MGMsights.

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Got a "wrapped" type email from MGM Rewards detailing my points activity from last year. Pretty insightful stuff. In short, I'm not earning shit for points on gambling anymore.

I earned 84K points and change last year. 75K is required for retaining Gold year to year, so unlike past years where I scraped by, this year I cleared it comfortably. A strong spend/play December trip made it a laugher.

For the year, fully 62K points came from the points earning on the MGM Rewards Iconic card. Most of that is just daily non-Vegas spend: food, bars, deodorant, etc. I gained only 17k points all year from gambling. That amazes me. 95% of that on VP. I fed $53K into MGM VP machines last year and only got 17K measly tier points out of it? Another 3800 points came from onsite resort spend, and that's it, that's the whole 84K. Only a little over 20K points were actually earned in a Vegas resort, which is where you're supposed to earn most of your points.

I play VP in Vegas because it's a game you can feed a hundy into and sit there for a half hour, even at $7.50 a hand. The expected win for the casino on VP is a lot lower than for slots, so I get a somewhat lower points haul but that ratio is crazy. If I hadn't had the Iconic card and spent as much on it as I do, I wouldn't even be sniffing Gold year to year.

The fact that I spent that much money in the casino, lost $7500 in the process and only scraped out 17K tier points from it is a ball-punch. Add to that the fact that most of the Freeplay I get comes from the Iconic card ($683 out of $720), and I'm starting to wonder why I gamble in Vegas at all. It certainly isn't benefitting me in any way, at least most years. If I so much as break even during a gambling year it makes me feel like I won the lottery. It's rare, in other words.

With as much as I raked in from the Iconic card last year, in not even a full year of use, if I pushed just a little more on in-town spending (when the 6X points kick in), I wouldn't even have to gamble to make Gold. Just daily-using the card alone almost guarantees Gold, and for my low-rolling ass, I'm never going to even sniff Platinum, so why am I throwing all this money away every trip trying to hit Royals that (almost) never come?

Head, scratched.


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