Which Players receive the most comps and why?
Casinos are businesses and as such, any player that spends money at their establishments are valuable to them. Obviously however, the more a player spends the more valuable they become.
This is why in general, slots players are more valuable to online and mobile casinos than table games players. While table game players may place substantial sized bets, on average, due to the nature and pace of the games, slots players place many more wagers per hour than any other player.
When determining the value of players and awarding comps accordingly, casinos take into consideration the number of wagers per hour, the size of the wagers as well as the house edge on the game/s a player plays.
Given these criteria, one generally finds that slots players are comped more generously than those playing table games, not only due to the fact that they place more bets per hour, but also because they play slots which have some of the highest house edges of all casino games.
Of course, there are some table games with high house edges. For example, American Roulette has a house advantage of 5.26% on almost all of the wagering options, but due to the nature of the game which requires a certain amount of time for players to place wagers and the dealer to then spin the wheel, wait for it to stop and then distribute the payouts, the game has a much slower pace than slots. On average a player may only be able to place 40 wagers per hour, which is significantly less than the average number of spins a slots player can make in the same time - often around 500!
This means that the slots player is generally going to experience more than double the hourly loss that a roulette player will, even when playing a much lower denomination.
Some players argue that video poker players are more than able to play over 500 hands per hour at what is considered to be a slow pace but they forget that the value decision for casinos is a three part process - while video poker can match slots in the number of hands played per hour and the betting ranges, the house edge is still considerably lower than on the slot machines.
Even if you elect to play one of the Video Poker variants with a higher house edge - like 8/5 Double Double Bonus which has a 96.79% payout rate, your hourly theoretical loss will still be less than that of a slots player playing 40 cents per spin on Penny slots.
If we compare penny slots players placing minimum wagers vs. quarter video poker players doing the same, the slots player will always be more valuable to the casino due to the house edge on the game. Also, slots players generally don't just play the minimums because many believe they have to bet the max to qualify for top payouts, making them even more valuable to the casinos who comp them to keep them playing or increase their slots play.