Treasure Island opened in 1993 as a Mirage-adjacent themed property — pirate aesthetic, the famous Sirens of TI free outdoor show (retired in 2013), and a casino floor connected to The Mirage via skybridge. MGM Resorts sold the property to Phil Ruffin in 2009 for $775 million, and TI has run independently ever since as a standalone property — no MGM Rewards integration, no unified-portfolio offer ladder, and a smaller standalone loyalty program. The blackjack rule card still tracks the standard Strip ruleset that the surrounding properties publish, but the comp posture and tier-credit network are fully separate from the MGM and Caesars networks.
The published Treasure Island rules
Per the verified rules database, Treasure Island main-floor full-bet ($25+) tables run the standard MGM Strip ruleset (carried over from the pre-2009 era and maintained as the property's published baseline):
- 6 decks from a shoe
- Dealer hits soft 17 (H17)
- Double after split allowed (DAS)
- Late surrender NOT offered on the main floor
- Blackjack pays 3:2 on $25+ tables, 6:5 below
The verified rules note reads: 'Standard MGM Strip ruleset. $25+ tables 3:2.' Treasure Island does not publish a high-limit room with an improved rule card; the higher-minimum tables sit at the back of the main pit on the same H17 baseline. The 'now independent post-MGM-sale' caveat applies to the comp ecosystem rather than the rule card itself; the published rules have remained stable through the ownership change.
House edge and EV per hour
Main-floor $25 H17 DAS no-LS 3:2 game: house edge approximately 0.72%. At 80 hands per hour:
- $25 average bet: -$14.40 per hour, -$43.20 per 3-hour session
- $50 average bet: -$28.80 per hour, -$86.40 per 3-hour session
- $100 average bet: -$57.60 per hour, -$172.80 per 3-hour session
Identical math to every other Strip property running the same H17 / 6D / DAS / no-LS / 3:2 published card.
How this stacks up vs the textbook baseline
0.22 percentage points worse than the 0.50% textbook reference — the same posture as the rest of the standard-tier Strip portfolio. TI's edge differentiation, if any, is in the comp ecosystem rather than the rule card.
Where to sit at Treasure Island
Treasure Island's casino floor is one of the smaller flagship-class floors on the Strip — roughly 80,000 square feet, compared to The Venetian's 120,000 or MGM Grand's 170,000. The pit layout is compact, with the main pit centered on the floor and the high-limit area partitioned toward the property's north side near the Senor Frog's entrance. The 6:5 tables sit at the perimeter facing the Strip-side entrance and the skybridge from The Mirage; the $25 3:2 tables run deeper into the pit toward the back and toward the high-limit partition.
A specific seat-finding observation: TI's north-Strip location next to The Mirage and across from Wynn means the cross-property foot traffic skews toward visitors transferring between flagships rather than a property-specific walk-in crowd. Floor pace runs steadier through the day with fewer pronounced peaks than the central-Strip properties; the Sirens-of-TI-retired identity means the property no longer has a free-show-driven evening foot-traffic spike. Working basic-strategy players will find consistent $25 3:2 availability on weekday evenings and Sunday-evening slots when the central-Strip crowd shifts back to its anchor properties.
The skybridge connection to The Mirage is the single most distinctive geography feature for blackjack seat-finding. Players using the skybridge enter the floor at the property's south side; the 6:5 perimeter is heavily concentrated there. Walking through the perimeter and toward the back of the pit, past the cocktail bar, reaches the $25 3:2 tables and the high-limit partition. The walk-past-the-perimeter rule applies here exactly as at the unified-MGM standard-tier properties.
Standalone comp posture at Treasure Island
TI runs its own standalone loyalty program — TI Rewards — separate from MGM Rewards and Caesars Rewards. Comp reinvestment at the standard tier runs approximately 15%-25% of theoretical loss, in line with the broader standard-tier Strip norm, but the program is materially smaller in scale than the unified MGM or Caesars portfolios. There is no cross-property tier-credit consolidation; theoretical loss accumulated at TI converts only to TI rooms, TI dining, and TI-branded offers. Phil Ruffin's other properties (Circa Resort downtown, the former Trump International) are not tier-integrated with TI.
The standalone comp posture has specific upsides: TI hosts the discretion to write offers off the published-tier ladder, sometimes more generous on a per-theoretical-dollar basis than the equivalent unified-portfolio tier slot would publish — particularly for a player who routes consistent volume through TI and develops a host relationship without trying to cross-pollinate offers to other properties. The downside is the lack of portability — a tier achieved at TI does not carry to MGM Rewards or Caesars Rewards properties, so a player splitting trips across the Strip cannot consolidate TI volume into a multi-property comp story.
Restaurant lineup — Gilley's Saloon, Phil's Italian Steak House, Senor Frog's, the food-court tier near the Strip-side entrance — converts to comp inventory at competitive per-cover value, particularly at the casual tier. TI's room product is the most aggressive value play among standalone Strip properties; the published rack rates run below the MGM and Caesars equivalents, and the comp-redemption nightly rates fall below that, which makes TI a strong room-comp destination for the modest-stake player who would otherwise pay rack at a unified-portfolio standard-tier property.