Using a casino Players Card is almost essential to your gambling experience if you want to maximize your potential profits
One of the few ways to guarantee that you make some profit at a casino is to play with a casino Players Club Card.
Almost all casinos have a members players club or a “casino VIP club”.
Offering perks and benefits to members, the players club card enable members to track their play and spend at the casino & related properties in order to qualify for incentives for using the card.
How Players Cards Work
When you play slots at a casino, you can insert your players card. It will enable the casino to log the amount of time spent playing, as well as your overall profit and loss.
Casinos tend to reward loyalty – giving players who are spending money in a property comps (complimentary drinks, or rooms, or meals) and other rewards. The players card is tied to your personal identity and is the mechanism which enables play to be tracked at a granular level.
Your Guaranteed Payback
When you sign up for a Players Club card you typically receive points that may be exchanged for free play on slots, spent at restaurants, or used to future purchases.
Some rewards programs (like MGM’s mLife) are tiered. Players start at level 1- earning points at a specific rate. If players earn a specific target of points in a given timeframe, they can move up to the next level, and so on. The higher the tiers / levels, the faster you earn points.
Although the amount you finally earn through this option depends on the casino, it often ranges from 0.25% to 2% of your betting action – which could be a rather considerable amount if you gamble frequently.
Also keep in mind that certain casinos may host days with multipliers, giving you a bonus when you play on specific days.
Las Vegas Casinos with Casino Players Cards Programs
Visitors to Las Vegas can enjoy the following casino player card rewards programs (at their applicable properties):
- my|Rewards Boarding Pass: Palace Station, Boulder Station, Texas Station, Sunset Station, Santa Fe Station, Green Valley Ranch, and Red Rock Casino.
- Caesars Rewards: Bally’s, Paris Las Vegas, Harrahs Las Vegas, Flamingo, Caesars Palace Las Vegas, Planet Hollywood and Rio All-Suite Hotel & Casino.
- MGM Rewards: Bellagio, MGM Grand, Mandalay Bay, The Mirage, Luxor, Excalibur, New York New York, and Park MGM
- Boyd Rewards: The Orleans, Gold Coast, Sun Coast or Sam’s Town, Main Street Station, California Hotel, Fremont Hotel
- Wynn Rewards: Wynn Las Vegas, Encore
- Grazie Rewards: The Venetian, The Palazzo
- mychoice Loyalty Rewards Program: The M Resort Spa Casino, Tropicana Las Vegas, Wynn Las Vegas, Encore
- Wynn Rewards: Wynn Las Vegas Encore
- Club One: Las Vegas Circa Resort & Casino, the D Las Vegas Casino Hotel, Golden Gate Hotel Casino
- Da Vinci Rewards Players Club: Tuscany Suites & Casino
MGM Rewards unveiled a credit card deal with MasterCard which is connected to the BetMGM rewards program – allowing approved MGM Rewards Mastercard holders to earn $250, or 25,000 bonus points, redeemable toward accommodations, dining and entertainment. Card holders need to spend $5,000 in the first 6 billing cycles to receive the bonus.
After a decade, MGM & Hyatt have announced the end of their rewards program partnership. The World of Hyatt and MGM Rewards alliance will be ending as of September 30, 2023 .
Player Card Myths
One popular slots myth concerning player cards is “I never seem to win until I take my players card out”.
This is a superstition – as slot machine logic and Random Number Generators (RNGs) work independently of casino play tracking hardware. In fact the tech used to track casino play is added to the machines after they have been developed – so there is no way for the machine to know which tracking system will be integrated.
It is 100% pure luck if someone wins big on U.S casino slots – regardless of whether their players card is in a machine or not.