Question of the Day - 04 October 2020

Yes, every cruise line we have used (we do 4-10 weeks a year), has these games and they are used quite a lot by people who are not the "real" gamblers.

Loved Flip-It.  Part of the "old Vegas" landscape long gone.  Flip-it never stopped me from donating most of my time and money to the slots/VP, though.  There is no longer any love for the vacationer who roams through a casino for a buffet and to spend (truly) just a few dollars.  Something for everyone, whales and minnows.  No more, it seems.  

The percentage of coins that would disappear forever was truly horrific, as much as half of the total on some machines. It was also well-nigh impossible to get a coin into one of those baskets. I lost interest when I saw how ridiculously hard it was to win. Definitely a part of old Vegas, the same way that getting your fingers broken for winning was.

You had to HATE MONEY to play this stupid game!!!!

Some of our cruise pastime is to always walk past the the flip it machine and see what the sea has deposited into the trays. Can usually make a buck or two  per cruise 

From season 4 episode 7 of Roseanne:

Roseanne: How the hell do you think this thing works?

Dan: Well, you put a quarter in, it drops in, and it pushes the other quarters off the edge you get to keep 'em.

Roseanne: Hey look at that, there's about a hundred quarters just wait'n to jump off the cliff! (she trys to nudge the machine to jostle the coins)
Yeah,they got this sucker nailed down pretty good.   Okay we'll do it your way....Give me a quarter Dan, this will be easy money.

Dan:  Oh Well Golly, If it looks easy, I bet it is!  Here let me fish out a quarter, and you go get a big bucket to collect our winnings,

Roseanne: Just give me the quarter.   You know the guy that invented this must be a moron. (She drop in the quarters one at a time).  Give me another one....
Give me another one....Give another one.  Give me another one.  Oh, here it comes, here it comes!  Give me another one.  Yahoo! Yay! I won!  A quarter!

Dan: Now don't go giving all that back....Walk away a winner!

I read the interesting and amusing article on making Flip-it an advantage play by Michael Bluejay that the answer  mentioned.

It looked like it must have been a good game for a certain subset of AP who like Bob Dancer was willing to go to cockamamie lengths to avoid honest work but who unlike Bob lacked Bob's intelligence, ability at math, perseverence, time and bankroll.

There was no math required. No learning curve. No manual to read. You just stared at a pile of coins for a few hours and when the pile looked more or less favorable according to some easily remembered descriptions of a positive pile, you placed your bets. Otherwise, you just watched others play.

No, you couldn't make a living at it, but you could still enjoy the orgiastic pleasure of causing a device meant for occasional amusment to give you .5% more than you gave it, and really, after all is said and done, isn't that what life is all about?

with $100 bills, and/or thick bundles of $1's, added to the pot. That gives you some idea how bad the odds must be.

There's also a whole raft of YouTube videos on the subject. Some of them have bitcoins or even gold bars.

Here's one with about $1400 in hundreds, and a "mystery prize" in a little pouch.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lYSQNmBv6jc

But like Kevin, I'll pass.

I bet if I wrote that I hated Flip-it, then Kevin would say it was the best bet in the casino and no wise person would pass one up.  LOL.

I usually spent no more than a minute or two, or a coin or five at a Flip-it. Once I actually hit the $50 can on the top shelf!  

Those pushers and coins could be hypnotic to watch, cheering them on, like cheering your horse to catch up at the race track.  I suppose I'm easy to entertain.

AP at Flip-it...now that is funny.  

I think in today's TITO world, any machine requiring coins is not going to make it except at the casinos that cater to people who remember great games like Flip It. Sigma Derby has a following and at the Four Queens we played the machines that dispensed silver dollar sized commemorative coins just a year ago ro so. I also remember a machine from the 70's (Fremont?) that had a chuck-a-luck type cage in it and paid different odds depending on what was rolled on the dice inside the cage. Does anyone else remember that and was it just called chuck-a-luck or something else?

Pennsylvania now allows 5 games at various rural locations.  The gas station near my house had this game.  It was very popular and after several months they got a second.  They got rid of them earlier this year when someone broke into the gas station after hours smashed the glass and took all the quarters.

I remember seeing these Coin Pusher machines in the 1970's in Italy and Spain when I was in the Navy. So they've been around for a long time. People loved playing them, even kids, many places didn't have any concerns about underage gambling. The machine was viewed differently than a slot machine, kinda like an arcade game. Some were outside restaurants or bars on the sidewalk. To me they are more like those crane machines where you put in your money and try to pick up a prize by operating the crane. 

We always liked to check these whenever our cruise ship was in choppy waters.  A big wave might shift those quarters to make it easier to score!
Jean Scott