Agua Caliente, Morongo VP and other stuff
I was in Palm Springs today (Friday) and stopped in at two casinos to check them out. Agua Caliente surprised me by having the cards in card craps face up -- with the shooter throwing the dice. This gives the shooter the chance of hitting or avoiding certain combinations to score a winner. I think Barona also has a face-up card craps game. I did not play.
Agua Caliente also has 7/5 Bonus Poker in its high limit room but on the main casino floor the game is 6/5. I checked as many machines as I could and could not find anything that approached full pay.
What was curious was that Agua Caliente had a game that was called "Suited Royal." All four suited royals had the same payoffs. It looked to me as though the game could have had different payoffs for different suited royals but that was not the case. So... what was the purpose? It would have made more sense if, for example, there was a premium for a royal in spades but no -- all royals regardless of suit paid 4,000. So if anyone has any info on this please explain?
I heard a commercial on the radio driving back to LA that Morongo in Cabazon was opening a new high limit gaming area. When I stopped in to Morongo I found out it was a new CARD high limit room and I did not go in.
The "machine" high limit room had few video poker machines and they all appeared to be Game Kings. Again, bonus poker was 7/5 for $1, $2 and $5. I did not see any higher denomination games.
Valet was free at Morongo. The last time I was there about 7 or so years ago there was a valet charge unless you had a higher ranking gaming card.
As I expected there was plenty of smoke at both casinos.
Agua Caliente actually impressed me because it was not cramped with plenty of walking space between rows of machines. But there were very few table games there. I asked a floor supervisor who said that in the past few years, table games were replaced by new slots.
I stopped into the poker room at Agua Caliente and found that they had plenty of low buy-in tournaments including a daily $50 tournament at noon. I love playing those low cost tournaments. There were also nightly tournaments.
The poker room at AC had six tables going and there was a wait list for the low limit No Limit Holdem table and it had a $60 buy-in. AC also had free valet.
I also walked by the hotel lobby and I really got the feel of a high end casino in Vegas. I was told their steak house was very good and maybe in the future I'd check it out.
I signed up for an AC players card, got $10 free play which I used on the $1 7/5 Bonus game. No luck.
At Morongo I thought I could get some free play with a "new account" since I hadn't been there in 7+ years but no luck there either -- my account was still active so no free play.
I looked for the card craps table at Morongo and couldn't find it. I also wanted to check out their Super Aces Bonus game section -- they used to have one with about 20 SAB games but couldn't find it either.
