Yesterday, I decided it was time to give my local casino another chance.
Let me explain.
Some time ago, I played a special promotion at Rivers Casino where if I earned a certain number of points, I could receive a cast iron cooking pan. Which at the time I really needed. But when I received enough points for the cooking pan, all the cooking pans were gone and I was left with an alternate option of (can you believe this) a gravy warmer.
That was two years ago.
I figure that’s enough time to forgive and forget. Besides, Rivers Casino is running another promotion – earn 100 points in slot play and you could receive some kitchen goodies.
I looked over the list of available kitchen goodies. Silverware set – no, I’m good with that. Spatula set – got plenty of those. Slow cooker – I’m on the fence about this one; most slow cookers are built for families of three or more, and I’d prefer a slow cooker built for a family of one or one.
Hey, here’s something intriguing. An electric beater. Hey, maybe I can make a cake batter with this and spend most of my time licking the beater blades instead of baking the cake.
Ah, what the hell. Maybe I can incorporate an electric beater recipe into a Bachelor Cooking segment on this blog.
So I needed to earn 100 slot points before 8:00 p.m., and I arrived at the casino at about 5:45 p.m.
When I play slots, I only do ten pulls on a machine – win or lose, ten pulls – and then I move to another machine. Things started a bit slow, but then one of the machines gave a nice $75 handpay. Take the credit slip out of the machine, put it in my pocket and don’t use it again. Another tip. That way, you’re not tempted to chase your losses or “play with house money” and lose it all.
Every time I went to a new machine, I checked my players’ card on the machine’s slot. 75 points to go. 70 points to go. Ten pulls of nothing here … ten pulls and a break-even handpay here …
Then I went to a machine called Gold Rush, which apparently has an old “miner 49er and his burro use a mine car to gather gold nuggets” theme. I’m only about 15 points away from the mixer. Give it a shot.
Last pull of the night – turned into a bonus game that gave me $225 in handpay out of the machine. Woah.
I checked the point total. I passed 100 points in plenty of time. Now I need to find the spot where I can claim my appliances.
Last time I tried this promotion, I had to traipse over to the customer service counter, where stacks and stacks of appliances were on view. So I went over there. No appliances on view.
Oh, come on. Don’t tell me all the appliances are gone AGAIN…
I asked the front desk about the situation.
“Oh, no, Mr. Miller,” she smiled, “we don’t do the promotions like that any more. You go to any slot machine, access the slot screen that monitors your point totals, and you can select the item and it will get delivered to your home via Amazon.”
Wait, what now?? No worrying about getting stuck with a gravy warmer again?
I ran back to the Gold Rush machine. It still showed my $225 handpay as the last pull, which probably scared everybody else off – you know, the old adage that the machine must have used up its jackpots or something. I put my player’s card in the slot and accessed the slot screen.
Two minutes later, I received a confirmation notice that a plug-in beater will be shipped to my home later that evening.
Well,l that’s nice. So it’s now time to cash in all my slips, and –
Wow. Will power and technique and patience gave me $412 in profit. And that $412 is going directly onto my car payment, which can now put my ownership of Lightning’s Girl within fingertip reach. Booyah.
So, let me see here. Some extra cash to pay off my car. An electric beater for my kitchen.
I’m not seeing the downside to any of this.
Maybe there ISN’T a downside after all.
#chuckislucky
Chuck The Writer 