Page 11 - May 2003 • Southern California Gaming Guide

Jean Scott is the author of the best-selling book The Frugal Gambler, a casino guide for thrifty low rollers, plus a sequel, More Frugal Gambling, to be published very soon. She stresses sensible, responsible gambling and shows how to stretch out casino fun time whatever your gambling bankroll. She is a popular speaker and writer on gaming subjects. She has a weekly Internet column called “Frugal Fridays” on www.lasvegasadvisor.com. Today, Jean Scott, who, in her words, is just an “ordinary grandmother,” is the world’s most famous low-rolling gambler and her fans are legion. Her web site can be found at www.frugalgambler.biz.
SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA GAMING GUIDE
Everyone likes freebies! Here is some advice on how to get more freebies in a casino, those wonderful complimentary “gifts” we refer to as comps.
1. Look for comps that don’t require you to risk any moneyplayingthecasinogames.Aperfectexample in most casinos is valet parking. Pull up and leave your vehicle with a valet parker, go into the casino and stay as long as you want, and when you pick up your vehicle, no employee is going to ask you whether you gambled or spent any money in the casino and charge you a fee if you didn’t. Another possibility is a coupon freebie; we have snagged many small souvenir and food items over the years by redeeming a coupon before we had put even one nickel in a slot or video poker machine or made one bet at the tables.
2. Join the slot club—more and more frequently called the player’s club to include all games — whether you plan to play at the
machines or the tables or whether you don’t plan to play at all. You can do this at the club booth when you are actually in the casino, or a growing trend will allow you to join, or at least sign a guest book, online. During slow periods some casinos will send offers for free meals or hotel rooms to everyone in their database, even those who have played very little and sometimes even to those who have never actually played a game in their casino. And many casinos offer what I call “partial comps,” discounts on rooms, meals, retail shop purchases, and attractions to anyone who is a slot club member, with no gambling requirements at all.
3. Concentrate your gambling at just one or two casinos where you can reach at least a basic comp level instead of spreading your play around a number of casinos and not reaching a minimum comp level at any of them. I recommend choosing one “core” casino and playing there until you can regularly get room and/or food comps. Only then
should you branch out to qualify for comps at other casinos. Too many players bounce around from casino to casino and never “establish” themselves at one where they play
enough to earn any comps.
4. Trytomakeitahabittoneverriskanymoneyina casino unless you are earning some kind of comp credit. That means not playing without a slot card in a machine. For table players that means choosing
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Andrew N.S. (“Andy”) Glazer is a columnist and Poker Tournament Editor for Card Player Magazine, and is widely considered to be the world’s foremost poker tournament reporter. He is also the online guide for the free poker information site, www.poker.casino.com. Newsweek called him “a poker scholar,” and he was one of the broadcasters for ESPN at the 2002 World Series of Poker. He writes a general gambling column for the Detroit Free Press, has written for virtually every gaming publication of note, and is the author of Casino Gambling the Smart Way, which can be found in bookstores or at his own website, www.casinoselfdefense.com.
Southern California residents are in luck when it comes to accessibility to legal poker games, and especially to legal poker tournaments. They are living in the poker capital of the world. Someone who wanted to play tournament poker year round could probably nd a poker tournament somewhere in Southern California every single day of the year.
The relevant questions then become “Why should someone want to play tournament poker instead of money poker?” and
“What strategy changes are needed to succeed in tournaments?” Let’s take a look at both questions.
Poker tournaments offer players a terri c way to compete against strong players without risking much money, and also offer a great way to make a big score without risking a lot of money. Normally, if you want to have a chance to win $5,000 playing money poker, you probably need to be playing in a game where the stakes are so high that losing $5,000 is a possibility.
In poker tournaments, though, your risk is limited strictly to the buy-in and entry fee. In a typical
tournament, the buy-in money creates the prize pool, and the entry fee goes to the host casino for its expenses/pro t. Although you can nd tournaments as inexpensive as $11 and as expensive as $25,300, let’s use a $100 tournament for our example. That tournament would probably have an entry fee of $10 (although it could be as much as $20), and so your total risk would be, let’s say, $110.
If 200 players enter, there is a prize pool of $20,000. First place usually pays between 35% and 40% of the prize pool (with the other high nishers collecting the rest of the money; usually, roughly 10% of the entrants win money), which means that for your $110, you can take a shot at winning $8,000!
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May 2003 Page 11