Casino Talks

Posted by: Vahe Baloulian at July 27, 2003, 6:52 am

Topic: casino on net Forum: Winner Online

I want to thank you all for taking time to share your thoughts and to raise these issues. Although most of them are concentrated around bonuses, it is a great education for my associates and me.

Now to Bart’s points.

However, you comment that the perception of winners being banned is "silly" I disagree with. It is not silly.
– What I meant is that we do not ban winners. Players have to win. And once they did, we try not to spoil it for them so that they spread the word..

A bonus in the Inet world or a comp in the real world acts as bait to play a recreational game. It's great for recreational players who play a reasonable amount. But more sinister for a compulsive player who now can play from his home. To give substance to your agruement that you are not trying to lure the Bill Bennetts of the world, you really do need to honor "all" your players. If the player did not cheat, he should not be booted. There is no such thing as a bonus abuser who honors the terms of the bonus.
– "Bonus abuser" is a term I don’t like. I look at it differently. As a business we have to be selective. I have a player who has been with us for 3 years. During this time he played only with bonuses, barely fulfilled the WR, and cashed out. Nothing illegal, everything according to the rules. I don’t want to continue serving this member. We pay fees to accept his deposit, we pay fees to cash him out, and we add to his cash out our own funds. However unpopular, it is a simple business decision. Now, should we toughen the WR? I don’t think so. I prefer to let this member go and still allow those who DESERVE – those who use their own funds as well to play – to take advantage of these liberal WR.
As to the compulsive players, no gaming house in their right mind want them as members. We have ery strict rules about this and our reps go through extensive training to identify and close the accounts of those who can’t control their gambling. This is not an easy process, but we have good tools to identify and deal with compulsive gamblers.

As to the amount of wagering, it doesn't work for me to hear a casino complain that a player didn't wager enough. He should wager what ever is recreational - for him. And you should support that.
– We do support that. I see that we agree that the player has to wager. The questions is – how much and with whose money. Just like in land-based casinos (LBC), we use specific formulas to decide the amount of comps given to the player. Here we are talking about players who don’t wager their funds at all. We are talking about players who make a deposit as a bait to get the bonus and rarely touch their deposit. This does not look like a compulsive behavior to me. This may upset some of you, but for me bonus chips do not belong to the player until he fulfills the WR. We let the player to play with free chips but they belong to us. Once WR is met, the chips are player’s. We can’t take them back. But we can make a decision if we still want to give this player free chips or if we want to have this player as a member at all.

Every land based casino in the United States offers some form of comp/bonus to make the gaming more enjoyable. They have alluring ****tail waitresses, they have subsidized entertainment, they have low cost/no cost food and they do it with a much higher overhead. But they also base their comps to some degree on play.
– We all understand that LBCs are not throwing money away. LBC do base their comps on the gaming action of the player. And it is not to “some degree”, but to the ery high degree. As they say in Vegas, you get the free room and you pay for the hotel. One of the LBC promos that is similar to ours is a match play coupon. I can’t play with just that coupon. I have to wager my own money with it. In our casino, you do not have to touch your deposit. And that is fine for a few times. If a player chooses this as his only modus operandi, we do not want that player as a member.

You should do the same. If you don't like the amount of action, just don't offer the bonus. If you offer/give it, don't complain when the player meets the terms and mark him as some kind of abuser. He isn't.
– He isn’t, I agree. And we don’t complain as the players should not when we take action. For us it takes time to recognize a player for what he is. Once we do identify him as a bonus player, we either stop the bonuses or close the account for the reason I mentioned in my previous posting.

Your company is a leader in the industry. If you want us to write those letter, make the phone calls and action our representatives you have to prove to us that the industry is worth saving.
Face it. You provide no tax base, you provide no jobs, you don't stimulate the local economy, and you do add to societal cost surrounding compulsive gamblers. But you also provide a worthwhile entertainment service to your base. So make sure it really is worthwhile, honest and not focused ONLY on those compelled to play night and day.
- About the taxes, jobs, etc – we do all of that in the countries where we have operations. US could be one of those countries if the legislation allowed. For example, Caruso’s country does benefit from our operations.
We are a global business with members from every country in the world. Since we cannot contribute to governmental organizations, we contribute to global charities and other NGOs. Part of this work is reflected on our site. Most of it done on a national and individual level without fanfare. We tried to contribute to a US organization that is involved with compulsive gamblers, but they refused our money since they are controlled by the land-based industry and didn’t want online casino participation. So, we found a different way to contribute to this cause.
Once again, our casino employee can be fired if he or she has failed to identify a compulsive player and take action. This is an extremely serious matter for us. To learn more about our approach, you may want to check out this link:
https://www.business2.com/subscribers/articles/mag/0,1640,47727,00.html

For myself, I make sure I get some non bonus play. But that is because I know you require that now. And I now play other places more. But I still don't know where the line is. I wish you would make it ery plain and ery fair. I am a part time player and don't have much time for interpretaion.
– The rule is ery simple. As long as you risk your own funds from time to time, you will be welcomed. If you simply use your deposits as a bait to get bonuses, this will work for some time and then we’ll either stop your bonuses or will cancel your membership. Just keep in mind that we do not enjoy doing this.

Trader 1.1 In my opinion CON has always been a class act. That is why I was so surprised when you changed the rule about split aces in your blackjack game and did not even post what the new rules actually were. I respect your right to make changes, even if I do not like them. I do not respect a casino that posts one set of rules and plays by another. When I questioned this move with casino support, the only answer I got was to have my account closed after more than three years. And yes, I had won quite a bit of money at CON over that time, even more than your frequent bonuses.
I also respect your right to ban players, for any reason--or for no reason at all. I did not find the letter rude, only disappointing. I don't think I could compose a letter informing someone that his action was not wanted without provoking a negative reaction. It was the seeming connection with a perfectly alid complaint that bothered me.
- Without looking at your history, I don’t know your details, I can tell you that the nature of your complaint had nothing to do with the closure of your account. If we made you feel that way, it was our mistake. Send me your details and I will look into it. Because of the personal nature of our support, we are required to look at your history before answering any email. Your history may have caused the support representative to alert the Security Department and… you know the rest. As to the BJ rule, we notified everyone through the newsletter and changed the rules on the site. One month after the change, during the site update, the old info got posted again for 2-3 days. This error was spotted and corrected.

To Caruso: I received your email and will contact you personally. For the rules of the games, they may change from time to time. This is caused by many factors, including our research, market conditions, membership composition, etc. Although the current ersion of the casino proved to be ery successful, our new full-screen ersion is coming up soon and it will feature a better ariety of games and other new additions.

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