Spent a long weekend at Fiesta Henderson. Saw this happen about 9AM
Saturday morning and thought I'd post it. My wife was playing DB on
the Dancers near the hotel registration desk. As I walked up to the
bank to join her there's a man playing on the left most machine, a
woman standing behind the chair on the machine next to him, then my
wife is on the center machine, and I sit down next to her. On the
second machine there is a heart royal on the screen. This is where
the woman is standing behind the chair, and the change light is on.
I take a look at the screen. It was a heart royal, 4 held with one
pulled on the draw. On the left bottom of the screen it says "WIN
4,000", and on the right bottom of the screen it says "CREDIT $0.00"
Hmmm, I scratch my head.
A floor person comes over and ask the woman if she needs help, then
sees the royal and says, Congratulations. The conversation then goes
like this;
Woman: I hit a royal but it didn't pay me.
Floorman: It didn't pay you?
Woman: No, it shows the win but it didn't give me any credits.
Floorman looks over the machine then says: Are you sure you didn't
already hit cash out and take the ticket.
Woman: No, it didn't give me anything.
Floorman: Tell me what happened.
Woman: Well I was playing DB and decided to switch to Triple Bonus.
I hit a royal but it didn't pay me anything.
(about this time I lean over to my wife and ask her if the woman had
actually hit that royal. She gives a very slight shake of her head
no)
Floorman: Are you sure you hit this royal? Are you sure it wasn't
left on the screen by somebody else.
Woman: I hit that royal. I play TB all the time. I was playing DB
but switched to TB and I hit that royal.
Floorman: Well let me check the history.
At this point he pulls up the last 20 hands or so and they're all
nickel DB. The machine shows the dealt hand, what was held, and the
final hand.
Floorman: Uh Maam, I don't think you hit this royal.
Woman: That's my royal, I was playing DB but switched to TB because
I play TB all the time.
Floorman: Well you can see the history here and there's no Triple
Bonus played. The last 20 hands were all Double Bonus.
Woman: I'm sure that's my royal. I switched to TB and then he,
(indicating the guy on the left most machine who was incredibly quiet
through this whole thing), said Look, you hit a royal.
Floorman: Did you play a TB hand?
Woman: I'm sure I did, I'm sure that's my royal, but it didn't pay
me.
Floorman: What denomination were you playing?
Woman: Nickels.
Now the floorman goes to a different history screen to see when that
royal was actually hit.
Floorman: This royal was hit at 2AM this morning and it was hit on
quarters. The $1000 was paid and immediately cashed out.
Woman: No, I was playing nickels.
Floorman: This royal was hit on quarters.
Woman: But look, it says 5 cents right there on the screen.
Floorman: It will show whatever denomination you were playing, but
the hand it shows on the screen will be the same.
Woman: Oh. (long pause) Well I was playing nickels. If that royal
was quarters then it wasn't mine cause I was only playing nickels.
He (again pointing to the same guy) told me I hit a royal and I
thought I had.
At which point she turns on her heel and quickly walks off. About
two minutes later the guy on the first machine cash's out and also
leaves. According to my wife, they were together, or at least seemed
to be together. The floorman walked off to find a supervisor. At
that point I ask my wife what happened. The woman had indeed been
playing nickel DB, but when she ran out of credits she had
changed screens to the TB and saw the royal. She and the guy talked
a bit, (my wife couldn't hear what they saying), and she then hit the
change light just before I walked up. She had not hit the royal, had
not played TB at all, and according to my wife, she wasn't confused
about hitting the royal, she well knew she hadn't hit that royal, but
apparently decided to try and scam the casino.
A couple of minutes later the floorman comes back with a supervisor
and tells her what had transpired, what he had done and said. They
discussed it a while, then he got out a $1 bill, put it in the
machine and played off the royal. He looked at my wife and I and
said something like, "Can you believe that?"
We were pretty incredulous that someone would try a scam so easy to
uncover. Maybe she didn't know about the history screen on the
machine, but who in this world doesn't know that the eye in the sky
could not have been checked and shown what had actually happened.