When most people go to Vegas, they come back poorer than before going. Spending money on expensive buffets and losing hundreds on casinos seems to be accepted outcomes.
The casinos know this, they market and take advantage of the unprepared out-of-towners.
But you don’t have to be one of these people. You can get $100’s in free gambling money, food and drinks with Las Vegas Player Card Promotions and coupons. When used correctly with the strategies in this guide, you can get your entire Vegas trip paid for, and have lots of fun in the process.
This guide gives you some Money Saving Tips, and Strategies my wife and I use when we visit Vegas. We would go to about 10 to 20 Casinos over a weekend, only gambling with the Free Play Money, and Match-Play money (More on what these are below), and only eat buffets with buy-on-get-one free coupons. We on average win $8 to $20 per Casino per person.
It’s a really fun way to check out Casinos we’d normally never go to, and a way to spend a weekend making money in Vegas, instead of spending money.
Highlights of Casinos with Lots of Free Gambling Money:
I have compiled a list of almost all Vegas Casinos that offer Free Play or Matchplay bonuses or coupons HERE, organized by geographical area.
Below is a highlight of a few casinos with Best Las Vegas Rewards Program in terms of Free Play / Match Play and Coupons. Make sure you stop by these places on your next Frugal Vegas run.
The D Casino:
Sign Up Bonus: Every 50 pts get for $5 of free play
LVA Coupons: $25 match play, Push on 22 at Blackjack up to $25
ACG Coupons: $5 to $100 slot free play, $25 matchplay
Downtown Grand:
Sign Up Bonus: Earn 25 points to get FREE PLAY to win $5 to $1000
LVA Coupons: $10 free slot play, $10 Match play
ACG Coupons: $10 matchplay, Free Ace card($25 max bet, once per day), Free buy bets on 4 and 10(Reported being honored as a $10 free play instead)
Plaza Casino:
Sign Up Bonus: Free Shirt, 3 tickets for Spin to Win
LVA Coupons: $10 slot free play, $25 matchplay
ACG Coupons: $25 matchplay, 2-for-1 drinks
Ellis Island Casino:
Sign Up Bonus: Play $5 and get a chance to win $5 to $500. $3 discount on food
LVA Coupons: 3 free drinks, $9.99 steak special with card (Another $2 off with $5 in slot play), $25 non-negotiable chip + $10 to $100 Free-play
ACG Coupons: $10 to $100 free slot play, play $10, get $100 free play
Frugal Vegas Basics:
- Las Vegas Free Play When You Sign Up
Casinos entices people to sign up with their Casino’s players club with promotions such match play bonus, Free Play, or free gift. These are essentially “free money” that can be used to play at the casino.
I’ll explain what match-play and free-play are in just a minute. Granted, these sign-up bonuses aren’t as lucrative as they once were. But several sign-up bonuses are still pretty enticing.
I have compiled a list of Sign-Up bonuses for Vegas Casinos Here. It’s the most complete list of sign-up bonuses I know of.
2. Use Coupon Books.
There are also various coupon books that offer coupons for match play, free play or B1G1 buffet coupons.
The strategy is to visit a particular casino, sign-up for their players club, play with the “free money” from sign up bonus and coupon books, then move on to the casino.
It’s not inconceivable to visit 10 to 15 casinos in two days, use $10 to $50 of free betting money at each casino, and come out ahead a couple hundred dollars.
3. Visit As Many Casinos as possible.
The strategy is to 1) go to a casino, 2) sign-up for the players club, 3) use up the free gambling money 4) use the casino’s eat and drink coupons 5) rinse and repeat for next casino.
Tools you’ll need:
- 2017 American Casino Guide(ACG) Coupon book. ($17 on ACG’s website, but it’s usually cheaper on Amazon) A new ACG comes out every year. Good until end of 2017. You may be able to find for discount on Amazon towards later part of the year.
- A list of ACG’s coupon list can be found on ACG’s website.
- Las Vegas Advisor (LVA) Coupon Book. Cost: $37 with diamond membership on LasVegasAdvisor.com.
note: Both ACG and LVA are physical books (you know, with papers and pages and all). So order it in advance of the trip.
- A new email address. Sign up for a new free gmail address before you go. You’ll be signing up for a ton of new players clubs. Chances are, your inbox will be spammed, in fact your spam folder will get spammed.
How to Get Free Play and Match Play In Vegas (Free Gambling Money)
Once you walk into a Casino, look for sign towards the Player’s club desk. It’ll be called different things at different casino’s, but each casino has one. Once you walk up to the desk, ask and confirm what the sign-up bonus is, then fill out the information needed to sign up.
You’re only supposed to sign up once per lifetime. But since they match the info by address on the driver’s license, and some casinos by the drivers license number, you can probably sign-up again and get the promo bonus again if you’ve moved out of state and gotten a different drivers license.
Free play:
Free play credits are used on machine games, such as slots of video-poker. Some casinos only allow free-play on certain machines, some allow free play credits on all machines. Ask the player’s club rep for details.
If there is free play promo with players club sign-up, the free play will be automatically deposited onto your Player’s Club card. If you want to use your free play coupon, you need to take the coupon to the Player’s Club desk at the casino, they will add the free play to be added to your Player’s club card.
How to Use Casino Free Play:
Insert the player’s club card into the machine game, then navigate through the menu to transfer the free play credit onto the machine. Each casino’s menu is different, ask one of the many reps on the floor for help if needed.
After free play credit is deposited onto the machine, you can start playing as if you had put in “real money” in the amount of the free play credit, with one caveat:
Free play credit cannot be cashed out, only the money you win can be cashed out. What this means is that, if you transfer $10 of free play onto a machine, then turn around and try to cash out the $10, no money will come out because you haven’t won any money.
But, if you bet $0.50 cents on your first play, and win $0.47 cents, your total credit on the machine will now be $9.97 ($10 – $0.50 bet + $0.47 winning). Now if you try to cash out, you can cash out $.47 cents, $9.5 will remain on the machine to be played.
Therefore, you should always keep track of how many much free play money you have left, and never play beyond that amount. Cash out as soon as free play is exhausted, to keep your out-of-pocket cost to $0.
To be safe you never go beyond the free play credit, you can press the Cash Out button after every bet/play. So the only money left on the machine would be the Free Play money, and you’ll end up have a bunch of smaller denomination cash out receipts.
Maximize winning with Free-Play
To maximize the Free Play money, don’t use it on slots. The best game to play is Video Poker game Jacks-or-Better. This is the simplest game to learn and play for beginners, and strategy is straight forward.
We always followed the Video Poker strategy laid out on Wizard of Odds, and we usually cash out anywhere between $7.50 to $12.00 when we played with $10 of free play.
https://wizardofodds.com/games/video-poker/basics/
The return is around 99.4% if you follow the simple strategy, and find a machine with 9/6 Full-House/Flush payout. (I’ll explain what this means in a minute).
This means you’ll on average walk away with $9.94, for $10 of free play, that you can cash out. Not bad for some free money!
The key is to find a video poker machine that has the most favorable payout. To find a video poker machine, just look for machines with the “Game King” logo. They are very popular, and should be very easy to find in any casino.
Each Game King machine has multiple games, sometimes even Keno, Slots, and Black Jack. What you’re looking for is a machine that has “Jacks or Better” game.
There are a bunch of other variety of Video Poker, and they have great payout too. We always used Jacks Or Better because we are familiar with it. You can see the pay out of the game when you press the game.
For Jacks or Better, try to find one that has a 9x payout for Full House, and 6x payout for Flush.
It’s possible the casino you’re at doesn’t have 9/6 payout. The payout for 8/6 or 8/5 are a little lower than 99.4%, and still not too bad.
What is Match Play, and How to use it?
Match-play: Match play coupons are used for table games(Blackjack, Pai-Gow, Roulette etc) only. It is a one-time use coupon match the amount you’re betting.
For example, if you’re on a Blackjack table, you can put down a $20 bet in chips, and put down your $20 match play coupon next to your chips. This would count as $40 bet.
If you win, you win $40 in chips, and get to keep the $40 in winning, along with the $20 in chips you bet with.
You may have to turn in your match-play coupon into the casino, to exchange for a special match-play chip.
Some casinos lets you put the match play coupon next to your “real money” bet. Check with the dealer or casino to find out.
Don’t worry, they see coupons all the time, and know exactly what to do.
How to Maximize Winnings with Match Play Coupons
We’ve always used our match-play coupon on Roulette or Blackjack. If you want more strategies on match-play, go check out Wizard of Odds page for match-play strategies.
https://wizardofodds.com/gambling/promotional-chips/
For Roulette, if you’re with a partner, and each of you have a $25 match-play coupon, you can have one person bet on black and one on red. There is a 92.64% chance it’ll land on either Black or Red, where you’ll win $50 for the winning bet, and lose $25 for the losing beg, for a gain of $25.
If you don’t have a partner to play the roulette strategy, I’ve always just played Black Jack. You’ll only lose the match play coupon if you lose the hand, you can use the coupon as many times as you want, as long as you win or push. So I just play until match play coupon is gone.
Which Casinos to go for the Most Free Gambling Money
Consult my list of Casino sign-up bonuses, and coupons before the trip, to plan which Casinos you want to go.
The Downtown, Fremont street area have a concentration of 12 Casinos that offer some sort of free gambling money. Best part is they’re all within walking distance of each other. So you could park your car, and go hit all of them within half a day.
You could spend the other half day, after you used your B1G1 buffet coupon, to visit other casinos on the list.
What did you think of this article? Any ideas or suggestions to make it better? Leave a comment below to let me know!
I do I sign up
Excellent, what a web site it is! This weblog gives helpful data to us, keep it up.
Can’t wait to see Vegas
Article is excellent. Your tip on playing table match play as pairs competing in the same game is “almost” a guaranteed win at 2-1 payback.
However, IF you play roulette and bet odd/even or red/black, you still have the 0, 00 , and these days, even a 000 where ALL bets are lost.
I recommend playing craps, if available. One bets passline and other bets don’t pass. THIS is the guaranteed way of winning.