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Bob Dancer writes a video poker column for beginners to experts. He also writes a column with Jeffrey Compton, "Player's Edge", featuring information on promotions at various Las Vegas casinos. Player's Edge is published each Friday in the Neon section of the Las Vegas Review-Journal. Click here to send Bob Dancer an e-mail.

For more details and a schedule of Bob's free classes, visit www.bobdancer.com.

Aug 05, 2008

When the Rules Are Enforced

I was playing at Green Valley Ranch this past Sunday. They are having a rather modest "Cash or Gas" promo --- which was worth $10 to me --- and this time that was enough to get me there. $10 is not usually enough to get me to make a special trip to a casino, so let me explain.

The way the promotion works is that if you play 20,000 points at video poker on Sundays through Thursdays, they give you $50 in cash or a Shell gas card instead of the points. (You can play for lesser amounts as well. 5,000 points, for example, earns you $20).

Shirley and I are both Chairman level there and this month our monthly mailers, in addition to at least $750 in free play plus three days of "maybe more mystery cash," (I've already counted the minimum in the $750) gave us several days of 4x points. We get one day this month of 5x points due to a coupon in a freebie magazine that everyone can get. Sunday was one of these 4x day. (In addition, if you play the $250,000 minimum to maintain Chairman status, the free play you get adds at least 0.30%.)

Playing 20,000 points usually earns you $20 in free play. But they take that $20 in free play away when they give you the $50 in gas or cash. That means your "bonus" is $30, which 0.15% of the $20,000 it takes to earn that many point. Added to a 4x coupon (0.40%), this makes the play worth 0.55% for the first $20,000, at which time it reverts to being a 0.40% day. (We're talking base points here. Since this was a 4x coupon, we earned an additional $60 in free play as well but that wasn't redeemable for the "cash or gas" promotion.)

To be sure we're going to collect the extra $50 when we use the 5x coupon, but after playing $20,000 that day, it reverts to 0.50%. This extra 0.05% for $20,000 is worth a big $10. Hardly worth the effort if that's all that was involved.

Still, we each need to play $250,000 per month to maintain our Chairman status and that's a lot for one day. If it's reduced to $190,000 or so because we've gone in and played $20,000 on each of three separate 4x days, that is a more manageable amount. (There are more 4x point days in case we want to spread it out some more, but there are drawings at GVR and other Station Casinos this weekend so we'll do our entire $250,000 each this week to maximize our chances in the drawing. Hopefully other Chairman players will do their play some other week or skip the drawing.)

Shirley has lung problems and finds casinos too smoky so I regularly play on both her card and mine. Every floorman there is aware of that because I play on a machine with numerous W2Gs, and when Shirley's card is in, her name pops up on the screen. But I explain that Shirley is my "favorite wife," and there's never been a problem.

Except for Sunday. Sort of.

I was playing on Shirley's card when my machine stopped working. I couldn't figure out why. I was playing $2 Bonus Deuces Wild Multi Strike and the last hand (costing $40 per play) returned $10. I hit the button several times, checked to see that all doors were closed, and . . . nothing. The machine was frozen.

I finally looked up in the display area and saw the following message scrolling, "Call Attendant to verify $95,524.04 Jumbo Jackpot."

Oh my!

In the past, usually when I've hit a jackpot for $50,000 or higher, I give a big shout. I don't plan it. It just happens.

But this time, instead of jubilation, my mind goes to, "I'm playing on Shirley's card. They might not pay me." I haven't seen the rules for Jumbo Jackpot but I'd bet a bunch that there's a rule in there somewhere that says you must be playing on your own card. Not to mention, "Management reserves all rights." Etc.

The Jumbo Jackpot has been a Station Casinos exclusive for several years now and periodically it morphs. Although at one time there were nine casinos (seven Stations and two Fiestas) part of one jackpot that would hit between $100,000 and $150,000, currently each property has its own jackpot in the range of $50,000 to $100,000. It moves up much more slowly these days because the coin-in from only one property is feeding it. It took more than two months for the GVR jackpot to grow from $50,000 to $95,000+.

To hit the jackpot you can be playing any machine with your card in. The exact jackpot level is randomly predetermined and when that level is reached, one of the players currently playing is randomly selected (exactly how I'm not sure. I've never know anyone whose won, although there have been hundreds.) The denomination you're playing is not supposed to make a difference in your chances of hitting the Jumbo Jackpot.

An additional feature is that everybody else playing with their card in gets a bonus when the Jumbo strikes. You get between $25 and $100, depending on your tier level.

Green Valley Ranch has at least three "suits" (supervisors) in the slot department during the day. I don't know who outranks whom. Each of them treat me well, but my favorite on this particular crew is Meliza. She was also a slot supervisor at Fiesta Henderson when they had high limit games worth playing so I've known her for three or four years and we get along great.

When the first supervisor came up, I explained that Shirley's card was in the machine. They're going to find out anyway so I might as well get it out in the open. He took down both Shirley's and my information and went away. There were several other players in the room telling me I should be jumping up and down for joy after a $95,000 hit. I told them I hadn't been paid yet and I was nervous about it because I was playing on my wife's card. Several players assured me that I'd be paid anyway. "I hope you're right," I told them.

I called up Shirley and suggested she come by for lunch. If they decided to pay us they might need to put the check in her name and she might have to be on hand to collect it. She was doing something else, but for $95,000 she decided lunch was an excellent idea.

About a half hour later, Meliza came by and said she had to call Johnny, who is the slot director (or perhaps he has a Vice President of Slot Operations title) and her boss. She tells me that a decision needs to be made because the rules say that you must be playing with your own card. "If it was up to me," Meliza tells me, "you'd get paid." Although that's an easy thing to say and you hear this frequently in casinos from employees not empowered to make certain decisions, I've been friends with Meliza for several years and I believed her.

Since I'm not going to be there when she talks to Johnny or whichever person in authority she can rouse at home on a Sunday, I do my lobbying while she's still there. Perhaps that will affect her conversation later. "While you guys decide, I'm working on both articles," I tell her. "The one where I DO get paid and the one where I don't." I suppose that could be taken as a threat, but I didn't mean it that way. They know exactly who I am and that I write about what happens to me in casinos whenever it's interesting enough. They could easily surmise that a possibly-disputed $95,000 jackpot was definitively "interesting enough", so they had to know an article was coming.

I reminded her that I've been paid 200 or more jackpots while playing on Shirley's card, and every supervisor on every shift knows it, so it seems unfair to start enforcing the must-be-playing-on-own-card now. If they told me at the outset that I couldn't play on Shirley's card, fine. That would be the way it was and I wouldn't have been playing on Shirley's card today. (The Palms, for example, has had such a conversation with me.) But when they haven't stopped me before (at either Green Valley Ranch or Palace Station or Fiesta Henderson, which are all part of the same organization and all places I've received numerous W2Gs while playing on Shirley's card), I suggested they'd lost their right to do it now. Meliza told me she'd do what she could and went to make her phone call.

Shirley was there by now and we told the floor man we'd be in the buffet while they decided what they were going to do. I left my cell phone number if they needed to talk to me.

During lunch we worked out some more arguments "just in case." The Jumbo Jackpot was at $50,025 by now, hundreds of people had collected their $25 to $100 bonus, and backing it up to $95,000 might be tricky. And if they DIDN'T back it up, boy would THAT be an article!

Another half hour or so later Meliza found us in the buffet and told us that the payment had been approved. YES! Shirley and I BOTH hugged Meliza! Meliza asked how we wanted the money (answer: $70,000 in check, $20,000 in "straps" of $10,000 each, two $2,500 Purchase Tickets to feed into the machine later, and $525 loose. The "loose" part was going to be a tip to the employees.) By the way, if you think that being ahead $95K makes Shirley less likely to smuggle a banana and an orange from the buffet, think again!

One surprising part to all of this was that when I was paid, the "loose" part came out to be $524.04 rather than $525. In the past, whenever I've hit a progressive, most casinos round up to the nearest coin. I was playing on a machine where the smallest bet allowed was $1, so I figured they'd round up to $525. They didn't. Perhaps this was because penny machines are also eligible the Jumbo Jackpot. Who knows? Other than as a curiosity, it didn't matter to me because it was all going to the employees, but I suggested to a floor man that HE should complain because this meant the tip pool was being shorted by 96¢. Somehow I don't think he followed up on my suggestion.

I didn't hear the conversation between the casino executives about whether they should pay me or not. Perhaps they argued that since I was a writer and they were going to pay the jackpot anyway they might as well get a favorable article rather than an unfavorable one. Perhaps they would have paid anyone who was playing on a spouse's card. Maybe they would paid anyone playing on anyone else's card. I just don't know. They've paid hundreds of Jumbo Jackpots over the years and surely this type of thing must have happened before.

I'm delighted that they ruled in my favor. Yes they took more than an hour to make up their mind, but I can understand why and I don't blame them for that.

Although I was aware of how big it was, I wasn't playing explicitly for the Jumbo Jackpot. Even though it was at $95,000, it could easily been another week or so before it hit. And even if it does hit when I'm there, there'll be many hundreds of other players in the casino at the same time with precisely the same odds as I have. Getting the $100 bonus when it hits would have been nice. Collecting the whole thing was awesome.