Casino Comps: Goodwill through Gambling

Complimentaries or "comps" are a way for casinos to keep their patrons happy and entice them to keep coming back for their services. These usually come in the form of souvenir items like keychains or mugs, while the casino's very best clients are given the full royal treatment with free drinks and meals, limousine services or hotel room discounts.

Casinos give away such comps to members of their player reward clubs. Their slot machines are equipped with devices that read the special membership cards the club members have been given, allowing computers to record the length of time or the amount of coins that they have played. The members are then awarded corresponding points which they can redeem for certain comps.

The player reward cards can also make one eligible for comps at table games. Members can present their membership cards for identification. The table's supervisor, the pit boss, will note their buy-in, which is the amount of money that they have traded for chips, the average size of their bet, and the length of time that they have been playing. It is a general practice for casinos to kick back about 10 to 40 per cent of the player's anticipated winnings in the form of comps.

The duration of the playing time, the number of hands played every hour, the size of the average bet, and the house percentage all add up to the player's expected loss. In a game of Blackjack, if a player has bet 5 dollars a hand for one hour at a rate of 60 hands per hour, from which the house expects an edge of 2 per cent, the player then bets 300 dollars per hour which the house shall expect a win of about 6 dollars or 2 per cent of 300 dollars. If the casino is giving away comps at 40 per cent of the expected loss, then the one hour session the player has spent would net him 2 dollars and 40 cents worth of comps, apart from the actual amount won or lost.

Players who have been rated for comps would also get placed on the casino's mailing list, through which they would receive special offers such as room discounts or invitations to gambling tournaments. They may even be sent cash vouchers in order to attract them into playing with them again.

Comps are basically the icing on top of the gambling cake. A gambler instantly becomes a winner simply for taking the time to sit down and play. It is a "thank you" from the casinos to their customers for trying them out, and an incentive to keep one coming back for more.