Tag: Bob Dancer

I’ve mentioned previously that Bonnie and I play at the Eldorado in Reno. Although we could drive, it’s easier to fly. One time, when we landed at the Reno airport, we took a shuttle to a casino I’ll call the Alamo rather than taking another shuttle to the Eldorado.

A little more than a month before this incident happened, I played for the first time at the Alamo. My goal was to get mailers at both the Alamo and the Eldorado. If we’re going through the expense of flying, it makes sense to have two or more stops once we get there rather than one. 

Because of this play at the Alamo, I got a mailer with some free play and $100 worth of food. It wasn’t enough free play to justify a separate flight to Reno, but as a brief stop on the way the Eldorado, it was well worth the time it took. It’s possible my future mailers would be larger at the Alamo if I skipped picking up this first offer, but I didn’t figure that out until later.

While the benefits of playing at the Eldorado are sufficient to keep us going back, and the high-end restaurants there are excellent, the midday meal options there leave a lot to be desired. So, we decided to use the entire $100 food comp from the Alamo. We’d eat what we wanted and take the rest “to go.” We carried three bags of food with us when we left.

From the Alamo, we took a Lyft to the Eldorado. We could have taken the Alamo shuttle back to the airport and from there caught the shuttle to the Eldorado. Given the uncertainty of the shuttle schedules, this could have easily taken an hour or more. A $15 dollar, 15-minute Lyft ride seemed to be a good investment. On this particular trip, we brought along one suitcase, one backpack, and a walker. I don’t absolutely “need” the walker, but I tire more easily than I did when I was younger and I’m often glad I have it. 

We went to the Gold Room at the Eldorado, which is what they call their VIP check-in area. Since the door to the Gold Room is heavy and we had our hands full with luggage, I went in alone while Bonnie waited outside “guarding” our stuff. After checking in, I returned. We gathered up our stuff and went to our room.

After a nap, I went down to the casino and played several hours. When I returned to the room after midnight, I discovered my backpack was not in the room. My laptop was in the backpack. The backpack is entirely black and  apparently just didn’t see it when we were gathering up our stuff. With the three bags of food, it seemed like we had our normal amount of luggage. I was exhausted and decided to wait until morning to deal with the problem. If the lost and found had the backpack now, they would have it in the morning. We had left it behind 10 or so hours before and there was no chance it was still where we left it. I didn’t sleep well. While I have my computer backed up, it’s a hassle and I wasn’t looking forward to it.

At 8:30 in the morning, I called the operator and asked to be put through to lost and found. The operator refused. She told me to go to the Caesars.com website and fill out a form. I didn’t want to do that. I played the “hapless senior citizen” card. “I’m 78 years old and not good with computers. Please let me speak to a real person.” The operator refused so I continued, “There is medicine in the backpack and it’s important I know whether it’s lost or not.” While this was an exaggeration, it wasn’t too far off the mark. I have a daily pill regimen, and pills for two days were in the backpack, but skipping these for a few days would not be a disaster. Still, I sensed that emphasizing the medicine might be my best bet to talk to a human. Eventually, the operator relented and transferred me to a security guard in charge of lost and found. 

They indeed had the backpack, including the laptop and everything else, and I was greatly relieved.

There are more and more similar incidents as I age. In the past few years, I’ve misplaced cell phones, keys, driver license, glasses, and departed a few slot machines without taking my TITO ticket with me. I’ve inadvertently left the garage door open when I drove away. Sometimes I’m fortunate and get my possessions back. Sometimes I don’t. While I occasionally lost things when I was younger, it’s happening more frequently as I age.

Bonnie, who is a few years older than me, loses things too. Probably more than I do. We each do our best to help the other, and we’re both glad we have each other to deal with these things, but sometimes it seems like it’s a case of the blind leading the blind.

While I’m still very glad I’m alive, there are more and more of these aggravating situations we need to deal with — at a time when we are less capable of dealing with them than we used to be. Someone suggested that this doesn’t seem fair, but to that a wiser man than me asked, “Compared to what?”

This is an article about slots rather than video poker. I know this will irritate some of my readers, and if that describes you, perhaps you had better skip this week’s blog. But I know that enough of my readers find “all things casino” interesting enough that they will allow me some grace in selecting my topics. Plus, this week I haven’t learned anything new about video poker and I did learn something new about slots I’m going to share with you.

I was playing Wolf Run Eclipse (WRE) at a Boyd property on a 10x point day. WRE is an IGT persistence slot machine that sometimes gets positive for the player. It has four or five separate meters, depending on the version. One of the meters is the “Grand,” which I have never hit in the thousand or so hours I’ve played this game — so I ignore it. When I started playing this time, the meter read ten thousand dollars and change, and if and when I ever hit it will be very nice, but I don’t pay any attention to it when I try to determine whether the game is worth playing.

The game has three meters that start at 5 free spins (mini, minor, and major) and one that starts at 100 (mega). I have hit the mega three or four times, but I generally ignore that too unless I need a “tiebreaker.” Each meter rises periodically until it is finally hit, in which case the player earns the number of free spins that are on that particular meter.

These progressives aren’t identical. The mini meter gives you one column (out of five) of wilds every spin. The minor meter gives you two such columns. Both the major and the mega give you three such columns.

The mini meter, in addition to being the least valuable, hits more frequently than the minor, which in turn hits more frequently than the major.

I have a formula I use to determine whether or not to play. It has different multipliers for each of the three lower meters. The “strike” numbers are different for different denominations. In most casinos the 1¢ and 2¢ denominations are tighter than the 5¢ and 10¢ of the same game on the same machine.

On the day in question, I was playing 1¢, 800 coins for an $8.00 bet. Had I found the same meter numbers on the game for 10¢ 80 coins or 5¢ 160 coins (both also $8.00), the latter would be better bets because they have a higher return to player (RTP). But this time the 1¢ version had the higher meters, so that’s the one I played.

I shaded my strike number a little for three reasons: 10x points, the mega meter was at 110 rather than the reset value of 100, and while I was going to be playing for the minor, the major was at nine — which is higher the reset value of five. 

As I played, I hit the mini four times and the minor and major continued to rise. By the time I hit the minor (which turned into a W2-g) the mini had risen high enough that it was worth continuing to play. So, I did.

When the mini finally hit, I noted that if it returned $860, I was even for my play at that particular casino for that particular day. This was a score that was definitely possible — probably even likely. 

As it turned out, after all the free spins were spun, the bonus was worth $845 — so I lost $15. I knew I had actually won because I had played for more than a half hour hammering an $8 machine. At 10x points, this generated a lot of points. I don’t count those points as profit until I redeem them, which I didn’t do on this day.

After the $845 was revealed, the machine calls it a “massive win” and starts to add that amount to my existing $700+ in credits. While in the process of this happening, my machine went totally black, along with the adjacent machines on either side. All three were IGT slot machines — and all three were different games. All the other games in the casino that I could see continued to work.

A slot manager came by to look at it. He probably had a message on his computer that told him three machines went dark. I asked him if this was likely to be a long-lasting problem. He said probably not, but the outage wasn’t planned and he wasn’t sure.

I wasn’t in a huge hurry, but I’d been planning on going to dinner. I wanted to retrieve my $1,600 ticket and be on my way. There was no way I was going to leave it behind. I knew the casino didn’t do this on purpose and was willing to give them a little time to fix the problem — but I didn’t want to wait all day.

After about ten minutes, all three machines began to reboot. I expected that when my machine came back on it would continue to add the $845 to my existing credits and I could be on my way.

That’s not what happened. 

When the machine came back on, I still had my $700+ in credits, and the mini bonus began to play again! There were more than 30 free spins. Some were for more than $100 each, and many of the spins turned out to be worth zero. 

As the bonus round played out, I started thinking about what I would do if it turned out to be less than $845? The machine was probably on camera, and they could verify what the bonus had been worth previously. Would they honor that? I also mused what I would do if the bonus round turned out to be worth more than $845? 

Before I worked out all of the ramifications, the bonus round ended, and it was worth exactly the same $845 this time as it was worth last time! I was surprised. 

The slot director came by and asked if everything turned out okay. I told him that it had replayed the bonus round, all 30+ spins, and the result this time turned out exactly the same as it had before the blackout.

He told me this was exactly the result he expected. At the start of the bonus round, he told me, the computer program decides how much this bonus round is worth. Once that number has been decided, it’s just bells and whistles for the bonus round to end up providing that exact number. The player doesn’t know how big the bonus will be until all the spins play out, but the machine knows and figures out a way to get there. 

I think this slot director is correct. I just hadn’t realized it before he said it. The machine has a specific RTP to give out, and it does.

This is very different from the way a video poker machine works. In video poker, the player chooses how to play each hand. Each machine holds more than the designated RTP because video poker players make mistakes. 

But slot players, taken as a whole, don’t make mistakes. They just hit the button and take what they get. The skill in this kind of slot machine is to wait until the meters are high enough before playing. But other players have played this machine to get the meters that high. So, the machine holds as much as it is supposed to — the casino makes money — and the knowledgeable players also make money playing this game.

The ROW casinos, the Caesars Rewards properties in Reno, recently changed their point structure. For some of the machines that contain the loosest video poker, Tier Credits (TCs) and Reward Credits (RCs) are now earned at one point per $20 coin-in versus the former $10 coin-in. Although the ROW consists of the Eldorado, Silver Legacy, and Circus Circus equally, for practical purposes this new rule only affects the Eldorado because that’s where the loosest video poker machines are. 

They did a similar change about two years ago. Many players boycotted these casinos because of the change and after two or three months, the former $10-per-RC system was reinstated. It’s possible this will happen again, I suppose. We’ll see. These casinos seem to struggle to attract players. Tightening the slot club can’t possibly be the way to attract more players.

Although this specific change only affects one property, and most of my readers are not players at this particular location, similar downgrades happen at other casinos all the time. The question becomes: How does a player evaluate whether to continue playing there or not?

The Caesars Rewards system is complicated — and each property has slightly different rules than its sister properties. The difference between RCs and TCs is not quickly grasped by many players. In many cases they are earned at the same rate, but they aren’t the same. RCs may be redeemed for comps, sports bets, or, at a two-for-one rate, free play. TCs can’t be redeemed, but determine whether you are Platinum, Seven Stars, or any of the other tier levels. 

The old $10-per-point system made RCs earned by playing video poker worth 0.1% in comps. Cutting that in half means that they are now worth 0.05% in comps. That’s not a big change. If you normally play $20,000 in coin-in in a day, the $20 in comps you previously earned now becomes worth $10. If you redeemed the RCs for free play, the $10 in free play you used to get now becomes worth $5. Other than being ticked off that it’s not as big as before, that’s not enough of a difference to cause most players to quit playing.

But what about if they had 5x or 10x points? Well, that could be different. This casino used to have Mystery RC multipliers every Monday, with a limit of 30,000 RCs. Whatever multiplier you receive, it will now take twice as much play to earn that limit. Time will tell if that is going to be cut back on this promotion or not. 

There are TC multiplier promotions as well. In addition, there are daily TC bonuses. Players earning 1,000 TCs in a day get a 1,000 TC bonus. Players earning 5,000 TCs in a day get a 10,000 TC bonus. That’s the biggest daily bonus offered. Whereas it used to take $50,000 coin-in in video poker to earn the maximum daily bonus, it now takes $100,000. For most players, this is out of the question.

If you play enough to earn a lot of TCs, for every 250,000 you earn, you receive one Seven Stars Experience Credit. There are a number of things you can redeem these for. The most attractive to me is $450 in free play at properties in Las Vegas or Cherokee. For the same play, Reno video poker players will end up with fewer Seven Stars Experience Credits in 2025 than they earned in 2024.

The basic Seven Stars target of 150,000 is harder to get. I find it valuable. The major benefits are five $100 food credits, one $1,200 travel to any other Caesars property including $500 in resort credit, and a highly discounted 7-day cruise for two on Norwegian Cruise Lines. Most properties have some sort of a daily benefit if you have Seven Stars status. 

These properties all have monthly mailers giving you free play, rooms, and resort credits (which are not the same as Reward Credits.) These are generally based on your average daily theoretical. If $1,000 worth of play gives you the same ADT as it did before (even though it gives you half as many RCs and TCs), then the mailers shouldn’t change. We’ll see.

The bottom line, for me anyway, is not the number of dollars coin-in required to get a RC. It’s the promotions and the mailers. If the promotions and mailers stay the same, I’ll continue to play at the ROW, at least sometimes. If they get slashed as well, I won’t. 

The change in the rate of RC and TC being earned is a much smaller change than reducing the pay schedule by one unit. I’ll put up with NSU Deuces Wild with the lesser rate, but if they cut that game by 0.8% to the pNSU game, I’ll likely stop playing there.

It’s the package of benefits (the game, the slot club, the promotions, the mailers) that matters to me, not the individual components of it. Any reduction in benefits is unwelcome, but small reductions are not necessarily showstoppers.