Tropicana $200 freeplay reimbursement

We wrote about this in December but hadn’t tried it until this past weekend.
At the new Tropicana (which looks elegant and completely different but still retains the small atmosphere — no trapeze artists swinging down and throwing coins, like the Trop of old), there’s a +EV promotion where you can play $200 in slots or video poker, and if you lose, you’ll get $100 back in freeplay immediately.  And then you can get the other $100 back in freeplay if you return a month or more later.
It’s pretty simple — just stand in line to get a Trop player’s card (it’s free).  Then play $200 of any game you want, even progressives (these games are usually excluded from promos).  If you win, great, just cash out and leave.  If you lose (like we did), return to the player’s club and insert your card into the kiosk.  It’ll instantly prompt you for your $100 freeplay, which will be loaded onto your card.  You must do this immediately after losing.
You then just need to playthrough $100 and then you can cashout.  We played video poker at the bar next to the club, and picked up some free cocktails while grinding out our $100 in Double Double.  There’s no marker to notify you when you’ve finished playing the $100, so just count the number of pulls/hands.
When we were at $100, we were still down, so we kept going.  And going, and… well, we ended up not cashing out because we went down to $0, just like the promotion is designed.
But we’ll be back 30 days from now to get our remaining $100, and this time we’ll make sure to cash out!