Club Royale revealed: How points are calculated

[Journey2016]

On 1/18/2019 at 2:30 PM, CNickMN said:

 

 

Anyway, as to the topic, here's what we've noticed about the RCCL casino and points: We seem to build up points much more quickly on the slots than on the table games. We have no hard stats on that, but it's just something we've both noticed. 

 

If you read my post above, you will see that the slots earn points about 20% faster. What complicates the overall calculation is the difference in pay out. The odds of winning at Craps is 48.6%. The odds of winning roulette (black/red or odd/even) is 47.4%. What this means is that, when you combine points and cash winnings, you need to have a winning percentage of 38% or higher. 

 

What the player payout percentage is on slots is almost impossible to predict. One thing I am sure of is that RCCL is not losing money on the deal.

[Mikew0805]

On 12/31/2018 at 5:46 PM, Journey2016 said:

So I did some experimenting during my last cruise. (The sacrifices I make- go figure). Here is what happened:

 

Allure of the Seas: 7 day cruise Dec 2018:

Gambled $175 on slots, kept pushing button until money ran out. This earned me 56 points. Works out to $3.13 per point. 

I also played Craps for 8.5 hours. My average bet was $100. I lost a total of $2400, earning 634 points. This cost $3.79 per point. 

Doing the math, if I had played the $2400 on slots, I would have wound up with 766 points instead of 634. 

 

When I was on the Independence in November, I was at the Craps table for 9 hours and an average bet of $80, earning 125 points for the $1000 I lost at the tables. The cost there was $8.00 per point.

 

When I was on the Symphony in June, I was betting the same as always, and I won about $3800 on the trip. 23 hours in the casino, and earned 684 points. 

 

Here are my conclusions:

Winning or losing doesn't matter when it comes to earning points.

The way that points are awarded seems to be rather inconsistent. 

Dollar for dollar, slots earn points at about 20% lower cost than tables. Without knowing the odds of winning at the slots, I can't tell you which is more effective. I do know the odds of winning at craps is 48.6%. 

 

Either way, I have gambled with $6,000 on RCCL cruises in 2018, winning $400 and a total of 1,374 points, plus a total of $700 in cruise certificates. The people saying that they are getting free cruises are either gambling with way more money than I can afford, or they are lying. Under the old CR system, I was getting free drinks and free cruise offers. Since they revamped the system, all of that has gone away. I get much better comps in Vegas with MGM than I do with CR.

 

I think people play differently. Just off the Symphony.. took $1200 to gamble with, and walked off the ship with $500. I was already Prime, so my partner was doing the playing. Earned 3244 points and did not hit a jackpot on this sailing. That was enough for a certificate, and to keep his Prime status for this year. We move slots depending on how they are doing, increasing and decreasing bets. In fact the last night we were playing one game at $3.40 a spin and played for 3 hours on $40 bucks. Huge amount of points were racked up during that time. You can see what I do for a living by my avatar... so clearly I do not make tons of money, ($1200 is on the higher end of what I/we usually take) and yet we get free cruises & offers... not lying. 

[jacads]

So do points keep accumulating from cruise to cruise?  

[rt1092]

On 4/7/2019 at 9:33 PM, jacads said:

So do points keep accumulating from cruise to cruise?  

Yes. The points accumulation year for Club Royale starts on Apr 1 and finishes on March 31.

Everyone's points start at zero on April 1.

 

Edited April 9, 2019 by rt1092

[ToroAzul]

Is video poker $5 per point as well? 

[proggieus]

18 minutes ago, ToroAzul said:

Is video poker $5 per point as well? 

1 point per $10 I believe due to the lower house advantage

[soflalaw]

From recent cruise, table games using rfid chips. So all of your bets (amount and multiple hands) are tracked, which “should” make software calculations for earned points more accurate.

 

I procurred Prime status first time ever with CR, only playing blackjack. So, I cannot attest to computer formulas for calculating one’s earned points, but I feel comfortable in saying that most, if not nearly all of my betting on the cruise was considered through their rfid tracking system.

[proggieus]

9 hours ago, soflalaw said:

From recent cruise, table games using rfid chips. So all of your bets (amount and multiple hands) are tracked, which “should” make software calculations for earned points more accurate.

 

I procurred Prime status first time ever with CR, only playing blackjack. So, I cannot attest to computer formulas for calculating one’s earned points, but I feel comfortable in saying that most, if not nearly all of my betting on the cruise was considered through their rfid tracking system.

 

 That is not correct,

 

 

I was just on Symphony which is the newest casino in the fleet. They do not use RFID for bet tracking purposes.

 

 

 

 

 

 

[soflalaw]

1 hour ago, proggieus said:

 

 That is not correct,

 

 

I was just on Symphony which is the newest casino in the fleet. They do not use RFID for bet tracking purposes.

 

 

 

 

 

 

My deepest apologies. For understandable reasons, I did not identify the ship I recently sailed on. It was not the Symphony of the Seas.

[proggieus]

34 minutes ago, soflalaw said:

My deepest apologies. For understandable reasons, I did not identify the ship I recently sailed on. It was not the Symphony of the Seas.

So you are suggesting that an older ship has more current technolgy then the newest ship?

 

 

[soflalaw]

I am not suggesting anything. Please do not engage in an adversarial tone. I was simply sharing the RFID technology that RCCL used in the casino on my recent trip, as explained to me by 2 assistant hosts, and by the casino manager himself.

 

I argue for a living (see my username). I do not come here looking to litigate, but rather collaborate. I trust that you can respect that.

[proggieus]

14 hours ago, soflalaw said:

I am not suggesting anything. Please do not engage in an adversarial tone. I was simply sharing the RFID technology that RCCL used in the casino on my recent trip, as explained to me by 2 assistant hosts, and by the casino manager himself.

 

I argue for a living (see my username). I do not come here looking to litigate, but rather collaborate. I trust that you can respect that.

 

 

Well then i guess they decided to only tell you the truth and have been lying to every other casino player.

 

you're a lawyer,

 

if you had a client who said he was told by three different people that McDonalds used only fillet mignon in their burgers and then had hundreds or thousands of other witnesses including Mcdonalds itself who say that its just regular beef.

 

 

which do you think is going to be the truth?

 

what makes more sense?

 

the ships have a very complex and accurate way of tracking bets for each and every player but lie to the players and make up some messy and imprecise way to explain how they calculate points.

 

 

or you either misunderstood or were misinformed.

 

there are members that post in this forum that have been club royal members for years and have become friends with various casino hosts over the years, none of them have been told this information.

 

Sorry. you are wrong.

 

this photo is from the printed brochure they hand out which is copyrighted 2018

 

 

 

I am really not trying to be argumentative but what you are saying is just not true. kinda hard to tell somebody they are wrong without being a little argumentative,

Edited April 28, 2019 by proggieus

[kwokpot]

7 minutes ago, proggieus said:

 

Well then i guess they decided to only tell you the truth and have been lying to every other casino player.

 

you're a lawyer,

 

if you had a client who said he was told by three different people that McDonalds used only fillet mignon in their burgers and then had hundreds or thousands of other witnesses including Mcdonalds itself who say that its just regular beef.

 

 

which do you think is going to be the truth?

 

what makes more sense?

 

the ships have a very complex and accurate way of tracking bets for each and every player but lie to the players and make up some messy and imprecise way to explain how they calculate points.

 

 

or you either misunderstood or were misinformed.

 

there are members that post in this forum that have been club royal members for years and have become friends with various casino hosts over the years, none of them have been told this information.

 

Sorry. you are wrong.

 

this photo is from the printed brochure they hand out

 

 

Oh. and another thing-

 

There is no point conversion between slots and tables as you suggested on another thread.

 

a point is a point as the conversion takes place in the rate that points are earned.

 

video poker has a lower expected house advantage therefore it takes more coin in to earn points.

 

 

A search of Soflalaw's CC posts seems to show he was on Quantum of the Seas recently, so that would be the ship he gambled and received that information. He MAY be confusing the overall use of RFID chips on the Ship (WOW bracelet) with that being used INSIDE the Casino with RFID in the Casino Chips themselves. Note that the terminology, RFID Chip, is used to describe the technology, you can easily see how that can be confused. Now I can see how the Casino can use RFID to track Casino Chip buy-ins but I'm almost certain Royal does not use RFID gaming chips. 

[proggieus]

18 minutes ago, kwokpot said:

A search of Soflalaw's CC posts seems to show he was on Quantum of the Seas recently, so that would be the ship he gambled and received that information. He MAY be confusing the overall use of RFID chips on the Ship (WOW bracelet) with that being used INSIDE the Casino with RFID in the Casino Chips themselves. Note that the terminology, RFID Chip, is used to describe the technology, you can easily see how that can be confused. Now I can see how the Casino can use RFID to track Casino Chip buy-ins but I'm almost certain Royal does not use RFID gaming chips. 

 i could see the higher denomination chips having RFID for authentication purposes. but the technology to do as he suggests is not really there yet, at least not without some very specific locations to place the chips and rules on chip handling, such as winnings must be returned to your chip rack before re betting other wise the system wont know who the winning chips belongs to.

 

the biggest problem is how RFID works in the first place, unless the RFID tag is large enough to hold a battery the chip are passive and must be moved through a magnetic field to generate the voltage internally they need to transmit its id, but because the voltage generated in this manner is so low the transmit range is very low, usually less then 2 CM. so you would end up with dozens if not hundreds of separate readers inside of a craps table to keep track of individual players bets.

 

they might have a large coil and reader in the chip tray for the table bank to auto count the table bank but thats a single large area that all counts towards the same "total", the table bank.

 

you would need a separate reader for each player in order to move a chip from the bank to a individual player. and then a separate reader for each player for every other bet on the table to keep track which bets that player is making.

 

or you would be required to move chips to your tray so that they can be "assigned" to you and then once they are read  on the table the system would know who owns that bet.

 

 

the biggest tell that they do not use RFID at the table is the count in and count out procedures.

 

how many hands per hour are wasted while the dealers and pit sups. count out and verify chip color ups and chip buy ins

 

The absolute simplest thing to implement once you have RFID readers and tags in every casino chip would be a single area to stack the chips with a digital read out of the total value. then you could color up, place the color up stack in the same area and let the system confirm the totals match.

 

but yet they still rely on humans to do the verification

 

[Journey2016]

I can't really see how RFID could EVER work. Let's say that you are at the Craps table. You put a $5 on a FIELD bet. How would the system know whose bet it was? There is no better specific place to put a field bet. Same goes for many other bets like COME and DON'T COME bets.

With that being the case, the only way would be for the casino to keep a running inventory of which chips belong to which gambler. This would require a lot of computing power, and even then this would become a problem if two guests exchange chips away from the table. For example, a person giving some chips to a spouse or other fellow traveler. I know that I frequently give chips to my wife and children. I have even given change for players away from the tables- say trading a $5 for 5 singles. That would certainly garble the tracking system up.

Even Vegas casinos, who have a lot more incentive and a lot more money to invest in a system like this, do not have anything like this. 

[proggieus]

1 hour ago, Journey2016 said:

I can't really see how RFID could EVER work. Let's say that you are at the Craps table. You put a $5 on a FIELD bet. How would the system know whose bet it was? There is no better specific place to put a field bet. Same goes for many other bets like COME and DON'T COME bets.

With that being the case, the only way would be for the casino to keep a running inventory of which chips belong to which gambler. This would require a lot of computing power, and even then this wouldn't  become a problem if two guests exchange chips away from the table. For example, a person giving some chips to a spouse or other fellow traveler. I know that I frequently give chips to my wife and children. I have even given change for players away from the tables- say trading a $5 for 5 singles. That would certainly garble the tracking system up.

Even Vegas casinos, who have a lot more incentive and a lot more money to invest in a system like this, do not have anything like this. 

 

not to mention how would they re assign the chips from winnings to a specific player.  Or how they could possibly keep track of who's bet is who's when placing the numbers like 6/8 or on the hard ways.  The chip stacks are what? 1/4" apart sometimes.

 

 

granted black jack would be far easier but even then what happens of you split multiple times and end up with 4 different hands, do they have 4 separate readers for each player position and if they do where exactly do you have to place the chips to be read? 

 

I would also think there would some liability for them to put in print how they calculated points and then using a completely different method. 

[DaCruiseBug]

So based on the little flyer if you play craps (should be similar earnings to blackjack) you get 10 points per $10 per hour. So if I average $80 per hand and play 2 hours per night on a 7 day sailing I should earn 1,120 points correct? That's 80 points per hour times 14 hours played. 

 

How many points are required to get a free cruise cert on Royal?

[hwmyones]

There are a lot of bizarre takes in this string. I’m signature, I go on 6-8 cruises a year, all comped by the casino. I play slots and table games. I usually end up getting half my points from slots and half from tables. 

 

The points you get from table games are based on your Theo. Your Theo is based on the house edge of each game, the number of hands per hour, your average bet, and the length of your play. Your points, and therefore comps, are going to be much lower playing blackjack than any of the poker games (I typically play ultimate hold em at $150 a hand for 3-4 hours a day and get about 1200-1400 points from table play per day). Remember, house edge from blackjack is 0.5%, so your points from blackjack are going to be much lower than playing say 3 card poker (2.32% house edge). There was some advice about being friendly with your pit boss, that’s absolutely true. I’ve gone up to the pit bosses and asked them to adjust my average bet a bit higher which therefore increases my theoretical loss and increases my points. Time wise you’re going to get points from slots faster if you’re playing max bet, but if you’re playing only a few dollars a spin it’ll take awhile to build them up. It’s very difficult to get points at the tables unless you’re betting $100+ a hand. Just being honest. 

[HunterBarb]

On 4/9/2019 at 5:40 AM, rt1092 said:

Yes. The points accumulation year for Club Royale starts on Apr 1 and finishes on March 31.

Everyone's points start at zero on April 1.

 

Oh well YIPES for ME - Have my FIRST Royal Carib cruise late in Feb 2020, so I GUESS  IF I earn anything I will have to JUMP on the next offer ~ drat ~ good to know (sorta !)

[ToroAzul]

Off the Allure yesterday. 

 

Day one we earned ~180 points on a $300 loss and not having a good time. 

We switched to tables. 

 

Played craps for four other nights with a starting of $60/roll. We pressed bets from there and tipped the dealers extremely well. We would put dealers on the line and back them with odds. In total, I'm guessing we tipped the craps dealers close to $200. 

 

Also had one ultimate Texas holdem session where I doubled up to $800.

 

All in all we came home with $800 more than we left with and had way more table time than we would have if on the machines. 

 

Was hoping the dealer tokes would help our rating but it appears it didn't. 

 

I'll check for offers in a few weeks. 

 

No discount certificate though and didn't make it to Prime but we kept our dollars and will comp ourselves with the winnings by booking a cruise in April. 

Edited September 30, 2019 by ToroAzul

[OldSeaDog1969]

As someone who has worked in the Casino business for nearly 30 years I can tell you that many Casinos use RFID technology. However not all Casinos use the RFID technology for the same reasons.

 

It can be used for table tracking but the system is very very expensive as every single chip has to have an RFID chip instead the gaming chip, otherwise they would not be able to track the average bet. The tables also have to have sensors for every bet placed. On Blackjack they can even tell how good your basic strategy is or if you are card counting as the cards themselves have RFID in them.

 

RFID technology is also used for game security. In essence it prevents the counterfeiting chips & internal theft.

 

[ToroAzul]

On 7/28/2019 at 12:19 AM, hwmyones said:

 

(I typically play ultimate hold em at $150 a hand for 3-4 hours a day and get about 1200-1400 points from table play per day).

Responding to an old post, apologies. Were you playing $25 on the ante and blind or $125 on the ante and blind for that kind of point accrual? 

[Justaddvodka68]

On 10/8/2019 at 7:49 AM, ToroAzul said:

Responding to an old post, apologies. Were you playing $25 on the ante and blind or $125 on the ante and blind for that kind of point accrual? 

 

Not the OP, but based on how he stated it, a $150 hand at that game would be $25 on the Ante & Blind with the possible $100 bet pre-flop.  That's how it was explained to me how they calculate average bet, and it's one of the reasons that both UTH and Mississippi Stud are better point earners than other table games. 

 

Not only is their edge high, but the floor can't possibly track and count how many hands each player risked 4X on and how many he checked through to the end, so the play is based on the average possible bet.  So chances are playing as the OP described, he was tracked at an average bet of around 75, maybe more if he plays trips.  The Ante+Blind+MaxBet/2+Trips is what was described to me. 

 

I only play $10 tables and go up if winning.  My host always tracks my average bet at $35 average. 10+10+40/2 = 30+5(Trips bet). 

 

On Mississippi, (which I've never seen on a ship.) the points really rack up, because on a $10 table your average bet is $50+whatever you're putting on the 3 card bonus. (10+30+30+30)/2. 

[fla gang]

So yesterday I called Club Royale to see how many points I have so far this year and the Gentleman said it will only show us your last cruise? I am already Prime and pretty sure I have enough to be prime again next year, but in the past they were able to give me a total for my cruises since April 1.

[Lady Hudson]

Call back.  I just called a few days ago and got current yearly totals for both myself and my spouse.  Different agents give out different information.