More on comps

10 April 2018

By Frank Scoblete

Here is the basic formula for comps: average bet times the number of decisions per hour times number of hours you play times house edge equals your theoretical loss times whatever percent of your theoretical loss the casinos will give back, which (finally, thank God!) equals how much the casino will give you in comps.

Now most casinos will give back between 30% (the really cheap ones) and 50% – known as the “Jackie Gleasons” because these are the “great ones” for comping – of your theoretical loss.

So, let us speculate that your casino gives back 40% of $105, which is $42, in comps. What does that $42 mean? They certainly don’t hand you $42 in cash, although sometimes they do send you cash back in the mail or, more likely, match play.

As a $25 average bettor at blackjack, you can reasonably expect to get a free room at locals and low-end Vegas casinos, plus some meals, especially during off-peak times, like Sunday through Thursday.

Now at mid-range casinos, you can get a decent discount on the rooms (called “casino rates”) and the buffet, again especially during off-peak times. At high-end places you’ll get the buffet. In the Midwest, a $25 bettor is treated the way a $100 bettor is treated in Vegas and a $100 bettor is treated like Apollo. Of course, in Atlantic City, a $25 bettor is treated like everyone is treated in the East:

$25 Player: Sir? Sir, may my wife and I have a comp?
Pit Boss: “Youse talkin’ ta me?”

(OK, OK, I’m just having a little fun with my fellow East Coasters.)

By the way, the casino puts a price tag on all the freebies. So a room at “Hairy Harry’s Outhouse Casino” might have a price tag of $15 a night, which will be subtracted from your $42; and the gourmet room at “Harry’s” might come in at $25 (how much can they charge for predigested franks and beans, anyway?) and the breakfast buffet will come in at $2 and voila! you have used your $42 in comps for that day.

At an A+ level hotel, you won’t get a discount for the room (except in really slow, snowball-in-hell seasons) because the price tag will be about $250 or more on the room and you won’t get more than $42 as a comp for their café.

You can plug any game into the formula and come up with what the casino will give you back for those games. Some games such as roulette have fixed house edges (5.26%), which means it doesn’t matter how you play because the edge is always the same; other games such as craps have house edges that vary from bet to bet – the casino rater will “estimate” what your average bet is based on the totality of the bets he sees you make over the time you are at the table.

Usually, however, casinos will rate craps players as playing against a three percent house edge, give or take. And all games have different speeds – roulette has fewer decisions per hour than blackjack; baccarat also has far fewer decisions per hour than craps.

Visit Frank’s web site at www.frankscoblete.com. Frank Scoblete’s latest books are I Am a Dice Controller: Inside the World of Advantage-Play Craps, Confessions of a Wayward Catholic and I Am a Card Counter: Inside the World of Advantage-Play Blackjack. Available from Amazon.com, Kindle, Barnes and Noble, and at bookstores.