After the conversion to MGM Rewards in February, players saw a hit in tier credit earnings, with the blow temporarily softened by a 2x tier credit promotion that ended April 30. The question then became, will they do any other tier credit multiplier promotions or is that going to be it?
A few weeks after that expired, the 2x tier credit promotion was revived through August 31. This was on both your gaming and non-gaming spend in Las Vegas. And now, the latest email confirms that this will now continue through the end of December, in the same format as before, for Las Vegas players.
This means that between February 1 and December 31, players will have had a tier credit multiplier in place for the duration, minus about four weeks. This is probably in no small part due to the frustration many players have felt in the massive depreciation in the tier credits earnings after switching over to the new system compared to the old earnings rate in Las Vegas. By offering a tier credit multiplier, it will take the edge off, but eventually it’s likely they won’t be as frequent, which will simply make it even harder to maintain a tier.
I have a trip scheduled to Vegas for late September/early October; I anticipate this will help me lock down Gold for another year during this trip, something I wasn’t necessarily sure would be possible at the time because of the reduced earnings.
Based on my research to date and that of others, it appears that you earn 8 tier credits for every dollar of theoretical loss, regardless of property. Under the tier credit multiplier, that will become 16 tier credits per dollar of theoretical loss. And for non-gaming spend, the 4 tier credits per dollar of spend will become 8 tier credits.
So those diligently working to renew their tiers and take advantage of some of the new perks may be able to make some headway this summer.
Meanwhile, if you’ve been holding off on tier matching with MGM, keep in mind that as of right now the tier match is still listed in the terms as ending December 31, 2022; they could extend it but until they do, presuming they even do, you’ve got through the end of the year to make it happen.
Hi, I love your website thanks so much! Are you certain about the 16 tier credits for theoretical dollar lost? I was just in Vegas last week and lost $50 playing video poker (not sure what that is in theoretical loss) but I definitely didn’t get 800 tier credits for it. Just trying to figure out how everything works with the new mgm rewards thank you!
Hi JK – I haven’t done as thorough a check on Video Poker as I have slots, but the tier credits lined up. I’ll have a more complete article on your question up pretty quickly, but the trick here is theoretical loss vs. actual loss. Let’s say you’re playing 7/5 Jacks or Better which has an expected payback of around 96%. For every $100 you put through that machine, the casino will calculate a theoretical loss of $4 (the other 4%, since it pays back 96%). Of course, in reality you could get a royal flush, or not get many good dealt hands – your actual performance will vary more widely. So my guess is you’d probably didn’t run to average and so your money just didn’t carry you as far.
In my tests on that particular game at one of their properties, I got 33 tier credits, which is about 8.25 tier credits per $1 of theoretical loss. That test was in an MGM casino where it’s not under a multiplier; Las Vegas is in a 2x multiplier so I’d expect that to be double. I do not know if MGM is able to precisely calculate the theoretical loss for each game and award, or if it’s an average across the machine, which may explain why I got 8.25, but it’s close enough to be expected.
So a better way to know how you fared is if you can see your coin-in for that video poker session. If it was all you did, you can see how much in wagers you did, and you can based on the pay table know what the game’s expected payback will be, and that should tell you whether you earned the correct amount of tier credits or not. For instance, if you did $1000 of coin-in and the game pays 96%, 4% of $1,000 would be $40, and that would deliver 320 tier credits normally, or 640 tier credits with the 2x multiplier.
Hope that helps!