Last year Harrah's changed its comp system so that playing poker gave players what they call "tier points" toward platinum and/or silver status. I kvetched a few times (see here, and earlier posts linked to from there) about how they are far less generous with in-town players than out-of-town visitors in terms of offers for free rooms, etc. I decided to try to attain platinum status and see what, if anything, that would get me.
I made it, and now have the spiffy platinum card.
Today I received in the mail coupons allowing me two two-night stays--one in January and one in February--at any of the four Harrah's Atlantic City properties (Harrah's A.C., Caesars, Bally's, or Showboat), Sunday through Thursdays only.
My suspicion, though, is that this offer did not come because of working my way up to platinum. Rather, it probably came simply because the system noticed that in October I actually showed up playing in the Harrah's A.C. poker room for a couple of days, and they want me back. When I look at my online points account, I still have no offers of other goodies.
As far as I can tell, Harrah's corporation basically still does not value my patronage, and barely acknowledges that I exist. Phooey on them.
Monday, January 04, 2010
My Harrah's plan worked--maybe sorta
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5 comments:
I'd say you picked a fairly bad year to obtain 'status'. Harrah's offers have been significantly reduced over this last year due to the down year. To know whether you qualify for a staycation though, log into the Harrahs site and pump in some dates for a room and see what the rates are, if your Average Daily Theoretical is high enough, you'll likly see rooms come up as comp offers, even with 27 pts an hour, a 3-4 hour session on average likely will give you some options. Again not really necessary for Vegas stay, but might apply for a trip to New Orleans, AC (outside of the 2 night offers) or another property. Plus you'll see offers toward summer for their winterfest tourneys and things like that, if they continue them.
Yeah I have received that offer in the past as well and I am just a lowly gold card holder.
As Michael says, play around with the 'flexible date'option in room reservations and you should see rooms at comp or next to nothing. You can look at dates for up to 2 months at a time. Check often because one day last summer they put the Senator Suites at CP up by mistake, and I managed to get Paris over New Years for 4 days comped out of the blue when they are never available to me even though I am Diamond.
I got the same offer and I visited Harrah's AC once and only played a daily tourney, and stayed a weekend at Caesar's AC playing about 12 hours of poker with a basic gold card.
AC may be tier-related. I first got Diamond at Harrah's Laughlin using "Diamond in a Day" (3,000 base RCs in 24 hours) and overnight I was able to book comps in Atlantic City, Tunica, Reno... anywhere except Las Vegas - even though I've never gambled anywhere outside of Nevada. Once I gave them a little action on the Strip, those offers showed up though. Las Vegas comps are not related to your tier at all.
A similar thing just happened, I'm still Diamond (through play in Laughlin) but basically abused the hell out of free rooms at the Rio without gambling there. They eventually took away my perks, I put on a few hundred RCs at Imperial Palace and they've come back.
Interested to hear what offers you get for Platinum achieved through poker alone. I somehow missed your post earlier in the year about now getting tier credits and I was surprised last month to find my total was higher than I expected because of my poker play. I like status (who doesn't... srsly?) and will be trying to use more live poker and less video poker to retain it next year.
I live in England but use a California box address for casino junk mail. That's probably significant.
I just wrote a bit about the cost and EV of Platinum/Diamond too. It got lost somewhere in this post: http://www.luckydonut.com/2010/01/the-worst-video-poker-game-i-ever-played/
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