Ask the Slot Expert: Lucky and unlucky on Friday the 13th

As I wrote a few weeks ago, I'm not superstitious. I don't believe in good luck charms or good luck rituals. I don't have a pair of lucky socks that I wear to the casino. I don't have lucky machines, but I do have machines that I prefer to play because of their location and lack of glare. I don't tap on the screen to try to get the jackpot or bonus symbols to appear. I don't put good luck charms on the machine and I don't put pictures of relatives on the screen.

The only thing I used to put on the machine was my NSU strategy card. When I ran into Jean Scott at the Gold Coast shortly after I had moved to Las Vegas, she told me to put the card away. Look at it when I needed to, but don't leave it on display. She said that you want to blend in with the crowd. You don't want to show that you're a knowledgeable player.

With everything being tracked by computer now and algorithms deciding which benefits the club will give you, I don't think leaving a strategy card on display makes a difference today. Nevertheless, I keep mine in my pocket now, though knowing the strategy much better than I did so many years ago has more to do with that than attempting to look like a casual player.

The only thing I sometimes leave out on the machine now is my cell phone. One, because I sometimes use it to card-in on a machine; two, because I enter play data into it; and three, because I sometimes want to Shazam a song being played in the casino. Sometimes it's a song I know but can't remember who performed it, and sometimes it's a song or artist I don't know.

I added to my playlist a couple of songs I first heard at Red Rock. The hardest part of Shazaming a song is usually finding a moment when the casino is quiet enough for my phone to get a good sample, but one song I heard at Red Rock presented a different challenge.

Red Rock played a song in which the performer talks to the audience. It's the only song I've heard at a casino with spoken word. It was strange to hear that on a casino's music soundtrack.

I had to find out what song it was. The first step was determining whether the patter was at the beginning or the end of the song. When a different song followed the second time I was paying attention, I knew it was at the end of the previous song.

Now my problem was trying to pay enough attention to the songs to be able to remember something about the song that had just played when I heard the patter again. It took a while, but I eventually determined that the song with the patter was Shattered (Turn the Car Around), by O.A.R.

Before you write me: Yes, now I know I could have turned on auto-Shazam and let the app identify everything and then checked the list when I heard the patter.

Back when Station Casinos owned The Palms, The Palms played a couple of songs that I wanted to find. One was particularly hard because of its wide dynamic range. By the time I heard the louder part and tried to Shazam it, it went back to the quieter part and Shazam couldn't identify it.

I couldn't use Plan B, identify using lyrics, because the lyrics were in the quieter part, which I couldn't hear well, and I couldn't make out many of the words.

Searching online, I found an article that said that the service that The Palms was using had an app that could not only tell you what song was currently playing, but you could also put in a request for a song from its library.

That was old info. I found another article that said that the playlist came in part from the new CEO. That might explain why The Palms played songs that I didn't hear in any other casino.

During the renovation a few years ago, I finally had my opportunity to Shazam the song. I was walking through the casino when I heard it playing. I hightailed it out of the casino to the spa area, which was torn apart but very quiet. Shazam was able to get a good sample and identify the song as Something Good by MOUNT and Nicolas Haelg.

No wonder I couldn't understand the words. English is at least a second language for the singer.

Even though I'm not superstitious, I hope others are. I always play on Friday the 13th. Not because I was born on the 13th (though not a Friday), but because I hope others will try to avoid the unluckiness of the day and stay away from the casino and it will be less crowded.

Playing on Friday the 13th seems to be one superstition that gamblers don't have. Casinos are just as crowded on Friday the 13th as on Friday the 12th or Friday the 14th.

I went to Red Rock this past Friday the 13th to test the unluckiness of the day.

For a time, it looked like Friday the 13th was going to be as lucky for me as it was for the Knights Templar in 1307. (Too soon?) I had a $180 ticket and was going to see how much play I could get from it. I was hoping to reach my goal of $2000 or so in action, but that is a big ask for a ticket that size on NSU. I was getting close to $0 on the credit meter (well, really $3.18 because the ticket was actually $188.18) when I threw away a hand and got four deuces back.

That was quite a surprise! Now my decision changed from "Should I take out a marker to keep playing?" to "When should I stop playing?" I like round numbers so I stopped playing at around a $700 profit and $5200 in action.

Even though it wasn't a point-multiplier day, I decided to play a little of my winnings in some slots. I played Invaders Attack from the Planet Moolah first. I took an L for $43.50. That doesn't sound like too bad a loss until I also tell you that I only played 100 spins at 75 cents per for a total of $75 in action. I wasn't too surprised or disappointed. Moolah games are brutal if you don't get many multiple-payoff spins or trigger the bonus.

Next stop, the Mighty Wins Frankenstein game that I was so happy to find again after it got moved. I went to where it was before and it wasn't there. I double-checked that I was in the right place. Yes, a bank of four machines next to a redemption kiosk across from a bar.

Uh oh. Moved again? Not likely because another Mighty Wins game was in its place.

There were two Frankensteins before. I checked the other side of the bank and the other Frankenstein was still there. I couldn't play it though because it had an out-of-paper tilt and I didn't feel like hitting the Service button and waiting for an attendant to come to replenish the paper.

It was getting close to lunchtime, so I decided to take my profit and call it a day. Rather than redeeming my ticket, I thought I would add it to my STN Cash account using the new unified Stations App. Stations took all of its apps except for the STN Play online casino app and "merged" them into one.

I planned to use the procedure I had used before to add the ticket to my account: connect to machine using app on my phone, insert ticket, cash out to account. I sat down at a machine with a large button deck that could hold my X-Large Dunkin Cold Brew out of the way while I did my banking.

I brought up the new Stations app on my phone and hit the Connect icon at the bottom of the screen. After a few seconds, both my phone and the machine said I was connected.

I hit the X in the corner of the Connection Successful screen planning to look for something in the app to transfer my credit meter to my account.

I was disconnected right after I hit the X. Figuring that I must have missed something, I tried it again. No dice. As soon as I dismiss the message, I got disconnected.

I must be missing something. I hadn't used the app before, so I looked around to see where things were on the app.

I hit the Account icon at the bottom of the screen. In addition to having a tab for my slot club account, the Account screen had tabs for STN Charms (Does anyone care about these?), my STN Cash account, MarkerTrax, and STN Sports.

Okay, things must still be similar to the way they were before. You can cardless connect from the base app, but if you want STN Cash access you have to use its special app or, now, tab.

I hit the STN Cash tab and connected to the machine using the icon on its screen. I put in my ticket and disconnected from the machine in the app. My credit meter didn't automatically transfer to my STN Cash account as I expected.

I wasn't surprised because Stations has changed what happens when you disconnect from a machine with credits before. I'll reconnect and look for a way to transfer credits in the app.

To keep this long story from getting much longer, I'll cut to the chase and say that I could not reconnect to a machine after connecting to it using the STN Cash module in the app. When I connected on a different machine, I couldn't find anything in the app to transfer credits back to my account and hitting the Cash Out button printed a ticket. I gave up on putting the ticket in my STN Cash account.

I could have gone to the cage to deposit the ticket to my account, but I decided to redeem it instead.

I previously wrote about good news I got from Red Rock. One piece of good news was finding that the Frankenstein machines were moved and removed. That is only half-good now that one of the machines is gone.

The other piece of good news was getting a $100 bill instead of five $20 bills from a ticket redemption machine when my ticket was greater than $x00 but less than $x20. The value of my ticket was in this twilight zone again. I would be able to test whether getting the hundy was new policy or a fluke.

I put my ticket in the machine and touched the screen to say I was done inserting tickets. The machine made a lot of thumping noises, more than I wanted to hear.

Sure enough, the machine gave me five $20s when it could have given me one $100 bill.

Oh well. Back to making tickets over $x20 unless I want twenties.

If you would like to see more non-smoking areas on slot floors in Las Vegas, please sign my petition on change.org.