I visited three Northern Michigan Indian casinos this past weekend
and I was able to gather some information about their video poker
inventory. I visited Victories Casino in Manistee, and Turtle Creek
and Leelanau Sands casinos in the Traverse City area.
Victories Casino had a poor selection of video poker games. The best
I saw at the .25 cent level was 9/6 DB.
Turtle Creek and Leelanau Sands Casinos are owned by the same tribe.
Leelanau Sands is the less visited casino. It has four gamemakers $1
Full Pay Pickem machines and several $1 9/7 DB and $1 NSU 16/13/4/3
Deuces machines. Leelanau Sands also has .25 cent 9/7 DB in three
play near the table games. Near the showroom theatre there are
ten .25 cent 9/6 JB machines. I play mostly JB and these machines
were slowed down to a crawl. I've never seen a video poker machine
operate so slowly.
Turle Creek has $1 and .50 cent 9/7 DB and NSU 16/13/4/3 Deuces
scattered throughout the casino. The casino also has .25 full pay
pickem and .25 cent 9/6 JB near the table games. These JB machines
operate normally. The casino has also nickel 10 play 9/7 DB. I also
saw a strange version of 9/6 DB in a row of multigame nickel
machines. This 9/6 DB game pays 80 or 400 on a five coin bet for
straight flushes and 200 or 1000 on five coin bet on four Aces. You
can do a max bet of 45 nickels on this game. I suspect the payout on
this version is probably around 98% but it would be fun for a low
roller.
Turtle Creek and Leelanau Sands have a joint slot club that gives you
one point on every $3 played in slots and one point for every $9
played in video poker. 100 points can be reedemed for $1 in food or
gift shop comps.
Despite the relatively good video poker inventory at these two
casinos I seemed to do better on their slot machines than their video
poker machines. Their JB games seemed to operate strangely. In six
hours of combined JB play at both casinos I only hit two four of
kinds. Perhaps I was just unlucky but these Indian casinos make me
nervous because there are few regulations on Indian gaming.
Hope this information helps.