OpenTable: Eating out on the cheap?

Living in NYC, it'd be a sin not to take advantage of all the restaurants the city has to offer. Only bad thing is that living in NYC also means eating out can get expensive very quickly. So I decided I'd try a little experiment. I'm going to use OpenTable to try and rack up as many rewards points as possible and see if that makes eating out any cheaper at all.

OpenTable is a free online service (there are also iPhone and Android apps) that lets you make reservations at select restaurants in select cities via the Internet. You can make them in advance or in real time (the latter is kind of cool, 'cause it lets you search for restaurants with no wait time while you're out and about). The other cool thing is that OT offers a rewards program for frequent users. You get 100 points for standard dining reservations, or if you make reservations at select restaurants you get 1,000 points. What do those points earn you? You get dining checks, which you can then use when you eat out. Here's how the rewards system works:

2,000 OpenTable Points = $20 OpenTable Dining Cheque
5,000 OpenTable Points = $50 OpenTable Dining Cheque
10,000 OpenTable Points = $100 OpenTable Dining Cheque

OT is not new and there are plenty of other ways to save money while eating out, but I figured I'd start off with OT since a friend told me they saved a good amount of money via OT. I'll follow up in a month and see how many (or little) OT points I've managed to collect.