How to travel like a high roller

By SmartMoney

Jay David is hardly what you'd call a high roller. For the Chicago consultant, the extent of his gambling is feeding $100 into a video poker machine once a month at his local riverboat casino.

But on a recent trip to Las Vegas, David and his mother spent five nights at two top hotels, feasted at several buffets and picked up two $125 silk Tommy Bahama shirts, all without paying a penny. David's entire trip was on the "house" -- the house being Harrah's Entertainment and MGM Mirage, the two largest operators of casinos in the country.

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Attention, freeloaders: As U.S. casinos pull in more bets than ever -- gambling revenue has nearly doubled, to $32.5 billion, in the past decade -- they're also giving away more in comps, the free food, hotel rooms and other goodies designed to get gamblers into the casinos and keep them there.

Last year alone, casinos gave out roughly $10 billion worth of these freebies. Though drinks and hotel rooms remain the most popular comps, these days casinos give away goodies such as spa treatments and even all-terrain vehicles. In 2005, the MGM Mirage chain paid to install air conditioning in the vacation home of one of its high rollers.

But if you think you need to be a "whale" -- industry lingo for a big-time gambler -- to get in on the comping game, think again. Thanks to better tracking technology and more competition among casinos, freebies are increasingly being doled out to gambling neophytes.

Even the awards themselves, once limited to hotel suites and A-list concert tickets, now include toasters, buffet lunches and coffee makers. Indeed, anyone willing to hand over his e-mail address and direct-marketing particulars will get at least a free buffet or two, and it may not take much more to score a hotel suite. No wonder a small universe of comp-related blogs has sprouted up.

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Why the change? In large part it's due to technology that has made the process far more automated. Getting comped used to happen with little more than a covert tap on the shoulder by a pit boss, but these days most freebies are doled out through frequent-gambler cards. Gamblers at Harrah's, for instance, now sign up for one of three tiers of reward status and log on to an online catalog to redeem points. Recent rewards included a Black & Decker cordless garden sprayer for 8,300 points and a Polaris all-terrain vehicle for 870,000 points.

If this sounds like a credit card loyalty program, it's no coincidence; Harrah's marketing exec in charge of the plan came from American Express. Nearly all the major casinos have similar programs.

But just because it's more high-tech doesn't mean scoring comps is easy. For one thing, the automated reward structure may be transparent in terms of points earned, but figuring out just how points accrue is still a mystery. In the hard-goods category, to get anything of value, you have to spend a lot of money -- maybe the reason why the most redeemed freebie for 2005's holiday season by MGM Mirage cardholders was a cake pan.

And though the reward programs control much of the comps, most casino hosts still hand out some freebies at will. Here are tips on how best to score comps in four categories:

Food and drink

Free drinks are, of course, the universal comp, given to all players on the gambling floor. The best way to get meals on top of that is to sign up for the casino's gambling card.

One tip: Casinos award points faster on games where the odds are better for them (the more money you stand to lose, the longer they want to keep you there). Because the odds on slots tend to favor the house more so than table games, the points add up more quickly there than, say, at blackjack tables.

Continued: Plan to gamble ... a lot

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