Originally Posted by
Dan Druff
Anyway, here was the free slot play scam they ran:
They had huge signs all over the building proclaiming "Free $100 slot play for joining players club!" This was circa 2008.
At the time, this wasn't uncommon in Vegas. Arizona Charlie's had one, and it was legit.
I went there with my then-girlfriend, figuring we would each get a free $100 shot at winning something.
First, we stood in a long line. Then we had to go through the process of setting up a players card.
Finally, we were done, and I asked, "Okay, so how do we get the $100 freeplay?"
They directed us to a woman standing away from the desk, holding two crisp $100 bills. Sweet! Or so we thought.
She directed us to a very specific roped-off bank of machines. I asked, "Do we have to play these machines?" She said yes. Then she asked each of us to choose one, and she inserted the $100 for us. WTF? We were then given the rules:
"You have $100 in credits now. If you can run it up to $1700, we will give you $50. Otherwise, if you run out of credits, that's it, and you do not get anything."
WHAT?!?!
So the $100 was in name only. It was $100 in fake credits. It might as well been $1,000,000 in fake credits. You couldn't cash it out. The most you could make was $50, and that was only if you turned $100 of fake credits into $1700. Total bullshit. We ran it out, and it actually took awhile. These were slow machines which used the credits slowly, and we kept winning little "jackpots" like 300 credits which kept us afloat but nowhere near 1700. Finally we both busted. Brutal.
Later on I read that this promo was even worse prior to when I went there. At one point, the machines were even slower and a little looser with the small jackpots, and I read stories of people spending 3 hours playing the machine, only to ultimately bust and walk away with zero. Ouch!