My apologies in advance, this report was written for a Tournament
Blackjack forum, but there's some VP in here. I'm too lazy to
rewrite the whole thing, although I did remove a lot of the blackjack
references. As far as their selection of VP goes - forget it. 1
bank of five or six 9/6 JoB for dollars only. Everything else was
utterly pathetic. Other than those JoB's, if you were willing to
play for the BIG money (dollars), your Bonus Poker is upgraded to
7/5. Woo-hoo!
This casino is a throwback to a period perhaps 10 years ago. No
slots or VP over $1/coin. Highest BJ table limit I saw was $300.
Most of the machines had bill acceptors, but cashout was by coin
drop. A sign on the entrance road had an arrow towards "casino
parking" that was pointed down a one-way road - going the wrong way,
of course. And, it was by far the oldest crowd I'd every seen in a
casino, bar none. We might have seen a half-dozen people under 30
the entire weekend!
The side story here is the screw-up by either the surveyors or the
builders when this nice-looking facility was constructed. Somebody
messed up. Bigtime. Apparently, the building was erected partially
on NON-tribal land, severely restricting the locations within the
structure that could be used for gaming. Therefore, you've got a
huge concert-hall sized room with absolutely nothing in it, and a
smaller room jammed to the hilt with machines and table games. The
strangest thing was the little bar, well away from the current gaming
room and where the JoB's are located. It's got a beautiful bar
there, complete with bartop TITO games - that are all turned off.
The JoB's and a few cartoon slots are in the furthest part of that
room from the bar itself. It seems that the line between tribal
and "regular" land runs right through that room!
As a whole, the tournament is a great deal. $200 each to enter if
you share the free room with somebody else. Meals are pretty much
taken care of with coupons handed out in the registration packets.
First night was a buffet featuring king crab, second night was also
crab but they added a sumptuous prime rib. Damn reasonable price,
too - I think it was posted at around $15 or $16. Drinks are dirt
cheap if you're playing, beer is 50 cents a glass or $1 for cans.
Everyone on the casino staff was quite friendly, albeit not too
knowledgeable of what rules were going to be enforced that day.
The quaint little P.S. to the story is those $1 9/6 JoB machines
mentioned earlier. 99.54% + .33% cashback. Not a positive play, but
what the heck. Those Barney Rubble machines are so old that 600
hands per hour would be a good speed, much more would be foolish
because you had to stop to check your "holds" before drawing out on
every hand. The buttons are in bad shape. Old IGT coin-droppers
with a max of 400 credits on the screen. And the room with them is
about 800 feet from the cage, so hopper fills and other procedures
requiring casino staff can be a long, long wait.
I wasn't complaining, however.
Have you ever tried to carry seven buckets loaded with $900 worth of
dollar tokens before? 
- Brian in MI