It seemed like a good idea to play it, but if I hadn't hit a dealt royal on
10 play quarters (yippie - first dealt royal on multiplay machine in about
6 years!), I would have lost money. I think I am ahead about $4000 after
playing some in Dec. and Jan.. So good news is I'm ahead, but obviously
you could easily have lost money playing a lot, even with the bingo cards.
One of the attendants said someone tried to use a bingo card (or cards)
with a fake stamp, and he was caught and arrested. That's the only "abuse" I
heard of.
However there was some confusion with some of the cards in Feb. When I
arrived early in the month they gave me a "hard" card (you had to hit all the
different straight flushes). Then there was a sign saying there was an
"easy" card, and when I asked, they said I could have an "easy" and a "hard",
so now I had two cards. When I turned in the "hard" card, they gave me
another "easy", so I still had 2 cards. This was true for a lot of people.
At the end, when I turned in two "easy" cards close together, a lady from
the booth came over and seemed confused, asking me how I had gotten 2 "easy"
cards. I explained that they had given them to me. She said I should not
have been given an "easy" to replace the finished "hard", but the
boothlings apparently had been confused and were giving them out.
So if they didn't mean to do this, which meant there were more cards out
than they thought, the fault was entirely with the Palms and the boothlings.
I did see another mistake - some people were playing less than max play at
3/5 machines, and they were allowed to get the bingos. They were supposed
to be playing maximum coin in, not just 3 or 5 lines on multiplay. Again,
this was the fault of the attendants, who were not checking this. I didn't
even realize it was a requirement to play max coins at first, because I
always do, and I saw people who weren't. But then I went to a 50 play nickel
machine and a friend was only playing a few lines and told me that she
couldn't do the bingos at that machine, and she pointed out the fine print on
the back of the card.
So it seems to me that some of the problems with the bingos wasn't due to
player "abuse" but rather due to boothling or attendant mistakes (poor
instructions to them).
Also it was hard to find machines available that were nickels and pennies.
The 50-play pennies were constantly in use, and I have no idea what time
people must have arrived to get on those. We played a little nickles (five
cents) on the 10-play machines, but mostly quarters on 3, 5, and 10 play.
I played a lot of DDB, some 9/6 JB, 8/5 bonus, bad deuces, and even a
little joker poker, mixing it up to keep it interesting, and sometimes
searching desperately for anything that might give a straight flush.
Since you had to have specific hands, and the attendants used different
stamps and noted their names and date on the cards, it would have been pretty
hard to abuse the system. The Palms could have made it easier for the
attendants by making the cards larger, with more room to write stuff down on
the cards. They also should have had different colors and stamps for each
day to prevent anyone from doing what that one guy did (using a fake stamp).
The bingo bonus cards did make the games more interesting, in my opinion,
and I certainly gambled WAY more in Dec. and especially Jan. than I would
have at the Palms.
If the Palms wants to do the bingos again, I would suggest that they do not
combine them with any sort of "gift" days, which is when the machines got
really overly busy and it was hard to get seats. Also perhaps they should
put in some extra penny/nickel 10 play machines to encourage people who
play at lower levels to come.
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