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Credit Lines for casino play - how to get a casino credit line
I am not referring to "check cashing privileges" which most anyone may obtain, at least for reasonably sized checks, but about lines of credit where you may pull "markers" against it to be paid back within a period of time.
In general figure that markers are like American Express - that must be paid back in full every billing cycle. (Or, they will break your legs.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Ii0_2kAYlU
Well, actually � no, that was in the old days only.)
When I used to gamble heavily, I had $20K lines at almost every major casino in Vegas, plus $20K - $50K lines in every casino on the south shore in Tahoe. Then I quit gambling for over a decade, and recently started getting back into it, and opened many $50K lines in Vegas only. (Lately I have increased these lines to far greater than $50K.)
When you apply for casino credit, they will look at the following:
1. They will do a hard pull of your consumer credit. (Some - very few - do a soft pull.) My experience has been that this is pulled on Experian. Obviously they want to see that you have good credit and pay your bills, but also they don't want to see maxed out credit cards, which could be a sign of financial strain. The authorization to run your consumer credit will be right there in the application you submit/sign.
Below are the relevant images from my Experian that I got a free copy of recently.
Attachment 306
I redacted the exact dates, and some of the inquiries were about to drop off this particular credit report at the two year mark, but you may note that Wynn, Cosmopolitan, Treasure Island and Palms all do a hard inquiry. Venetian (Sands LLC) does a soft. But all do pull your personal credit and will not issue you a credit line without looking at it closely. No deadbeats allowed!
2. They will pull some form of "casino industry" credit for you, to determine what casino credit lines you have had in the past, and whether you have been faithful with always paying them off without delinquencies. To some extent when they pull this they are also looking to see how much credit you have available out there, but for whatever reason casinos don't seem to worry too much about this - in other words, if you qualify with one casino for a $50K line and that casino sees that you already have two other $50K lines out there, they don't check to make sure that you could pay off a $150K blowout. They should check to make sure you could potentially pay back a blow out on all open lines, but they do not.
Back then this credit report was always pulled from a Las Vegas outfit called Central Credit (now called Everi) - these days they are additionally using an outfit out of San Diego called VisuaLimits LLC (aka NCC Reports) for certain bank verifications. Some casinos will use both NCC Reports and Everi to get all needed information about you.
What a lot of people don't know, is that these casino credit bureaus must follow the same rules as consumer credit bureaus, including giving you a free annual copy of your credit report, deleting any derogatory information seven years after last payment, deleting inquiries after two years, and so on.
3. They will verify the average balance at the checking accounts you give them, over at lest the past 90 days. (Know that: on these casino industry credit profiles their report will show average balances on your bank accounts going back up to one and half YEARS.) They will in general give you only a credit line that is equal to or lower than the average balance in the accounts you give them for verification. So if you have a checking account with say, an average $75K balance, you will more than qualify for a $50K line.
One thing that has changed with respect to what kind of checking accounts the casinos will accept, is that in the old days, casinos would accept any checking account, business or personal, for verification without regards to who owned the business, practically, as long as you were a signer on the account. Nowadays they are more strict about this, and want to verify that you are the 100% owner of that account and business, if you submit a business account, and some of the casinos now insist on personal checking accounts only for verification.
Besides the above big 3, they will of course also look at your age, on some of these applications they will ask for your employment and stated income, and they will also look at your gaming history to see how reliable you have been with your past casino dealings. If your host knows you, he can step in and vouch for you and override some minor concerns that might come up during the checks of the above three big factors. The best way to apply is to first get friendly with a host and submit the application through your host, who will go to bat for you to some extent to get you the line, especially if he knows you.
Little known insider Fact: if you apply for a line of $100K or above, they will also do a full background check on you.
Once you have your line, you may pull any amount up to your line per trip, and they might even authorize temporary what they call "TTO" credit line increases (typically 25%) on a per trip basis. If you lose and are unable to pay your line off during your stay, they will deposit the markers in due course, just like checks, into your bank accounts. If they know you and you have a good gaming history with them, they will wait up to 90 days before they deposit, but nowadays they like to deposit everything much sooner than that.
In Nevada, if a deposited marker bounces and you fail to make good on it, casinos will turn the checks over to the district attorney who will prosecute you for check fraud, and add 10% to the balance owed as a fee, and basically extort all of it out of you with the threat of criminal prosecution hanging over your head. If it gets to that point, the D.A. sometimes just threatens to file a case, other times does file it but withholds the arrest warrant, and in some cases proceeds all the way with a prosecution, but in all cases if the NSF (non-sufficient funds) check offender pays up he avoids jail. The basic rule is to never sign one of those markers unless you know you have the funds to cover it one way or another, and to treat gambling very seriously.
Advantages of marker play are that a casino will be much more liberal about extending you comps (free stuff) if they know you have an established line which means that you are giving them a regular shot at taking your money, versus a cash player or even a front money player (one who deposits or wires funds to the casino in advance of each visit) where they can't know for sure that they will be able to get hold of any more of your money than what you have presented that trip. Disadvantages of course are that if you lose control you might end up blowing out your whole line.
Other advantages of marker play are that it can give you the leverage ("bullets") to come back from a loss, because you may keep playing, but - in general - if you are on a losing streak having less money available is better than having a lot.
Good luck, and gamble responsibly!
