Hi Gang:
Hedy and I had two traumatic experiences with credits left on a machine
but each time it had a happy ending. Both happened in Las Vegas and both were
a number of years ago.
The first came at the Orleans. Hedy and I were playing quarter 10/7 DB on
adjacent machines back by the racebook and were both running bad, going
through several hundred dollars without hitting a single quad.
We were getting ready to move to the full-pay deuces machines by Don
Miguel's (oh, how we miss those days!) when I finally hit a quad. I decided to
play the machine down to $100 in credits and then cash out. When I reached
the $100 mark something must have distracted me (I don't really remember) but
I pulled my card and walked away without cashing out the ticket.
We were playing deuces for about 15 minutes when I realized what I had
done. I told Hedy and she said, "Go back and see if it's still there. And,
hurry up."
I raced back to the machine but my heart sunk when I saw a woman sitting
at the machine playing. I came back and told Hedy.
"Did you ask her if she found any credits on the machine?" Hedy asked.
"No," I said, figuring she wouldn't tell me if she had. "Well, go back and
ask," she said.
I figured that this was a waste of time, but when I went back and asked
the woman if she had seen any credits on the machine when she sat down, she
asked me, "How much money are you talking about?" I told her it was $100.
Well, she opened her purse, reached in, pulled out a ticket for $100 and
handed it to me!
I was stunned ...but happily ... and thanked her over and over.
The second incident came at Caesars Palace. We were playing the Super
Times Pay machines with 9/6 JOB near the food court and were both doing well.
While we were playing, I noticed a guy close by watching us intently and
figured he was waiting for the machines to open up. He was kind of creepy
and I felt almost as if he were stalking us.
When we decided to leave, I took Hedy's ticket, added it to mine (it came
to over $600), and was about to cash out the total. Again, I'm sure
something happened to distract me and I walked away without taking out the ticket.
We had walked about 100 steps when it struck me that I possibly hadn't
cashed out. I checked my wallet frantically looking for the ticket but it
wasn't there. We raced back to the machines where we were playing but when I saw
zero credits on the machine panic immediately set in.
"That guy ... the stalker," I thought to myself. "He's got our money!"
Hedy went running to the nearest security person, described the guy and
they lit out in hot pursuit trying to find our No. 1 suspect. I stayed in the
area where we had been playing and roamed around looking for the culprit.
I don't know what brought me back to the machines where we had been
playing but I did and on closer inspection I found that the 600-plus dollars were
still there, but not on the machine I had checked when we came racing back.
It was on the other one!
I cashed out the ticket, went to find Hedy and we both breathed a huge
sigh of relief. We were quarter players in those days and this was a lot of
money to us then. Plus, it was during the first couple of hours of our stay
and that kind of a loss could have put a real damper on the trip, mentally
and fiscally.
We both learned a valuable lesson that day and now always linger a bit by
the machines when we're ready to leave to check that we've A) cashed out
our tickets and B) pulled our player's cards.
Regards,
CoachVee & Hedy
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