Ask the Slot Expert: New screen almost makes me lose out on free play

Last week I wrote about changes to the slot club software on Red Rock's video poker machines (and probably all video poker machines in a Stations casino) . Whenever a casino changes a system, you have to pay attention. Things might work a little bit differently now.

For those not familiar with these video poker machines, they don't have separate, dedicated displays for the slot club. The slot club menu appears on the monitor when you touch a button on the screen to open the menu. The game screen scales down to make room for the menu.

I was at Red Rock a few days ago to redeem my free play offer. I opened the menu, touched the button to activate my free play offer, and entered my PIN. I closed the menu and started playing.

I used to be able to play NSU at about breakeven any day of the week. My casino options became more limited due to some pre-Covid slot club changes. In Covid, my total return options seem to be settling in on either playing at a small loss or playing with a small edge. The breakeven options is frequently off the table now.

This was a play-at-a-small-loss day, so I wasn't going to play for a long time. When I was finished playing, I opened up the slot club menu to check how many points I had earned. (If you remember from last week, one of my complaints about the system is that it stops displaying the number of points you earned and just displays a good luck message instead.)

Good thing I didn't just check my points at a kiosk on the way out. There was a new screen in the free play activation sequence.

Entering my PIN was enough to activate the free play under the old menu system. The new menu system requires me to touch another button, Activate Free Play, before it finally makes the free play available.

I should have noticed that something was amiss when I began playing. At Stations, the free play is awarded to you piecemeal after each hand or spin as a sort of rebate. You have to have credits on the machine to use your free play. Say you bet $5. At the end of the hand, the machine gives you whatever you won on the hand plus $5 from the free play you have available. The system continues matching your bet ex post facto until you have no more free play available. I wasn't getting credits even when I lost a hand.

In other clubs, you can play free play without having to put money in the machine.

I've been tripped up by this rebate system before. On video poker machines, I don't let the credit meter go to 0 because most machines with multiple paytables go back to the paytable selection screen when there are no credits. I'm never fast enough to get more money in the machine before it switches screens and I have to choose my paytable again. The machine never leaves the paytable if I put more money in before running out of credits.

The Palms used to have multi-hand machines with 9/6 Jacks. A long time ago, I was playing next to Jean Scott and her husband Brad. None of us were having luck that night and I was running low on credits. When I was close to 0 credits, I redeemed points for free play and hit the Deal button.

I didn't have enough credits to fund a max-bet play at the number of hands I was playing, so the machine asked for more money. I was trying to avoid having to put more money in by redeeming points for free play, but I didn't redeem the points soon enough. I should have redeemed them when I still had enough credits to fund a max-bet hand. I had to put more money in the machine anyway.

(I know. The world's smallest violin is playing just for me.)

Fox has a new game show that features a slot machine, Cherries Wild. If you think the help screens on a casino-based slot machine operates are confusing, consider this description of the slot machine used in this game.

The program does not use a "real slot machine". Each spin in a particular game is the product of a game play combination that is determined in advance by the program's producer. On each tape day, an independent outside compliance company randomly assigns those predetermined combinations to the contestant teams taping that day. At least one (1) of the contestant teams on each tape day will receive a combination that has the potential to lead to the Grand Prize if the game is successfully played to its conclusion. At no point in the game do the contestants put their own money at risk.

Question: Your latest article shows the typical weak minded person fooled by the inclusion of two simple words: "up to."

[The writer is referring to my column three weeks ago about how disappointed in myself I was for missing the "up to" disclaimer in an offer for trading in my old cell phone, yet I never miss the disclaimer when it appears in a sign advertising slot paybacks "up to" a certain percentage.]

That person is a member of a group that mindlessly presses a button to play a slot machine of which you are the apparent king of. No thought or intelligence involved . Just put in your money and press the button and brainlessly zone out while a tv screen hypnotizes you into a zombie like trance.

Your critical comments of how the pandemic was handled by our last President shows your lack of thought. Operation "Light Speed" brought more than one vaccine in record time that will enable you and the rest of the lemmings to safely pursue your brainless activity in your favorite casinos.

Your publication of the grossly inflated pandemic fatalities shows that you uncritically accept anything the "experts" and the main stream media vomit out of their lying mouths.

Why don't you ask your new "president" how he plans to effectively quarantine the travelers who will be streaming across our southern border any day now that he has given them the all clear signal.

I don't need to read your politically charged "slot expert" articles any longer so I am bidding you adieu.

Answer: Pfizer says that it did not accept any Operation "Light Speed" funding for the development of its vaccine. Dr. ALbert Bourla, CEO of Pfizer: "The reason why I did it was because I wanted to liberate our scientists from any bureaucracy. When you get money from someone that always comes with strings. They want to see how we are going to progress, what type of moves you are going to do. They want reports. I didn't want to have any of that. I wanted them- basically I gave them an open checkbook so that they can worry only about scientific challenges, not anything else. And also, I wanted to keep Pfizer out of politics, by the way." Transcript: Pfizer CEO Dr. Albert Bourla on "Face the Nation," September 13, 2020

Pfizer did participate in the manufacturing and distribution phases of Operation Warp Speed. Moderna participated in both the development and manufacturing and distribution phases of Operation Warp Speed. There are other vaccine candidates still in development that received development funding from Operation Warp Speed.

This page on the Department of Defense's website has good information about the goals, strategies and tactics of Operation Warp Speed. I was struck by the mission statement in this exhibit: "Mission: Deliver 300 million doses of safe and effective vaccine by 1 January 2021."

Your comment about quarantining travelers was the point of my comments in the column. Unlike in other countries, quarantining upon arrival is not being enforced no matter where the travelers are coming from.

Look below for the latest grossly inflated pandemic fatalities.

Here are the latest figures from https://www.cdc.gov/covid-data-tracker/#cases_totalcases.

Click here for the latest Covid data.

The game show I referred to above, Cherries Wild, had another notice in the end credits roll. I didn't copy down the actual text, but the upshot is that the show is not taped before a live audience. Other Fox game shows, like the Masked Dancer and the Masked Singer, say in their end credits that the audience shots are from other shows.

I don't know why I keep watching The Masked Singer. Not being very familiar with contemporary pop music, I don't know three-quarters of the celebrities who are guessed as possibly being under the mask. At least I have a better recognition percentage of the people who are actually under the masks.

Fox brought back Name That Tune also. There are plenty of audience shots in this show. But this show is taped before a real studio audience.

How can Name That Tune have a real studio audience when other shows, like the ones I mentioned and Jeopardy and Wheel of Fortune and.... can't?

Name That Tune is taped in Sydney, where they have Covid under control enough to have small studio audiences when they follow strict safety precautions.

Stephen Colbert did a bit on his February 22 show about different officials giving different estimates for when things can return to normal, however you want to define "normal."

Instead of basing the estimate on the calendar, I wish someone would base it on the virus. I wish someone would say that things can start going back to the way they were when the positivity rate falls below x% and hospitalizations below a certain number and vaccinations above a certain number or some combination of those metrics and maybe others.

If they time the return to normality in virus metrics, I think it might give some people incentive to keep up the safety measures. The scientists are now saying that we should not let up on the safety measures just because metrics are improving. I think they should say that we can get back to normal sooner if we keep up with the safety measures and keep improving the metrics.

If we relax after every surge, we'll just keep going through surge and improvement cycles over and over again.