Some players think about the various permutations of what can happen if you pull your players card before something happens, or play without it. Here’s an example:
I know casinos can track your play when using your player’s card. Can they also track what you cash out of a machine if you take your card out BEFORE you hit the cash out button?
Vicki R.
For the purposes of what matters to the casino, they don’t actually need to track this, because they track every wager while you’re playing.
Let’s say you put $100 in, play for some period of time, and finish with $50. They don’t track the $100 in and the $50 out itself because they instead track every wager and its outcome:
- Bet $1, win $0
- Bet $1, win $0.25
- Bet $1, win $104.50 (from a bonus, but they don’t really worry about that aspect either)
And so on.
That’s because the total amount of wagers and total amount of wins tracked to the card will give the casino an accounting of the total win or loss of a session by a player.
If a player pulls their card after it’s recorded all of that, it doesn’t really matter that the card’s not in when you cash out, because they already know how you did.
Now, some players will purposefully pull their card because they worry casinos will know about their winnings and think that impacts their offers. Most casinos don’t care about that – they care about the theoretical loss, which is how much they expect you to lose based on the game being played, the house edge, and the total amount of wagers made.
Taking your card out takes away that tracking and impacts your numbers, which can in turn impact your offers. It also makes your win/loss record inaccurate, which is why the IRS requires more than just a win/loss statement if you’re ever audited.
They also care if those wagers are made a bit at a time or all at once – a player betting $500 on a single roulette wheel spin looks different to a casino than one who wagered $500 through $1 spins over time on a slot.
But logging your cash out amount is almost academic when they know everything else.
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