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On 12/23/2018 at 6:57 AM, riddle said:

Are you saying that you actually find video poker machines on NCL which have a better payback than others?   I have never found them to differ so maybe I need to look harder at the machines.

We prefer to play Triple Play, 5 Play, 10 Play and Ultimate X.  The Superstar machines have those and I think they may have slightly better pay tables at least at the $0.25 level.  The specific game I know is Triple Double Double Bonus.  More for the full house on the Superstar than on the Game Kings.

17 hours ago, VideoTech said:

 

That has always been true in regulated land casinos. If a bank of machines has an advertised payback %, it's when played at Max Bet. And it's also true that if a bank of machines is advertised as paying 98% (or whatever %), not ALL of them have to pay that. As long as one or some of them do, it's legal to put the advertised payback sign over the machines.

 

Right, I always knew that about different machines, but hadn't contemplated different %s based on credits wagered within the same machine.  Seems like with enough data, you could start to determine whether better to bet one or two vs max.  It couldn't be perfect science, but if you frequent the same casino often, it seems like you could get some decent sample size returns....ie this week only bet 1 vs next week bet 2, etc.....

Unusual thing I heard while sharing a box suite at a concert with a marketing rep from former Isle of Capri casinos....he said that on slots they could set the payback %s to different amounts based on how many credits were wagered.  I always assumed that if it was a 90% machine, that meant 90% across all combinations of wagers from a single penny to fully loaded.  This comment makes me think that they could set Bet One to 85% and Bet Max to 95%, or some combination as long as the theoretical comes out to a percent equal to or larger than what is mandated by the government (which is not required in INTL water on these ships).  Anyone have specific information on this topic?  Thanks!

20 hours ago, xcell said:

It's funny -- my kids have been cruising on NCL as many times as we have, so in theory, they are Plat members but because they are kids, the don't have perks.

Keep in mind if they were booked under Kids Sail Free or Free Friends and Family they will not get credit toward Platinum on those sailings.

Agree with VideoTech.  Know the rules before you wager.  Also, when it comes to Video Poker, the guidance there is to always bet max so you catch the full benefit of the pay table, or find a cheaper machine and bet max there.

We were on this sailing as well.  First a little background, this was 2nd time on Breakaway, been Getaway 2x, Epic 2x, and Escape 1x.  There was something just "off" with this sailing.  I spoke with am experienced NCL couple in the Thermal Spa Suite about half way through, and they also agreed, and the poor guy on his honeymoon was a first timer NCL.  We just chatted about a lot of the issues you presented.  I guess it was second nature for my wife and I to book our specialty dinners early, so we didn't have an issue getting what we wanted.  But, it sounded like all of the reservations were booked at all of the restaurants by the end of the first night.  I assumed that part of the issue was that the 4 stops was a new itinerary for the ship, so it wasn't something they were used to.  However, I would have expected the impact to be far less.  We had a great time, but understand why some people may not have.  I also know they had over 550 invited casino guests on board, so the casino was always crammed.  Only a couple of times was I not able to play on the machines (Super Star Poker) that I wanted, but I know that the table players were feeling the jam.  I wouldn't move on from NCL because of this one sailing, but maybe stick to the smaller ships for holiday sailings?  Happy cruising! 

2 hours ago, awreaper said:

Somehow all these peoples luggage was misplaced and finally after day 3 or 4 it made it's way to the ship.  🙂

 

Thanks for sharing.  This reminds me again of why we will cross pack our stuff tonight when we get ready to leave for our next cruise!

Assuming you have at least 2 rooms, for booking purposes you put yourself in one room and your wife in a different room.  You should each get platinum certificates for meals.  Now, I personally haven't done this, but based on policy it should work.  If someone has tried this, please chime in so we all know.  Thanks!

Thanks for dropping back in and providing the post cruise feedback.  I haven't done RCCL, only NCL and Carnival for me so far, but appreciate the background.  I find myself wanting to play only certain video poker machines based on payback %s as well, so I get that feeling of waiting for the one you need to be opened.  Luckily for me, NCL usually has about 12 machines that fit my profile on each ship and Carnival has 3, so not quite as rare as your single zero, but not as common as the rest of the slots.  Good luck in your future gambling adventures!

On 11/10/2018 at 11:24 PM, Dreamer115 said:

 

Gotta ask, what's in a Dirty Shirley

Shirley Temple with vodka....pretty darn simple... 🙂

On 11/9/2018 at 1:39 PM, Mike_DeA said:

Thanks, I understand what you are saying.  I think part of the equation for free trips is how many total points you accumulate as well, but not certain.

 

Your win/loss in any casino will be based on a starting number of zero for whatever period of time is measured.

Whenever you ask them about points they quickly remind you that points don't lead to comps or something of that nature.  The truth is that points are an indirect aspect.  The "comp" value earned at video poker is quite different than that of slot machines.  For myself, I usually estimate the amount of time I spend playing slots vs VP, then take 90% of my points for example and rate those dollars at 5% hold for VP and take the remaining 10% and rate those dollars at 20% for slots.  Keep in mind, the VP points are 2x as expensive as slots when calculating.  I have been using this methodology on my past 6 or 7 cruises, and usually end up within a few hundred bucks on my estimate vs reality.  The thing that absolutely kills me is the 5% hold on video poker.  The machines are like 95.8% payback machines with perfect strategy.  Personally, I play at about 99.5% accuracy from testing on my 3rd party apps.  So I am playing right in that 95% range.  However, what percent of population plays at that high of an accuracy?  I cannot imagine more than 5-10% of all players.  The net result is that if you don't play darn near perfect math on those machines, you are actually giving more to the casino than the % they hold.  When I calculate at other casinos, it seems like they use 10-15% hold on video poker and it takes them about a year to realize when a player is in that upper tier of accuracy (to remove marketing promos, etc).  Just my two cents.....sorry....

Also, I should add, this isn't something I have kept to myself over the years, I usually just do the sharing on the Casinos board here. 🙂

50 minutes ago, Mike_DeA said:

Congratulations on your good luck.

 

What does this last line mean?  I'm confused if you mean you don't put the cash back into that same machine, or something else.

The deal as I understand it from CAS (multiple times as you can see in my signature) is that when you win "their" money, they don't count that as "your" play when it comes to actual losses.  Simple example is I bring $1,000 with me, day 1 I win $1500 on a hand pay with W2G.  The rest of the week I spend my full $1000 and the $1500 I won.  I would expect actual losses (and almost every casino I play at on land and at sea) would count actual losses at $2500, however, CAS only counts it as $1000.  CAS also calculates theoretical loss, which in this example would be about $350 (assuming I flip my $1000 7 times before I lose it all and I only play video poker).  Since the $1000 is more, they would take that number.  Based on my historical play they evaluate VP at about 95% payback game, meaning any theoretical calcs assume a 5% house hold in the equations.  Different argument/different topic likely there.  The example that opened my eyes to how this all worked was the Jewel trip where we had over $9k in hand pays.  Didn't know how they did it, so played in all back over time.  We brought $5k with us, so I was expecting about a $14k loss or Haven suite on my next trip.  Not so much, I got $4900 theo loss which was an ocean view or balcony at that time.  ($14k * 7 * 5%).  From that trip forward we follow this guidance:

Any hand pay/W2G gets put away, and does not get gambled further.  We stick to our original budget of $x per session.  This way when we get done with the trip if they only offer us another ocean view or balcony at least we have the cash on hand from the trip if we want to upgrade/etc.

Any wins that are less than $1200, we can either continue to play in that session, or if we are done for the day (late like 3-4 am usually) 🙂  get divided up among the remaining sessions, so we have more to play later.  Except for the last night, because there are no more sessions on that trip.  

As you can probably gather, we do this quite a bit.  We try for at least 2 cruises a year (one with the kids/one without) but have been on 3 or 4 a couple of times.  With this level of play we usually get an OV or Balcony on any 7-10 day sailing for the CAS comp rate of 300-400 for the first 2 people.  The real secret in my opinion is to get a lot of winners in the 500-1000 range, and keep flipping the money to a multiple higher than 10.  The best I got once was like 22x, and we got a Jewel class suite on the next one.  Hope this helps.  Sorry for being long winded.

I don't believe in the looser tighter argument.  We play video poker primarily with a few slots mixed in.  We have hit hand pays (over $1200 in a single hand) on all different days of the cruise and on many different ships.  The best few were $7700 on a single line 10 play video poker on Carnival.  Royal Flush was progressive, and my wife hit it for that amount.  When it reset it was only worth $2000.  Right place right time.  We were playing on the NCL Jewel and had 5 hand pays in 7 days for a total of about $9000.  We ran hot the whole week on that one.  Lastly, hit a Royal Flush on Ultimate X with a 3x multiplier for $3,000 on the Epic.  Only one we didn't do decent on was the Escape earlier this year, but was first time in quite a while that we didn't come home with $3k plus after a week.  We bank any and all hand pays since CAS doesn't give you credit if you play them back.

35 minutes ago, Jonslola said:

For some reason I always become obsessed with one or two food items from the breakfast buffet and eat them every day of the cruise (along with whatever else I get). My first cruise it was  salmon mousse, last cruise it was chocolate croissants and muesli. I can't wait to discover my new obsession in January!

I find I do this with breakfast as well...and then of course with the UBP......one time on the Epic it was Miami Vice all week, the next one was Jaegermeister rotating with Blue Moon, the next was Dirty Shirleys.....it will be interesting in a week to see where I land this time. 🙂

According to this picture from here on CC it does:

https://www.cruisecritic.com/photos/ships/norwegian-dawn-265/casino-204952/casino--v18023652/

We do the same, get there around 10 or so, try to get an early number.  In my mind, when I cruise, my vacation doesn't really "start" until I take that last step from the gangway to the ship!

Mine would be our first move over to NCL.  We had done a few 7 day cruises out of LA to Puerto Vallarta, Mazatlan, and Cabo San Lucas.  They were a great time as well, but something was missing.....I wanted to see the Caribbean in a major way!  All I could think about was those islands, and how great that would be.  So, long story short, we booked a 10 day out of Miami on the NCL Sun.  This was a perfect set up for us from Colorado (airfare for 5 makes us want to get our money's worth).  We did a 5 person inside for this cruise, and on the first night we all slept through until after 2:00 pm, since there was no outside light coming in.  We only woke when the room steward knocked loudly because her shift was about over.  I realized we missed a bunch of activities, so we didn't sleep that long again.  🙂  

Anyway, we went St. Thomas, St. Maarten, Barbados, St. Lucia, and Dominica.  Five islands in five days....every morning we would wake up in a new place!  We met a nice couple in Dominica and shared a tour bus, and discussed where we were going in Barbados.  They were on a P&O ship from Europe but were stopping the next day in Barbados as well.  Coincidence then ruled, because we were all going to The Boatyard!  We took their advice and got an early start so we could get prime seating on the beach.  We head down to the taxi stand, jump in a van, and guess who is already sitting in the back!  The same couple!  We hung out with them all day again!  It was just like it was meant to be!

Sorry to ramble, this just brings back found memories!  The best one came on day 7/8, when my wife and I reminded each other that if were just on a normal 7 day cruise, we would be headed home.  Instead we got to enjoy 3 more days!  We haven't been able to get back to a 10 day because they moved the Sun, and all the mega ships with 5 person ocean views just run 7 days, but believe me, when the time comes, we will be back on that 10 day voyage soaking up the sun and playing our tails off in the casino!  

Thanks for this topic!  It let me really go back and think about the past 15 cruises or so that I have taken, and it is helping me warm up for my next one in just over a week!  

I think I have it figured out.  Thanks so much for the help!

Any know how to make sure you get the emails?  I keep getting the Elite printed offer in the mail, but by then each sailing is gone.  I get emails from other departments from Carnival, just not the Casino.  Is there something I need to do with my profile to get these delivered?

Sorry I don't know we never asked about additional people cruising

 

Sent from my ZTE A2017U using Forums mobile app

Thanks! Maybe I will just have to find a number and call URCOMPED. I usually take the kids on 1 cruise a year and just the wife and I on another....

We usually hit the airport on the way out for food....split between McDonalds and a bagel place. We are from CO so we fly in at least a day early. My wife always books places with complimentary breakfast, so we hit that before we head to the pier!

We got a lot of free offers from urcomped and especially on MSC the host told me free is really free no charges at all ,they even pay the port charges/ taxes for you. I may use them our next cruise and not even use this certificate.

 

Sent from my ZTE A2017U using Forums mobile app

Do you know how it works if there are more than 2 people in your cabin? TIA!

I shall follow along as well!

Our primary charge each sailing is to the casino and haven't had a difficult time using this OBC in the past. You should be good to go!