Conventional wisdom tells us that the house always wins, and that the only to not lose at the casino is to not go to the casino. Clearly, conventional wisdom does not into consideration comps: those wonderful freebies the casino gives away just for gambling. And more importantly, it doesn’t consider status: the ability to stand in a specially designated, shorter line to receive said comps.

Loyalty and reward cards have become a regular part of the everyday consumer experience, and it’s no different at casinos: simply swipe your rewards cards in slot machines or hand it to the croupier, and the next thing you know, the casino sends all kinds of offers for free food, free hotel stays, free show tickets, and even free money to gamble with.

To the casino, however, these rewards programs have been an absolute game changer; through the power of big data, they can identify various profiles of gamblers, and with the magic of marketing, they can create individualized advertising campaigns to bring these players coming back for more. All casinos have the same, guaranteed house edge on the floor, but the ones that most effectively spend that edge on enticing the right players to gamble more end up being the most profitable.

The right players are *not* the “bet your life savings on red” types (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ashley_Revell); instead, casinos prefer gamers who return time and time again, despite losing more often than winning. For these folks, casinos will happily spend 40% of that player’s anticipated losses on comps to entice them to play.

Calculating Losses

The house edge is no secret, and it’s relatively easy to calculate. Slots payouts are often regulated, and range from 5 to 15%, depending on the state. A roulette wheel, on the other hand, has 38 slots, but only pays out 35:1, giving the house a 5% advantage. Craps has… well, let’s just say that has a much smaller house edge at 1% or so.

For an electronic game, calculating the player’s anticipated loss is easy: simply give award points based on the total dollar amount played. But for table games, where chips are constantly passed around, they rely on a pit boss to periodically estimate the average bet and your session duration, which are then used to calculate award points based on the game’s volatility.

When a game has enough volatility, if a player nears the end of his bankroll, he’s much more likely to place a Hail Mary bet (such as betting it all on 12, and hope it hits). The same is true when he’s ahead: he’ll place larger bets, because “it’s just the casino’s money,” after all. Obviously, these increase the house profits, and a game with higher volatility will yield higher reward points.

The Comps Hustle

To pull off a comps hustle, we simply need to inflate our anticipated losses. Short of playing at the Lucky Deuce, this is only doable on the human-driven table names.

Aside from applying the core comp hustle tactics (betting higher when the pit boss is watching, increasing session duration with more restroom breaks, etc.), we can also significantly decrease the game’s volatility through “opposite” bets like betting bet $100 on red and $100 on black.

With the red+black “strategy”, it would take an average of 19 spins (30 minutes) before losing $200; compare with a “normal” strategy of just betting black, a bankroll of $200, and an average bet of $200. Only 47.5% of the time would you survive the first spin.

Of course, casinos are well aware of comps hustlers, and have no interest in spending their marketing budget to entice them. A comps hustler will early a whopping zero points.

This is where we need to devise a system that’s complex enough to the casual observer, but keeps the volatility as low as possible. An accomplice is key: in roulette, you bet red, your accomplice bets black, and you pool the (inevitable) losses.

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