Originally Posted by
AxelWolf
Originally Posted by
mickeycrimm
I think Di Rocco liked the controversy. Controversy sells. At the time there probably wasn't 100 video pokers pros in the United States. Di Rocco didn't give a rats ass about them. The masses of recreational gamblers were the market. They don't want to know how to grind out a profit. They want to know how to strike it rich.
I read Gaming Today religiously in those days. The rag came out every Tuesday. I found a lot of plays just by reading the casino news. I remember one morning walking into the Vegas Club, picking up a copy of Gaming Today, grabbing a seat, then reading "Detroit Motor City installs Anchor Gaming's Double Time System."
I immediately booked the next flight to Detroit. I was in Detroit before sundown. I had made a lot of money on that double time system when they first installed it at the Pioneer/Laughlin.
I didn't know they had that system in Detroit. How soon after the Pioneer, do you remember what year? My GF(Wife now) and I did really well at the Pioneer and it was really fun. That play lead me to other things in Laughlin that were super lucrative and we had it to ourselves. Randys guys kept trying to figure out what we were doing, but they never did. I asked Randy if he could tell his guys to back off and that was the last I had to deal with them.
I just caught myself remembering things a little wrong. I think my cognitives these days ain't much better than Joe Biden's It wasn't the double time system. Anchor had another system called the Lucky Coin Bonus System which you might remember was installed for the opening of Mandalay Bay. Another spot I made some money.
Detroit Motor City had been open for only 3 weeks when I got there. The Lucky Coin System was billed as MOTOR CITY MILLIONAIRE. All the machines in the house were linked together. Sometime during each month whoever bet the lucky coin received 50K a year for 20 years. So it wasn't really exploitable.
But, luckily, they had about 20 of the $5 Visions, $1 X-Factors, quarter Blue Screen Bingo's, and quarter Vacation U.S.A's. So I got to make some money but I had to pull out after a week. First of all I didn't like Detroit. 2nd, I was drawing heat. Surveillance came down twice and warned me about vulturing. One of them said "You play Visions for a living." 3rd, more and more Chinese were arriving. So I pulled the plug. Went back to Nevada.
BTW, I'm in contact with Randy. He visited me in Montana about a year ago when he was passing thru. He lives in North Dakota where he is from. He's still heavily into sports handicapping and is currently working all the new promotions in the newly legal sportsbetting states. He's holed up in one state in particular this football season because they have lucrative promotions.
He also makes appearances of the Mitch Moss Radio Show. I'll see if I can find the video of him telling the story of the $1 Full Pay Deuces Progressive with 1% meter in Ruidoso, New Mexico. Randy and Ali told me about after it ended.
I think that was about 2002 which was the year of the Pioneer Double Time System. Ali was still working blackjack promotions at Ruidoso at the time but came over for the Pioneer play. They kept delaying the installation and Ali's ole lady got into some kind of trouble back in Ruidoso. He had to go back and take care of it so he missed the Pioneer play.
After the Pioneer play I went north and played Draw Till U Win and other games around northern Nevada for the next 5 years before discovering Montana.