Annual Value of Seven Stars

[abrown83]

I know there are a few Seven Stars members on this forum.

Anyone care to ballpark the perks not including regular comped rooms?

I ball parked it around 5k-7k.

Annual Trip
Cruise
$500 dinner
Annual Gift
Signature Events

I figured out a good way to in 20, one hour trips to the casino make Seven Stars.

Expected Net Profit including Seven Stars and Reward Credits of $9,800 to $11,800.

More realistically you are looking at being roughly break even if you don't hit a Royal.

If you wanted to do it in a less swingy fashion you could do it in 20, 3 hour trips.

You would need roughly a $55,000 bankroll to have less than a 1% chance of going broke if you did the 20, 3 hour trips.

If you want to know how, just look up Horseshoe Hammond on VPFree2.

[JimmyG_415]

I know there are a few Seven Stars members on this forum.

Anyone care to ballpark the perks not including regular comped rooms?

I ball parked it around 5k-7k.

Annual Trip
Cruise
$500 dinner
Annual Gift
Signature Events

I figured out a good way to in 20, one hour trips to the casino make Seven Stars.

Expected Net Profit including Seven Stars and Reward Credits of $9,800 to $11,800.

More realistically you are looking at being roughly break even if you don't hit a Royal.

If you wanted to do it in a less swingy fashion you could do it in 20, 3 hour trips.

You would need roughly a $55,000 bankroll to have less than a 1% chance of going broke if you did the 20, 3 hour trips.

If you want to know how, just look up Horseshoe Hammond on VPFree2.

I'm interested, I was just asking about this on the thread where the SD mayor lost all of that on video poker.
I googled that, a lot comes up, I don't get a specific game plan,
can you provide a link?

[abrown83]

I know there are a few Seven Stars members on this forum.

Anyone care to ballpark the perks not including regular comped rooms?

I ball parked it around 5k-7k.

Annual Trip
Cruise
$500 dinner
Annual Gift
Signature Events

I figured out a good way to in 20, one hour trips to the casino make Seven Stars.

Expected Net Profit including Seven Stars and Reward Credits of $9,800 to $11,800.

More realistically you are looking at being roughly break even if you don't hit a Royal.

If you wanted to do it in a less swingy fashion you could do it in 20, 3 hour trips.

You would need roughly a $55,000 bankroll to have less than a 1% chance of going broke if you did the 20, 3 hour trips.

If you want to know how, just look up Horseshoe Hammond on VPFree2.

I'm interested, I was just asking about this on the thread where the SD mayor lost all of that on video poker.
I googled that, a lot comes up, I don't get a specific game plan,
can you provide a link?

There is no link with specific game plan, figured it out myself.

3 Play @ Deuces Wild $2 is the 20, 3 hour trips (maybe 2.5)

Basically 834 hands each time to get 2500 tier credits, you will then be given 5,000 bonus tier credits for the day.

This means each trip will generate 7500 tier credits. 7500 x 20 trips is your 150,000 required for Seven Stars.

Expected loss of $200 over the course of that $500,000 in coin-in.

If you don't hit a royal you are looking at roughly $10,200 in losses.

You would get 5000 in reward credits and the value of Seven Stars.

It is massively +EV but could be horrendous on the swing factor.

Quick Edit (It is 834 deals, not hands)

[Dan Druff]

Being a Seven Stars member since last year, I can answer this.

For those that have no idea what we're talking about, abrown is referring to the top tier level at Caesar's properties. Almost all casinos have some sort of loyalty program, but Caesar's is actually the best in the industry. For example, I am a "Platinum" member at Cosmopolitan (their highest level), but they barely give me anything, aside from a few comp rooms and an occasional $100 freeplay.

The value of Seven Stars is extremely variable, depending upon how much you take advantage of it, and how much the perks are worth to you. Much of its value is also derived from taking advantage of the many freeplay/free merchandise promotions, which occur every 1-2 weeks but typically require travel at your own expense unless you are a local.

It is also important to understand that, to my knowledge, they have not released the official brochure for Seven Stars of 2013. This means that, despite being a Seven Stars member, I have no idea what my benefits will be. However, this post will assume they will be identical or very similar to 2012, which is quite possible.

Here are the benefits of being a Seven Stars member:

- Guaranteed comp stay in ANY U.S. city where Caesar's has a property, for a minimum of 4 days. There are no blackout dates. However, you do need to give 48 hours notice for this guarantee to be good. Otherwise, they will only comp you (and find rooms for you if full) at their discretion (which usually happens, anyway).

- Annual Trip: You get free round trip airfare for 2 people, up to $600 each, to fly to any U.S. Caesar's hotel location. You get 5 complimentary nights at this property, and a $500 food and beverage credit on your room.

- Annual Dinner: You get a $500 dinner at a Caesar's hotel restaurant of your choice. A few restaurants that are independent and rent space at Caesar's dont' pahticipate in this, but most do. I chose to use mine on the very last possible day -- December 31, 2012 -- at the Strip House Steakhouse at Planet Hollywood. Unless you are going to order expensive wine, I would suggest taking a minimum of 3 other people to the annual dinner, or you'll probably waste part of the $500.

- Annual Gift: This is talked up a lot, but it's kind of a fail. You get to choose one of a bunch of mostly crappy "gifts" each year. I got a set of nice knives, which was valued at about $220 (and incidentally, was the most valuable item they offered).

- Cruise: You pick any cruise destination served by Norwegian, and Caesar's will book one trip for two. You are responsible for the airfare, and you get an "interior cabin" unless you pay to upgrade. I believe you are also responsible for port taxes and fees.

- Signature Events: These are special events, typically twice per year, where only Seven Stars members are invited. One usually takes place in the Atlantic City area, and the other in Vegas. You are responsible for the travel expenses. I only went to the one in Vegas last year, and it involved a number of small fail events (chocolate reception, lunch buffet in the hot early October sun, and lame barbecue), highlighted by a pretty good Don Henley concert. I don't remember what the Atlantic City one consisted of, since I didn't go.

- Signature Experiences: As you earn more points AFTER reaching Seven Stars, you start to reach additional "level bonuses", similar to how Pokerstars used to give Supernovas extra bonuses when they would hit 200k VPPs, 300k VPPs, etc. I am not counting these in Seven Stars value because they require extra play.

- Free play/Free gift offers: These are not Seven Stars specific, but Caesar's is CONSTANTLY running promotions, especially in Vegas, and you will get invited to nearly all of them if you are Seven Stars. The amount of free play (or the value of your gifts) will greatly vary depending upon the action you have given Caesar's recently. For example, my free play offers are typically around $300. I have seen some crazy Asians getting $20,000 in free play for the exact same promotion! For the purposes of figuring out the value, we will assume you will get $300 for these.

- Great Gift Wrap Up: Again, not Seven Stars specific, but you will earn "gift points" that are separate from your Total Rewards Credits. You just need to show up to their designated "Great Gift Wrap Up" event (they have two fairly close together in November and December, and you need to show up to one of them) in order to redeem these gifts. If you don't show, you lose your points. Based upon last year, you will earn about $800-$900 worth of Great Gift Wrap Up points on your way to Seven Stars, and you can trade these in directly for free play, or "buy" gifts with them. I bought an iPad for my girlfriend and used the rest of the points for free play.

- Free tickets once per month to select shows: You get 2 tickets per calendar month to select shows. Many of these are failshows, but there are a few decent ones in there, such as Penn & Teller. Occasionally they will also allow you to use this to get free tickets to a higher tier show, such as Jersey Boys. In addition, there are separate promotions where you are invited to get free tickets to specific dates of performances of shows that are typically expensive, such as Celine Dion.

- Free internet and movies at most properties. Yes, this includes porn. Incidentally, I tried to watch a few of their porn movies, but at least at Caesar's, they are terrible.

- Intangibles: You will be treated better as a Seven Stars member, and generally have a lot of pull at Caesar's properties that you otherwise wouldn't. You get priority valet parking (which you also get as a Diamond level member, which is below Seven Stars), access to their Seven Stars and/or Diamond lounges, special cashier lines, extra consideration regarding getting seated at their restaurants, etc. You even get to use a Seven Stars & Diamond room to register for WSOP events. They will also be a lot more accommodating when it comes to getting upgrades for your rooms and favorable views.

A lot of the variance in the overall value of Seven Stars comes from how you want to use it. I will explain the value of everything (in my opinion) in the next post.

[Dan Druff]

So how much is Seven Stars worth?

It depends. There are fixed benefits (ones that you can only use once or twice, with a fairly static value), and there are variable benefits (ones that you can use many times, but require some time and effort).

Let's go over the fixed benefits first:

Annual Gift: Mine was worth $220, but assuming you don't want knives, it's safer to say it's around $200, or even a little bit less. We'll say $200 here for simplicity.

Annual Trip: They give you up to $1200 for airfare for two, but don't give you the difference if you fly cheaper than that. For simplicity, we will say that a flight across the country is typically $500 per person, making the value of the travel $1000. The $500 food and beverage credit adds $500 to the value of the trip. I won't count the hotel stay, because you would have gotten that free, anyway. (We will deal with the hotel values later in the post.) Total approx value for annual trip: $1500

Cruise: I believe they only pay for the 7-day cruises. While you can take far-flung European cruises, note that you are responsible for the airfare! The only value here is the cruise itself. It depends upon the cruise you want. Some of the Caribbean cruises are worth just $399 per person! The Hawaii cruise is the most expensive, showing up as $1029/person right now on the Norweigian website. The Euro cruises are in the middle in the $650 range. So the value here ranges from $800-$2050. Average value would be around $1350.

Signature Events: Not worth much, in my opinion. The Don Henley concert was nice, but the rest of the weekend's events were lame and not worth very much. Remember, they don't pay your airfare. You also get some freeplay here. I think I got $250, if I remember correctly. It depends on your recent play history. I'll give this about $400 value total, and that's being generous. However, I don't think it's worth traveling cross-country for this, so I'll only count it once, assuming you can get to either AC or Vegas fairly easily without flying.

Annual Dinner: Worth $500, provided you are Jewish and make sure to not waste any of the credit. (Fun fact: My bill on December 31 came out to $500.51. Waiter complimented me on how efficiently I used the comp, but I'm sure in the back of his mind he was playing "Hava Nagila" in his head.)

Roughly all of the above works out to about $4k.

But remember, there's also the variable benefits:

Great Gift Wrap Up: You will earn about $800-$900 in Great Gift Wrap Up points, on the way to Seven Stars. If you aren't close to Vegas or AC, you may spend more money than that in travel, in which case these are worthless unless you are going to be at one of these properties anyway. However, if it's easy to get to either Vegas or AC, and you are free during some point of the two 5-day periods in November and December when they have this, you can redeem these points. You also might end up with more than $900 worth of points if you either play more, or pahticipate in promotions where you earn extra gift points.

Hotel stays: You have the "right" to continuous "4 days on, 2 days off" stays. That is, you are guaranteed 4 free nights in any city Caesar's properties exist, and you can have another 4 free nights provided that 48 hours pass between check-out and next check-in. Theoretically, you could stay at a Caesar's property for 243 days per year, and that's without extra promotions or extra nights given to you by your host. If you really spent 243 days at a Caesar's property, you could put the retail value of this well into the 5 figures, perhaps as much as $40,000! But would you really want to spend that many days at a Caesar's hotel, especially having to check out every 4 days and go somewhere else for 2 days? Probably not. At the same time, it is very nice to have the freedom to stay at these properties for free whenever the hell you want, including high-season times like New Year's. So what is this really worth? Depends how often you really want to stay in Caesar's hotels, and how much you really enjoy it when you do.

Free internet and movies: If you're bored, I guess it can be cool to watch movies in the room for free, but I've never really felt the need to do so. The porn is really cheap-looking (even by porn standards) and just didn't do it for me. The free internet is cool, though. Caesar's gouges you for $14.99/day for internet, so it's nice to get that for free whenever you stay at their properties. A few properties outside of Vegas don't give free movies, but I believe all give free internet.

Free show tickets: Other than the occasional promotions to see some of the more expensive shows, most of the "free" shows you can see are second and third-tier productions. However, there are a few decent ones in there like Penn & Teller, which normally costs a minimum of like $85/ticket.

Free play: You will get overwhelmed with offers for various free play, gifts, and special events. It will become a situation where you have to pass some of them up, or otherwise you'll be devoting your entire life to Caesar's promotional offers (not kidding here). If these offers require any kind of travel (even just driving a few hundred miles), that adds an extra layer of complexity to what you feel like accepting. Many offers also conflict with one another, so you need to choose carefully. There are some tricks to getting concurrent and consecutive offers booked, even when they say you can't. Realistically, even with no offer being worth more than $300 (which is usually the case for me), I can usually work consecutive offers in to where each stay at Caesar's involves about $600-$1000 worth of offers. You could probably milk this for upwards of $20k value per year if you are dedicated, but a lot of that involves being local (or close to local), or it's just not worth the time and travel expense.

Rewards Credits: You will probably earn a few thousand dollars worth of Rewards Credits on the way to becoming Seven Stars. You can trade these in for half-value if you want freeplay (I don't suggest this), or just use them as free money to spend on room service, restaurants, shows, massages, etc at full value.


So is it worth it?

It's up to each individual to decide, based upon how much the above appeals to you.

abrown is correct that it takes some effort to get there. The best way to do it is earn 2,500 "Tier Points" (similar to VPPs on Pokerstars) in a "Total Rewards Day" (usually defined as 6:00am-5:59am, rather than midnight to midnight), and then you get 5,000 bonus credits. This will speed up your ascent to the required 150,000 tier points by a factor of 3. You will need to do this on 20 separate days, though, which can be time consuming, and also might induce travel expenses if you are not local.

[WillieMcFML]

there's a lady i've played with at harrahs stl (now hollywood casino) that was seven stars and i don't believe she was even that wealthy

she's just grinds the shit out of the penny & nickel slots, from what i have heard. she's just a gambling addict and puts in the hours betting max.

her host HATES when she plays poker, she will get numerous calls from the host while she is playing trying to get her out of the poker room

she has so many unused comps she'll just order four or five pizzas for her table and anything they don't eat is up for grabs for the entire poker room

[Dan Druff]

there's a lady i know that was seven stars at harrah's stl (now hollywood casino) and i don't believe she was even that wealthy

she's just grinded the shit out of the penny & nickel slots, from what i have heard. she's just a gambling addict and puts in the hours betting max.

her host HATES when she plays poker, she will get numerous calls from the host while she is playing trying to get her out of the poker room

she has so many unused comps she'll just order four or five pizzas for her table and anything they don't eat is up for grabs for the entire poker room

They are trying to clamp down on the lower limit players achieving Seven Stars. Some of the machines have been reduced in the tier points they earn, and you really need to hit 2,500 in a day if you want a relatively quick path to Seven Stars, or you're going to be putting in a ton of hours (and expense) doing it.

Caesar's is a mixed bag when it comes to hosts. Some are good, some are okay, and some are terrible. You can switch, but there is sometimes a negative stigma associated with that. In general, the hosts get frustrated when they book a stay for you and you don't play, even if you played a ton last time. It's always, "What have you done for me really lately?"

[BeerAndPoker]

So in other words bring your laptop, take advantage of the free wifi, and go on pornhub.com.

[Dan Druff]

BTW, I am not going to post publicly how you can "work the system" to maximize redemption of free play offers. There's nothing illegal about this info, but I don't want it out there for Caesar's reps to google and find at some point.

If anyone is Seven Stars and wants to know, PM me.

[WillieMcFML]

going to start a seven star BAP

i'll live in a casino and eat free food for 2/3 of the year

you never have to clean up after yourself, never have to do your own laundry

[SrslySirius]

going to start a seven star BAP

i'll live in a casino and eat free food for 2/3 of the year

you never have to clean up after yourself, never have to do your own laundry

This might sound dumb, but is it possible to actually live off of these perks? I have no idea how comps and reward points work. That would be pretty funny if you could get to seven star with a modest starting bankroll, and skate by the rest of the year on comped rooms, food, and free play.

EDIT: Haha, just read Druff's post about 4-on/2-off hotel stays. This might be doable.

[JimmyG_415]

3 Play @ Deuces Wild $2 is the 20, 3 hour trips (maybe 2.5)

So is that $ 30 a deal? -($ 2x5) x3
How much would you need in your bankroll for 3 hours of that?

[WillieMcFML]

going to start a seven star BAP

i'll live in a casino and eat free food for 2/3 of the year

you never have to clean up after yourself, never have to do your own laundry

This might sound dumb, but is it possible to actually live off of these perks? I have no idea how comps and reward points work. That would be pretty funny if you could get to seven star with a modest starting bankroll, and skate by the rest of the year on comped rooms, food, and free play.

EDIT: Haha, just read Druff's post about 4-on/2-off hotel stays. This might be doable.

split an apartment in vegas with another 7 star, 4 on 2 off so you always have the apartment to yourself

you could live like a baller on 10k a year

[Dan Druff]

going to start a seven star BAP

i'll live in a casino and eat free food for 2/3 of the year

you never have to clean up after yourself, never have to do your own laundry

Actually, the laundry is a problem. Have you seen the rates hotels charge for that shit?

Your choice is to either get ripped off to no end, or to spend time with the dregs of society in a local laundromat.

[WillieMcFML]

going to start a seven star BAP

i'll live in a casino and eat free food for 2/3 of the year

you never have to clean up after yourself, never have to do your own laundry

Actually, the laundry is a problem. Have you seen the rates hotels charge for that shit?

Your choice is to either get ripped off to no end, or to spend time with the dregs of society in a local laundromat.

i assumed a seven star would get that comped as well

[Walter Sobchak]

Druff, I thought all bracelet winners are lifetime Seven Stars. Am I wrong? If not, and you qualified this year based on play? What did you play, how big and how much, to make it? I suppose BJ, video poker and table poker?

[bukowski72]

Speaking of Ceasar I laughed/choked when I saw this headline today. Why would I want to pay only for the services I use when I could just pay for all of them? And this fee won't even show in my room rate.

Caesars to start charging resort fees, says guests demanding them

Read more: http://www.lasvegassun.com/#ixzz2LfPYZW5y

[Pooh]

Druff, I thought all bracelet winners are lifetime Seven Stars. Am I wrong? If not, and you qualified this year based on play? What did you play, how big and how much, to make it? I suppose BJ, video poker and table poker?

Chances of him answering that are around zero percent. Druff is very tight lipped when it comes to personal shit like that and he already stated a while back that he wasn't saying how much he spent to obtain 7 star.

[Crowe Diddly]

Druff, I thought all bracelet winners are lifetime Seven Stars. Am I wrong?

I don't know much about this, but from what I remember kevmath explaining, I think you may be confusing the Diamond level with the 7 Star level. I don't believe they are the same thing, but I could be very wrong...

[Tuna]

Ironically, it seems you only really benefit from these perks if you actually live in Las Vegas which doesnt help you much if you have a home there. Besides the rooms, there doesnt seem to be anything that is all that great. A lot of the perks seem to be like coupons where you have to get yourself to the location and your either get a discount or get the barebones and it is up to you to pay for an upgrade.