Grubby at PokerWorks

It’s not often you run into people just like you who are as big a gambling idiot as you. And by you, I mean me. Most of the time I’m playing with grumpy blue-haired old ladies.

While playing the 2-cent Monopoly Big Event at Silverton (I felt bad that I finagled five free nights out of them and felt obligated to give them some play — big mistake), someone sat next to me who began yelling in a radio announcer voice, “C’mon, Mr. Monopoly Man, where are you?”

One of six Big Event bonuses hits randomly, which then awards whatever bonus credits displayed to each of the players eligible. And it had been a long night of not hitting the best bonus — Once Around, which gives the opportunity at hitting any or all 5 of the other bonuses.

When it finally hit, the bonus that was paid off to everyone times their multiplier was small. I had mine up to 15x, he had his to 30x. Much potential there, all wasted.

After a couple more buy-ins of Big Event not hitting at all, I finally left, saying Mr. Monopoly had beaten me. (When in fact, Mr. Monopoly had tricked me into playing longer. I was down $200 before I sat down, won $200, then lost that plus more all in the span of half an hour.)

Continuing my pay-it-forward-however-small gesture, whenever I’m below $1 on a slot machine and I don’t plan to play that game anymore, it isn’t worth it to me to play out the remaining pennies because I don’t want to hit a bonus without playing all lines. I’ve seen the misery in people’s faces when they played off their last penny and then hit the bonus for 200 times their bet, or $2.00.

So now I just cash out and hand the ticket to a player next to me for luck.  (If I’m under $2 and the cocktail waitress appears, I cash out and give her the ticket as a tip.)  I know I don’t have any luck, but I seem to be lucky for other people (playing video poker earlier, a woman next to me hit a natural royal flush; playing Mr. Cashman, a woman next to me hit the Cashman random bonus on Jewel of the Enchantress for $1250 on a $1.25 bet). Not that there’s a such thing as luck, but if I can portray the idea of luck within a little placebo thermal slot ticket, the player may feel more positive and win, or at least feel more positive about losing.

Make any sense?

So I gave the guy next to me my 16-cent ticket and wished him luck. He appreciated the gesture and continued playing. Earlier, I gave a 57-cent ticket to a grouchy woman who had no reaction. My lucky tickets only work if the bearer acknowledges.

I headed to the Pompeii and Red Baron slots tied into the Loco Loot progressive bank, and as bad as those games are standalone, they’re even worse attached to that damn progressive. In Loco Loot, you pick five boxes and trains arrive filling in those squares with numbers, the sum of which awards you one of the progressives. Just a different implementation of the Zorro cards bonus. I hit the progressive a lot, but always the bottom one for $6. On a $2 bet, $6 doesn’t go very far.

The guy from Big Event hunted me down and tried to give back the 16-cent ticket I gave him. He said he had to tell someone: he was waiting for a slot attendant because he’d just won $1800 and was flabbergasted as to how it happened. I asked him if it was from Once Around in Big Event (something I really didn’t want to know, because if he won $1800 off a 30x multiplier, that would mean I would’ve won $900 off a 15x), but he said it was the cannon bonus playing X Marks the Spot II.

He tried to return the ticket but I said to keep it, hoping it would bring him more luck.

And, as I cashed out what I had left of Pompeii, I handed him the 24-cent ticket and told him to do it again.

I then moved over a row to play Great Wall and Filthy Rich 2: Shakin’ Bacon (I like the nekkid dancing pigs in the barn bonus), when he came over again and showed me both the tickets I’d given him. One, he said, was worth $1800. The other was worth $1200.

He’d won another jackpot off the cannon bonus!

He put the two tickets into his shirt pocket and patted it

We then exchanged names and he pulled me over to Wheel of Fortune Super Spin, where we chatted. The $3000 he’d won will cover some of the $10,000 he’d lost so far this trip. Turns out he just got into gambling six months ago when he won some big $25,000, $15,000, and $10,000 jackpots on Wheel of Fortune in the high-limit area. As far as gambling goes, at least he has the memory of winning big to keep him playing.

Me, I don’t know why I still do it, why I run through thousands of dollars per trip without having hit once, why I have this need to spend every last dollar in my pocket before I can go home. It’s very similar to drinking to get drunk or staying at the bar until last call.

I’ve been spending this first part of the trip with mamagrub and Rich, and without them here I don’t think I’d be spending as much time playing slots. Playing slots with them is spending time with them.

Or that’s just my excuse.

We’ve been playing nonstop slots at the California, Main Street, Las Vegas Club, Four Queens, Binion’s, Fremont, Fitzgeralds, Golden Nugget, Golden Gate, Green Valley Ranch, and Sam’s Town. I did break away to play poker at South Point, The Orleans, and GVR, with winning sessions in 2 of the 3.

ATM visits were so frequent and so maxed out that I finally just went to the bank to withdraw.  July 4th helped yesterday because the banks were closed.

They leave tomorrow, when I won’t touch another machine and focus on poker.

Slot players tend to have the misconception that if a machine hasn’t hit in awhile, it’s “due,” when it’s like a coin flip: every flip is a 50/50 chance it’ll land on heads or tails.  If it’s heads five times in a row, the sixth time it’s still a 50/50 chance it’ll be heads again.

Slots are slave to the random number generator that constantly spits out numbers even when it isn’t being played.  As soon as a player hits the spin button, their fate is determined.  If that player hits nothing in their entire buy-in, the machine isn’t any more or less likely to hit something for the next person because it’s been warmed up.

I’ve known all this for years but somehow I’ve parlayed the same idea into thinking that I’ve played so much that I’m due for just one W-2G.

I need to give up the notion that I’ll eventually hit a jackpot (and by jackpot, I just mean a win greater than $500, much less $1200+ for the IRS paperwork) and realize that it’s just one of those things that isn’t going to happen.

If only slot machines weren’t so much fun.

This entry was posted on Thursday, July 5th, 2007 at 1:02 pm and is filed under Uncategorized.