I've gambled @ multiple casinos EVERY DAY this year!

Planned a trip to one of my local Washington state casinos (Muckleshoot). Haven't been there in quite a while. They advertise themselves as "the biggest & best in the Northwest". Big? Definitely. I'm pretty sure they have more machines than some strip casinos, but they don't seem as cavernous. And for some reason, they have a real fixation on Copper Dropper. There must be at least a hundred of those machines in here. One large section of the casino dedicated to just these, plus they are sprinkled in all over the place. Best? Eh, I haven't felt that. Haven't been here in a while because previous gaming sessions did not have the desired outcome.

Most of the machines are not progressive, so you don't need to play max bet on them. Which is good, since max bet on most of them was $5. I'm more of a $1.50/$3 per spin kinda guy (varies depending on how I'm doing).

There's a really great non-smoking area. It's one big building, with tons of machines and several tables in it. Based off my experience today, I don't think they have any sort of air filtering happening in the smoking section, so prepare to get black lung disease if you venture in there.

One thing I like about this casino is they have a few drink stations scattered around for self-serve coffee & pop. We can get our own pop at most fast food places now, and I wish this one would catch on in Vegas.

Since WA doesn't allow "games of skill" , this means we don't get any actual VP. It's "Match Card" VP, which means that it doesn't matter what you hold, your win/loss was determined when you dealt the cards. It also means that I don't get to develop a serious gambling problem because there aren't any machines near me. So I don't know why they bother, but they had a handful of DDB machines here.

For the most part, it was a pretty crappy gaming session. Had several machines where I'd blow through $20 without winning a single penny. Did have a fantastic session on an American Originals machine. Got a 100 free spin bonus round for $260! Sadly, most of that went right back into other machines. Ended up down a couple of hundred bucks here overall.


My original goal was to try to start 2016 on a winning note, so I decided to head to another casino ~20mi away (Snoqualmie). Upon reflection, I guess driving so far just to try to book a win was a real degen move. But (spoiler alert!) it paid off in the end.

I've had a lot better luck at Snoqualmie. It's a lot closer to me, so I've made a couple of trips per year for the last few years. I don't generally stay/play long. I'll run a few hundred bucks through, generally break even or end up a little up. Got this HP on the 4th of July this year:
.

So I'm for sure up lifetime at this place. I went more when they were first trying to attract customers and had better offers I think some of my recent rewards offers from them have been like $5 cash. Not sure how high their offers go. I've never had one that actually made me go there. More of a bonus if I already happened to be headed there. Didn't plan on this trip, so I didn't check out what offers I had before I left. Happily surprised to get $15 cash + $15 FP. Already up! Thought about calling it a day right there, but I didn't drive all this way for nothing!

It also has a non-smoking section, but it's pretty small. Well, bigger than Palazzo, but not as big as Muckleshoot. Maybe 150 machines all crammed into one end of the building. But the smoke isn't that bad in the rest of the casino (better/newer filtering I assume), so I'll generally play where I'm feeling lucky.

That big Quick Hit hit above reinforced my love for these machines. I've had a lot of good luck with the free spins on them over the years. But I've been trying to coax more money out of pretty much every QH machine I've laid eyes on since then, and haven't been able to replicate the success. Today, I put $120 into several different machines at both casinos, and I managed to hit 4 QH's only once, never got 5+.

But I did end up with a few great hits, and was sad that I didn't have my phone with me today to capture the slot porn (sorry, I don't know what I was thinking). I was playing a game I haven't noticed before - Meltdown Overload. The tagline on the machine was something like "guaranteed big payouts on bonus rounds", or something like that. I was 2 spins away from hitting my self-imposed limit on the machine when I finally hit one of these bonus rounds. I think I won $10 just for getting 3 of the Meltdown Overload symbols, and got 10 free games. During the free games, I hit the 3 symbols again multiple times on consecutive spins. Each time it added a bigger bonus and 5 more spins. Think it was $20 -> $40 -> $80 -> $100. Next one was $200, but never got that one. Still, pretty happy to get $250 out of it!

Then later I was playing Bierhaus at 1.20/spin and got the voluptuous beer maidens (or whatever they're called) filling up all but one space on the board. That gave me 75 free spins! And it froze 4 wild symbols into position for the duration of those spins. The placement of the wilds on the 1st and 3rd reels was perfect, so that every spin was a winner of something, and it helped to get a lot of 4 & 5 OAK's. Those spins ran for a LONG time, and eventually I ended up with a $590 bonus round. Thanks Bierhaus!

I was feeling pretty good about things, so I decided to try a few $5 spins, and even put a bunch through a $10/spin machine before coming to my senses.

Ended the day up only $30. No handies today, but a win is a win. I'm in the black for 2016! :banana:

Another bonus: Both casinos offer free electric car charging. I guess I shouldn't complain about the rewards, since I'm basically getting comped limo & beverages!

 

A win is better than a loss! And glad you are aware that Washington state VP is total bullshit. Last trip I met up with a guy from the Wizard of Vegas who initially caught the machine bug from playing in WA by hitting a couple of royals. Once I pointed out the truth of those games, he moved to Vegas. haha

 

I like the fact that you started 2016 in the black! Here's wishing you more continued Good Luck!

Would you care to elaborate more on the "no skill" VP that you have there? How is it different than the regular VP machines in Vegas? Are you saying that the cards patterns are random like slot machines whereas the VP machines in Vegas deal from a 52 card deck?

 

http://www.casinocenter.com/class-ii-vs-class-iii-video-poker-machines/
http://stickman.casinocitytimes.com/article/class-ii-and-class-iii-slot-machines-62522

Great explanation of the differences.

Really takes a lot of digging to find this info. No obvious indication of it anywhere on the WA Gaming Commission's website

I did notice that some (not all) of the slot machines I played also display a bingo board in a secondary display. It's not clear to me if this means that some of the machines are class III and others are class II, or if the display of the bingo board isn't actually a requirement. From what I gather, Native American casinos are only licensed to use Class II machines.

 

I think all Native American casinos nationwide are allowed to run "electronic bingo" (class II) games. But WA state casinos are also authorized to run "virtual pull tab" games which means prizes from all machines are picked from a large virtual prize drum. For slots, people won't notice much of a difference because prizes from the drum can mimic the variance of a Vegas slot machine. But for VP however, this method of operation (as well as electronic bingo) throws strategy out the window and all your wins are predetermined.

Each card of the 52 card deck is not weighted equally in these scenarios, Electroguy. Generally, non-winning combinations are weighted greater than a "fair deck", so then they can boast 9/6 paytables and still payback in the lower 90s. This topic obviously pisses me off since I'm a VP addict...

 

Wow! Thanks BreakEven and Tring! I learned something today, never knew there were things like class ll and class lll machines.

I would imagine for the accomplished VP players, why would they even bother to play these type of machines? I would just keep slapping the buttons because the genie will fix it for me anyway, since all the wins are predetermined.

 

Many people are pretty uninformed I think. You also have to play very oddly to obviously notice things. For example, throw away trips, get that (or better) back. Or always hold 5 cards with garbage, then the "genie" or the "match card" will appear. I have played these games for "amusement only" in Alabama awhile back. I would intentionally hold garbage and "rooting for the genie". Wish I would have taken a pic with my former "dumb phone".

The "match card" gimmick is less obvious, because you can always have the match card make up players' errors without altering hand results.