The Psychological Strategies Which Land Based Casinos Use To Keep People Playing

If you’re a casino proprietor, chances are you’re actively engaged in thinking about keeping players in your establishment. The structure of casinos in general revolves around the idea of house edge, which means over the infinite term, the casino always wins. Note, this doesn’t mean that a specific player in general will always lose, and it is possible for players to be significantly up on their potential gambling winnings over the span of a career. However, the total pool of players will always lose to the casino’s advantage over the infinite term, because of the in-built advantage that the house enjoys in every single game.

If you extend this idea further, casino marketers need to do their level best to keep everyone playing for as long as possible, as well as attracting as many new players as they can to their casinos. In doing so, they guarantee higher gambling volumes, which in turn should lead to more substantial profits for the casino.

As far as land-based casino resorts are concerned, there are a number of tricks and tips they can deploy in order to make this a reality. These strategies are designed to keep players in their seats, enjoying the games they are playing, or alternatively to revisit the same casino resort time and time again. But what are these strategies, and how effectively do they work in practice for land based casinos hoping to keep players engaged?

Exploiting The Senses

So we’ve seen why casinos want to encourage players to keep on playing – it’s the business they’re in, and a crucial element of maximising their profits over time. One of the most effective ways in which they can achieve these effects is through playing to the senses of individual players. Land based casinos have an advantage over their online counterparts, in the sense that they have a physical resort and premises from which to work their magic. Once you head inside a casino resort, you’re instantly bombarded with sights, sounds, and smells, all designed to make you feel at ease, confident in carrying on with your game.

When you first walk through the doors, you’ll usually walk past slot machines. Indeed, this is where the loosest machines in land-based casinos are to be found, because the casinos want you to hear the sound of money being won as you walk through the door. They want every single player that enters their resort to hear what winning sounds like, so they can picture themselves in winning ways.

You may also be confronted with low level lighting, almost always designed to distort the time of day. You won’t find many clocks around in a casino, because the management don’t necessarily want people keeping on eye on the time – they want you to stay and play for days on end, if that’s your thing. Even down to the formal evening attire and smart appearance of the staff – this is all designed to create a multi-sensory experience that tells you you’re in a high value environment, with big money to be potentially won – ideal for giving you the psychological encouragement you need to start, and to keep on, playing.

Cashback Rewards & Comps

It’s not just in terms of playing to our senses that casinos work to encourage players to stay for longer. Cashback, similar to casino bonuses is one of the oldest tricks in the book, and players can in some cases be offered a percentage of their losses as a rebate. This takes the sting out of losing to a certain extent, because you know that even if you do end up on a losing streak you’re not going to be completely out of pocket. Similarly, high value players might find they’re brought some free drinks, complimentary sandwiches and other snacks, or any other of a range of rewards and goodies.

These are designed to primarily keep you in your seat, and casino management will find every possible way to meet the needs of players who are actively gambling, without giving them cause to leave the table. Once you’ve left the table for a toilet break, the chances of that being your last gambling session of the night massively increase – versus the chance of someone who is already sitting at a table ditching a game part-way through. It’s all part of the approach land-based casinos take to encouraging their players to play as much as possible while they have them at their resort.

The Red Carpet Treatment

Really high value players get treated like film stars from their casinos, almost to the point where it can start to look a little suspicious. Why is my casino taking me on holiday, free of charge? Of course, most players are aware of the reasoning – the casino values that player’s business, and wants to keep them sweet, in the hope of return and repeat business, time after time. But yet, this is one of the most important psychological strategies casinos have at their disposal when it comes to keeping players invested for the long-haul.

It’s similar to any kind of gift – when someone does something nice for you, particularly something they were under no obligation to do, or that you weren’t expecting, there’s a degree of relationship formed there. Account managers at land-based casinos are regularly invited to weddings, funerals, graduations, and all manner of special occasions, because their job involves forming strong relationships with important players. By forming these bonds, players feel a certain degree of indebtedness to the casino, and an enhanced degree of loyalty compared to what they might otherwise feel – all the while, trying their level best to rinse the casino of as much money as possible.

Of course, there are multiple different strategies available to casino managers, and land-based casinos in particular have honed the craft over a number of decades. They understand what it takes to encourage players to stick at it, and to spend more of their money – because more gambling means more money for the casino, regardless of whether individuals win or lose.