In most (except Las Vegas) you don't earn Tier Credits when you are using "free play".
Besides perks like limo service between hotel and airport (just mentioning one), 7*'s have separate lines at (1)total rewards center, (2)casino cage. [I passed through Bellagio a few days ago--there are NO special "tiered" lines (for MLife players)]

Agreed on CET giving you a lot for just hitting the 7* level. The other quirk of CET's TR system is that they rely so heavily on ADT and supposedly reset ADT after 6-12 months of non-activity. This leads to an obvious play of maxing out the daily tier credit bonuses (and this latest bonus), thereby getting 7* with play (and ADT) compressed as much as possible. This high ADT will generate big offers 2-3 months after your play. As soon as those offers materialize, book a bunch of weekend flights to Vegas, collect the free play, but play at other chains. After 6 months of this, the offers will dry up, but if you time it right you will still have over a year of 7* status to reap the minimum guaranteed benefits from. Once your 7* status is finally running out, rinse and repeat the above steps.

As an aside, there are some other property groups that give good guaranteed benefits just for hitting the highest tier levels, although I don't think any of them are in Vegas. Mlife is not good at all in this respect.

I think it is safe to estimate that one could easily generate $10,000 just in free play as a result of hitting 7*, as long as they compress their qualifying play into as short a period as possible (thereby maximizing ADT). Of course, you then have to actually make the necessary trips to collect on that free play. But if you also place a value on the free rooms / suites, $500 annual free dinner, etc., etc., then the value prop is clearly there.

This all assumes that CET does not decide to tighten up on discretionary comps as a result of their impending bankruptcy proceedings.

True, but in fairness, I have also only had to ever wait behind one other person when cashing in chips at Bellagio. Plus the main cashier has a good line of sight to their nightclub so you get some interesting eye candy walking by as you wait in line during certain times of the evening.

I've been thinking about this. The problem is that compressing it into fewer days is that you aren't taking full advantage of the tier multipliers any more (anything over 5k TC in a day is not tripled). So while you will have higher ADT, you will have to put in a lot more coin-in to get 7*.

$450k VP coin-in over 8 days (with min $50k per day) will get you there (45k TC + 80k multiplier + 25k bonus = 150k = 7*). I have no idea what their theo is on good VP but let's assume that it's 1% (if it's different just scale accordingly). So the 8-day plan would get you an ADT of $563 and it would cost you $2074 in EV.

On the other hand you could do it by playing $950k over 3 days. That would get you 95k TC + 30k multiplier + 25k bonus = 150k = 7*. Your ADT would be $3167 but your total EV cost would be $4370.

It seems pretty clear to me that reaching 7* is worth the $2070. The question is, is raising your ADT from $563 to $3167 worth another $2300? I would guess that is probably is, but I'm not sure exactly how their offers work.

I'm there anyway. Because CET offers are so freeplay-heavy, they are great to double-dip (you can collect freeplay there while you play a tournament at another property). Tournaments are harder to double-dip because you tend to run into scheduling conflicts.

I actually wasn't even thinking that far ahead. I was just saying that even if you do it over 8 days of play, you only need to get 3 of those days in by the end of March, because after those 3 days you have maxed out the 25K bonus from this promo. In other words, you can space your 8 playing days out and finish up sometime later in the year.

I'm thinking of folks who don't live near a CET casino and don't want to (or can't) take a ton of days off work between now and the end of March.

I understand that. I just wonder what the offers are going to look like if I hit 7* with an ADT in the $500 range. That seems low to me.

In Atlantic City, say at Caesars, the lines for the Casino Cage can be huge--so being 7* (with line bumping privileges) is nice. DITTO for the Total Rewards desk.

NO
(1)free limo between airports and hotels
(2)free check cashing, debit card cash advances
(3)annual gift selection

Side note:
When you reach 250,000 TC, you get 1 Experience Credit; each additional 250,000 gets you another EC--the 1 EC level while nicer than last year is not all that great.
If you get 2,000,000 TC (8 x 250,000), one choice is to watch the 2 minute Kentucky Derby at Churchill Downs in a VIP viewing area + a free dinner [transportation is NOT included]...personally I don't find this perk very exciting.

Looks like this bonus is coming back for Q2 2016. See https://www.totalrewards.com/content...dit-bonus.html

Your bankroll requirements are going to have to be huge to deal with variance. Even low variance games. $450K/$950K coin-in are pretty serious figures. Things also get very risky once you are entering into $5+ denomination VP. Not to mention the theo for a lot of the best games is very low. Off the top of my head, you are talking about sessions where you could be down in the $5-10K range. Far beyond the mathematical long-term EV. Only less risky play would be to do it at very low denominations. But, then you would probably have lousier games as well as extreme limitations on how much coin-in you could do per hour.

In the Vegas market, I believe the offers would not be that great. Unless, you put a huge value on rooms. Especially for low theo VP plays. Haven't tested this or even discussed it for quite a while. Though, CZR has traditionally been much more generous to new/dormant players. Just hard to know in advance.