Invitational slot tournaments have a lot in common with invitational giveaways. Proven players are invited in for a few days and cash prizes are distributed among them. However, instead of earning drawing tickets via play on regular online casino machines, players compete by playing specially programmed slot machines. The high scores win the prizes.
You can calculate your expected result in a slot tournament more easily than you can in a giveaway event, simply because it’s easier to predict the number of entrants in a tournament than it is to predict the number of tickets that will be in a barrel. In addition, slot tournaments are strictly luck, so every player has an equal chance. All you need to do is hit the button and take the score you end up with. As in the giveaway events, if $50,000 is being distributed among 200 players, each wins $250 on average.
Tournament Players
Some casinos, however, play games with the numbers. The Venetian has been the worst offender in this regard in the past few years. On one occasion, the Venetian offered $75,000 in prizes, based on 250 entries. This would have resulted in player-equity of $300. But when only 225 players showed up (90% of what the prize pool was based on), the Venetian took away 33% of the money and offered only $50,000. (They kept “$75,000” in the title of the event so we played the “All American $75,000 Tournament” with $50,000 in prizes.) This resulted in player-equity of $222. Big difference.
Many players base much of their decision to participate on the advertised player equity Making proportional changes to the player pool is fine (in this case, that would mean reducing it by 10% to $67,500 to compensate for the fewer entrants). But to reduce the player pool by 33% for a 10% shortage in the player base wasn’t perceived as fair. This was a penny-wise pound-foolish move on the part of the Venetian. The only players who cared were their best customers. The casino was giving away money to its best customers partly as a gesture of goodwill. Why ruin it with such an overtly miserly approach?
Invitation for Players
There are no free lunches. Casinos invite only proven players, who are expected to gamble a significant amount during the tournament. A australia casino might expect $10,000 worth of action, $100,000 worth of action, or even more. It depends on the place and on how much is being giving away.
How do you know how much action they expect? Ask. Ask your host what it takes to be invited to special events. If it’s $10,000 per day in action, you have to decide whether it’s worth it to you. This amount would be out of the question for a nickel or quarter player. However, it would require only three or four hours of play a day for a dollar player or about 45 minutes a day for a $5 player. The event may or may not come with a room and meals. But it usually has bookend parties a reception beforehand and a full- blown awards banquet afterward.
If you determine that you can qualify, another question you should consider is how much it will cost to play during the event. Let’s say it’s a big tournament that requires about $100,000 of play and the equity is $1,000. If you’re a slot player, a house edge of 3% might be typical. So you can expect to lose, on average, 3% of $100,000, which is $3,000. Losing $3,000 to play in an event where the expected return is $1,000 isn’t smart gambling in my book. But other people have different opinions. Many players like the excitement of a Vegas weekend and a slot tournament gives them some chance to recoup their normal losses.
