vpFREE2 Forums

Players Getting Booted the Suncoast Way

#1

I suppose I could keep my mouth shut about this. But I hate to see someone getting it in the back without knowing about it. On another gambling forum the subject of Suncoast video poker came up. I explained to them what could potentially happen to them if they took advantage of good video poker with promotions and referred them to two articles in Dancer's LVA column dated Oct. 29 and Nov. 5, 2013.

Another poster jumped in and said Dancer's articles were not true. He didn't outright call Bob a liar but he heavily implied it. He said he had a friend in middle management at Suncoast. He quoted his friend "No video poker players at Suncoast EVER are banned from playing unless they break the rules, are rude to our employees, or our cameras can prove they're lying to us when we question why they're doing something questionable at the machines....and I dare you to produce one piece of written or electronic evidence that refutes this. Only inexperienced managers would even think about removing any of these well-heeled and/or regular players from their customer base."

I personally think this poster is full of bull. Bob, do you have any comments about this.

There are details I can't put up here. Bob if you can email me at mickeycrimm@yahoo.com I'll be glad to give you the full details.

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#2

Mickey I was one who got no mailed from at the GoldCoast for playing 9/6 jack or better more than 3 years old. They said it because they can't beat me on 99.54 game ?- come on now and no one will talk to me further about it . Can ii get an help from the group?

#3

Most casino employees (especially bartenders) think advantage players are rude because they tip less than 5% of jackpots like non-AP's.

<<<No video poker players at Suncoast EVER are banned from playing unless they break the rules, are rude to our employees>>>

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Sent from my iPhone

On Feb 1, 2016, at 6:32 AM, mickeycrimm@yahoo.com [vpFREE] <vpFREE@yahoogroups.cNo video poker players at Suncoast EVER are banned from playing unless they break the rules, are rude to our employees, om> wrote:

#4

Casinos know that barring players who haven't done anything illegal (winning is not illegal) is bad for business and bad for the image of the casino industry and they try to deny it whenever they can. Whenever players are barred, the common response is: "Well, they must have done something wrong". I'm surprised Bob Dancer gets barred at all, because the casinos must know he's going to write about it. These casino come off as just a bunch of poor losers and they tarnish the image of the good casinos who don't resort to these tactics, and they tarnish the image of gambling in Nevada. Tourists are led to believe that all Nevada casinos are just trying to rip them off, instead of providing a fair gamble for their money. Las Vegas was built on the value of providing a fair gamble to tourists and the occassional transgressions were dealt with swiftly by Nevada gaming regulators. Sure there was the notorious American Coin Scandal where video poker machines were rigged not to hit royals at full coin, but the Nevada gaming regulators quickly shut that operation down.

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#5

As a side note, some gamblers might not like that Bob was playing on his ex-wife's card, but it's well known that casinos prefer female gamblers over male gamblers, so many male gamblers either lie about their sex or play on the cards of wifes, paramours or daughters. Ever wonder why casinos seem to be a magnet for cross dressers? There was even a guy who took a bet that he wouldn't get implants and wear them in public for a year, the guy did and won the bet but he kept the implants because he noticed his gambling improved dramatically. Apparently implants are very popular in the pit and on the floor. Most guys must get distracted from checking for facial hair or adam's apples or extra junk in the trunk. But you can't fool Dan Marino:

Ace Ventura Proving She's A Man! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tFL1UXuHJ-A

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tFL1UXuHJ-A

Ace Ventura Proving She's A Man! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tFL1UXuHJ-A Ace Ventura: Pet Detective (1994) Starring: Jim Carrey, Courteney Cox Arquette, Sean Young, Tone Loc, Dan Marino Directed by Tom Shadyac

View on www.yout... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tFL1UXuHJ-A
Preview by Yahoo

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#6

That scandal with Street Operator American was quite bizarre. A sad story. As I remember no casinos were involved. Just a vending company operating a route of bars, clubs & restaurants on commission basis. But my opinion, eventually players would sense no or less big wins. Results would be less play on games, thus hurting the gaming and amusement vending in the little locations.

My opinion, hassling, cheating or giving bad play or deals puts any business out.of business. Most business forgets "the customer is always right". Of course if customer gets too good deal, have to cut back some.
When deals are involved, if it's all fish you can eat or if it's 9/6 JOB with good CB, a certain % of folks will take advantage. It's price of doing business. Can't have it both ways.

Just a personal opinion.........Cheers Jeep

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#7

On side lite. Late October 2015, first time Vegas trip in years for me and the wife. New cards in all places for wife and me. We played about same $$$. Used same address, but separate accounts signing up cards on different days. I get good offers my wife gets none. Cannery is only casino that sent both of us offers?? In this instance she believes they discriminate against her. Palms is only property that still had us in data base since 2007. No offers from them, but didn't play much there. Also, no offers from old LVH. Not much play there. Can't remember it's new name,Westwood or Westgate? Most of the individual Boyd and Stations send offers from each place, but just to me.

In the past casinos wanted to put us together, I protested saying I didn't want my wife to have access to my gambling activity. Separate accounts no problem. Always good offers then for both.

But, things change......Cheers.....Jeep.

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#8

Chris, if you are still reading this board, hope all is well, and I run into you this year !! Take care, hclasvegas.

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Sent from Windows Mail

From: vpFREE3355 vpfree3355@gmail.com [vpFREE]
Sent: ‎Monday‎, ‎February‎ ‎8‎, ‎2016 ‎5‎:‎05‎ ‎PM
To: vpFREE3355 vpfree3355@gmail.com [vpFREE]

That scandal with Street Operator American was quite bizarre. A sad story. As I remember no casinos were involved. Just a vending company operating a route of bars, clubs & restaurants on commission basis. But my opinion, eventually players would sense no or less big wins. Results would be less play on games, thus hurting the gaming and amusement vending in the little locations.

My opinion, hassling, cheating or giving bad play or deals puts any business out.of business. Most business forgets "the customer is always right". Of course if customer gets too good deal, have to cut back some.
When deals are involved, if it's all fish you can eat or if it's 9/6 JOB with good CB, a certain % of folks will take advantage. It's price of doing business. Can't have it both ways.

Just a personal opinion.........Cheers Jeep

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#9

Good morning. Many years ago American Coin was thinking of going public and I received their business plan and proposal, that was my business at the time. Remember, if you hang out in bars playing VP and you see pictures on the walls of players hitting royals how would you know the games were rigged to make the royal a 250,000 to one shot or worse ? While doing our due diligence on the company one thing stood out like a sore thumb. Their hold was more than 1 % higher than the other top 10 slot route operators at the time. I asked a partner of the company , are your drunks that much dumber than the average drunk around town , do they play that much worse for a reason ? He couldn’t give a good reason why their games held so much better. I didn't think it was a good fit for a small cap IPO either, bars are a cash business etc, so I never got involved, thank goodness ! good luck. btw, I wish I kept the business plan.

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Sent from Windows Mail

From: vpFREE3355 vpfree3355@gmail.com [vpFREE]
Sent: ‎Monday‎, ‎February‎ ‎8‎, ‎2016 ‎5‎:‎05‎ ‎PM
To: vpFREE3355 vpfree3355@gmail.com [vpFREE]

That scandal with Street Operator American was quite bizarre. A sad story. As I remember no casinos were involved. Just a vending company operating a route of bars, clubs & restaurants on commission basis. But my opinion, eventually players would sense no or less big wins. Results would be less play on games, thus hurting the gaming and amusement vending in the little locations.

My opinion, hassling, cheating or giving bad play or deals puts any business out.of business. Most business forgets "the customer is always right". Of course if customer gets too good deal, have to cut back some.
When deals are involved, if it's all fish you can eat or if it's 9/6 JOB with good CB, a certain % of folks will take advantage. It's price of doing business. Can't have it both ways.

Just a personal opinion.........Cheers Jeep

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#10

As i remember, the tech ratted them out. If not for that they might still be in business today. Also, but not sure, I think machines were gaffed to eliminate only 1/2 of the royals, thus giving house a 1% edge. Again, it's long time and my info is what I read in news papers. As we know, news is not always right. I'm sure can look up info on net.

Cheers

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#11

Regarding American Coin...

I remember some of the details of that scandal, yes, and I may not be 100% accurate here but I believe the tech that ratted out the scandal was shot to death. There was an actual murder involved in the whole thing.

I also believe the odds of hitting the royal were halved since it would have been a lot easier to do it that way due to the binary nature of assembly language code.

Sometimes when I am on a bad streak and I don't hit royals for a long time, I do wonder if the machines are rigged....And how in the world would you have recourse against such an insidiously hidden way of cheating?

If the techs who know something feel threatened with their lives in cases such as American Coin and the states need to keep the casinos running for tax revenue, the players don't seem to stand a chance at all when they feel like something might be wrong that would threaten to shut down any casino operation (and losing state tax revenues and jobs for the economy to boot).

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#12

American Coin was a slot route operator in the 1980's. They had about 1000 machines in the neighborhood bars in Las Vegas. These bars were restricted to about 15 machines each. By the late eighties American Coin had been under investigation for a host of crimes for quite awhile. The investigation was started because of a certain unnamed informant. But Larry Volk, a former computer programmer for American Coin, put on the hot seat by the control board, admitted that he gaffed about 500 machines under orders of two of the owners, both named Rudolph LeVecchia, father and son. Volk told the board that a jackpot blocking device would cancel the draw of a certain number of royal flushes when there were five coins bet. Volk also used this technique in video keno machines.

The board had determined that the cheating went on for three years without detection. It was estimated that the gaff had blocked somewhere between 10 million and 20 millions dollars worth of jackpots. Volk was going to be the key witness against the Levecchia's in the criminal proceedings. In 1989 the board revoked American Coin's gaming license and fined them 1 million dollars. They went out of business and filed for bankruptcy.

The Attorney General's office was proceeding with criminal charges. Larry Volk was shot and killed while working on his car in his carport in February 1990. This severely handicapped the state's case. Two years later, David Lemons was charged with the crime. He beat the rap.

In 1997, while doing time for a burglary charge, David Lemons confessed to killing Volk. He also implicated Vito Bruno, and Bruno's aunt, Soni Beckman, a longtime Levecchia family friend, as accomplices. Bruno got a ten year sentence. Beckman was let off with a fine and probation. The Levecchia's went scott free. Lemons couldn't be charged again because of double jeopardy.

Ironically, Ronald Dale Harris was one of the investigators for the control board on the American Coin case. Just a few years later Harris would be convicted of gaffing slot machines and electronic keno to pay out large sums of money.

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#13

mickey:

I have no doubts as to the accuracy of your story, yet it still begs the question: What can a player today do when s/he feels like something funny is going on? The American Coin scandal required a confidential informant already knowledgeable of the situation. What can a player do that isn't sure of it, but only suspects it?

The deck is seriously stacked against a player complaining about possible cheating because regulators already have a strong financial interest to keep everything running normally.

I also bet the players who were cheated in the American Coin scandal never were able to file a class-action lawsuit to recover their losses, were they? Something like that would be almost impossible to sort out because there is no written proof of playing VP or slot machines. Win/loss statements wouldn't be enough, and surveillance footage would also be a nightmare to procure.

Ouch!

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#14

Psychophysical, I don't think blind trust is the answer. But in the end you have to put your faith in someone. What jurisdictions should one trust? I once heard about a Draw Till U Win (103.2%) game in that same bar, Carlos and Charlie's that Joran van der Sloot hung out in down in Aruba. Do I trust Aruba? No. I heard of the same game being in a casino in Bolivia. Do I trust Bolivia? No.

I think the citizens of the state of Nevada, their political leaders, and their employee's on the control board and the gaming commission have a vested interest in keeping the gaming fair and honest. They have to protect their economy and tax base. Cheating scandals don't exactly bring in customers. If I even suspect I'm being cheated in a poker game I don't go back to that game. People are not going to flock to Nevada if they think they are being cheated.

Early on in my machine playing career, every time I took an extended losing streak I thought I was being cheated. But the end results were always the same. I always came out ahead. In twenty years I've still never had a losing year. I started seeing the losing streaks as just a cost of doing business. When your sample space gets big enough you will see all kinds of whacky stuff. Five cycles between royals. Ten cycles between quads. On the flip side I've hit 3 royals in four hours, six quads in 200 hands.

My first reaction to a losing streak is to become agitated. And I will stay agitated to a point. If the losing steak keeps up I eventually start laughing at myself. But then I'm always playing within the means of my bankroll. Surviving the losing streaks is routine to me. As long as I trust the jurisdiction I'm gambling in I never suspect that I'm being cheated. It's just the cost of doing business.

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#15

The silver lining behind the American Coin scandal is the control board, which took heavy criticism because of the scandal, realized their own shortcomings. They instituted stiffer policies, procedures and regulations on the machines. They even went so far as to order the retesting of every machine in the state, about 150,000 at the time, to insure their integrity.

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#16

The argument against casinos gaffing their machines has usually been centered around a few areas: 1. They easily make enough money without resorting to anything illegal,
2. The consequences of getting caught would be so great (loss of gaming license, fines, negative publicity, loss of managerial jobs, etc.) as to make any such attempt foolish,
3. The state gaming agencies would likely discover any such gaffing.

I have personally never thought that anywhere I've played has cheated me. If I did think so, I wouldn't return to play.

Ohio and West Virginia (which is my neck of the woods) have many little "Skill Game Parlors" which seem to be mom & pop operations that appear in rented store fronts and probably have a couple dozen or so slots and video poker machines. These operations appear and last for a while, then they disappear. I've never been in one of those places because as far as I know, there is no regulatory agency monitoring their games or procedures. These places might be full of "Mickey Crimm" opportunities, but I don't trust them, so I've not visited.

In any event, as far a legitimate casinos gaffing machines: I don't think the CEO of any giant gaming corporation would ever send out a memo ordering her GMs to "Make sure our machines have the 'XYZ PROM' activated so we get an extra 2% hold on our $1 and up video poker machines." Repeat--I don't think that would happen.

What I do think is much more likely is that the GM of a property in BFE, Oklahoma dreams of becoming the GM of a more glamorous property in Las Vegas. In an effort to impress his corporate bosses with what a good job he is doing, this rogue GM makes a secret deal with his Slot Director to gaffe enough machines (not all) in hopes of showing a measurable increase in his property's net profits. The GM and Slot Director hope that the state gaming commission never selects the gaffed machines for review (or the Slot Director has a mole in the gaming commission who will tell him which machines have been selected) and the GM promises to bring the Slot Director along as he ascends the corporate ladder.

Anyway, that's my general premise. It is possible that there are otherwise legitimate casinos with gaffed machines, but they are not gaffed by corporate policy. They are gaffed by a small group (maybe three people max) who are willing to take that risk in exchange for the chance of a big reward.

Never underestimate the limits of desperation.

I find it amusing when people tell me they are certain the casino we are in has secretly "tightened" all of the machines to illegally reduce payouts, but they will be back the following weekend.

Max

---In vpFREE@yahoogroups.com, <mickeycrimm@...> wrote :

The silver lining behind the American Coin scandal is the control board, which took heavy criticism because of the scandal, realized their own shortcomings. They instituted stiffer policies, procedures and regulations on the machines. They even went so far as to order the retesting of every machine in the state, about 150,000 at the time, to insure their integrity.

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#17

I've read in the past that when the EPROM's are manufactured they are delivered to Nevada Gaming for testing before they can be placed in a machine. And there has to be a Gaming agent present when the chips are placed in the machines. They are placed with a seal so a Gaming Agent can tell if the chip has been tampered with. Then they make random checks of machines to insure their integrity.

In 2005/6 I spent about a year in Ely, Nevada. There were a dozen Spin Pokers in the Hotel Nevada that had full pay joker poker (100.64%). There were multiple permanent promotions running. In short, they were paying me $1000 a week to play a game in which I already had an edge.

While I was there Gaming came in and tested a bunch of machines. I had a pretty good relationship with the assistant casino manager and we talked quite a bit. He told me that Gaming told him that the chips in the Spins Pokers had to be replaced. I asked him why. He said the only reason Gaming gave him was the chips were to old.

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#18

On a related note, try a search for "Konami Code".

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