Casino Comps & Player Rewards
Every comp (the free room, the buffet, the host's phone call) is priced off one number: your theoretical loss. We know the exact house edge of every game we cover, so our calculator shows what your play is really worth to the casino, what you can expect back, and what the session truly costs after comps. No myths, no "comp wizardry", just the math.
Where do you play?
🏨 Land casinos
Price any session, or read the program guides with earn rates pre-loaded.
🚢 Cruise casinos
All 8 major programs compared, calculators for the 5 that publish their rates, and slot data photographed on real ships. The live onboard tracker is Royal Caribbean only.
💻 Online casinos
VIP levels, rakeback and bonus stacks, priced against expected loss like everything else here.
More programs as we work through them.
New to comps? Start here
What is your play worth?
Pick a game and a program, set your bet and hours. Edges come from our verified engines; program base rates are illustrative and dated; the Advanced panel lets you enter the exact rates your host quoted.
Advanced: enter the rates your host or player's club quoted
🚢 Cruise casino rewards
Cruise casinos give away cabins, and almost nobody publishes what that actually takes. This is the deepest toolset on the site, and the only place some of these numbers exist at all, because we photographed them. There are 22 pages of it, so if you would rather start from one place: the cruise casino hub.
Price one sailing on every line
Your expected loss doesn't change with the cruise line. The points do, by 2.5×. Enter a sailing once and see all of them ranked.
Compare all 8 cruise programs
What a point actually costs on every major line, converted to dollars of coin-in, because points aren't comparable across lines.
Price every certificate rung
Royal Caribbean publishes 13 instant-certificate offers. See the play each one takes, and what it costs you on average.
Project your annual tier
Plan a cruise year across multiple sailings and see where you land: Prime, Signature or Masters.
Track Club Royale points onboard
Royal Caribbean only: the thresholds and certificate rungs are Club Royale's. Free, offline, and everything stays on your phone.
Read the Princess certificate chart
Princess publishes its Sea You Soon chart only as untagged images. Here it is as text: nine rungs, four voyage lengths, and why two short cruises beat one long one.
Price Carnival status in play
From 1 September 2026 casino points become Status Qualifying Stars 1:1; this works out the coin-in each tier takes.
Royal Caribbean ship casino slots
Dated slot lists for Royal Caribbean ships, backed by photographs and credited walkthroughs.
Browse past months' offer flyers
Royal Caribbean and Celebrity both pull old flyers offline with no index of their own. Every month we could still confirm, back to June 2024, linked straight to the source PDF.
Review photographed RTP evidence
No cruise line publishes slot payback. We read it off the machines' own lifetime meters; one had returned 87.1%.
By casino brand
Caesars Rewards
The biggest network in the country; one card across 50+ casinos, from the Strip to regional properties.
1 Reward Credit ≈ 1¢ · earns on coin-in and rated table play
MGM Rewards
The Strip's other giant. Slot points, express comps, and tier credits that unlock resort perks.
Points ≈ 1¢ · faster base slot earn than Caesars
Boyd B Connected
The locals' favorite: regional properties often comp back a richer share of your play than the Strip does.
Regionally generous earn · strong mailer/promo culture
Club Royale (Royal Caribbean)
The cruise casino gives away cabins: instant certificates, same-sailing FreePlay, and annual comp cruises by tier. Our calculator shows the play each offer takes.
1 pt / $5 slot coin-in · monthly certificate offers · free-cruise goal-seek
Carnival Players Club
Carnival Rewards replaces the VIFP Club on 1 September 2026 and casino points convert 1:1 into status. The richest slot earn rate at sea, and we price what each tier really costs.
1 pt / $2 slot coin-in: 2.5× Royal Caribbean · casino points → Status Stars 1:1
Celebrity Blue Chip Club
Six tiers, more than anyone else at sea, on an August–July year, with Tier Credits and Reward Points earned side by side.
1 pt / $5 slots, $10 video poker · Reward Points die at the end of each sailing
NCL Casinos At Sea
One program across Norwegian, Oceania and Regent, and the only cruise line whose points don't reset every year.
1 pt / $5 slots · 18-month rolling expiry, no annual reset
Princess Players Advantage
Automatic enrolment via the Medallion, a tier match worth a phone call, and no tier ladder at all, which Princess says outright. Its Sea You Soon certificate chart is published only as images; we've put all nine rungs into text.
1 pt / $2 slots, $5 video poker (reported) · certificate chart official · no tier ladder
Virgin Sea Roller Rewards
Five tiers Virgin does publish, an earn rate it doesn't, and an offer match that lets another line do your earning for you.
Tiers confirmed · earn rate reported only · matches competitor offers
Lines with no published redemption
Neither of these lines publishes what points redeem for, so neither gets a tier calculator. They fail differently, though: MSC discloses no earn rate either, while Holland America publishes the fastest rate at sea and then nothing to spend it on. Their pages say exactly that, and name what would fix it.
- MSC Signature Player Rewards: Comped cruises carry no taxes or fees, a real edge. No published earn rate or tiers.
- Holland America Players Club: Publishes the fastest earn rate at sea and no thresholds at all, so there is nothing published to earn toward.
All eight cruise casino programs compared → : converted to dollars of coin-in, because a Carnival point costs $2 and a Royal Caribbean point costs $5.
More land-based programs (Wynn, Venetian, Station, mychoice) are on the roadmap, and the same math will extend to online casino rewards.
The honest math
- Casino Comps, Explained
- Theoretical Loss (Theo): the Number Behind Every Comp
- Comps Don't Make You a Winner
- Cruise Ship Slot RTP: What Real Machine Meters Show
Every cruise figure on this site carries an evidence class and a source. See where the data comes from, including the one line that publishes no earn rate at all, and the terms for reusing any of it.
One rule to remember: comps are a rebate on expected losses, never a way to profit. If chasing a tier or a mailer makes you bet more than you otherwise would, the casino wins the trade. See our responsible gambling page.
Common questions
How do casino comps actually work?
Every comp is priced off your theoretical loss; your total wagering multiplied by the house edge of the game you played. Not what you actually lost, and not what you deposited. The casino expects to keep a fixed slice of everything you cycle through, and hands a fraction of that slice back as rooms, food, FreePlay or cruise certificates. That is why two players who both left down $500 can be offered wildly different things.
Are cruise casino comps worth it?
They are worth more than land comps per dollar of expected loss, a cruise certificate can cover a fare worth hundreds, but they are still a rebate, not a profit. A free cruise earned through play typically costs more in expected losses than booking the same cabin outright would. The value is real if you were going to gamble anyway; it is a bad trade if the certificate is what makes you play.
Can you actually beat a comp program?
Almost never. The rebate is funded by the house edge, so the program can only ever return part of what it takes. The exceptions are narrow: low-edge games like full-pay video poker or good blackjack, played well, where a generous rebate can approach or occasionally exceed a very thin edge. On slots, where nearly all comps are earned, the arithmetic does not get close.
Do points expire, and does it matter?
Almost always yes, and it matters a lot. Most cruise programs reset on a fixed date each year, so play in month eleven keeps a tier for a year while identical play in month one is largely wasted. NCL is the notable exception, holding points 18 months on a rolling basis. Check your program's tier year before you plan a push.