Get Your Comps

If comps for comps' sake isn't enough to convince you to get your share, the following probably will. The fact is, comps aren't free. They're far from simple largesse and generosity on the part of the casinos. Instead, the players pay for them, even if it's just pennies at a time. Still, those pennies can add up in a hurry.

Generally, the casino rakes an extra dollar out of every pot to go toward the comps, so it's not exactly as if the casinos are giving it away. Players are up against a 10 percent rake with a maximum of $3 or $4, plus the buck for the comps. Plus another buck for the dealer. Say you have 10 players at a $2-$4 or $3-$6 table. Each has a $100 bankroll. And they take turns winning. All ten will be broke at the end of six hours. Guaranteed. And that's at 40 hands an hour, though with shuffle machines, it could be quicker.

That's in Las Vegas, which is probably the cheapest place in the world to play poker. California rakes start at five dollars a pot, even at the lower limits. New Zealand rakes a dollar per player in a $4-$8 game, which is outrageous. Australia's even worse, though; there, casinos help themselves up to $15 a pot. You get killed.

Comps are often worse in the big tournaments than in the cash games. During the good-old decades that the Binion's ran the World Series of Poker, the casino lavished an amazing buffet on the WSOP contestants. You'd never seen such a thing in your life. On the other hand, in 2005, the WSOP's first year at the Rio, Harrah's gave out a coupon for a $10 discount at the Rio Carnival World Buffet (at $23.99 for dinner, tournament participants still paid $13.99.)

Big Comps for Big Players?

And what of the vaunted high-rolling poker players, the superstars who hang out in Bobby's Room, are seen constantly on the TV poker shows and always seem to be playing at final tables of tournaments? Do they get any special considerations?

At the World Series of Poker, they get the same $10-off dining coupon that the rest of us do.

"Limits don't have anything to do with the level of comps," according to David Matthews, the winner of the Ultimate Blackjack tournament. The casino rakes its $3 or $4 per pot whether it's a $20 or a $1,000 table. The high-limit games are good for cachet, but that's about all. Unless a big player has a separate deal with the casino, such as Daniel Negreanu, who was the high-paid poker ambassador at the Wynn up until recently, the big players get just as little as the little players."

Indeed, the MGM's "Poker Room Comp Policy" on the casino's site states that players logged into time-collection poker games (who pay by the half-hour instead of by the pot) receive comp values per hour that are only slightly higher than those for low limits. If the rent is $6 per half-hour, the comp value is $1.20, only 20 cents higher than a raked game. The comp value does go up to $2 an hour, but that's for a game that charges $10 per half-hour for space, and where the betting limits are in the thousands.

However, there is one sure-fire way for poker players to get comped correctly: Just go into the pit and start betting hard-won money at table games like blackjack and craps where the house has a built-in mathematical edge.

Some top players have actually done this. They leave their own turf, the poker table, where they have an edge over inferior players and are making consistent money despite the rake, and wander into the casino and blow their winnings at games virtually impossible to beat over time.

High-rolling poker players can get big-time comps. All they have to do is 'leak' into the casino. If a poker player walks into Bellagio and starts firing up a crap or baccarat table at $10,000 a roll, he can get the penthouse suite, the five-star meals and the champagne and caviar room service.

And if he took his playing money off of Chip Reese or Doyle Brunson at a Bellagio poker game, all the better.