Hi Gang:
Harrah's AC has changed its policy on hand pays. Beginning this week all single hits of $1,000 or more will be hand pays. Prior to this, only jackpots of $1,200 or more were hand pays. This was confirmed this past weekend when a friend of ours hit aces with a kicker on DDB at the 50-cent level and her machine locked up. We're not sure if this is for VP only but we're guessing it will be for all machines.
The tech who came to pay off our friend said that the Borgata had gone to this policy and Harrah's has decided to do it as well. The tech said it's designed to create more excitement with the machine locking up and music playing more often. The drawback, of course, is that this will significantly slow up play. Another friend of ours plays only at the quarter level and he hit three royals the week before. He didn't have to stop playing once during that trip but would have had his machine lock up three times if it had happened this past week.
I guess this will also Impact players (VP and slots) who play at the higher levels. Smaller hits may result in more machine lock-ups. The other thing this impacts, of course, is whether to tip the tech that handles the hand pay. More hand pays means more opportunities to tip. So, what's a player to do?
It will be interesting to see how this plays out over the next few months and to see if players start complaining.
Regards,
CoachVee & Hedy
PS: The VP pendulum swung big-time this week as Hedy and I got beat up pretty badly. Only one set of aces, very few bonus quads and no hand pays. Thank goodness we had a nice cushion from the past three trips.
Sent from my iPad
