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Ask the Slot Expert: Advantage Play outside the casino20 April 2022
Last week I wrote about a conversation I had with Jean Scott's husband, Brad. I had just played a promotion in which you got a free movie ticket if you earned a certain number of points. Without missing a beat, Brad asked, "How much did that ticket cost you?" "About $200," I said and we both chuckled. Many people would think that we're crazy laughing about losing $200 to get a $12 ticket (Cinemark XD early show). But we both knew that, even though it was more likely to have a loss, I might have had a profit -- and a movie, to boot. The movie promotion decreased the house edge just a bit. Bob Dancer wrote a column with a similar theme recently, Not Everybody Will Understand. In it he described how a manager at Sprouts Farmers Market resolved a problem with a promotion by giving him a benefit better than what he was entitled to. After that, he went to the casino to play video poker and lost $750. When he got home, he told his wife, Bonnie, about his score at Sprouts. The loss at the casino didn't bother him at all. Bonnie said, "Your thinking is no messed up!" Bob's point was that as long as he plays only when he has an advantage, the math says he will have a profit in the long run. That's the same math that the casino uses. As long as they have an edge over the players, individual players will win or lose, but overall the casino will make a profit. One of the goals of Advantage Play is to squeeze as much benefit as you can from a promotion. You just have to be careful about how hard you squeeze a casino's promotion. The casino may notice and take action (I know). In the Sprouts promotion, your register receipt would include a coupon good for $10 off a $75 purchase the next month. There was no minimum purchase required to get the coupon. An advantage player who regularly shops at Sprouts might make more purchases of fewer items to maximize the number of coupons she received. When the coupons became valid, she might group her purchases to just over $75 each. (I don't do a good job hitting a target amount at the grocery store. A couple of weeks ago I had an offer for extra rewards points if I made a $40 purchase. I wasn't planning to buy that much on that trip, but I estimated that I was pretty close with what I had in my cart. I thought that maybe I should get a few more items, but I thought I was just over $40. As it turned out, I was 32 cents under $40. I should have called over the self-checkout chaperone and told her that I was going to run over to the impulse-buy display to get a candy bar to get over $40, but I didn't think of that until now.) What could Sprouts have done to thwart some Advantage Play techniques? Sprouts could have required a minimum purchase to get the coupon on your register receipt, but I figure that they thought that more coupons in the wild, the better. They calculated that the additional purchases they would get from people using coupons would more than make up for the smaller profit they would make on each purchase. We can use Advantage Play techniques in other situations. Whenever Starbucks has a game, there's someone who posts a message about how to play the game at the cheapest cost. Some games involve challenges that you can complete. Let's say a game has these three challenges: make a weekday and a weekend purchase; make a purchase at two different stores; and make a morning and an afternoon purchase. The advantage player looks at the gestalt of these challenges. A banana is the cheapest thing on the menu, so that's what he'll buy. He buys a banana from store A Friday morning and a banana from store B Saturday afternoon. He's killed three challenges with two bananas. I never tried to maximize my Starbucks return that way on the games. I always just bought whatever I would normally buy. But this morning, I did make an unplanned Advantage Play play. It was double points day and it's been a few days since I've gone for a walk, so I planned to walk to Starbucks for a cold brew. When I opened the Starbucks app this morning, I had a menu challenge I could start. Buy two Impossible Breakfast Sandwiches for extra points. I could do that. And I might as well get the first one on a double points day. The contestants on Wheel of Fortune could use some Advantage Play techniques. I never used to watch Wheel after Jeopardy, but I got sucked in with the new promotion in which viewers can win $10,000. It's easier for me to just watch the show than to remember to check the website to see if my Spin ID won. More entertaining, too. Why do the players buy vowels so often? Pat is like a pusher with the vowels. Even though he's only pointing out to contestants that they have enough money to buy a vowel, it's like he's encouraging them to do so and he always says it's a good idea -- unless the vowel isn't in the puzzle. As soon as these players get some money, it's burning a hole in their pockets and they have to spend it on vowels. First consonant in the puzzle and the player buys a vowel. Why? You're probably not going to be able to solve the puzzle with only one consonant and one vowel. And too many times the vowel they buy is not in the puzzle and they lose their turn and $250. Why not spin the wheel? If your consonant is not in the puzzle, you still lose your turn, but you have an extra $250. Okay, you might spin Bankrupt. But you're probably not going to solve the puzzle after your vowel buy and you're going to spin again anyway. Don't buy the vowel now. Now, let's say players call a high-frequency consonant, buy a vowel, and then call another high-frequency consonant. They probably would have called the second high-frequency consonant even without the vowel. The vowel didn't change their play, so buying it then was money down the drain. There is one instance in which buying a vowel early in the puzzle makes sense to me. If the category is What are you doing?, you know there is a gerund in the puzzle. You should call N, then G, then buy an I. Then try to get enough consonants revealed to solve the puzzle. Granted, we're not talking about a lot of money with vowel buying and most games aren't very close. Every once in a while, a few hundred dollars decides the winner, so every little bit can help. (To prove my point, tonight a lady with the Million Dollar Wedge lost to another lady by $232.) And all players could leave with more money if they were more strategic with buying vowels. Don't go vowel fishing. Buy only when you're fairly sure the vowel is in puzzle and you need some help or you have no idea what consonant to call next and are desperate. On an episode a few weeks ago, a lady had a commanding lead going into the Triple Toss-Up and the Million Dollar Wedge. She got the third toss-up and the first spin on the next puzzle. There was time to start normal play on that puzzle. I was afraid she might get Bankrupt and lose the wedge. I don't know if players can see a timing indicator to know that the puzzle after the toss-up is going to go right to Final Spin. If she could tell that it was time for Final Spin, then she was safe solving the toss-up. If she couldn't tell that she would safe from spinning a Bankrupt on the next puzzle, I think she should have let someone else get the third toss-up and hope that she didn't have to spin again. She was 99.99% sure to win. Why take a chance on losing the Million Dollar Wedge? It seems like the same people who advocated for letting jurisdictions set their own level of Covid mitigation efforts are now complaining that the rules are different in different places. Isn't that what local determination is all about? The airline pilots who lifted the mask mandate mid-flight should not have done so. The safety of all of their passengers is their primary responsibility. There might have been passengers aboard who would have taken additional precautions if they had known they were going to be on a flight with unmasked passengers. The pilots shouldn't have changed the rules during the flight. Here are the latest Covid data. There is a difference in the hospitalization data for US versus NV. The CDC reports total number of Covid hospital admissions. Nevada reports current hospitalizations, not admissions. Note: Nevada reported 310 deaths in one filing this past week and 159 in another. This is not the time to get sloppy in reporting hospitalizations and deaths since the number of cases is not as relevant as it was before vaccines and treatments. Click here for the latest Covid data. Send your slot and video poker questions to John Robison, Slot Expert™, at slotexpert@slotexpert.com. Because of the volume of mail I receive, I regret that I can't reply to every question.
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