Game selection and daily routine

I began playing Excalibur and rarely played other games until level 30 or so. I do not like the games with the “find objects in a picture” bonus game as I am very poor at them. I don’t play the high-roller games simply because my bankroll of 200-300K does not allow it without a high risk of bankruptcy. Blackjack is mostly a levelling-up tool for me when I need 330 or more XP and I am tired of spinning slots. My maximum bankroll was slightly over 500K and my lowest point was about 20K.

For almost two months I gathered coins/LP three times a day; morning, noon and night.
I would play a mixture of slots and blackjack for about 3 hours a day on average. I accumulated approximately 75K LP that I used to buy rewards and have about 6K left. I have 50K coins on the mobile app and 200K on the PC platform. I am moving towards a second phase of play.

I have the rewards I need for my upcoming trip so there is little need to collect more LP immediately. I have built the MGM Grand so I don’t really need to level-up. My plan is to collect the daily bonuses, hotel bonuses and chip shares until I have over a miilion chips on the PC and 100K on the mobile app. Then I’ll begin to play at higher limits for my next Vegas trip. If that take 6-8 months that’s OK.

Thanks for reading. Feel free to send comments to the blogs. Good luck at myVegas.

Kirby

Quest/Challenge strategy

These two concepts are essentially the same with Quests offered on the PC/MAC platform and the mobile apps and Challenges offered in MyStrip only in the mobile apps. You get credits towards bonuses during your slot play.

Challenges are game specific – you get coins/LP for wiinning a certain muber of LP or a certain number of slot symbols from a limited choice of games. They are really designed to encourgae you to try out more games than just your favorite. A very important point is that they are NOT time-based. You can take as little or as long a time as you want to win their reward. As such they are excellent candidates for minimum bet spins unless the challenge requires a MAX bet.

Quests are similar in concept but they all have multiple levels of rewards with increasing coin or LP rewards. The increased rewards come with at the price of increased spins required to complete the quest AND the only way to get them quicker is to increase your bet size. Naturally, overplaying your bankroll to win the quest runs a high risk of losing all your coins so you have to balance risk vs reward. To edge you towards bankruptcy, the game designers have cleverly added a time limit for each quest. It may be hours or days, but if you don’t complete the quest within the time limit you lose the chance to win bigger rewards. Speeding along with a high bet to meet the deadline is almost a surefire formula for bankruptcy!

My philosopy is geared towards bankroll preservation so I view quest/challenges as optional. It’s not too risky to win the lower level rewards in normal play and sometime I have a levelling-up need that will induce me to try for the mid-level rewards. I only tried to reach the high-level rewards twice and came close to bankruptcy both times. My advice is to avoid quests and challenges in normal play.

I’ll do one last post on game selection and then consider this blog complete.

Backjack and myVegas

Blackjack is the only table game offered in myVegas. It has advantages over slot machines in levelling up.

Keep in mind that you only get half your bet as XP in blackjack but the long-term house advantage in blackjack is about 1% which is less then for the slots.

You get LPs at a faster rate than with low-limit slots because your bet size is much larger.

Blackjack is not available on the mobile platform and playing it does not earn credits to quests/challenges.

If you enjoy blackjack it should be part of your overall strategy, but if you don’t it’s OK to just stick to slots.

Now let’s move on the quests/challenges.

Levelling up strategy

Levelling up requires Experience points (XP) which come from playing the slot or card games. At each new level you get coins and LP. You may also get game enhancements such as new games, auto-spins, and increased bet size limits. Finally, hotel construction begins at pre-defined levels. All in all it’s important to level up efficiently, blending speed with bankroll safety. Keep in mind my comments in an earlier post abourt bet sizing and risk of ruin and you’ll be OK. I began by betting minimums and rarely went over 10 coins/line.

If you can play blackjack with a basic strategy sheet, it can be really helpful to level up. The key is that you will need a bankroll of somewhere around 200,000 coins to play efficiently without risking bankruptcy. I generally bet 5K-10K and could absorb the bankroll swings that will happen in blackjack.

You can see the reward for levelling up by clicking on your current levl number in the center of the screen.

I’ll say a few words about blackjack in the next post.

Hotel building strategy

You will build hotels all the way through level 88. Building them requires collectin myVegas Vs in slots or blackjack. I believe each hotel hjas seven unique each parts, each of which requires a pre-determined number of Vs. The start out easy to build but the V req increases for each hotel so that by the time you get to the MGM GRand at level 68 you need 99 Vs for most of the parts.

It is very important to note that the bet size does NOT affect V awards so you can bet the minimum amount for a slot game, thus protecting your bankroll. You wuill not gain LP or XP very quickly but the goal is to get the hotel built without losing too many coins. I have found that I get a long-term average of 1 V for every 13 spins although they often come in clusters. If you are trying to build a hotel and are no getting that many Vs, I strongly suggest trying a different slot game. Increasing the bet size will not help! Just experiment to find a slot that will give a good number of bonus rounds as well as good number of Vs. Your bankroll at minimum bet will go up and down a couple of thousand coins but it should be safe.

The final point is not to play blackjack during the hotel construction phase. You will need 13 hands to get one V and that’s way too inefficient.

Once the hotel is built you will get a small number of chips right away but the big payoff is the “collection” of addition coins and LP every 6 hours or so.

Next let’s discuss levelling up.

Avoiding bankruptcy

There is a mathematical concept named risk of ruin that applies to gambling. Basically, if you have a limited number of coins (bankroll), there is a bet size that can be played forever without going broke as long as the game has a long-term user advantage. Now as I mentioned in an earlier post, just playing the slots or blackjack withou collecting any bonuses would eventually doom you to bankruptcy but the bonuses/gifts can make make up for your game losses. The trick is not to have your bet size too large for your bankroll. As an example, assume you have 100,000 coints and can bet 50,000 coins per spin. You could bet 50K per spin and win really big but it’s more likley that after just a couple of spins your hard-earned coins will all be gone and you will have to begin the slow process of re-building your bankroll. Now imagine that you bet only 1,000 coins per spin. You will get some in-game bonuses that help to replenish your bankroll and if you can show the self-discipline to stop playing when you’ve lost half-your bankroll and until you can get back up to 100K with bonuses and gifts, you will never go broke.

Of course this is easier said than done. Betting big gives a big rush when you win huge coin amounts. Betting small means it takes much longer to earn LP and level-up. In the end you have to find your balance point. As this blog goes along, you will see that I favor small bets unless there is a reason for larger ones and I will NEVER bet 10% of my bankroll on a single spin!

That’s it for today. Next time I will discuss how I bet size for LP, levelling-up, hotel building and quests.

Keep your eyes on the Loyalty Points (LP)

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Never forget that your goal is to accumulate LP.  LP are what you redeem for MGM rewards.  Coins are a means to that goal but not the only means.

You get coins basically in four ways (two on the mobile app):

(1) Daily spin

(2) Playing slots

(3) Gifts from friends and myVegas (PC/MAC only)

(4) Hotel collection (PC/MAC only).

The daily spin is calulated from four components: (1) base win, usually coins but sometimes LP, (2) how many days in a row you have logged in – 5 in a row is the max bonus of 3x base but you will want to log in to all accounts at least once a day, (2) Facebook MyVegas friends multiplier upto 5 x if you have 50 friends and (3) a small multiplier for Liking myVegas on Facebook.  Any LP you get here means less slots spins in the future.  Moral of the story – find 50 myVegas players on Facebook and send a friend request.  Over 50 is OK, but not really needed.  NOTE: the mobile version also has a bonus that regenerates every 4 hours in addition to the daily spin.  This sort of makes up for not having hotels as a coin source

Playing slots is the main way to gain LP.  myVegas is well designed in the sense that just like real casino slots you will go broke eventually.  You will go broke faster if you do not get good bonus games or if you bet too much per spin.  Of course this is part of the marketing strategy as you can always buy the play coins for real money.  If you follow this guide you should not need to buy coins!

Gifts from friends depends on giving and receiving coins from myVegas friends.  This applies only to the PC/MAC platform.  The more myVegas friends you have the greater the opportunities to gain coins.  I have noticed that I get a few LP for each friend I gift.  These gifts come as Facebook Notifications when you login to Facebook.  You can also get some coins from user groups but I found that most of them are quickly depleted and I stopped trying to collec coins that way.  myVegas will also occasionally gift you some coins or LP.  Watch for e-mails to your myVegas Facebook account for these.

The hotels you build and a few nonhotels in the PC/MAC platform will generate coins or LP every 4-6 hours in variable amounts.  The earliest hotels generate smaller bonuses but even they can add a couple of thousand coins a day.  I collect in the morning, mid-afternoon and night because that leaves me a life outside myVegas but some of these regenerate in an hour or less.

Why bother with these spins and bonuses?  Simply because they are the only thing standing between your gameplay and eventual bankruptcy.  So develop a method for collecting tem systematically.

Next we’ll discuss bankroll management and the concept of risk of ruin.

 

First tasks

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(1) If you have not already created a separate Facebook account just for playing MyVegas, I strongly recommend you do it. Otherwise tour friends and family will see all you MyVegas posts and your MyVegas friends will see birthday pictures intended for your famiy. All you need is a second e-mail address exclusively for your MyVegas Facebook account. The create a unique user name on this Facebook account that indicates it’s a MyVegas user. This e-mail account is the one which will receive MyVegas bonus e-mails and purchase confirmations. This may seem confusing but I never considdered doing it and now my everyday Facebook experience is a mess.

(2) If you have an Android or IOS device that will play the MyVegas App, download it. It does not have as many features as the PC/MAC version but will accumulate Loyalty Points (LP) and they can be synced toyour PC/MAC account. Login with your MyVegas Facebook account info.

(3) LIKE MyVegas. You will get periodic bonuses via e-mail if you do.

(4) Like the Facebook user James Hite. He gifts a lot of chips every day and even gifts LP once a month.

(5) Join a MyVegas Facebook Group. My favorite is MyVegas Gifts, Guides and Giveaways.

That will get you started with a few chips. But hold off on starting to play right away. We need to discuss bankroll management and a general play strategy BEFORE you begin. That comes in the next post.

Why another MyVegas strategy resource?

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I know that there are other strategy guides available on the web for MyVegas, but I hope that my recent experience will be helpful to the new player. If you are considering playing or are a new player there may be some pointers in this blog which will help you meet your playing goals. At this time I am level 68, have about 200,000 coins and have rrdeeemed most of my points for rewards on an upcoming trip to Las Vegas. I am not going to try to put everything into one massive post, but will break it into smaller, more digestible chunks. If I have made a grossly incorrect comment, please feel free to post a comment. This is a totally open blog. Thanks