In last week’s article, I mentioned that I had played $500,000 coin-in on a game at the Palms. A man I know as “Al from New York” asked me how I could possibly get that much money into a machine. After all, feeding a machine with hundred dollar bills is a time-consuming process. (I normally don’t give out the real names of people in my columns, but Al complained that he never got credit for his questions, so I took that as permission to use his name.)
How you get money into a machine varies by casino. At the Palms, they will sell you “purchase tickets” for $1,000 each. A purchase ticket looks very much like a normal “cashout voucher” which we’ve all used at casinos that have “ticket in ticket out” technology. Some casinos will create a purchase ticket for any amount that you want.
At the start of my gambling day, I could trade a “strap” of $5,000 (i.e. 50 $100 bills) for five $1,000 purchase tickets. I would feed one or two of them into the machine and away I’d go. I might have brought the strap with me or I could have taken out a “marker” (a casino IOU).
Another feature that is player-friendly is “key-to-credit” technology. As I was playing 25¢ Hundred Play 8/5 Bonus Poker on that day at the Palms, let’s say I was dealt four kings. Since I’m a professional player, I made the correct play and held all four of them! That created a W2G jackpot of $3,125. Let’s further assume I had $2,500 in credits before I hit this jackpot.
At some machines, the casino has the technology to leave the credits on the machine after I sign the W2G— i.e. my new balance would be $5,625. On other machines, without the key-to-credit technology, the best they could do would be to bring me three $1,000 purchase tickets and $125 in real cash money. (Casinos that can create purchase tickets for any amount sometimes have a limit of $3,000 that the machines will accept at one time. In that case, they might bring me one ticket of $2,000 and one for $1,125.)
If I’m going to be playing one of these machines for two or more days in a row, I might take home some tickets (or leave them in a safe deposit box) rather than cash them out at the end of my first day’s play. Starting the second day’s play with a ticket for $2,500 or more means I don’t even have to go by the booth to get purchase tickets.
With reasonable luck, my total score will never dip much below the $5,000 seed money with which I started. In that case, I could have played the entire $500,000 coin-in and basically spent almost no time at all feeding the machine. If the day isn’t going so well, I’ll buy another five or ten purchase tickets and keep going.
Sometimes the jackpot is not an even dollar amount. Let’s say I drew one card to the AKQJ of hearts and ended up with two royals ($1,000 apiece), 12 flushes ($6.25), five straights ($5.00), and 31 high pairs ($1.25). That is worth $2,138.75. Two thousand can be in purchase tickets, but I’m going to end up with some currency and three quarters in the payout. These machines do not accept coins. Some players “solve” this problem by tipping either $3.75 or $8.75. Others wait until they get another jackpot ending in $1.25 or $6.25 and trade in the small stuff for multiples of $5 bills.
I also play at the South Point where they currently have neither purchase tickets nor key-to-credit technology. In this case, if I’m planning on starting play at midnight (which is when their 2x points start and where most of my play is done on $1 Ten Play Double Double Bonus Quick Quads), I might show up at 11:45 p.m. and start creating tickets. I could take out a marker and create four tickets of $2,500 each to get me started.
When I get a jackpot there (a frequent amount is $2,600, which is a dealt quad or Quick Quad), I know they will pay me in cash. If there is not an open Quick Quads machine available, I’ll go ahead and create a ticket for $2,600 (assuming I have the cash to do it) while I’m waiting to be paid. When I get paid, I’ll put the money in a separate pocket. That way my “starting figure” stays the same ($10,000 in this example) and when I do get paid I don’t have to waste time feeding the machine when I could be playing.
If there is a spare machine next to me, I’ll shift over and play while I’m waiting to be paid. When I am paid, I’ll play with my right hand and feed hundred dollar bills into the vacant machine with my left hand, creating a $2,600 ticket. If it’s near the end of the play, I won’t create tickets. I’ll just let the cash they pay me accumulate in one of my pockets. When I’ve finished playing, I’ll compare the money in that pocket with the $10,000 with which I started and be able to tell how much I’ve won or lost.
If you’re playing a big machine (say a $100 denomination, or maybe a $25 Ten Play), casinos will sometimes station an attendant right behind you and record every W2G. (Last time I did this was in 2001 and it was called a “Super Session” at the MGM Grand. They may have different terminology today.) While the machine doesn’t lock up for normal jackpots, there will be some threshold (perhaps $50,000) where the machine will lock up if the jackpot is at least that amount.
There are other techniques to get the money into the machine, but these are the ones I use or have used at the casinos I frequent. Also keep in mind that even if you have to hand-feed each $100 bill, most of the money is recycled several times and the amount of coin-in is MUCH higher than the actual total of the hundred dollar bills that you have to feed into the machine. Playing $500,000 coin-in on Hundred Play Bonus Poker, it would have been unusual for me to lose more than $10,000. Had I played the same amount on single line machines or on higher volatility games, I could have lost considerably more.
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