35 Years of Advantage Play – Part 9

1997 and 1998 were transitional years that brought many changes.  We were still “living” in casinos – 195 days in ‘97, almost all of them comped.  I was getting pretty expert at maximizing players club benefits, working for hours to put together a puzzle with dozens of mail offer pieces to make a long frugal vacation “picture.”  I was still laboring under the mistaken belief that even with heavy quarter play we weren’t “big enough” players to use a host. We always joined the players clubs separately, not joint accounts, so we would have double the mail offers, and we could often stay in one hotel room for a week or longer by switching back and forth between our names to register.  But we were getting a little tired of schlepping our roller bags up and down the Strip and even from the Strip to and from Downtown to take advantage of the free benefits we were earning at many casinos.  We eschewed taxis, considering a long walk was a good way to get our daily exercise, but in the summer Vegas heat that was often a pretty tough method to be frugal!

Although we were still flying back and forth for most of our Vegas visits, in ‘95 we started driving from Indianapolis for our long winter stays, and that reduced the schlepping.  But in ‘97 and ‘98 we were given another opportunity to make our Vegas visits more convenient and comfortable.  A dear friend had a condo in Vegas that he did not use often and he insisted that it would benefit him if we would “take care of it for him” during our long winter stays.   The few times he would come over from California for a weekend visit, we would pack up a bag and drive to a casino where we always had ready free rooms.

Previously I talked about our early foray into dollar VP play in ’95 and then pulling back to mostly quarters for a couple of years because we psychologically were not prepared for the wilder roller coaster ride.  However, our bankroll was growing, our 50-cent play was getting us used to bigger losing sessions, so in ’97 we were starting to take advantage of more dollar high-EV opportunities.

Many of these were on Double Bonus, a positive game at 100.17%, but we had to learn a new and much more difficult strategy.  Even at the quarter level we realized this was a much more volatile game than 9/6 JoB because of paying even money on two pair instead of double.  We had gotten used to the increased volatility of Deuces Wild, but it took time to accustom ourselves to this even bigger volatility jump.  However, we were finding it with many extra benefits and/or with high progressives that  softened the volatility somewhat.

Our favorite place to play DB when we were back at our home in Indianapolis was at The Empress riverboat in Joliet, IL.  The advent of casino riverboats in the states surrounding IN was a mixed blessing. It majorly reduced our lucrative Tonk and craps play – Indiana residents were spending all their gambling dollars at the riverboats instead of at the Moose Lodge Tonk tables or the crap games at the Catholic Monte Carlos. On the other hand, some of the riverboats offered good VP games with extra benefits, giving us casino options when we weren’t in Las Vegas.

The Empress, although a brutal traffic-filled several-hour drive from Indy, beckoned us with free rooms in the nice hotel on the shore and all the food we could eat; large cash bonuses for showing up and high slot club cashback; and a bank of $1 DB progressives with a super-fast meter and many short-coin players, consistently leaving for us those big jackpots .  We loved that game.  So much so that despite our not being morning people, we would get up early so we could be in the front of long lines waiting for the boat to open.  These machines were popular and the bank filled up quickly.

A casino  guard told us a funny story about the separate handicap line.  This line was also long but it wasn’t for our machines but for the new penny slots that had just been introduced into casinos.  Those banks filled up immediately each morning and there were people waiting behind the seats, ready to snatch one when someone got up.  Although there were a few players in wheelchairs in the handicap line almost every  person was using a cane.  The guard told us that the minute many of those people got through the entrance gate and past the guard’s line of sight, they would throw away the canes and race to those wonderful penny slots.  He said the casino had hundreds of canes in their Lost-and-Found!

We hit the royal 7 times in the two years we played those machines a couple of times a month when we were back home in Indy.  The jackpot was mostly from around $5000-5500, but Brad took one down for $8143.  Of course, we had many losing sessions when we didn’t hit the royal.  I wrote this in my notes on April 14, 1997: “Rode the dollar 10/7 DB progressive from $5500 to $8100 and then we had to leave because the boat was closing for the night and we were going back to Indy the next morning.  Lost $4655 – Ugh!”

However,  we took advantage of plenty of dollar opportunities when we visited other riverboats.  Many were progressives, and we liked those on 9/6 JoB or 8/5 Bonus.  Not so much volatility.  And when we were in Vegas, we frequently played progressives whenever we found them with high level jackpots.  But we didn’t actively search for them, sticking with mostly $1 DB at our “core” casinos where we could maximize our slot club benefits.  In mid- ‘98 we were thrilled when dollar FP Deuces popped up at the Reserve and Brad hit 2 royals on them the short time they lasted, and then we found one at the Silver Legacy on a side trip to Reno.  Brad and I both hit a royal on those.  But these jewel plays never lasted very long!

There were many other changes in these two transitional years.  Here is a picture that will give you a hint about some I will discuss next week.