Here's a fact worth noting: A company with a long history in frequent-flyer program research says that Continental Airlines is the most liberal of the five remaining "network" carriers when it comes to claiming free rewards.

Here's another fact worth noting: When I wanted a couple of business-class tickets to Rome earlier this year, I scored freebies from my Continental OnePass account for just 105,000 miles each. I got the seats I wanted on the days I wanted to fly on my first attempt, which meant I didn't have to pay about $4,000 each roundtrip to live la dolce vita with my frequent-flying wife for a couple of weeks.

Now here's the truth: Neither fact matters. When it comes to choosing and using frequent-flyer programs, you're on your own. Who cares what a research report says is good or bad among the major plans? Why should you give a damn that I got two (free) tickets to paradise?

Like business travel itself, playing the frequent-flyer game is an exercise in selfishness. All that should matter to you is what you can have when you want something—an upgrade, a free ticket, merchandise—in return for the loyalty you've shown to an airline and its ever-increasing army of frequency-plan marketing partners. Everything else is just background noise.

As noise goes, however, I'll admit that the new report from IdeaWorks is a good read. Over the span of two months, it made 6,160 booking requests at the websites of 22 frequent-flyer plans. It tried to claim a pair of free roundtrip tickets at the lowest published level (i.e., the most restricted) on both long- and short-haul routes for travel through October.

The big winner? Southwest Airlines' Rapid Reward program, which made seats available 99 percent of the time. The big loser: US Airways' Dividend Miles plan, which made freebies available just 10.7 percent of the time. In between were good showings for Alaska Airlines (75 percent) and a handful of overseas airlines that offer only a few flights to the United States. Continental's 71.4 percent was followed by its potential merger partner, United Airlines (68.6 percent); a poor showing for American Airlines (57.9 percent); and a disastrous 12.9 percent availability rating for Delta Air Lines.

Of course, I could easily poke holes in the IdeaWorks survey: Southwest doesn't fly internationally, thus offers you no shot at Rome or Rio. Despite its dreadful showing at the restricted level, Delta's SkyMiles program at least offers the increasingly rare guarantee that you can claim any seat in its system at any time if you're willing to cash enough miles. And who is really surprised that US Airways finishes last in any survey?

But that shouldn't matter to you. With something like 10 trillion frequent-flyer miles chasing a constantly decreasing supply of free seats due to shrunken airline route systems and tighter redemption rules, it's best to focus on practical ways to maximize your own participation in the frequency programs. So here are some simple ground rules to help you make the best decisions for your own travel and your own spending.

Understand the Game

Frequent-flyer programs are unregulated—the 21st century equivalent of the company store. The airlines that sponsor them make all of the rules, set all of the earnings level, control all of the awards, and reserve the right to do whatever they want, whenever they want. They can inflate or deflate the value of their "currency" and never have to pay off with a free seat. Forget about fair. Forget about honest. If you play, you play by their rules. And if they sometime forget to mention a rule (an example: the Mileage Plus program from United Airlines secretly limits the total number of award seats it allows members to claim on Star Alliance carriers), well, that's just part of the game.

Don't Buy the Lie

Frequent-flyer programs are literally lies. They long ago stopped being about rewarding your loyalty to a particular airline and years ago morphed into massive marketing machines aimed at selling you everything from flower-delivery services to credit cards. Every one of the airline's so-called "partners" buy miles from the carrier and give them to you as a way to change your purchasing pattern. The only shot you have at "winning" the game is never to buy anything just to earn miles. The only miles that have any real value to you are the ones you earn "free" as a result of a purchase you were going to make anyway.