Slot machine show and tell

17 January 2012

By John Grochowski

Last spring, I relayed a number of stories from readers about their favorite slot games, and what attracted them. Ever since, I’ve been receiving e-mails about other favorites. Let’s share a few more:

Zachary: I’ll bet you get this one a lot. My favorite is Reel ’Em In, no question. It’s the game that got me to where I like the slots. I was always a table player, mostly blackjack with a little craps. Slot machines bored me to tears.

Once I was having a bad day at the tables, and didn’t really want to spend any more money. My wife said, “Come sit with me. You won’t believe this crazy game.”

It was nickels, and it was video — well you know all that, everybody knows Reel ’Em In. I’d never played a video slot before. We were playing, and my wife was telling me about the game and all the paylines, and the next thing I knew the video reels had gone away and there were these fishermen on the screen. I’d gone to the bonus round, and didn’t even know it.

I don’t remember how many credits I got. It wasn’t a lot. But I went to that bonus four or five more times in the next hour or so, so my money lasted. It sure hadn’t been lasting at the tables. I was relaxing and having fun. It amazed me.

Blackjack is still my main game, but now I take some time to relax with my wife over the video slots, and I still look for Reel ’Em In. I really like the Compete to Win one. The competition is fun.


Georgia: I got a late start in playing the slots compared to some people, I guess. I never went to Las Vegas as a younger woman. The first time I ever gambled was when the casinos came to Iowa, what was it, 20 years ago? I was 40 then, and my 65-year-old mother beat me to it. She went on a bus tour, and came back telling me I should give it a try.

A few weeks later, I asked if mom wanted to make a day of it with me and show me the ropes. I drove, and we went on a cruise together. They had a game called Wild Cherry. It had the three reels, and it was like a lot of the three-reel games that gave you a little something even if you only got one cherry. There were separate Wild Cherry symbols, and if you got three of those, that was the jackpot.

Mom and I played machines right next to each other for the whole two hours. We didn’t hit any big jackpots, but we did OK. Mom got three 7s once. It was 300 quarters, I remember that, because we talked about it with my dad and my husband, and they didn’t get how we could get so excited about $75. Especially when we really lost a little money overall — only about $40 or so. But mostly we played and talked, and talked and played and talked and talked.

We went back every few months for a long time, and we played Wild Cherry when we could find it. I got the three Wild Cherries once and won $2,500. That was fun!

I still see it sometimes, and I see Triple Double Wild Cherry, still on the three reels. Mom’s in her 80s, so she doesn’t come with all the time, just a couple of times a year. But even when she doesn’t come with, she always asks afterward if I found “her cherries.”

Look for John Grochowski on Facebook (http://tinyurl.com/7lzdt44); Twitter (@GrochowskiJ) and at casinoanswerman.com.