Ask the Slot Expert: Cashless but not crashless

I was at Suncoast the Tuesday after Christmas to earn the points I needed to requalify for Emerald status on a point multiplier day. Santa left a number of prezzies for me on the machines I played on Christmas Day. I was hoping for a repeat performance on Tuesday.

I started out with a very nice ($273) bonus round on Magic of the Nile. I left the machine $120 ahead and with 108 of the 622 tier credits I needed.

I decided to play my favorite Bao Zhu Zhao Fu machine next. I don't think I told you about my good fortune playing the machine when I discovered how wrong I was about the legitimacy of the firecracker progress indicators.

I started out playing the level 1 bet ($0.88). After a few profitable bonus rounds, I upped my bet one level to $1.76. I had had some rockets with large dollar amounts land on the screen while playing, but none of them ever triggered a bonus round.

A red rocket with Major appeared on the screen. The rocket flew up to the firecrackers and -- triggered the Double Up Bonus. The game screen changed to the bonus screen, then changed to the Double Up screen. Will the Major symbol appear in both screens?

Yes, it will. How much was the Major worth? Over $600.

Yippee!

Drats!

I hadn't received a W-2G in 2022 so far because I was playing so much low-denomination multi-hand video poker. Here's my first form.

A good thing about the jackpot -- besides the money -- is that I got to try Boyd's Instant Jackpot, which I had signed up for a few weeks ago. At the end of the bonus round, instead of locking up, my machine displayed my options on the card reader display. I could either have the jackpot added to my credit meter and the W-2G mailed to me at the end of the year or I could wait for the handpay and W-2G.

I took the first option and was back in action with minimal delay. I played for too long at $4.40 per spin trying to hit another bonus round at that bet level. Nevertheless, I left the machine with most of that bonus.

So here I am back at the same Bao machine hoping to catch lightning in a bottle again. I put my card into the card reader. Then I put my ticket, which was worth $426.17, into the machine.

Oops. I missed the Welcome message saying how many tier credits I had earned today. I like to ensure that the system has credited me for the tier credits I calculated that I had earned. I pulled out my card to be able to resinsert it and trigger the Welcome message again.

My credit meter went to $0. What happened to my money?

I saw messages on the game screen and on the card reader display that said, in effect, that my credit meter was transferred to my Casino Wallet. I had signed up for Boyd Pay a few days ago, so it must have become active. I’m pretty sure I had pulled my card out with credits on the meter after I had signed up and my credits didn’t disappear until today. Maybe I hadn't.

Okay. I can live with this. I actually like the feature that credits get transferred back to your cashless account when your slot session has ended. That makes it harder for someone to steal your credits if you forget to cash out before leaving a machine.

I was planning to try out Boyd's cashless gaming system in the new year. It looks like I'm going to try it now.

I started the Boyd Rewards app on my phone. I clicked on the Boyd Pay icon. The next screen showed that the money on my credit meter was now in my Casino Wallet. Phew.

Back to the main screen. Click on Boyd Connect to establish a Bluetooth connection between my phone and the machine and transfer the cash back onto the machine.

Boyd Connect didn’t work when I tried it a few months ago, but maybe now it will. A difference from Stations’ Cardless Connect is that you have to touch the card reader screen to initiate the connection on the machine. Maybe I didn't do that when I had tried using the system before. I waited until the card reader screen displayed “Touch Here to Connect” -- you don’t really have to wait for that -- and touched the screen.

My phone displayed a screen about entering a passcode. I figured it wanted my slot club PIN. I entered it. After a few seconds, my phone displayed an “Invalid Passcode” screen. Eventually I got a message saying that a connection could not be established on both my phone and my machine.

I tried this procedure multiple times with no success. I found a slot floorperson and her supervisor and asked them for help. I went through the motions to initiate the connection and get to the passcode screen.

“Does it want my PIN?” I asked. “I didn’t set up any other passcodes when I signed up for Boyd Pay.”

“Yes, enter your PIN.” A few seconds later, the Invalid Passcode screen and then the unable to connect screens appeared again.

“You’re connected to LTE. Try the in-house WiFi,” the supervisor said.

That sounded promising because I had been having problems with LTE connections and T-Mobile the past few days. Walking down to Starbucks, I stopped at my usual spot to place my mobile order. Instead of a 5G data connection, my phone had an LTE connection. The store selection screen never appeared in the Starbucks app, so I was not able to place a mobile order.

The floorperson said that she too had been having LTE and T-Mobile problems and the supervisor said he was having LTE problems with AT&T also.

I was still not able to connect using the in-house Wi-Fi. They guessed that so many attempts might have locked my account. We were right next to a kiosk. I was able to access my account from the kiosk. My PIN was still good. They were out of ideas and directed me to the slot club booth.

The rep at the booth didn’t know why I couldn’t connect. Everything looked okay on my account. Her manager would not be in for a few hours. Try the cage.

I had already decided that the cage was going to be my next stop. If I wasn't going to be able to transfer the cash to a machine, I was going to go to the cage to withdraw the money from my Casino Wallet so I could get playing again.

I told the cashier that I wanted to withdraw money from my Casino Wallet. She said she would get her manager.

I was used to the cage handoff when I was one of the first people using STN Cash at Red Rock. In the beginning, only a few cashiers had been trained on STN Cash, so the cashier had to get one of them if you wanted to set up or have transactions done to your STN Cash account.

The manager came to one of the windows and pulled up my account. She said that maybe you need to have money in your Boyd Pay wallet to connect to a machine.

I said that I didn’t think that was the case because nowhere does it say you need to sign up for Boyd Pay to use Boyd Connect.

She suggested that we reset my PIN. We did that and I tried connecting again. No dice.

I said that I would be happy to just withdraw the money and play with cash. She didn’t seem to want to do that. I found out why later.

She said that she would call the marketing manager to come down and help troubleshoot.

"By any chance, is her name Mavis Marketer [not her real name]?" I asked.

"Yes, it is."

I was already talking to Mavis about not getting tier credits after playing and losing a lot playing Airport Deuces on a multi-hand machine. I would get a chance to meet Mavis in person.

While waiting for Mavis, I looked at the Transaction History screen in the app on my phone. It showed one transaction: from the machine to my Casino Wallet. I showed that to the cage manager and explained that the Casino Wallet is your wallet that interfaces to the machines. Your Boyd Pay Wallet interfaces to the outside world. (There is a lot of confusion about the two different wallets in the Boyd Pay system.)

When Mavis got there, the cage manager told her what was happening and added something I wasn’t aware of. She said that it took over an hour for the transfer from my machine to my Casino Wallet to appear on her screen. Even though my phone showed a balance, the balance she saw was $0 until just a few moments ago.

Mavis and I went to one of the machines right in front of the cage. I went through the steps to connect and -- miracle -- my phone connected. I went to the Boyd Pay screen and one of the buttons there was to transfer cash from my Casino Wallet to the machine.

I never found out -- I don’t know if anyone knows -- why I couldn’t connect and why I suddenly could. In any case, I was back in action after a 90-minute hiatus.

I don't have to enter my PIN to connect to a machine. That makes sense. You don't need to enter your PIN when you put your card in the reader. I only have to enter my PIN when I want to make a transaction -- transfer cash to the machine, redeem points, redeem free play.

The app screen that asked for the passcode did say to enter the passcode if the machine was displaying one. What could this be? Bluetooth pairing.

None of the machines I tried to connect to displayed a passcode, but we didn't know what else to do so I entered my slot club PIN.

I had a few issues with Boyd Connect/Boyd Pay the rest of the day. The app didn't give me the option to transfer cash to some machines, though I could redeem points and free play. The connection dropped twice while I was playing on one machine. (I have a Samsung Galaxy S21 Ultra. I'm not using an old or low-power phone.) Because Boyd does not credit you with partially earned tier credits (unless something has changed), I won't use Boyd Connect on video poker machines. I don't want to be a hand away from earning another tier credit and have the connection drop.

At Suncoast today, I noticed that my Account Balance screen in the Transfer to Game sequence showed the balances in my Boyd Pay and Casino Wallets, in addition to my points and free play balances. Maybe you don't need to use your phone to use cashless gaming. I'll try that on my next visit.

Not having to use your phone is a positive. When I was at Red Rock last Thursday, I tried to connect to a machine using the STN Cash app. It crashed -- that is, the app screen disappeared -- every time I tapped the Connect button. I could connect using the regular STN app.

I tried clearing the cache, clearing the data, and uninstalling and reinstalling the app. I tried 5G and in-house WiFi. Crashed every time. Proving that the Android programmers have a sense of humor, a couple of times my phone displayed this message: "There is a bug in this app. Reinstall it after the developers have fixed it."

The app started crashing on me last Thursday. I didn't really need it, so I didn't report the problem. When the app was still crashing on New Year's Day, I considered reporting the problem at the cage, but I figured that it wasn't likely for an IT tech to be available to troubleshoot on a holiday.

When I was writing a detailed email about the app crashes that night, I pulled up the app to include the version in my email. I thought, "Before I send this email, let me check the Play store to see if there is an update."

There was. I installed it and the app doesn't crash anymore.

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