The Ultra-High-Rollers

2 May 2024

By Royal Flushes

CINDY: So, you bet in the hundreds, maybe the high hundreds, or the thousands, or tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of dollars. You are, compared to the rest of the country and the world at large, rich. Some of you may be very, very, very rich. Filthy rich! Maybe some of your adventures have made their way into books or films or television shows. That rich.

ABBY: That is no knock on you. Everyone, I would guess, wouldn’t mind being rich.

CINDY: Or most of everyone. Maybe there are people who don’t care about having a lot of money or even a medium amount of money. I don’t actually know many of those people; nor do the millions of lottery players throughout the world. But they must be out there. Somewhere. Right?

ABBY: I don’t even count members of religious orders who have places to live and meals furnished to them. They have material possessions. Even folks in the high mountain top temples…

CINDY: I think we are getting carried away here. We are really just talking about casino playing; that’s it.

ABBY: Yes, right. Do high rollers have better comps, value wise in terms of their worth to the casino? A low roller might get back 30 to 50 percent of his or her expected losses in comps; okay what about the really high roller? Is that the same range?

CINDY: No, it isn’t. If you are a hundred-dollar bettor, yes, it probably is but those betting many hundreds and especially those betting thousands, well they can be in another class of player entirely when it comes to comps.

ABBY: Think of it this way: If you are a multi-millionaire and live the high-style lifestyle you get just about everything you want so what can the casino give you that you don’t already have? Probably very little.

CINDY: The casinos must give you something almost no one gets – a break concerning your overall losses.

ABBY: Correct. Many high rollers have worked out deals with casinos to give them back a percentage of their trip losses on any given trip. Say you lose, oh, like a million dollars, the casino might return five-hundred thousand of that. The casino would not do that for either Cindy or me, but for someone who owns a fleet of private planes? “Come play at our place!”

CINDY: Now, going down lower on the list, what about high rollers that are not in the fleet-of-planes world? They can get some good deals if they know exactly how the casinos rate their value. Say, you get a beautiful suite and all your meals comped, even at the best of the gourmet restaurants the casino has to offer, what about you? And they also throw in all the shows and the parties and…well, you get the idea. What about you?

ABBY: Everything has a cash value. Let me give you a simple example that came our way from a high roller that we know. He was getting the high-roller works that gave him everything but he was never given his airfare. So, he asked his host to show him his value sheet and everything was listed in terms of his comps. The suite had a big price value. He told his host that from now on he didn’t want a suite, just a regular room, and now would they pay for his airfare?

CINDY: Yes, they did. The airfare now came in under the total amount they were willing to comp this player.

ABBY: No matter who you are in the high-roller range, there are always ways to get a little (or a lot!) more value for your play.

CINDY: I guess for me to get my airfare comped, I’d have to sleep in the alley.

ABBY: Me too.