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June 8, 2007
Harrah's
Richard's banning from Harrah's was already getting some serious publicity in the poker world, but now it's crossed over into mainstream news. Even Freakonomics published a brief article about it. He had asked me if he should blog about it when it happened. I guess he chose wisely.
I wonder what I would do in Harrah's situation. If a casino executive thinks a customer is a long term winner at video poker, it can only be for a few reasons. One is that they are using some sort of device to jackpot the machines, and that's fairly easy to check for. And if you thought someone was doing that you wouldn't ban them. You'd catch them and have them put in jail for a very long time (Nevada doesn't mess around when it comes to scamming casinos), so that one is out.
The second option is that your machines have bad payout tables. I don't know what the auditing process is, but again that would be easy to determine, and obviously isn't the case.
The third is that the player is losing at the machines but getting it all back and then some from the comps. So the logical course of action would, at first glance, appear to be to cut off their comps and have your security guards monitor them every time they set foot in the casino, just to make sure it wasn't some sort of foul play.
I'm not sure about the legality of that though. Can Harrah's just say "Sorry Mr. Brodie, we can't continue comping you"? I really don't know, but I would assume they could. I also don't know if they could simply invalidate past comps, but again I assume they could. They typically are granted pretty broad powers in such areas.
So the question is, from their perspective, is a total comp cutoff better than just banning the offender? Banning has at least one advantage. For one, it gives Harrah's the power to have him arrested at a later date. Perhaps they think doing so will prevent other people from legally trying to take advantage of them. Of course it won't, but it seems higher-ups in corporations often think along those lines. I do know of two people who've been arrested for going back into a casino they were blacklisted from, both times just to eat (one ate, left, and returned to leave a tip). It may not be a deterrent to future customers, but it's definitely revenge.
Also it might look unusually shady if Harrah's invalidated comps Richard already had, if he already had any, assuming it's legal to do so. It's probably better from their perspective to tell any other high rollers who catch wind that he was abusing the machines (most of them probably have no idea that such a thing is impossible) than to look as if they just take comps away from people who accrue too many.
But then, it also looks very poor to ban someone who has done nothing more than win, with no real accusation of impropriety. And Harrah's could possibly have made thousands in WSOP entry fees from Richard. Plus he might choose to eat dinner at Caesar's and actually pay for it.
So what I would do, as the Harrah's exec in charge of this, is see if he had comps outstanding, and if so, if I could invalidate them and any future comps. If he had a ton of them saved up and I couldn't legally erase them, I'd probably ban him since it would cost less that way than whatever fallout might ensue.
If he had few or no comps, or if I could legally revoke them, I'd just do that and gladly take the profit from any future video poker play and any poker tournaments. I'd issue a very official "we don't comment on such matters" to anyone, as I would anytime I was publicly asked about those types of situations. I'd lean more towards that option for sure in the case of Richard, who has a well-read blog and is well-known in the very connected poker community.
I do think it sucks for Richard. I've known him for a while, and the streak of good luck that got him banned is definitely far from the only video poker he has played. If it were my casino, I'd welcome him with a smiling host and just wait for the digital cards to average out. At my casino, the comps would be as carefully controlled as the payout tables, so nobody really could take advantage of them. And of course at my casino, he wouldn't need comps since dinner would be on me.
Posted by themaroon at June 8, 2007 4:17 AM
Comments
Matt, the truth is unless the machines are paying out more than they shoudl Harrah's should be DELIGHTED that a regular is winning the jackpots and putting the winnings back into the casino. Rather than some "hit and run" player. Richard said in his blog he lost 80% of the winnings back. As long as those machines are paying out what they're supposed to be paying they are still profitable regardless of who wins. that's what is so confusing to me. I mean rather than banning him from the casino i'd use him to promote their slots..announcing to all that he hit 4 jackpots in 1 year!!!
Posted by: anon at June 10, 2007 7:15 PM