Question of the Day - 27 June 2021

When a "big" jackpot is hit in Las Vegas, the casino where it was hit generally sends out a news release.

It's great publicity for the casino, especially if it's a smaller one. A recent example is the local player who won $905,000 on a Buffalo Grand machine at Ellis Island. The winner's statement, “It’s not every Tuesday that you walk into your favorite local spot and leave with almost a million dollars,” was widely covered. And Ellis Island certainly shared in the glory; the last time the casino had the chance to promote a win that large was in 2017, when a player hit a $747k jackpot on another Buffalo Grand machine.

Every casino public relations department worth its salt has an email list comprising all the Las Vegas media outlets; when a casino sends out a press release, most of us are on the receiving end. On occasion, we don't see one, but it's a simple matter of checking the other media -- Las Vegas Review-Journal, Las Vegas Sun, Fox 5, KTNV 13, KSNV 3, etc. -- which we do regularly anyway to keep up with current events, in order to catch any whiff of a recent big win.

On Sundays, reporter Tony Cox does a round-up of "big" jackpots hit in Las Vegas (and at Caesars properties throughout Nevada) in the Las Vegas Review-Journal. For the R-J, big means five figures. These don't come from press releases; for winners, Cox follows the casino Twitter feeds, like the player who hit a $12,487 jackpot on a Dancing Drums slot at the Orleans recently, and compiles them for the Sunday filler column.   

We don't bother with those. We generally don't clutter up the joint with jackpots that are less than the high sixes; seven-figure-and-up hits are always reported.

But for one like the $153,000 Face Up Pai Gow Poker progressive you mention, we make exceptions. That was a really cool way to hit a progressive jackpot (four aces and a joker), so we're glad to hear you had as much fun reading it as we did posting it.