding to my inputs at least a little bit. Still nothing in my "offers" inbox yet. We'll see if that starts changing soon.

Of course, there remains the problem of what to do when Harrah's finally notices me and starts offering to let me stay in their fine Vegas hotel rooms. I don't like hotel rooms, even when they're free. I like my own bed, in my own apartment. And I don't have any travel planned to other cities with Harrah's properties. So in one sense, this whole project is kind of boneheaded and pointless. But it interests and amuses me nevertheless.

10 comments:

Cardgrrl said...

You takes the free hotel rooms! You checks in, you takes keys and gives them to your out-of-town guests to use!

Everybody wins!

(Of course your free rooms will probably be somewhere other than Vegas.)

KenP said...

Surely you have one, lone friend willing to come visit you and stay in a room you comped... :)

Hell, there a few of us out there that'd at least pretend...

Anonymous said...

Usually for locals, they dont offer hotel stays. Offer usually come in the form of food or money or tournaments, ect.

kirkvw said...

Hell Grump, checkin and never pay for toiletries again

Cardgrrl said...

Also, when you become a Diamond member you can eat for free in Harrah's properties that have Diamond lounges with food. And you can bring a guest for free too.

I'm not sure if there are any of those in Vegas (I seem to remember hearing no), but there are several in AC.

Cardgrrl said...

Also, you can take your gazillion rewards credits and redeem them by buying stuff from this catalog.

I think you get a better bang for your buck using them to buy food in Harrah's-owned restaurants, however. (Other restuarants and stores on the casino properties usually use credits at a rate of 2-1 or more rather than 1-1.)

Tarpie said...

As of last month the Flamingo was not giving tier points. I cannot find the post on AVP, but off the top of my head tier credits are awarded at Harrah's, IP, Bally's, and Rio. Not sure about Caesars.

LasVegasMichael said...

This is coming from an admitted Harrah's addict (I have logged nearly 2000 hours in Harrah's properties since January):

You get exactly 28 tier credits for every hour of play. No more, no less. What does vary, however, is how efficient the room is at properly tracking your player's card use.

Not all properties are set up the same. Rooms that do not use the tableside Genesis Bravo units are far less likely to track comps correctly. Ballys and Flamingo are notorious for being very lackadaisical when it comes to properly tracking the cards, since neither have functioning Genesis Bravo tableside units.

The BEST HET properties to play that are known for tracking every single minute correctly are Harrah's and Imperial Palace. Both place have functioning tableside units (HLV being the original Beta Test site for the tier credit rollout back in March).

Platinum status is attained after 143 hours of play, assuming all your hours are tracked. Diamond is earned after 393 hours of play.

I earned Diamond status a few months ago, and have enjoyed some of them minor benefits.

As Cardgrrl mentioned, their are Diamond lounges, but I myself have not utilized this perk as yet. Lounges are available in Caesars, Harrah's, Rio, and Paris. Bally's closed theirs due to budget cutbacks several months ago.

Also, the Diamond card gets you priority valet, express line passes to most restaurants, and entry into the Spa and gym facilities.

Having said that, there is a HUGE difference between how AC handles hotel room upgrades and how LV does.

LV uses ADT (Average Daily Theoretical) to assess how many ancillary offers you will receive (free rooms, invitiational tournaments, etc). The comps I mentioned above are guarnateed, but the ancillary comps are not.

The first buzzkill for you will be the fact that you have a Vegas address. Out of state addresses get mailed significantly better offers and have access to mich better upgrades than locals.

The second is the fact that you don't gamble. Your ADT is virtually zero since playing poker does not increase your ADT at all. You earn Tier Credits, yes, but ancillaries are based solely on your ADT and address.

Every time you go into a Diamond Lounge or redeem some other Tier perk that costs theoretical money to the casino, your card is swiped, and your ADT is lowered. You can have a negative ADT, which basically means that you will receive no offers whatsoever, but can still use the guaranteed perks, including the admittance to the lounges and spas.

Dropping money in a slot machine or video poker will not get you on the radar except for occasional mass marketing offers.

Slots are tracked differently. For every $5 put through a slot machine (not lost, necessarily, but coined in), you earn 1 tier credit. Your ADT is affected positively.

Video Poker has less of a house edge, so it takes $10 coin in to earn 1 tier credit.

Table games are assessed on a bet average compounded with the house edge, and can vary.

After seeing this, you now know that they are giving away significantly more Tier Credits for poker than they should. Enjoy it while it lasts!

Any questions concerning their Vegas system, feel free to ask. I have studied it quite a bit for personal research purposes.

Rakewell said...

Thank you, Michael. That's by far the most useful and comprehensive information I've received so far.

Anonymous said...

Something to keep in mind about free room offers, assuming that LV residents would only get them from out of town:

Harrahs Rincon near San Diego and Harrahs Tahoe would not be bad getaway spots for a few days, the latter especially in the summer. Both are nice resorts, and Lake Tahoe beautiful, of course.

Look over the list of casino locations, and see if any others interest you---NOLA perhaps?

Even if you don't get a full comp, really cheap would not be bad either, especially Tahoe.
smudger