Ask the Slot Expert: Casino Gift Promotions: A different coax for different folks

Okay, I know that a few weeks ago I wrote that I was no longer being a schnorrer and picking up every free gift a casino offers me --

How many T-shirts do you need? At least they wear out after a while. I look to my left and there's a heavyweight hoodie that is still in a plastic bag. I have to find another hanger so I can put it in the hall closet with my other heavy-ish logo jackets, which I can wear about 10 days each year in Las Vegas. I get more use out of the lighter jackets and windbreakers. I'm still trying to remember why I thought it was a good idea to pick up the small, semi-hard-sided suitcase from Palms a few years ago.

This month I passed on the T's from one casino, but found myself at Red Rock last Friday to complete the duo of Wolfgang Puck kitchenware that were this month's gifts. The first gift, Puck's chopper, works fairly well -- better than a Popeil Chop-O-Matic, I suspect. Now it was time to pick up my casserole dish.

The gift page in a mailer can sometimes be a little misleading. There's rarely anything in the picture to show the size of the gift and sometimes the description doesn't help. I once picked up a set of Master Chef bowls. Even though I had a nice set of mixing bowls with lids from Palms, they're metal and not appropriate for some ingredients. The Master Chef bowls were made of glass.

You couldn't tell how big they were from the picture in the mailer. I discovered that they were prep bowls and not mixing bowls. Still useful, but not as big as I was expecting.

One time I knew more about the gift than was revealed in the picture and description. The gift was a Stanley plastic toolbox. I had just purchased some Stanley toolboxes from Lowes, so I was familiar with the product line.

At the pickup area, people were complaining about how small the toolbox was. It's smaller than a four-year-old's Fisher-Price toy toolbox. But I knew that this was a small toolbox that would be perfect for holding a few tools on my second floor so I don't always have to bring tools upstairs for small jobs.

Even though there was no sense of scale in the picture of the second Puck gift in my mailer, the description (Six-Inch Casserole Dish) left nothing to the imagination. While walking to the gift area, I saw a screen alerting players to the gift. The screen said you could earn the gift after playing 300 points.

That's interesting, I thought. I had always known that invited guests can frequently pick up gifts without playing. When I was playing more, I could usually pick up a gift without a play requirement, so I would get the gift and then play a bit. I hadn't been playing as much the past few months, so my offer required earning 50 points to get the gift.

I have never seen a gift offer that had more than two play requirements. It was always either the play-way or the free-way. I either had to play the number of points in the public advertisement for the promotion or I was able to pick up the gift without playing. I never had a play requirement that was less than that for the general public.

Have you seen the same thing in your casino's gift promotions? Has this been going on all along and I just didn't experience it? Or is this a result of the new reality of casino promotions? A different coax for different folks.

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