Val: Portrait of a Slotaholic

Casinopalooza was a rousing success! Despite a few bumps in the road. ("Not my fault!" says Hick, "I don't control the roads! What do you want ME to do about it?")

Here was the plan, devised by my sister the ex-mayor's wife, who has been this route several times before. We would arrive in Joplin at check-in time at our hotel, then head out to hit four casinos that night. On Saturday, we'd eat at the hotel breakfast bar, and go to four different casinos, then loop back to a couple that we hit the night before. We ended up leaving off one, because Sis didn't like it the last time, saying it was a little sketchy. But we still went to SEVEN casinos. All within a 30-mile drive from Joplin.

I looked up the player's card comps at the various casinos online. The ones Sis gave me in her list of stops on Casinopalooza. In the previous times Sis and Co. have been to these casinos, they did not get a player's card. The Ex-Mayor uses his at the St. Louis casinos we go to, but Sis won't. She thinks it lessens her payout. Anyhoo...she decided that this trip, she and The Ex-Mayor were going to get player's cards.

Here's a collection of mine. It wasn't easy hiding my name on each one! There are seven we got on this trip, and three from the St. Louis area. I'm pretty sure two of them are obsolete now, since I tried one at Christmas and it didn't work, and the other casino has been under new management for many years now.

Let me tell you...that player's card decision was a scathingly brilliant idea. Here's what we got from those seven Oklahoma casinos we visited this weekend:

The Outpost - $7 new member

High Winds - $10 new member / $10 for seniors / $5 Friday night Money Monkey /
$8 Saturday Money Monkey

This is my Friday night Money Monkey, his picture taken in the car. After earning 50 points playing, you could choose a stuffed monkey with a scratch-off tag on its ear that contained between $5 and $100 in free play. We all got $5 on our Money Monkey, except for Hick, who didn't earn one Friday. On Saturday, we all got $8, and Hick got $5. There's a story about those monkeys in a future post.

The Stables - $10 new member

Buffalo Run - $5 new member

Wyandotte - $5 new member / $5 for everybody between 2:00 and 4:00 Saturday

Grand Lake - $15 new member / up to $50 if your card shows you've lost at least $50 that day

Indigo Sky - $7 new member (but they are associated with The Outpost, and we got ours there)

Downstream - $7 new member / $10 food voucher

In case you don't have a calculator handy...that's $147 in FREE PLAY that we got on this trip! Can't beat that with a stick! Of course, we can only be a new member once. But they'll probably send us some comps in the mail. The Ex-Mayor raked in even more free play, because it is his birthday month.

Of course you have to play a little bit to get your free play to activate, but not all that much. I would have spent that money at Grand Lake, even if they weren't giving me $50 free play for losing. Oh, and when I played the free credits before we left, I won $109 with it. Sweet justice! At Downstream, Sis won over $200 on her $7 free play. Good thing, because she'd been losing for a while elsewhere.

So...how did it all shake out? Let the record show that Val left Casinopalooza with every penny that she took along to play with, PLUS $505.

I can't wait to go again.