I rarely play two video poker machines at once. One exception is when the South Point runs their “Money Madness” promotion, where they have a casino-wide progressive that must hit between $10,000 and $25,000 (along with a smaller progressive as well.)
If you’re playing and somebody else hits the progressive, which is usually going to be the case, you still get $25 in free play as a consolation prize. So, playing on both my card and Bonnie’s doubles my chances for that $25 bonus. And if the game I’m playing generates relatively frequent W2Gs, that’s all the more reason to want a second machine.
One of those situations occurred last February 19, which was Presidents’ Day, and the casino was offering 2x points, which was worth 0.6% there. Other casinos were offering 6x points, which amounts to the same thing, but the South Point has a bigger variety of better games to play.
I got there about 2 a.m., planning on playing twelve or so hours if I could. When I was younger, I planned on longer shifts, but only being able to play twelve hours at a time now is hardly the biggest compromise I’ve had to make as a senior citizen.
There are several acceptable games to play on such a day. One of them is Ultimate X where they have two 25¢ Ten Play machines. It’s a lucrative pay schedule, but it’s $25-per-pull price tag and sky-high volatility makes it more expensive than many players wish to tackle. Still, they are popular machines with many players playing 5¢ or 10¢ variations which have considerably lesser pay schedules.
About 15 minutes into me playing both machines, a guy who I’ll call Ed, said, “You’re not really planning on playing both of those all night, are you?”
That’s not at all the same as saying, “May I play one of those machines?” to which my answer was always going to be, “Of course.” I appreciate that the South Point sponsors both my podcast and my classes and quite simply I’m not going to get into any argument on the floor that might encourage the bosses to conclude that I’m too much trouble.
Whether Ed’s question met my definition as a proper request, it’s possible he meant it as such. I asked him if he wanted to play one and he nodded, so I picked the machine on which I wished to continue, played off my multipliers on the other, cashed out, and consolidated.
After some initial pleasantries, I went back to playing my machine. Although I can play quite a few different games at a high level, one price of playing so many is that if I don’t concentrate on what I’m doing, I can easily get the strategies mixed up.
Ed, however, liked to talk.
Talk, talk, talk, talk, talk.
Soon after he got there, somebody nearby got a jackpot, so there were extra casino workers around. He asked anybody who was listening whether they heard about the actress who stabbed her husband that morning? Nobody had heard. Ed said he thinks it was “Reese somebody.” The floorman ventured “Witherspoon?” Ed replied, “No silly. With her knife!”
Did I mention he never shut up?
After the initial couple of minutes, I simply hunkered down in front of the machine and ignored everything he said. He’d ask direct questions, such as, “Why did you play the hand that way?” or “I heard it was your birthday last week. Anything interesting happen?” or “Have you had any big jackpots on these machines?” I didn’t respond to any of these. I couldn’t make him shut up, but if I didn’t answer back, perhaps he’d take the hint after an hour or three.
He decided to tell me about a recent situation when he played two machines simultaneously at a casino in Laughlin. There was a hot seat promotion, where $100 in free play is awarded randomly every so many minutes, and he was playing on both his card and his wife’s card, even though she was 100 miles away.
He was asked to give up one of the machines and he said he was holding one for his wife. The player was persistent, but Ed wouldn’t budge. The player went to the shift manager, who came back and said that house policy was that you could only play one machine at a time if somebody else wished to play one. Ed’s name was now recorded by the casino and if this happens again, he will be restricted from the club.
So, Ed moved over and let the other player have one of the machines. The player inserted $5, played one hand, lost, and then stood up and told Ed, “That’s my limit. You can have the machine back again.”
“You went to all that trouble and you only wanted to play five dollars?” Ed’s voice became animated. Even so, I kept playing my machine without comment.
“This guy screwed me!” Ed ranted. “Five lousy dollars was all he wanted to play and now the casino has my name down as a trouble maker. It’s so unfair!”
While I was NOT going to discuss it with Ed at the time, which would have kept him going for another hour or two protesting how he got screwed, I think Ed brought it on himself.
He lied to keep an extra machine, basically taking a shot. Sometimes when you take a shot, things backfire. That’s what happened here.
You cannot wait until everything plays out and then demand a Mulligan in order to try again. You have to make your decisions before you know exactly what’s going to happen.
And if your decision turns out badly? Well sometimes gambling works that way and sometimes life works that way. Nobody screwed him. I think the phrase, “Hoist on his own petard!” is apt here. And since he wouldn’t shut up, I can’t say I felt sorry for him at all!
