Hot Slot Plot

One of the beautiful things of Vegas is the solitude.

The invisible walls the slotters (my new term for people who play slot machines, I’m very creative) put up around themselves while they play. It’s a feeling like no other, to sit in front of a machine and really feel it, you and the machine are one, you feel its rhythm and it pays you back for feeling it. The world dissolves away as you make money spinning wheels, and nothing else matters in the world, except for when your drink is coming.

So on Tuesday, as I recovered from my dry air hangover, I sat down for a rousing game of nickel slot Monopoly. I wasn’t doing well, and hadn’t been doing well for the trip. I was really hoping for some solid slot time, and was running around the Grand searching for my machine. But as I continued to throw nickels down the pike, I heard a man behind me winning up a storm. I kept listening and paying attention and he was hitting some kind of win every 4th or 5th turn. I turned to look without seeming conspicuous, and indeed, this dude was hitting it big. I went to the bank of machines he was playing and put in some quarters on a different machine, but noticed quickly that 1. I wasn’t winning and 2. The machine he was playing was different than all the other ones in the bank.

The dude was playing a lone machine, and I wanted it. So I waited, I waited until the dudes wife came and he had to leave, and I went, and I sat. And I started to win, a lot. In the course of 45 minutes I had made 80$ pretty easily. The machine was hitting, and it was hitting a lot, and once or twice, it hit pretty big. It was a regular slot, but it had a fourth reel, and that wheel would give you 2x your win, 5x your win, 10x your win, or the excellently fun “Haywire” where the other 3 reels would turn and you’d win up to 100 credits. The machine kept hitting the 2x reel a lot, and a couple of haywires. And every now and again it would just land on 5 free credits.

But I couldn’t stay, and I got scared of the money I was making and it was more than I had made since I had been there, and I got nervous. Reluctantly, very reluctantly, I walked away. But I felt pretty good, because it wasn’t karma, this machine was paying off.

The only thing is, its speaker was making little noises, every once in awhile, and the speaker would make a really loud noise.

I went upstairs and took a nap, or tried, but all I could think about was all the money I was missing. So I sat up and went back downstairs, found my lone machine and started to play. I was going up and down, but mostly up when the speaker started making a REALLY loud noise. I couldn’t’ sit there, I hadn’t been there for more than a few minutes, and I had to get up and leave. So I left it, I left my machine again.
I wandered around, lost more money, met my friend for a drink and went upstairs to get dressed for Blue Man. When I raced back down, with only a half hour to play before we left…there he was.

The original man was back. He’s no dummy, right? He knows a winning machine when he sees one. So on John’s advice I go and sit back down at the Monopoly game and start listening. And the dude was winning again. I sat and waited again, waiting for him to move. Eventually, his wife comes back and I’m in like Flynn…winning. Again. But I had to go, I couldn’t stay! I had a show to go to!

So I left and came back later, more speaker problems, by the time I finally sat down to really play, the machine didn’t seem AS loose. It was still hitting, but the 4th reel wasn’t hitting like it had before. It kept going past the 2x win, I got a few more haywires, but it wasn’t like it was.

I believe that when they fixed the speaker, they fixed the machine…although I now have a new theory that every casino has one or two really loose slots, and it’s up to the slotter to find them. This guy was way in the back of the casino, in a corner, and it was the only one of its kind.
it was destiny that I found it, but I regret not being able to go back to it. I think most of the time if you have luck with a machine its dumb luck, and you can’t get it back, but after the dude won, then I won, then the dude won again…well…at least you can see where my theory comes from.

Now granted, it’s no 50 hand poker, which really captured my heart…but theres a machine in the MGM Grand that will pay out. Let me know when you’re going…I’ll tell you just where it is.