Diamond in a Day - CET Total Rewards

At times, they offer 1 to 1 on machines, don't they?

Occasionally I've gotten offers from properties advertising that, but they've never offered me that in Las Vegas, and the window has always been small.

For example, I have an offer for September 25th in Reno, "Exchange your Reward Credits® for Free Slot Play at the limited time rate of 100 Reward Credits for $1 in Free Slot Play."

It seems the best use of rewards credits is to get freeplay on slots and then run the freeplay down to zero to convert as much as possible to tier credits.

if you pay for food or rooms at their properties the best use is to pay with your RC. If everything is comped the best value is 1:1 on the sports betting app.

what you suggest makes no sense. to start with you're only getting 50 cents on the dollar. then you're intentionally blowing all of that money to get a few tier credits. The entire thing makes absolutely no sense. even if you wanted to light the money on fire for some TC you'd still be better off converting it on sports bets then torching that money in slots since you'd have twice as much to work with.

Also, if using slot dollars/freeplay, you don't earn TC.

Even 8/5 JoB is far better than slots. You can turn that into about $47 per 100RC on average. But sports book you can do close to $95/100RC

Flew out to Vegas for the 10x multiplier last week and shared some notes on using the video roulette strategy on Reddit here:

https://www.reddit.com/r/CaesarsRewards/...

Lost exactly $702 to become Diamond...

Why not play 98% vp?
Even at $10/tc, it'll cost less than the 5.4% house edge of roulette.

1400 tc = $14k coin-in
14k x 2% = $280 loss (theo)

The issue is variance. Sure VP video poker have better EV but 2% of that is solely from hitting the Royal. So you are really looking at 4% not 2% a huge majority of the time. But even after that, esp. on the higher variance games, you could still easily be over 10% cost. 25% not rare.

VP is (excluding maybe poker or sports betting) the lowest theo cost but is a high variance choice. Sure the same things could happen playing roulette or craps or Baccarat or BJ (etc) but those would be more tail risks vs. VP and mny slots.

I don't really understand why the sort of people who would post on this board would worry much about the variance in achieving casino status.

Like we're all poker players, right? We should be thinking about making the right play in terms of EV, and understand that there is always variance to gambling.

VP does have quite a bit of variance. But it's nothing compared to the variance involved in poker tournaments. If you're willing to put up $1000+ to play in a poker tournament because you think it's +EV despite the fact you will lose your buy-in more than 80% of the time, why wouldn't you be willing to risk that amount to make the best play at any other casino game?

Also, you're not going to lose 25% of your coin-in at VP over any reasonable sample of several thousand spins at a game like JoB or BP. Besides the equity of hitting a royal flush, the rest of the your results will even out and hit close to expectation pretty reliably.

First, don't take a number out of context. Note what I actually wrote..."esp. on the higher variance games, you could still easily be over 10% cost. 25% not rare."

Did not say or hint that losing 25% or even 10% playing JoB or BP. I specifically conditioned those numbers on the higher variance VP games was common. It isn't common on any game but also far from rare on the higher variance games.

While I agree we should be looking generally at the EV ignoring the variance is just as bad. And you don't compare tournament variance to VP variance for earning a status.

As you noted, you are going to narrow down your results range a fair bit because you are talking about about 3000 spins vs 1 or a hand full of tournamaments.

It becomes much like a RoR calculation. Sure Roulette has 2x+ the the expected cost (unless you can find a European wheel). But what is the variance or Roulette vs VP? (even a game like JoB). Over the next 100 years you will "fore sure" (not really) save money going the VP route. But in any single year the cost going the VP route can be multiples higher for VP. There is even a tail risk, that you could blow your entire budget on a bad run and go broke before you reach the status.

Yes that could happen in Roulette also but a much smaller risk that is will happen in Roulette. This "safety" can have a value. Esp. if you have a tight budget to use chasing the status.

There are many threads here where people have discussed how bad they ran chasing Diamond and 'went broke' (or atleast ran out of budget) before getting the status.

Personally, I don't face this delima because my wife is a degen for slots. I can sit with her, use 'her' budget, enjoy a scotch and cigar (she likes that aroma) while she plays 95% of the spins and I reach in occasionally. We typically do this after a nice dinner and before I wander over to poker. Then she will switch to her card (which always has many more TC than mine ever gets.)

I didn't keep track of coin-in, so I don't know how close I got, but I lost in the neighborhood of 3 grand trying to get just over 1000 tc last year. Whether I got value for that is dubious.

If you are properly bankrolled and can emotionally handle the downswings, variance is irrelevant and ignoring it costs you absolutely nothing.

Earning 1400 tier credits with that roulette strategy costs over $700 in EV (I'm trusting the numbers on that reddit page). 1400 tier credits earned on 9/6 DDB costs less than $150!

what were you playing per hand?

I believe there are very few 9/6 DDB games at CET properties at least in Vegas, and they only earn at $25/TC. The best you can do is probably 9/5 JoB, which will cost a little over $200 in EV.

That said, I got my Diamond+ status playing 9/5 JoB in Danville, and got half my EV loss back in next day slot play, so there might be better deals in CET casinos in other locations.

This is spot on. 100%.

Obviously EV matters more than variance, but variance still matters.

Those who say variance does not matter in the long run are missing the point. People are not looking to play for the long run. They are looking to make a very specific short term goal (Diamond or Diamond+).

In the short run variance matters. Maybe even more than EV.

I say this as someone who the last three years has found myself a thousand or two tier points short of qualifying for Diamond in mid- November trying to figure out the best way to get Diamond without putting in a lot of hours due to a busy schedule.

https://www.888casino.com/blog/roulette-...
Roulette has a var of 25.

https://www.casinocenter.com/video-poker....
JoB is lower at 20

I was going to chime in JOB variance is actually pretty low.

A lot of the variance is from getting a royal which I just assume I'm not gonna get an add 2 percent to the house edge the times I've used JOB to get diamond.

I'm generally gonna go for the best ev but the higher the variance the more it matters.
I remember a few years ago there was some side bet across Caesars properties in Vegas that hit a +ev state. I think it was on baccarat. So a lot of people chased it. I forget the exact details but if something is a ten million to one shot and at best I can play a few thousand rounds before it hits you're just gambling with an excuse. The ev ignoring the miracle was probably 100-200 an hour of negative ev not to mention you could be using that time to make money. Might as well just buy lotto tickets at that point.

That’s the variance when you are making even money bets on roulette. The variance of betting every number will of course be zero.

The first time I made Diamond I only got halfway, which pays the same as if you do the whole thing in 1 day. 2500 tc iirc, and I only had a few hours left in the 24 hour day. Including rest stops, etc. It was one hand at a time, 1 dollar credits. It's much easier now, do it on at least a 5x multiplier day, 5 or 10 hands per push, it wouldn't take much more than a few hours.

Then you're guaranteed to lose 5.4%.

1400tc x 5 = $7k coin-in
$7k x 5.4% = $378

How did he get ~$750 theo from?
video roulette is $10 per tc?

Probably. Won’t be 5:1 for sure. That is slots. If they figure out certain % are doing this solely for TC, they will and may have increase the ratio.

The guaranteed loss but zero variance is exactly the point of this part of the discussion. You are paying more on average but you know your cost.

Sounds like the game was awarding $10/TC.
All those electronic table games tend to award TCs at a pretty atrocious rate; I'm surprised it was even that good.
I played a little electronic baccarat a while back, and it earned at $45/TC.

I put your point here to the test. I was in Vegas last week and did indeed get 1-1 for my sports bets. I had very bad luck with the 6 bets I made and wound up 1 for 6 so it was a similar result from taking the 2-1 on slot play. I still have most of my rewards credits though and next time I go later in the month I plan to have better luck and get better value. Still it is way better than taking the slot play.