Players Card (Volume 2)

OK, time to get serious. Let's start with Total Rewards:

For reasons I will explain later, there is almost no point trying to get to Seven Stars unless you happen to be a millionaire. Getting to Platinum will definitely get you plenty of free offers to delight you, but getting to Diamond is the objective with Total Rewards. It makes ALL the difference reaching that  milestone. And I will explain later, I promise.

The website showing this information is HERE.

Gold - zero
Platinum - 5000 Tier Credits
Diamond - 15,000 Tier Credits
Seven Stars - 150,000 Tier Credits*

You earn 1 Tier Credit for each $5 turnover on a slot machine. (There are many other way to earn them, but I'm sticking to slot play for the moment). So in basic cash terms:

Gold - zero
Platinum - $25,000 TURNOVER
Diamond - $75,000 TURNOVER
Seven Stars - $750,000 TURNOVER*

* - Seven Stars is by invitation only - meaning they want to vet you first!

Now, those numbers may seem high, but they also have bonuses if you do a high turnover in 24 hours (Starting 6am to 5.59am the next day):

Earn 500 Tier Credits and receive bonus 125
Earn 1000 Tier Credits and receive bonus 1000
Earn 2500 Tier Credits and receive bonus 5000 (Platinum in one day)
Earn 5000 Tier Credits and receive bonus 10,000 (Diamond in one day)

So if you gamble $200 a week and rarely achieve 100 Tier Credits in a day, it could take you longer than a year to make Diamond, and since the system resets every January 1st, you'll never do it. Sorry.
On the other hand, if you only go to the casino once a year, take the same amount of money (52 x $200 = $10,400) and manage to earn 5000 Tier Credits, you'd be diamond in a day.

So, for Total Rewards, you are definitely rewarded for playing more money less often. On a personal note I would say that during most of the last 7 or 8 years of being Diamond I achieved it mostly from playing $200 a week, and then rolling my bigger wins into those targets to achieve bonus levels. I rarely did it with my money! One Christmas I did dip in to my money to make sure I got the last few Tier Credits needed to get over the hurdle, as maintaining Diamond is worth a lot of money to me. But in general I have just gone along each week with about $200, not particularly worried about winning or losing, but focused quite intently on having fun, eating a free meal, drinking some free drinks, and if I should happen to win anything useful, then keeping one eye very closely on my Tier Rewards to make sure I maximize my evening's enjoyment by reaching the relevant bonus target. Once I've made diamond for the year then there's a whole different reason to play - profit! But until I am diamond, that is the ONLY target I have in mind.

OK, let's look at MGM's MLife Tier structure now:

With MLife Rewards you are trying to get to Platinum to get the really worthwhile comps. Also note that with MGM their Tier Credit accumulation is determined from October 1st through September 30, not January 1 to December 31 like TR does!

Sapphire - 0
Pearl 25,000
Gold 75,000
Platinum >200,000
Noir - by invitation only.

Tier Credits are earned in Las Vegas, on Slots only, at a rate of 25 credits per dollar turnover. So the actual cash equivalents here would be:

Sapphire - zero
Pearl - $1,000
Gold - $3,000
Platinum - $8,000

I find those numbers incredibly low, so I'm tempted to double check that now I see them in writing, but for the moment that does appear to be the case.

Let's take a quick look at the benefits offered for Diamond vs Platinum:

(this is really looking ONLY at the Diamond and Platinum benefits, I'm not so bothered about any lesser benefits!)

(You should be able to click on the image(s) to expand them)

Now that's clearly far too much information to understand, so I'm going to just leave that here for you to refer to, hope that it never changes or I'll be screwed, and on the next entry go over some of those, and some additional pointers in a little more detail. But let me leave you with this one story - many years ago I was in Las Vegas with my family, about to get in line for the Buffet at The Paris, which was not less than a three hour wait. It's a good buffet to be sure - but 3 hours? Anyway, there's a door that is separate from the main entrance, marked nice and clearly "Diamond and Seven Stars Entrance". We walked in, showed my Diamond Card and were seated IMMEDIATELY. It was at that point in time that my wife conceded that whatever it took me to get to Diamond Status in future, she must be told to let me do it. Diamond has many many awesome benefits, but few are more satisfying than saving three hours standing in line for a buffet with 3 starving kids next to you.