VP High Roller

On Saturday I ventured up to Harrahs Rincon in Escondido, CA to take advantage of $140 free play offer along with a $60 food comp. I was surprised to see that the remodeling, which is almost completed has closed the room where my favorite Dream Card machines were located. The entire area was gone and the new VP Zone has been moved just a little north. I feared they had finally taken the two Dream Card machines out, but as relieved to find obscurely in the middle of a bank of the newer VP machines.

I sat down and put in my card and found a $50 free play offer. I wasn't worried about it because I knew the $140 would show up later which it later did. Why I'm writing this is because as I sat down at one of the two machines, there was another guy at the other. I first was impressed that he was playing 10-play but then I noticed he as playing at the dollar level and was playing the Dream Card bonus. That's $100 per dealt hand. I flashed down to how much he had and was currently over $2000. I began playing at my usual quarter level 5-play without the Dream Card bonus (25 coins instead of 50) but as I played I was sneaking glances at his play. I had never seen anyone play video poker at $100 per hand before.

He soon ran out of money and simply put in another ticket for $1000. He had a small stack of these. After a couple of hands he was dealt three 4s and the Dream Card gave him the fourth. He was playing Bonus Poker (8/5) and the machine locked up for a $2000 hand pay. Here's the interesting part: he walks away before the hand pay. The attendant comes over and I say I think he may have gone to the rest room. She calls on the radio to someone. Another attendant comes over. He comes back with a couple of bottled waters. He signs the tax form and the attendant doesn't pay him in cash, she pays him with two $1000 tickets. I've never seen this before.

It seems that the high rollers go to the cashier and get tickets I instead of cash so they're not taking a lot of time pumping in hundreds. Then they make an arrangement to be paid in tickets instead of cash. This was all fascinating to me. I really wanted to talk with him and pick his brain about how how he can play at this level, but he gave me the impression he didn't want to chat.

As for me, my $140 free play showed up, so I had a total of $190 this day. I came today because in addition to the free play, I could go to the promotions booth and collect $75 in cash. I got lucky and hit quad Aces and a couple other quads and cashed out $200. I then picked up my $75 cash and got my ticket for the $60 food comp, which I used in their Mexican restaurant. That's a lot of money for a single, so I or ordered ceviche and the the steak combination with deep fried ice cream. The meal was amazing. When I gave the the voucher along with my 7 Stars card, he came back with two boxes which were a large margarita pit her and six margarita glasses. Wow!

One heck of a good choice to go to the casino today.

Congrats to you for your winnings and the Margartia goodies.
We were at Borgata once talking to our host (she had an office in the slot high roller area) and we watched 2 women in their late 20's playing side by side machines at $300 a pull for max bet.
The hand pay guy just hung nearby as there were many payouts.
They also had a spread if food I was drooling over.

Ahhh to be so wealthy, looks like fun!

Congrats on your win and the swag!

Every now and then I play next to a big roller. Once in Atlatic City. over two decades ago, I was playing roulette. This slob of a guy sat down and just sat there. Shortly, someone delivered a tray of chips worth $10,000! In less than 15 minutes, he lost that and got another.

I couldn't stand it anymore, so I left. Hope he recouped his losses!

Joy

Sorry but that wasn't a hi roller. Not even close. Sounds more like someone with not a lot of play knowledge that got lucky and collected some $1000 tickets. I would think that you fared better than him overall that night.

Was it MoneyLA?

Fun story, JMan. Thanks. Sort of makes sense to use tickets instead of bills for that much coin in. Interesting.

$100 per coin players can get W-2Gs on about 45% of their hands, so a casino will typically have an employee there full time just to handle the paperwork.

It's all relative to what people usually play. I've never played VP for more than $15/hand.

I've played $100 minimum BJ and have bet $120 - $500/spin roulette for several hours per session. That is well above what most people play. Most people would look at that level of play to be high rolling. At the same time, while playing at those levels there have been other players at the same tables playing for substantially more.

This is what can happen when playing VP at a VERY high roller level. Poker player Huck Seed hit this progressive at the Aria (I think?) playing a single line $500 progressive betting $2,500/hand. I was told he had $45,000 in before hitting this royal. I could easily retire on that much money!

Did you get that from Obama? Read the info first, not throw out a wild guess or wait to hear about it from other sources. There were no $100 coins, it was a ten play/$10 per line game. Man! Like father, like son.

I believe that was a $100 machine.