This is from LVA
Last July we wrote about a new-member sign-up deal at Wynn Las Vegas good for two buffet passes for $4,500 in video poker action. That good deal has turned into a great one, as it now takes only 50 points—a mere $450 coin-in—to snag the two free buffets.
As gambling incentives go, this is about as good as you’ll come across. The WLV dinner buffet costs $32, so two of them (including tax) are worth about $70. With the good machines at the Wynn (several return 100% with perfect play), your expected profit on this deal is about the face value of the buffets: $70. That’s strong from an expected-value point of view, but what about the risk? How likely is it that you’ll lose more than $70 trying to win it?
To reach $450 coin-in, you have to play 360 max-coin hands at 25¢ or 90 at $1. That’s only about 45 minutes of play for quarters. Most players have an intuitive sense of how much can be lost over short periods of time and it would take a pretty bad run to lose $70 in this case. But how bad? A new product on the market called Dunbar’s Risk Analyzer for Video Poker (DRAVP) allows you to analyze situations like this. Here’s how it works, using the Wynn deal as an example. (This analysis is provided by Dunbar himself, using DRAVP.)
Let’s look at satisfying the Wynn proposition’s gambling requirement playing WLV’s 9/6 Jacks or Better that pays an unusual 90 coins for a straight flush for a near 100% return. If you play this game for quarters and stop if you lose $70, DRAVP says that you have a 15% chance of losing the $70 before earning the necessary 50 points for the buffet comp. If you start with $100, you have a mere 2.5% chance of going broke before getting the comp.
What if you play dollars instead, cutting your playing time from 45 minutes to less than 15? A $70 starting bankroll is much riskier now. You have a 48% chance of losing $70 before playing enough for the comp. A $100 bankroll isn’t much better, as there’s still a 27% chance of losing your bankroll first. You might think you’d need four times $100 to play $1 JoB and have the same small 2.5% chance of ruin as with the 25¢ game, but you need only $175.
Does it matter if you play a different variety of video poker than Jacks or Better? Yes. Even for such a short period of play, some games have a significantly higher chance of ruin than others. The Wynn has a variation of NSU Deuces in which the 5-of-a-kind pays 15 coins and the straight flush pays 11. This game has a similar rate of return as Jacks or Better, but the risk of ruin is much higher. Playing this game for quarters, a $70 bankroll has a 25% risk of ruin; for a $100 bankroll, it’s 6%.
There’s an additional level of the Wynn sign-up offer. If you go on to earn another 450 points (another $4,050 coin-in), you get two more buffets and $10 in free play. How much risk is there for this additional $80 or so in value? Quite a bit. If you try to earn enough for all the comps (500 points total) with a $100 bankroll on 25¢ JoB, your chance of going broke before getting the freebies jumps from 2.5% to 70%! So you’ll earn the first two buffets 97.5% of the time, but get the other two and the free play only 30% of the time. If you want to have a 97%-98% chance of earning the extra buffets playing 25¢ JoB, you’d have to start with about $400, according to DRAVP. To have that same 97%-98% level of success playing dollars, you’d need to start with about $700.
Bottom line: The 50-point deal is strong, as fewer than one in seven who play will lose more than the value of the comp. And this analysis doesn’t consider the value of cashback or bounce-back offers you’ll get from the Wynn for qualifying.
Dunbar’s Risk Analyzer for Video Poker can be used to find the risk of ruin for sessions ranging in length from a few hands to months of play for most single-line video poker games. See the wrap for more information on this product.
More Wynn
Dunbar’s reference to Wynn bounce-back is valid. We continue to hear of generous offers coming in the mail to players who’ve joined the club and played for the free buffets. Free two-night stays have abounded in recent weeks. Yes, ’tis the season for such offers, but WLV is still striving to establish its base and should continue marketing hard to new customers, improving an already stellar sign-up offer.
Daily Jumbo
Station Casinos is running a "Holiday Daily Jumbo Jackpot" from December 25 to January
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