{"id":121501,"date":"2021-02-09T09:19:36","date_gmt":"2021-02-09T17:19:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/gambling-with-an-edge\/?p=121501"},"modified":"2021-02-09T09:19:43","modified_gmt":"2021-02-09T17:19:43","slug":"two-stories","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/gambling-with-an-edge\/two-stories\/","title":{"rendered":"Two Stories"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

I have two brief things that came up recently and are worthy of writing about, but neither is sufficient to fill up an entire blog. So, I stacked them together. Hope you don\u2019t mind.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

New Rules<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I was playing dollar 9\/6 Double Double Bonus, with four progressives. I hit the aces hand for $844 and to my surprise, the machine locked up. I\u2019d played at this casino previously and jackpots less than $1,200 never locked up. But it did today. I had earlier in the session hit $400 and $250 jackpots and those didn\u2019t lock up, but $844 did.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When the floorman came, I asked if this was a new procedure casino-wide, or if this particular machine was mis-programmed somehow. He told me it was a casino-wide policy, requested by the employees in the hope of possibly generating more tips. The pandemic has been really hard on the staff.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I don\u2019t like this policy, but I\u2019m not going to complain about it or create a scene. It will cost me five minutes every now and then. I didn\u2019t tip.\u00a0 Resetting the payout for aces back to $800 only cost about 0.15% and the other numbers were high enough to make things worthwhile, so I continued to play.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I\u2019ve previously played at casinos–Palms and Eastside Cannery, among others–where for a time they locked up the machines at $1,000, trying to squeeze tips out of quarter royals. These moves were always unpopular with the players, and both casinos removed this policy after a month or so.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I can understand a casino wanting to take care of their employees, but they need to take care of their players too. The pandemic has also hit us.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Starting to get the Eye<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I was the only one playing a progressive, and I was there for four hours. I didn\u2019t hit the top jackpot, but had hit several of the lesser ones and it was still a positive play. However, the jackpot I hit four hours in (still not the biggest one), was enough to turn the play negative, so I left.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Shortly before I hit the last jackpot, some sort of slot supervisor came and stood right next to me, writing down the size of all of<\/s> the progressive amounts on my machine. He could have done this on any of the other machines, but chose to do it standing uncomfortably close to me.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I\u2019m not sure what he was doing. It could be that they were trying to understand why I was playing for four hours. It could be that they were sending a message that my play was unwanted or close to being unwanted.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So, what to do?\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I could be kicked out at any time, of course. It has happened before at casinos. It will probably happen again. The first step is to do what I can to make this as costless as possible. This is a casino where you earn points that you can download as free play on your machine. If I\u2019m restricted and can no longer play off the points, they might redeem them in cash at 50\u00a2 on the dollar. Which is probably legal according to their slot club rules.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I didn\u2019t have a ton of unredeemed free play, but I had enough that losing 50% unnecessarily of it would be irritating. So, I came back the next day on a different shift and played off what I had. It wasn\u2019t a point multiplier day, and the game was no longer worth 100%, but it was worth well over 99% and on the amount I was playing, it didn\u2019t matter much. Consider it cheap insurance.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If I don\u2019t end up being restricted, well, no harm done. I\u2019ll just start building free play again from zero. But if I do get restricted, I won\u2019t lose 50% of what I had earned.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And, like most things in gambling, I needed to make my decision before I knew the actual result. If it turns out I\u2019m not restricted, then some would say it was a wasted trip to go and cash out. But I can\u2019t know if I\u2019m going to be restricted until I\u2019m actually restricted! So, I have to make an educated guess in advance and live with it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Note that today I\u2019m saying giving up a buck or two (plus the time and cost to get there) is okay to save $300 or so. A few weeks ago, I wrote that I\u2019d wait a minute to earn an extra dollar when I was risking about $300. So how are these cases different?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It has to do with the probability of something bad happening. In the case a few weeks ago when I waited for a progressive meter to turn over an extra dollar, it was 8,000-to-1 or so that I wouldn\u2019t lose out by waiting. This time, it might be closer to 10-to-1, or even shorter odds, that I\u2019ll lose out if I don\u2019t spend that buck. That makes all the difference to me. Every case is different, and you have to do it by feel each time, but those are the kinds of considerations that cross my mind before I make the decision.<\/p>\n\"Facebook\"<\/a>\"twitter\"<\/a>\"youtube\"<\/a>\"instagram\"<\/a>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I have two brief things that came up recently and are worthy of writing about, but neither is sufficient to fill up an entire blog. So, I stacked them together. Hope you don\u2019t mind. New Rules I was playing dollar 9\/6 Double Double Bonus, with four progressives. I hit the aces hand for $844 and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":6498,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"spay_email":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"Two Stories by Bob Dancer","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false},"categories":[29,2,3],"tags":[1926,428,196],"yoast_head":"\nTwo Stories - Gambling With An Edge<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/gambling-with-an-edge\/two-stories\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Two Stories - Gambling With An Edge\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"I have two brief things that came up recently and are worthy of writing about, but neither is sufficient to fill up an entire blog. So, I stacked them together. Hope you don\u2019t mind. New Rules I was playing dollar 9\/6 Double Double Bonus, with four progressives. 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