Ask the Slot Expert: Gold medal error in bronze medal match

I don't believe in lucky charms, but I always go to the casino on my birthday. It used to be worthwhile. A free play offer or a game to win free play or dining. This time one casino ignored my birthday completely and the other only wished me a happy birthday on the card reader display.

My birthday streak is alive. No royals or other big hits on my big day. I did finally get the Dragon Train bonus on Dragon Train and, even though it took a while, I got all three bonus features on a Quick Hit Link machine I had been eying for a while. Add in the Chocolate Cream Cold Brew I got for free at Red Rock, birthday reward from Starbucks, instead of paying the exorbitant casino-store price, I consider the day a success.

I almost got a gift from Red Rock. I was about to enter the velvet rope lane for the cage when a man passed by me and went right to the window. He had some sort of problem other than being in a hurry to catch a flight. The people at the other two open windows also had complicated transactions. Finally the lady at the farthest open window was finished and the agent waved to me.

I told him I wanted to take out a marker. He did his magic on the keyboard and went to the printer to get the marker. He handed it to me to sign and I noticed that it wasn't my name under the signature line.

I figured that the marker was for another agent. I told him that it wasn't my name on the marker. He looked at the name and said that it was the lady who was there before me.

If I had signed my name, I think they would have found the mistake eventually. And I would have been in trouble if I had tried to sign the name on the marker.

I hoped for some royal flush karma for doing the right thing but, alas, it was not to be.

I was going to discuss the video poker gimmick I like the best this week, but real life intervened. Someone was playing the machine, so I decided to play another gimmick while I waited for the machine to open up. Now I think I like this other gimmick better, even though it doesn't meet one of my criteria for a good gimmick. I'll think about it some more -- and maybe play both machines some more.

In the meantime, the Olympics are over and I have two complaints about the coverage. First up is a continuation of my rant about the Volleyball coverage.

I think there are two things wrong with NBC's commentary on Volleyball. First, the onsite reporter who provided the what-ABC-called "Up Close and Personal" human interest stories and player interviewers. The length of her pieces were inappropriate for the time available when they went to her.

For example, USA is playing Italy. The score is 5-all and the video feed is showing a replay of the last point. Let's go down to the floor to Heather Cox.

Ms. Cox has an item about how Alessandro Michieletto, a player on the Italian team, grew eight inches in four years and had to change the position he played. The coverage showed two pictures of him with the same teammate four years apart. In the earlier picture, he's shorter than his teammate. In the later picture, he's taller.

We can the hear the crowd noise during the next play while we're looking at the pictures, but we can't see the play. We missed it.

The video coverage returned to the game in time for the replay. Rather than describing the play we just missed, the two athlete/color commentators, Kevin Barnett and Salima Rockwell, talked about his shoe size.

And that's the second problem. The color commentators were sometimes too busy talking shop or making jokes with each other that multiple plays went by without comment. The professional broadcaster, Paul Sunderland, sometimes had to interrupt them to talk about the play that was occurring.

It reminded of the Odd Couple episode in which Felix visited Oscar in the ABC broadcast booth. Howard Cosell is calling a football game. He throws to Oscar to call the next play and Oscar freezes. Felix grabs the microphone and calls the next play and then pontificates about how we could all learn a lesson from the play. When he throws back to Cosell, Cosell said that he'd recap the three plays you just missed after the commercial.

I thought the volleyball coverage was going to be my biggest grip until I invested three hours of my life watching the Bronze Medal Men's Team Table Tennis match between the Japanese and the French teams. There are three players on a table tennis team. The French team consisted of Simon Gauzy (29) and the Lebrun brothers, Alexis (20) and Felix (17).

The contest is best of five matches. The first match is doubles. The rest are singles matches. The first singles match is between the players who were not on the doubles team. A match is the best of five games. First player to 11 points wins the game and you must win by two points.

Simon and Alexis easily won the doubles match, 3 games to 1. Felix squeaked out a win in the first singles match in the fifth game 12 to 10 to take the match 3-2. That was a close one.

Simon and Alexis both lost their singles matches 3 to 1. The overall match score is now 2-2. Whoever wins the next singles match wins the bronze. It's Felix's turn to play.

He won the first two games, even though he was frequently behind. (He would frequently be behind in his matches only to rally and close the gap and often win.) He lost the third game, 14-12. If he wins the fourth game, France wins the medal. The Japanese player, Shinozuka, needs to win to keep the match alive.

The score is 11-10, Felix leading. Bronze Medal point. He takes a timeout.

Timeouts are usually a good time for a quick commercial break. The table tennis timeouts are 30 seconds.

I was watching on one of the temporary, extra Olympics channels on DirecTV. The coverage was a bit weird because the announcers seemed to have no awareness of when they were going to or coming back from a commercial break. The breaks frequently started or ended mid-sentence. I don't know who was announcing the match. They were good, but they weren't NBC's commentators.

In a boneheaded broadcasting decision that rivals that of the Heidi Game, whoever was directing this coverage decided now would be a good time for a commercial break. A three-minute long commercial break for a 30-second timeout.

Coverage resumed with the French team celebrating. I wonder what happened.

A few hours later, the match was replayed on USA. This coverage had NBC's commentators. This coverage did not break away at the time out. I saw Shinozuka score to tie at 11-11. Then Felix scored two points in a row to win the match and the medal.

The director of the temporary channel coverage made a gold medal error in that bronze medal match. I should have streamed the match on Peacock in the first place.

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