Hot Stuff

The stuff that is really hot! Some of this stuff you'd only know if you were there or you were in the loop.

Bingo

03/01/04 - Station Casinos have put up a web site that has all of the bingo progressive jackpots for all of the station properties like Sunset Station, Texas Station, Boulder Station, Palace Station, and the sister properties like Fiesta Henderson and Fiesta Rancho. The new web site is at www.stationcasinosbingo.com

Video Poker

Double Down Stud - Sunset Station reduced the number of machines from 5 down to 2. They are still setup for .25, .50, and $1.00 denominations.

The Silverton has 6 of these machines in 5 cent configuration with pretty much the same pay tables that are at Sunset Station. It sure was fun to play this game at that price, double down on a 4 to the Royal, and then hit it!

I've noticed that the Palms Casino also had 8 of these machines 4 backed up to 4 with the same denominations and payouts as the Sunset Station machines.

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Arizona Charlies East on Boulder Highway has the highest payouts I've seen (and the theoretical max chipset) for the Double Bonus Deuces Wild game. They have 7 of them in the place, 5 in a row in front of the players club, and the other 2 in the Sportsbook. The paytable for this game is much better then the versions at the Station Properties, which are on the 2nd and 3rd pay schedule down from the theoretical best. Play them babies before they take them away!

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Now that the Castaways is closed, the ROYAL DEUCES game seems to be no more! This game paid 4000 coins for 4 DEUCES, which of course is $1000 on a 25 cent machine and the same payout as the Royal Flush! They had ONE machine there with this config and it was always busy. Too bad on that one. If anyone knows where there is a ROYAL DEUCES game in Las Vegas, write to me on the feedback page.

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The California has 2 machines similar to the ROYAL DEUCES, and they are called something like DEUCES FRENZY or something wierd like that. One is near the craps tables right after you come down the right hand side steps, and the other is in the row of machines right behind the corvette or whatever car they have above the bank of one armed bandits. The key to find it is that the glass on the machine is purplish colored (not Yellow/Brown like LOOSE DEUCE, or BLUE/BLACK like Double Deuce)

Also these machines pay 4000 coins for 4 deuces and they also have another feature of paying coins for deuces on the deal. So it's kind of like the Pay The Aces / No Faces game crossed with ROYAL DEUCES. Lots of fun if you can get a seat. Nothing like having a payoff of $1000 on 4 deuces, which occurs approx once every 4000 hands instead of the usual 40,000 hands it takes to hit a Royal Flush.

Video Keno Flaw

By now, IGT has probably swapped all of the bad chips in the Keno games. If you haven't been in the know, that you probably don't know that certain IGT Keno games had a flaw that allowed them to be cheated. Basically (without giving it away) IGT introduced a "new" keno variation and the flaw allowed a person to put in a certain coin that didn't match the denomination that the machine was set on, and if you did certain things when the coin was dropping into the machine, it would register the coin with the higher denomination!

Imagine putting in the smallest denomination on a multi-denom machine and having the machine register it was the highest denomination on that machine! Even if you didn't bother playing any Keno, you could make a lot of money just feeding in small coins, hitting the cash out button, and then taking the ez-pay slip to the cage. Even better was hitting a nice jackpot at the higher denom when playing with very little money.

In a hush-hush move, IGT notified everyone to disable that particular keno variation, until they could get new chips out to people.

IGT Swaps out old machines for newer ones

OK - here is another one for the cheaters. It's no secret that IGT is helping companies replace the older "family" of video poker and slot machines with the new "family" of machines. Don't let people fool you into thinking this is a "normal" upgrade. The upgrade is being done as quickly as possible to minimize exposure, bad pr, and potential problems casinos could face if the secrets that have already be "decoded" in the older machines became any more common knowledge then they already are. 2 things that ARE obvious support this hush-hush plan: they want the S2000 AND 2000+ family of chipsets and machines out of general inventory and circulation SO BADLY that they are offering to essentially buy them back (in the form of rebates, credits, creative accounting options) so they can take control of them, and destroy them in the big pit in the back of IGT's Reno operation. (Remember that older machines can be resold thru places like Gamblers General Store and other gaming resellers, but IGT doesn't want these machines to get into any more hands then necessary) This is why the buyback/destroy process is so critical. Next, the machines that "replace" the machine in a casino is designed around a different CPU architecture with a different chipset and random number generator and support chips. There is of course more here then just this, but let's just leave it at that. Anyone with any "random thoughts" in their head could probably figure out the underlying reason why this is being done. Lets just wrap by saying it would be quite exciting to actually know what hands were coming up next in a video poker machine.