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Ask the Slot Expert: Three royals in 18 hours9 December 2020
Answer: Very unusual indeed! I don't know how quickly you play, but I would estimate that you play between 4000-6000 hands in six hours. Hitting one royal in three six-hour sessions is not news. You have to hit them sometime. Two royals in 18 hours, a good story, but not momentous. We all get lucky sometimes (well, I haven't, but more on that later). Three royals in 18 hours, though, is a great story and a rare event. I've gotten three sets of deuces in one session three times (Is that a double hat trick? A hat trick cubed?), but I've never had more than one royal per day playing single-hand video poker. I did get two royals in one session playing five-play -- that was memorable -- and multiple royals playing 20-100 play for dimes or quarters -- not so memorable. Oh, wait. I do have a memorable multiple-royal experience playing quarter 10-play. I was dealt a royal and won $10,000. The casino even took my picture with a big cardboard check. That experience is memorable not only for my big win, but also for what had happened about 20 minutes before. A woman sat down at the machine next to me. She said that she was on a vacation to try to forget her troubles. Her mother was recently diagnosed with breast cancer. I said that there was hope for a recovery. I told her that my mother had breast cancer in 1973, survived it, and she died of old age in 2010. Treatments are much better today. Then she said, "How about we go partners and split whatever we win?" Okay, I had given her the benefit of the doubt but she's just a con artist. I told her I wasn't interested in taking on a partner and she was on her own. She didn't leave right away and I was considering hitting the Service button to ask a floorperson to call security. She left before I took action and I never saw her again. I told Jean Scott about my multi-hand dealt royal and, of course, she could top it. I think she has written about this experience, so I'm not speaking out of class. She and Brad were playing at a casino and they were trying to keep a low profile. They were playing 100-play quarters to earn points quickly for a promotion and they were dealt a royal. It's nigh impossible to have a low profile when you win $100,000. I attract scam artists. Washing my hands in the mens room, a guy asked for help. He showed me a page in the notebook he was carrying. The page had the name and address of a nursing home, where he was supposed to work that day. He said that he got off the bus at the wrong stop. I thought, Maybe you did get off the bus at the wrong stop, but how did you end up in a mens room in Red Rock Casino? (The one time I took a local bus in a London suburb -- Crouch End, sounds like something you'd get an ointment for from your gastroenterologist -- I sat right behind the driver and asked him to tell me when I should get off. And then I got off through the entry door instead of the exit door. No one complained about my not following the proper procedure. If my American accent didn't give away the fact that I didn't know what I was doing, the luggage I was carrying did. Or maybe their courtesy was just English politeness.) I told the off-course bus rider that I didn't know anything about the bus routes in Las Vegas and I couldn't help him. He said that what he really needed was money to buy another bus ticket. I told him that I still couldn't help him. A week or two later, I was sitting in the Red Rock food court having a snack and my buddy came up to me again. He showed me the same page in the same notebook and started to tell me the same story about going to work and getting off the bus at the wrong stop. I interrupted his performance. I said, "You don't remember me? You told me the same BS story two weeks ago in the mens room right over there. How come you keep getting off the bus at the same wrong stop? He ran away from me. A little while later I saw him going from table to table in the food court again. I went to the security podium and told them about the con artist. I said, "You can't miss him. He has a three-inch wooden cross hanging from a string around his neck." It took security so long to respond that the grifter had enough time to get someone to buy him lunch at Panda Express and then disappear. I haven't seen him since. I've been playing less NSU Deuces and more Bonus Poker the past two weeks. It's near the end of the year and I haven't requalified for the top tier in one of my slot clubs yet. In retrospect, I should have played more over the summer when the virus was less prevalent. I've been bitten more than once by the wait-a-while-things-will-get-better-in-the-future trap only to have things get worse in the future. I'm trying to limit my time in the casino, so I'm trying to earn the status credits I need more quickly than I can earn them playing single-hand NSU. That means playing triple-play Bonus Poker so I can earn a bunch of points in a third of the time it would take playing NSU and have only a small expected loss on a point multiplier day. And maybe I'll hit a bunch of royals in a short amount of time, too! Keep up your amazing run. I want to hear about your fourth royal before the end of the year. Here are the latest figures from https://www.cdc.gov/covid-data-tracker/#cases. Click here for the latest Covid data. Trump, December 5, Voldosta, GA: "We’re rounding the turn, we’re rounding the corner of the pandemic." Donald Trump Georgia Rally Transcript Before Senate Runoff Elections December 5 Over a million new cases each week and more than 2000 people dying each day. New cases and new deaths increasing week after week. I always thought that "turning the corner" means getting past the most difficult time and starting to improve? As I said before, I'm trying to limit my time in the casino and maybe requalify before the Thanksgiving surge shows up in the data. I guess it's really too late, because the people who are going to be in next week's statistics are playing in the casinos now. I'm amazed at the number of people who seem to think that it's business as usual. I'm the only one playing at a bank of four machines. I'm at one of the machines on the end. Another person comes to play at the bank and doesn't sit at the machine at the other end, but picks the machine next to it. Even though we both have masks on (I've been doing a double mask for weeks now), don't you want to be as far from me as you can be? This happened a few days ago. I was going to play until I had a round number of points, but then the drink he had ordered arrived. He pulled down his mask and left it down. I was outta there. I always avoided interior machines and smokers in the past, but now avoiding them is absolute for me. Interior machines are out because of social distancing. And I can generalize avoiding smokers in that I avoid being near anyone who is not wearing a mask for any reason -- smoking, drinking, eating. How has taking Covid precautions changed your behavior in the casino? Are you going less frequently? Are you staying for a shorter length of time? Are you keeping more than six feet away from other players? Send your slot and video poker questions to John Robison, Slot Expert™, at slotexpert@slotexpert.com. Because of the volume of mail I receive, I regret that I can't reply to every question.
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