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Grand Fromage
Jan 30, 2006

L-l-look at you bar-bartender, a-a pa-pathetic creature of meat and bone, un-underestimating my l-l-liver's ability to metab-meTABolize t-toxins. How can you p-poison a perfect, immortal alcohOLIC?


It was a rust belt leech casino, not a fun Vegas one. No table games, only slots. My job was to work on the machines but I got to see pretty much everything that goes on in there. I don't expect to ever work there again but I won't answer anything if I was told not to talk about it.

I will initially say the machines are fair. The odds are obviously in the house's favor but they're not rigged in any way. It's just a fancy, expensive random number generator.

I'm sure some other goons have done time at casinos so feel free to hop in.

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A Festivus Miracle
Dec 19, 2012

I have come to discourse on the profound inequities of the American political system.

Rust Belt Leech casino eh? Tell me of your most disgusting stories.

Alan Smithee
Jan 4, 2005


A man becomes preeminent, he's expected to have enthusiasms.

Enthusiasms, enthusiasms...
tell me everything

spicy fights

biggest winners biggest losers

saucy ladies who had more to them than meets the eye

food

Rupert Buttermilk
Apr 15, 2007

🚣RowboatMan: ❄️Freezing time🕰️ is an old P.I. 🥧trick...

I used to be a full time sound designer and composer for Spielo (now IGT) slot and keno games.

Best job ever. I even did an Ask/Tell about it at the end of either 2010 or 2011, can't remember.

Dont Touch ME
Apr 1, 2018

quote:

but I won't answer anything if I was told not to talk about it

Afraid the mafia will read your posting history?

driguy
Feb 16, 2009

In The Pit!
To add to this thread, I currently work for a Slot Machine vendor in a state where gaming is on Native American land. I have been a Slot Technician for far too long. I have also worked on table game equipment, AMA.

Grand Fromage
Jan 30, 2006

L-l-look at you bar-bartender, a-a pa-pathetic creature of meat and bone, un-underestimating my l-l-liver's ability to metab-meTABolize t-toxins. How can you p-poison a perfect, immortal alcohOLIC?


A Festivus Miracle posted:

Rust Belt Leech casino eh? Tell me of your most disgusting stories.

Security gets the real good stories there. As a tech I spent as much time as possible not interacting with customers, thank christ.

There were multiple instances of people taking a poo poo on the floor or machines. One guy was a regular who claimed to be in the CIA to anyone who would listen. He lost, got upset, dropped trou, and took a poo poo on the chair. Then smeared turd all over the machine and left. He showed up again later and was surprised to be banned from the casino.

There was another poo poo smearer once, and a guy who decided to poo poo on the carpet next to the machine. People also left used needles in bathrooms, would drop their loaded diapers on the floor while shuffling along. The low key most disgusting thing is people constantly rub all over the machines for their good luck spells and leave gunk everywhere. I wore gloves at all times while on the floor, both because of that and to avoid getting pinched while working. Those loving machines are made of knives.

Another good one was the loose onion. One of the guys in the maintenance department noticed an onion on the floor in the kitchen and decided that rather than tell anyone or pick it up, he'd wait to see how long it took for the kitchen staff to clean and notice the onion there. As of my last day there, the onion remained. I worked there for a year.

You can't smoke indoors so there are smoking areas outside, and those are absolute loving nightmares to have to work in. I hate smokers. Also sometimes you open a machine out there and since it was outdoors it was colonized and a tidal wave of baby spiders pours out.

Rupert Buttermilk posted:

I used to be a full time sound designer and composer for Spielo (now IGT) slot and keno games.

Best job ever. I even did an Ask/Tell about it at the end of either 2010 or 2011, can't remember.

Every single person in the casino hates you, sorry to report. When we got the Hot Stuff machines installed I resolved that if I ever met the sound designer for it, I would murder them with my own hands.

Dont Touch ME posted:

Afraid the mafia will read your posting history?

I agreed to not talk about certain things so I'm not going to. None of it's that interesting.

Alan Smithee posted:

tell me everything

spicy fights

There weren't any that I remember. I'm sure night shift security had some winners. Occasionally someone would get mad and punch a machine. Breaking a screen is a good way to get your hand cut to hell and get to pay the casino $10,000 to replace the extremely overpriced monitor.

We did have a couple people die while I was there. One lady's elderly mom died at the machine next to her. She ignored it and kept playing until the police there to investigate the death made her stop long enough to answer questions.

When someone dies on the casino floor they put up ropes and little mobile dividers to block view of it. Most people are too busy playing to notice.

Alan Smithee posted:

biggest winners biggest losers

Biggest winner I ever saw got $35,000. There were people who would go through hundreds of thousands of dollars in there every month.

Biggest losers were everyone who worked there lmao

Alan Smithee posted:

saucy ladies who had more to them than meets the eye

The average age of a customer there was like 800 so there wasn't much of this. You'd occasionally get propositioned by a prostitute looking for customers if you were on night shift.


The food's real bad. Generic deep fried poo poo, I assume all frozen from some supply company, warmed up incorrectly. Not interesting, just bad institutional food.

EorayMel
May 30, 2015

WE GET IT. YOU LOVE GUN JESUS. Toujours des fusils Bullpup Français.
Do you remember any frequent gamblers coming in and (politely) get to make your acquaintance with them, with or without making GBS threads and/or knives involved? How were they if so, or were they all "not good" to be around?

Did you also gamble in that casino yourself, when or when you weren't supposed to?

What was your most miserable day that you recall, and what made it so spectacularly lovely?

Rupert Buttermilk
Apr 15, 2007

🚣RowboatMan: ❄️Freezing time🕰️ is an old P.I. 🥧trick...

Grand Fromage posted:

Every single person in the casino hates you, sorry to report. When we got the Hot Stuff machines installed I resolved that if I ever met the sound designer for it, I would murder them with my own hands.

I have no idea what game you're talking about. I left in 2013, and Spielo hadn't bought IGT at that point.

Actually, here's my demo reel, with a small selection of stuff I'd done at the time:

https://vimeo.com/53121521

Grand Fromage
Jan 30, 2006

L-l-look at you bar-bartender, a-a pa-pathetic creature of meat and bone, un-underestimating my l-l-liver's ability to metab-meTABolize t-toxins. How can you p-poison a perfect, immortal alcohOLIC?


Rupert Buttermilk posted:

I have no idea what game you're talking about. I left in 2013, and Spielo hadn't bought IGT at that point.

Actually, here's my demo reel, with a small selection of stuff I'd done at the time:

https://vimeo.com/53121521

It's the world's most annoying machine. I was just joking about how listening to these things blast disco for hours on end every single day drives you insane. Everyone wished we could mute all the machines, alas.

EorayMel posted:

Do you remember any frequent gamblers coming in and (politely) get to make your acquaintance with them, with or without making GBS threads and/or knives involved? How were they if so, or were they all "not good" to be around?

Oh yeah, there were lots of regulars who were decent and friendly. I didn't meet a ton since in tech we don't interact with customers that often, but over time there were people you recognize because they're at the casino literally every day, and sometimes you talk to them. I don't have any interesting stories there since it was just normal people.

EorayMel posted:

Did you also gamble in that casino yourself, when or when you weren't supposed to?

Nope. You are absolutely not allowed to gamble in the casino you work in, you would be fired instantly. The only time I got to play the games was when we would install new machines, there was a testing procedure to make sure they worked. You and another tech got a form to fill out and went to the bank, got money from the bank ($20 usually), then head to the machine. Stick the money in and play ten rounds, record all the bets and wins, make sure it's doing what it's supposed to, then you cash out and take it back to the bank.

Since I was a low level employee I was allowed to gamble at other branches of the same casino company if I wanted to, just not the actual place I worked.

EorayMel posted:

What was your most miserable day that you recall, and what made it so spectacularly lovely?

There were a lot of miserable days, pretty much all of them were the same deal. The boss was a moron and wanted us to constantly move machines around. Every single day, move machines. The worst days were ones where we'd be scheduled to do like, 80 machines in a single day. You have to undo all the wiring, take them down from their stands (they're pretty heavy), move them to the new location, disassemble the stands, reassemble the stands, set them back up, redo all the wiring, then do troubleshooting because slot machines are the worst pieces of crap and if you turn them off, they may never turn on again. If you moved 80 machines probably 15 of them would break and have to be fixed. Sometimes you'd lose a few permanently.

The worst version of that was always doing it in the smoking section because it's so disgusting.

EorayMel
May 30, 2015

WE GET IT. YOU LOVE GUN JESUS. Toujours des fusils Bullpup Français.
So slot machines are printers but designed to explicitly eat your money and with more flashing lights that may very rarely vomit money back at you.

I knew there was a commonality in me hating both. Good to know.

turbomoose
Nov 29, 2008
Playing the banjo can be a relaxing activity and create lifelong friendships!
\
:backtowork:
Any interesting ways people tried to cheat? Or maybe just funny good luck rituals?

AHH F/UGH
May 25, 2002

You ever go to any of the casinos in Seoul? How do you think they stack up?

Walkerhill was where we went most weekends, but I occasionally went to the 7-Luck at Seoul Station and had a pretty good experience and generally made money.

It seemed like all the Holdem Players went to Walkerhill though, and that's really loving far away and generally populated with a *lot* of Chinese-born Koreans.

Grand Fromage
Jan 30, 2006

L-l-look at you bar-bartender, a-a pa-pathetic creature of meat and bone, un-underestimating my l-l-liver's ability to metab-meTABolize t-toxins. How can you p-poison a perfect, immortal alcohOLIC?


EorayMel posted:

So slot machines are printers but designed to explicitly eat your money and with more flashing lights that may very rarely vomit money back at you.

I knew there was a commonality in me hating both. Good to know.

They may be worse than printers. They're just trash. We had at least one model where the repair manual that came with it had a section showing you where to punch or kick the machine to fix it.

They're also all proprietary parts, so they're absurdly expensive. Doesn't matter to me as a tech, but it is part of why we never had spare parts available. There was one model that ran a specific size of like a GT 530 video card that cost $500. A new CPU fan was like $40. The monitors were minimum a thousand and often $10,000+.

turbomoose posted:

Any interesting ways people tried to cheat? Or maybe just funny good luck rituals?

The biggest way people tried to cheat was printing their own tickets and trying to put them in machines. That uh, does not work. Slot machines don't really give you many other options for cheating, we'd get counterfeit money occasionally.

Lots and lots and lots of good luck rituals. The most common type was people rubbing the screens in specific patterns or pounding on the buttons. Once you press the spin button there's literally nothing you can do to affect the outcome, but nobody believes us when we tell them that.

Weirder ones:

There was a guy who appeared to be jerking off the pull lever on his slot machine.

One who would press the spin button, jump up, spin a circle, and sit back down.

Most slot machines nowadays are Chinese themed since that's the biggest gambling market. There was a guy who would only play Chinese New Year theme machines and shout a racial slur in Mandarin before every bet. He apparently had been doing this for a while but I was the first employee who knew what he was saying.

Guy who squatted on the chair and slapped the machine with prayer beads.

I really should've written them down when I worked there, I'm probably forgetting so many. People get extremely weird around slot machines.

AHH F/UGH posted:

You ever go to any of the casinos in Seoul? How do you think they stack up?

Walkerhill was where we went most weekends, but I occasionally went to the 7-Luck at Seoul Station and had a pretty good experience and generally made money.

It seemed like all the Holdem Players went to Walkerhill though, and that's really loving far away and generally populated with a *lot* of Chinese-born Koreans.

I went to one in Busan and uh... I guess 7 Luck, I remember it being near Seoul Station. All the casinos I've been to in Asia were pretty miserable since they're full of silent dudes chain smoking and getting extremely angry that they aren't making any money.

I did go to one in Macau that felt like where James Bond would end up after five years of a crippling heroin addiction and it was pretty fun. Only place the minimum bets were low enough I could play for a while on my budget.

Murmur Twin
Feb 11, 2003

An ever-honest pacifist with no mind for tricks.
I’m a table games dealer (blackjack, roulette, craps, poker variants) and love talking shop! I’m down to answer any questions people have about our side of the tables.

Strong Sauce
Jul 2, 2003

You know I am not really your father.





AHH F/UGH posted:

You ever go to any of the casinos in Seoul? How do you think they stack up?

Walkerhill was where we went most weekends, but I occasionally went to the 7-Luck at Seoul Station and had a pretty good experience and generally made money.

It seemed like all the Holdem Players went to Walkerhill though, and that's really loving far away and generally populated with a *lot* of Chinese-born Koreans.

Whats the diff

RapturesoftheDeep
Jan 6, 2013

Murmur Twin posted:

I’m a table games dealer (blackjack, roulette, craps, poker variants) and love talking shop! I’m down to answer any questions people have about our side of the tables.

What is your favorite game to deal, and your least favorite? How do the players at each compare?

Any celebrity encounters? I saw enough minor celebs in the poker games in AC that I'd assume you've seen some. Bonus points if you've seen James Woods act like a clown too.

STING 64
Oct 20, 2006

im a sportsbook supe in one of the largest casinos on the vegas strip whats up industry friends

Rupert Buttermilk
Apr 15, 2007

🚣RowboatMan: ❄️Freezing time🕰️ is an old P.I. 🥧trick...

Grand Fromage posted:

It's the world's most annoying machine. I was just joking about how listening to these things blast disco for hours on end every single day drives you insane. Everyone wished we could mute all the machines, alas.


Sorry, my reply came off way more serious than I meant it. :shobon: I was only clarifying that I didn't specifically work on that game, if it was an actual Spielo/IGT title.

I remember working for over two years on a game that used the "Hot Hot Hot" song by Arrow (I don't want to mention the actual game title here, just in case). The length of time for slot game development is usually 6-8 months, but there was some managerial issues with this particular one.

I never want to hear that goddamn song again.

jase1
Aug 11, 2004

Flankensttein: A name given to a FPS gamer who constantly flanks to get kills.

"So I was playing COD yesterday, and some flankenstein came up from behind and shot me."
What are the dealer poker games like? They see a massive amount of hands per day and See every type of player imaginable I always assume the dealer game was tough as gently caress. In Cleveland it was well talked about how good the poker was but I could never get an invite. I did play in a game with a few dealers and they always stood out for their decision making.

Baddog
May 12, 2001

Grand Fromage posted:

We did have a couple people die while I was there. One lady's elderly mom died at the machine next to her. She ignored it and kept playing until the police there to investigate the death made her stop long enough to answer questions.

When someone dies on the casino floor they put up ropes and little mobile dividers to block view of it. Most people are too busy playing to notice.


Just ignoring your mom dying is crazy poo poo.

Man, this one time at the track I hustle up to place a bet, and they are kinda wide eyed, staring over my shoulder... I turn around and there's a dude just laid out on the floor about 8 feet away, two paramedics working on him. I'm like "uhhh poo poo I'll ummm sit this one out" and back away and they're all "no no no come on back" waving me up lol. "Ok let me get 50 on Sleepy Dancer to show.... "

Get my slip and turn around and these dudes are throwing a loving sheet over this guy. He probably would have wanted me to get that bet in though.

I guess the moral of my story is "lovely little racetracks don't have ropes or dividers".

Domus
May 7, 2007

Kidney Buddies

Grand Fromage posted:

They're also all proprietary parts, so they're absurdly expensive. Doesn't matter to me as a tech, but it is part of why we never had spare parts available. There was one model that ran a specific size of like a GT 530 video card that cost $500. A new CPU fan was like $40. The monitors were minimum a thousand and often $10,000+.

I worked in an adjacent kind of industry, coin-op and vending. A lot of coin-op poo poo is exactly the same - machine running on off the shelf parts with crazy replacement costs. I always got pissed at the pinball 2000 motherboards, which were literally from cable tv boxes, but cost $1k to replace. Did you ever get screwed over by the manufacturer not caring about a part? Touchtunes juke boxes had touchscreens that would develop giant black spots after about 2000 hours. The monitor people knew it was an issue, but it was such a small part of their sales they just gave no shits.

Also, spiders in your outside machines? Stink bugs here in Ohio, constantly, but rarely any spiders.

The place I worked for ran “skill games”, essentially slots but with some skill element that even a monkey could do (line up 5 numbers in order, etc.) Even though they were technically legal, they were often removed from establishments by the state alcohol folks. Your place ever have problems with state regulators?

Jase1, you must have worked at the jack, you were technically the competition!

Domus fucked around with this message at 00:12 on Jan 17, 2021

tetsuo
May 12, 2001

I am a shaman, magician

Rupert Buttermilk posted:

I used to be a full time sound designer and composer for Spielo (now IGT) slot and keno games.

Best job ever. I even did an Ask/Tell about it at the end of either 2010 or 2011, can't remember.
Are there any industry guidelines/best practices/etc about composing things for those machines (e.g. only in certain keys ) so there's not a grating, cacophonous, clashing discord between separate machines all the time?

Rupert Buttermilk
Apr 15, 2007

🚣RowboatMan: ❄️Freezing time🕰️ is an old P.I. 🥧trick...

tetsuo posted:

Are there any industry guidelines/best practices/etc about composing things for those machines (e.g. only in certain keys ) so there's not a grating, cacophonous, clashing discord between separate machines all the time?

I was told to aim for C, since that was what our older games were in and the other composer believed that a lot of other companies' games were also primarily in C. However, I was allowed to use different modes and scales depending on the theme. I believe I used a heptatonic scale for an Egyptian-themed game.

Edit: just looked up heptatonic and I might be misremembering. I did use different scales though.

Strong Sauce
Jul 2, 2003

You know I am not really your father.





Baddog posted:

Just ignoring your mom dying is crazy poo poo.

Man, this one time at the track I hustle up to place a bet, and they are kinda wide eyed, staring over my shoulder... I turn around and there's a dude just laid out on the floor about 8 feet away, two paramedics working on him. I'm like "uhhh poo poo I'll ummm sit this one out" and back away and they're all "no no no come on back" waving me up lol. "Ok let me get 50 on Sleepy Dancer to show.... "

Get my slip and turn around and these dudes are throwing a loving sheet over this guy. He probably would have wanted me to get that bet in though.

I guess the moral of my story is "lovely little racetracks don't have ropes or dividers".

i feel like that's not as big of a deal. the dude's dead and you don't know him, you buying a slip isn't going to change that.

like if it's your mom and you say, "hold on one more pull" that's a way bigger issue.

but seriously, i don't think i've been involved with anyone dying at the casino... not sure how i'd take it if someone just keeled over right at the table...

LemonLimeSoda
Jan 23, 2020
when people die at our casino, there are no ropes or curtains
You'll just see the EMS pushing the crash cart along the main aisle
I'm a Slots CSR in Florida (pay out the jackpots, walk the floor)

Adar
Jul 27, 2001
I worked at PokerStars' corporate HQ from ~Black Friday until 2018, AMA

(no, it's not rigged)

I would blow Dane Cook
Dec 26, 2008

Adar posted:

I worked at PokerStars' corporate HQ from ~Black Friday until 2018, AMA

(no, it's not rigged)

What's it like living on the Isle of Man?

What actual shady poo poo was going on?

Tetramin
Apr 1, 2006

I'ma buck you up.
Oh man I never considered how much casino employees must hate the repeating loud rear end noises slot games make.

E: also the one time I went to Reno I was there over the weekend and played at a table Sunday night that was all dealers except for me and one other guy. They were all fuckin sharks. But I’m sure the card room wanted to just make sure the table stayed alive. When the dealing shift changed one of them would throw their vest back on, slide into the dealer seat while the dealer took their seat. All really good players.

Tetramin fucked around with this message at 07:18 on Jan 17, 2021

Rupert Buttermilk
Apr 15, 2007

🚣RowboatMan: ❄️Freezing time🕰️ is an old P.I. 🥧trick...

Tetramin posted:

Oh man I never considered how much casino employees must hate the repeating loud rear end noises slot games make.

That was never lost on me, but if you take it from the other perspective, where composers are tasked with writing music and especially creating good sound design, if the machine is sold to a bar or pub or non-casino, that stuff is usually muted immediately. "Hey, do this work for nothing!"

Spielo was, before the merger, primarily focused in the "distributed" market, which was non-casino, especially in Sweden. And 99% of the time, those machines were muted. I get that all of the music is annoying to listen to on repeat, I'd probably feel the same as you all if I worked the floor, it just sucks that the casino is the one place where our work will actually be heard.

Belbos Computer
Nov 20, 2005

Fiat Lux, Big Bang, seven days, seven minutes, seven seconds, and a universe is born before your eyes.
Slippery Tilde
Question for the table game dealers: can tipping well and often affect player reward points or whatever? After one trip to ac my player card level was maxed out and I got a bunch of comps. I wasn't playing longer or higher limits than normally and my friend who was playing with me at every tables didn't get the same treatment. All I could attribute it to was I was going a little wild that weekend with the tips for the craps dealers during my hot runs. I'm just wondering if that's up to the pit boss's discretion or even tracked directly in the system.

seiferguy
Jun 9, 2005

FLAWED
INTUITION



Toilet Rascal
What’s the way to tell what machine has the “best” payout?

I’ve always been told to ignore branded machines, I.e. those Simpsons, Game of Thrones, Willy Wonka machines. Not sure if there’s truth to that.

Pakistani Brad Pitt
Nov 28, 2004

Not as taciturn, but still terribly powerful...



I’m not sure if there is anyway to tell with slots? Maybe in some jurisdictions they have to post it somewhere?

With video poker you can calculate it from the payout table

Grand Fromage
Jan 30, 2006

L-l-look at you bar-bartender, a-a pa-pathetic creature of meat and bone, un-underestimating my l-l-liver's ability to metab-meTABolize t-toxins. How can you p-poison a perfect, immortal alcohOLIC?


Domus posted:

I worked in an adjacent kind of industry, coin-op and vending. A lot of coin-op poo poo is exactly the same - machine running on off the shelf parts with crazy replacement costs. I always got pissed at the pinball 2000 motherboards, which were literally from cable tv boxes, but cost $1k to replace. Did you ever get screwed over by the manufacturer not caring about a part? Touchtunes juke boxes had touchscreens that would develop giant black spots after about 2000 hours. The monitor people knew it was an issue, but it was such a small part of their sales they just gave no shits.

Also, spiders in your outside machines? Stink bugs here in Ohio, constantly, but rarely any spiders.

The place I worked for ran “skill games”, essentially slots but with some skill element that even a monkey could do (line up 5 numbers in order, etc.) Even though they were technically legal, they were often removed from establishments by the state alcohol folks. Your place ever have problems with state regulators?

We had a bunch of older machines that the manufacturer didn't make parts for anymore, so when one broke, whoops. Management wouldn't buy replacements so we just had a slowly expanding field of dead machines that we'd cannibalized to keep the other ones going.

No problem with regulators, the state lottery has an office in the casino and monitors everything.

seiferguy posted:

What’s the way to tell what machine has the “best” payout?

I’ve always been told to ignore branded machines, I.e. those Simpsons, Game of Thrones, Willy Wonka machines. Not sure if there’s truth to that.

There is no way to tell. The actual software of how the machine works isn't accessible by anyone for security reasons, but the casino can set up the payout odds to an extent. All the machines get set to a default that the casino uses, and then over time the manager of the slots watches how often the game is being played and how much money it's earning/paying out, and may adjust the odds to try to get more people to play it. But as a customer there is absolutely no way for you to tell what machines have what payouts. The branded machines work exactly the same as all the other ones.

The only way to increase your chance of winning is to bet more. All slots are set up to pay more on larger bets, and jackpots only happen on big bets. If you want the best chance of winning a big payout, go to the highest limit machines and bet the maximum. Of course, this means you lose more money if you don't hit a jackpot, but. :v: That's the way it's designed.

If you're playing the high limit machines at max bets you will win jackpots. It wasn't all that weird for a person playing those to win multiple jackpots in a single day. But unless you just happen to get several good rolls on the RNG, over time you're losing more than those jackpots are paying.

TheJunkyardGod
Sep 19, 2004

Do not taunt the Octopus
I've worked in poker for way too long, mostly as a dealer but now I'm a floor. I can answer any poker specific questions!

WorldIndustries
Dec 21, 2004

TheJunkyardGod posted:

I've worked in poker for way too long, mostly as a dealer but now I'm a floor. I can answer any poker specific questions!

have you ever seen a physical fight between players, or what's the closest it's gotten?

Murmur Twin
Feb 11, 2003

An ever-honest pacifist with no mind for tricks.

Tetramin posted:

Oh man I never considered how much casino employees must hate the repeating loud rear end noises slot games make.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-PySMBCNT3Q

I will hear the music from this game in my nightmares until the day I die.

Belbos Computer posted:

Question for the table game dealers: can tipping well and often affect player reward points or whatever? After one trip to ac my player card level was maxed out and I got a bunch of comps. I wasn't playing longer or higher limits than normally and my friend who was playing with me at every tables didn't get the same treatment. All I could attribute it to was I was going a little wild that weekend with the tips for the craps dealers during my hot runs. I'm just wondering if that's up to the pit boss's discretion or even tracked directly in the system.

I can't speak for everyone obviously but generally speaking, the Floor (who doesn't collect tips) is the one in change of rating the players and the dealers have nothing to do with it. And generally speaking it's a function of how long you play and how much you're betting, but that doesn't mean a Floor couldn't have fudged it - especially if they're a dual-rate (part-time floor, part-time dealer)

RapturesoftheDeep posted:

What is your favorite game to deal, and your least favorite? How do the players at each compare?

Craps is the best game to deal, but it's also by far the toughest. There are a ton of things to keep track of at once, and there is a lot of math that can get complicated if you're not ready for it. That said, it's fun to deal because (a) you work with a crew instead of alone, (b) you get to scream like a banshee when you're on stick, (c) your brain will be working the entire time you're there, and (d) when the table gets hot and the players get into it, there's an energy at the table that you can't find anywhere else. Craps players tend to come in two flavors: regulars who play all the time and know their poo poo (which is scary as gently caress if you're a new craps dealer because they will test you), and newbies who are curious what's up, want to be taught, and will probably accidentally break a bunch of rules if they're drunk.

Roulette is probably my personal favorite. There's a ton of different little things going on every spin that require different parts of your brain, and I like jumping back and forth: part of it is math (you learn how to do 35x + 17y + 8z really quickly), part of it is physical dexterity (you have to make sure you have your chips in stacks of 20, which can get overwhelming since you have to sweep away all the losing bets every spin), and you juggle it back and forth while still being social with the players. Roulette regulars are mostly cool, but that might just be my opinion because I love dealing the game and am usually having a lot of fun when I'm there, which (hopefully?) is infectious.

Blackjack is fine, it just gets repetitive since there are so many more blackjack tables than other ones. When you start as a dealer you don't know craps or roulette, so you end up dealing mostly blackjack. I don't dislike blackjack, I just prefer other games to it.

Poker variants (called "carnie games") can be good or bad - I enjoy dealing Ultimate Texas Hold'em (UTH) and Pai Gow because I've been playing poker most of my life and so have no trouble reading poker hands, talking poker lingo, etc - this isn't true for every dealer, and there are a lot of them that hate these games. Three Card Poker is fine, it's just boring because there aren't many different things that can happen. Let It Ride is probably every dealer's least favorite game, because it's boring as poo poo and the house edge is insane so people never win money at it.

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Any celebrity encounters? I saw enough minor celebs in the poker games in AC that I'd assume you've seen some. Bonus points if you've seen James Woods act like a clown too.

If so, I didn't recognize them, but I don't really know celebrities too well. Closest I got is that I was once pulled to wait at a high limit table that was opened specifically for a famous NBA player (we're not supposed to 'out' players so I'm avoiding naming names just in case) since he was in the building, but he never came to the table so I just stood dead for an hour.

I work at a casino in the middle of the woods of western OR, so I don't think celebrities come out our way too much. Pre-COVID we would have concerts, but most of the acts we booked are aimed towards the 50+ crowd, so even if those artists came by to gamble after their shows I probably personally wouldn't have a clue who they are.

Murmur Twin fucked around with this message at 22:54 on Jan 17, 2021

Rupert Buttermilk
Apr 15, 2007

🚣RowboatMan: ❄️Freezing time🕰️ is an old P.I. 🥧trick...

Further to the 'best" machines to play, the math is almost always the same. With Spielo machines, they could be set by the owner to payout anywhere from something like 87-92% of lifetime earnings, meaning that a given machine would eventually pay out that percentage of what they've earned.

The way this was calculated is that the math model/algorithm for each game was handled by an on-staff mathematician (we had an entire team), and they'd simulate, quickly, something like a billion spins, maybe more, in a feature-less, DOS-looking interface. Then they'd check the payout percentage from that, and adjust accordingly.

Once the math was straightened out, the graphics sound, music, and general gameplay would be layered over top to create the game.

ilmucche
Mar 16, 2016

What is rating players? I've never heard of that before

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Rupert Buttermilk
Apr 15, 2007

🚣RowboatMan: ❄️Freezing time🕰️ is an old P.I. 🥧trick...

Oh, another thing about digital slot games; you know how you spin, and can stop the spin earlier than it naturally takes to stop? Some people think they can strategically stop it but that's not true. The outcome is determined the moment the initial spin starts, so stopping it early is just a shortcut to what was already going to happen. You can even tell, because if you look carefully at most games when you stop a spin, you'll see the symbols quickly change the moment you do that.

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