More points earned from the same coin-in basically means the slot is expected to be set to a lower payback. The expectation was MGM was moving to a theoretical loss based calculation, which would explain why some slots offer more than others. They move proportionally up or down based on the earnings of a particular game. The more Tier Credits you earn, the more MGM Rewards Points and Slot Dollars you earn. What can we learn from this limited, but useful experiment? Quite a lot, actually. To keep my numbers clean, I’m reporting below exactly what I earned, multiplier inclusive, and we’ll look at what that means during the analysis.

I am at the Gold tier of the MGM Rewards program, so my Slot Dollars earnings are boosted by 20 percent over what a Sapphire player would earn. Here are the results of my runthrough of $100 in spins on 15 slots, as well as a Video Poker machine for comparison. I devised this experiment in a similar way to one performed by Steve Bourie of the American Casino Guide Book when he was similarly trying to understand the comp program of a casino closer to him, the Hard Rock in Hollywood, Florida. This would show me what each machine yielded on $100 in coin-in. I chose to do $100 in wagers on each slot machine, and record my three balances after each machine. I’ve begun with the closest MGM casino to my home, MGM Springfield, and I designed a simple experiment to figure out what I’m getting from each slot. So I’ve begun an experiment that I will continue to perform throughout the year to see what this yields for me as a player.

Unfortunately, without a transparent formula for earning tier credits, the only way we can truly know is to play, and see what our play accomplishes. I’ve previously shared that one of the most critical, yet harder, questions to answer about the MGM Rewards transition is what this means for earning and maintaining status, and earning those real time comps in the two buckets MGM has always offered.

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