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Originally Posted by
ZeeBabar
I am wondering if its worth it to drive the 3-4 hours to go play at it for a $125 incentive?
Regardless of the incentives your rated play generates you should plan trips as what is called a transshipment problem. The typical transshipment problem people are familiar with from school is, you need to make many deliveries of you product over a large region. You want to deliver them in the most cost efficient way so you devise a route(s) that saves the driver(s) time which costs you money and saves driving expenses. Delivering every day a proper solution to the transshipment problem will add a lot to your bottom line.
Apply this concept to AP and your incentives you should look at your offers for a region and plan trips so you can maximize incentives. This means visiting many casinos in a region on your trip and taking advantage of not just the EV value incentives but also reward and/or tier credit multipliers that may be happening during that month. You need to learn how to work all the casino systems at the different properties. For example, at CET properties it may seem hard to make 7-Star. The value of 7-star may be important to you. You play without paying attention to how to work the Total Reward system and your annual play doesn't get you but halfway to the 150K points needed to hit 7-star. Then you start working their system. You hit the tier credit multiplier and you earn many times the tier credits with the same play, or end of the year matching carry over to the next year so you earn tier credits in a different year that help your annual quest to make 7-star. Then each day that you think you have generated a significant amount of tier credits you go to the Total Rewards desk and find out how much you have earned at each property you played that day. They have a stepped tier matching reward where if you earn so you can hit a bonus tier credit for a given day cumulative for all the properties you played:
Earned tier credits on a given day: Bonus added to tier credits earned
500 Tier Credits: + 125 Tier Credit Bonus!
1,000 Tier Credits: + 1,000 Tier Credit Bonus!
2,500 Tier Credits: + 5,000 Tier Credit Bonus!
Earns Platinum Status in one day!
5,000 Tier Credits: + 10,000 Tier Credit Bonus!
Earns Diamond Status in one day!
As you can see if you are close to the next step you can play a little more and add 125, 825, 4K or 5K tier credits to what you have already earned that day. You should find out how much you need exactly and decide if it is worth earning the extra. If you are close enough it is. Usually you have already decided you have played enough AP play for the day at all their properties in the area and the total rewards desk will be closed when you will complete play so you need to know just how many tier credits your play generates so you choose machine play. The goal is not to play at the best EV but to generate tier credits at the least cost in EV/tier credit. I pick crappy video poker with a poor pay table because a good pay table will not generate much tier credits and that is your goal. The variance and time spent earning the needed credits makes a good VP machine a horrible choice for generating tier credits. Credits accumulate quickly at most bad VP machines and you only give up EV on rarely hit payoffs that make it a crappy VP machine. If you don't get any during the short amount of play it takes to generate your tier credits the crappy pay schedule cost you nothing for that session. You don't waste much time generating the tier credits and though EV is much worse the variance you expose yourself to is small because of the greatly reduced money you need to play through the machine. By working the system you may go from almost impossible to make 7-star to making it easily half way through the year.
There may be other ways to earn tier credits as well which have nothing to do with their casinos like using a Total Reward credit card or shopping in their shops. You should be AP'ing your credit cards systems as well (AP is a way of life) to get 2-5% cash back on every purchase you make, so I don't recommend getting a TR credit card. But one big purchase with the card on the same day you generate a lot of tier credits playing can push you to the top of the tier credit matching chart of 5K or 10K extra tier credits over what you would have otherwise earned for that day.
Basically AP play is a way of life that extends to everything you do. When I was a red chipper I would plan every trip to hit a bunch of offers from many casinos. A red chipper has trouble covering expenses with profit. By learning to work all the reward systems for the casinos you plan and laying out each month's play to maximize incentive EV you will have a plus EV for the month over expenses before you even factor in playing results. For a red chipper in BR building mode that is huge. The RoR factoring expenses for a red chipper is huge. The RoR figures quoted don't factor in expenses so for all practical purposes they aren't very accurate unless you play the incentive game to have additional EV over expenses. The percentage of EV that expenses would eat up is disastrous if your EV is small. But as your EV grows with your BR the amount expenses affects RoR starts to become far less significant.
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