Free sun shields ...

It's never too early to start scoping out the best deals in Vegas, and I do only have 19 to go now, after all.

The following promotion, which starts today at Four Queens, is well worth a mention.

"Top it Off" promotion July 1 – August 31.

Royal Players Club members who earn their first 40 points will receive a
Four Queens Sun Shield.

Members who reach 400 points will receive a $10.00 gas card and $10.00
in Free Slot Play.

Members who reach 800 points will receive an additional $10.00 gas card
and $25.00 in Free Slot Play.

Members who reach 1200 points will receive an additional $10.00 gas card and
$50.00 in Free Slot Play.

Members who reach 1600 points will receive an additional $10.00 gas card
and $75.00 in Free Slot Play.

Members who reach 2000 points will receive an additional $10.00 gas card
and $200.00 Free Slot Play

It's not quite clear whether the word "additional" applies to both the gas card and the slot play, but even if not this is a tremendous promotion.

Worst case: with 2,000 points earned you'll get $50 in gas, $200 free slot play and a sun shield.  If the slot play does accumulate, it's $360 slot play in total.

I won't attempt to put a value on the sun shield.  I'm sure it's a high quality item, but this promotion is already good enough that we don't have to add it into the EV calculation to make the difference between it being a winning or losing proposition.

The best video poker games at Four Queens are 10/7 Double Bonus (100.2% payback) and 9/6 Jacks or Better (99.5%) and I think I'm actually going to play this one on JOB.

With $8 coin in required for 1 point, the highest award in the promo takes $16,000 of total action which, at 99.5% payback, is an expected loss of $80.

Add on the $50 in gas cards (which are as good as real money) and a further $50 in cashback (you get $1 back for every 40 points normally from the slot club) and we're already in profit regardless of whether the free slot play (which is almost as good as real money) adds up to $200 or $360.  It's all gravy.

Of course I'd do a little better playing the positive Double Bonus game.  A perfect strategy would turn the $80 expected loss into a $32 theoretical win.  That strategy is relatively complex, but even playing Jacks or Better strategy on the Double Bonus machine increases the payback to 99.8% (overall $32 loss) - although it also increases the variance significantly.

However the biggest attraction of this promotion is just how quickly it should be possible to rattle through $16,000 in play on a multi-line machine JOB at the Four Queens.

They have the same 50-play machine that I used to get Total Rewards Diamond fairly painlessly, and that I hit the $10,000 jackpot on last month.  Although that will never, ever happen again.

It's $12.50 per spin, but much lower variance than playing a single line for the same stake (if, indeed, a $2.50 coin x 5 coins per hand machine existed).  You'll always get something back on every spin, usually a little less or a little more than the stake, with significant wins mostly coming before the draw - so you can hold the winning hand 50 times.

On past form, I've been able to play about 500 games per hour on this type of machine (it's slower than a regular game because it has to draw 50 hands every time).  That's over $6000/hour cycled which means I should be able to rack up enough slot points for the maximum bonus in about two and a half hours!

Compare that to playing on a single line quarter machine at 1000 hands per hour ($1.25 per spin) - it would take more like 12 hours of play to get there.  Even so, this would be a fairly respectable hourly rate (as much as $30/hr if the free play does accumulate, or $18/hr if not).

However being able to play at turbo speed should give a theoretical hourly rate in the region of $90-$150, depending on the actual conditions of the promotion!

Now, to be able to quit the day job all I need to do is find a couple of deals like this every day...