Horseshoe Southern Indiana (Jan 10-11, 2008)

ontheopenroad · Horseshoe Southern Indiana (Jan 10-11, 2008)

I had originally thought that I would be going on this trip alone this weekend, because Frank was supposed to be working on Saturday. But, he called me Friday evening and told me that his schedule changed and he was off Saturday, so we headed out shortly before lunchtime on Saturday to Horseshoe Southern Indiana. We stopped in Bowling Green, Kentucky to have lunch at Culver’s. I know some of you up north are saying “Big Whoop” and some of you down south are saying “What’s Culvers?” Culver’s is one of my favorite fast food restaurants, and the closest one is about 45 minutes away. Any time I drive past one, I have to stop. But this time, we were too full for frozen yogurt afterwards—and the Carmel Cashew Sundae is the reason I go there!

Anyway, you didn’t tune in to hear about lunch on the road, I’m sure.

We arrived at the Horseshoe around 3:00 pm on Saturday evening. Diamond has its privileges. We walked right up to the counter, and check in was a snap. My casino host had set up my reservation and placed a nice chunk of food comps on my room. The room was nice, but fairly standard. I have stayed here only once before, and the room before I think had been updated since this one had. It was clean, but showed a little more wear than the other. No problem. I didn’t go to the Horseshoe to sit around the room and criticize the worn carpet.

The reason for this “short-notice” trip was that my casino host had entered me into a VIP slot tournament. First place was $25,000. I don’t remember the other payouts, except fifth place was $2,000 and sixth through tenth was $1,000 apiece. My session wasn’t until 7:00, so we played some slots until 6:00 when the tournament started. I watched some of the earlier sessions to try to scope out which machines were paying, and what they were paying. It was 5 minute sessions—one on Saturday, and one on Sunday. Not all machines in the area were the same, but they were all triples. Triple Stars, Triple Butterfly Sevens, Triple Blazing Sevens, etc. The highest total that I saw before my session was around 3,300. For my first session, I chose a Triple Stars. After five minutes, my time was up and I scored 2,639. I thought this was pretty good, given what I had seen, and not knowing what the other scores were. I asked if the scores would be posted, and the gentleman running the show said it would be tomorrow (Sunday) before they would be posted. I walked away thinking I was running pretty good. (We’ll discuss that when we get to Sunday!)

The other promotion that they were running this weekend was for Sunday evening (6:00 pm). They were giving away a Cadillac STS, or a $25,000 cash option. You got a set number of free entries for swiping your card at the promotion booth, with additional entries based on play over the weekend. They had two of the Caddy’s in the walkway between the hotel and casino (which is quite a hike since the hotel is set off the river a bit, and the casino is a riverboat, which naturally is in the water). I had my eye on the silver STS, and I gave it a little kiss (well, I kissed my hand and touched it) every time I walked by.

Because I had lost the farm in New Orleans last weekend, this was a low-budget trip. Frank and I played for a few hours, hopping around between 1c and 5c machines. Nothing was really paying. I did hit a $150ish progressive on the Platinum Quick Pay, but that was about the extent of it. We weren’t really hitting much to play back on.

We had made 10:00 reservations at the Jack Binion’s Steakhouse, so we headed off for dinner. I had pan seared sea scallops, and Frank had prime rib. When we went in, I had my eye on a chocolate soufflé on the desert cart, but by the time we finished our entrée’s, we were both stuffed, so no dessert for us. The dinner was good, the restaurant was nice, and the wait staff was very accommodating. The restaurant even has a smoking section—something we can no longer enjoy in Tennessee.

After dinner, we went back to the casino and played for perhaps another hour. I know that we were back in the room by 12:30, and I had spent what I had brought to play the whole weekend! Ugh! I did have enough food comp left that we filled out the slip to have room service for breakfast the next morning. I must say, honestly, it’s the first time I’ve ever ordered room service in my life. And it’s not something that I would do if it were not comped. I just think that $5 for a box of cold cereal is just WRONG!

Sunday morning I awoke with dreams of driving my Cadillac STS home with my $25,000 from the slot tournament. At 9:30, room service was delivered, and we ate our breakfast and got ready to check out. At 11:00 on the dot, we headed down and checked out of the hotel. After taking our bags out to the car, we headed down to the casino.

The slot tournament resumed at noon, and my session didn’t start until 1:00. They still didn’t have the scores posted yet. After much soul searching and examining my bank account, I decided I would make a small withdraw from the ATM to play today. We played for a little while and managed to stay fairly even. Then I headed over to see the start of the tournament. They had finally posted the first day results, and I almost fell over when I saw that first place on the first day had scored over 9,000 points. The top ten were all over 5,000 points. Here I thought that my 2,639 from the previous day was so good. LOL

I hovered around a little bit until 1:00, then I headed in for my session. This time, I chose a Triple Butterfly Sevens. During my session I managed to hit double-triples at least twice, and after five minutes I had scored 7,714. My total score was now 10,353. I headed over to the tournament table, and found that as of 1:00, I was in third place!

Frank and I headed over to some penny and nickel slots. I was doing pretty good. I had been playing all morning on $100, and still had over $100 out of it. I saw the nickel PowerBall progressive slots, which I really like, and headed over. I always play these at the max, even though you don’t have to in order to qualify for a progressive payout (it does increase the value of the progressive, though). After about an hour on this machine, I had managed to increase my initial $100 to about $350. It was then that I decided to get “brave.”

I had seen a bank of $1 Quick Pay machines when we had walked in on this particular floor, and as soon as we walked in, someone had hit the $1000 level progressive on the any-position Quick Pay. I decided to give these a try. Frank gets a little queasy at $1 machines, so he just stood and watched me. I played $20 on the first machine, and decided to move around. I picked a machine, and the machine next to me was open. I handed Frank a $20 and told him to sit down next to me and play it. I played my machine, and I looked over and he was playing $1 at a time. His machine was a 3x,4x,5x Pay Quick Pay. I told him, you can’t win the Quick Pays on one bet, and he had to play the max (which for this machine is only 2 bets max). I told him it was my money---play it! He played out the $20 while I played out my machine. When he was out, for some reason I decided to move over to his machine. Good thing! I spinned (or spun?) it about four times, and I hit the any-position Quick Pay for $1,001. A guy walked by while I was waiting for the attendant, and it turns out he had just hit on the machine, and he was the guy that I saw when I entered that floor. Good thing I moved over! Frank tried to take a picture with his cellphone. I knew that was a no-no. I was going to take one when the attendant went to get the money from the cage. The Security Officer and Slot Attendant told Frank that he couldn’t take it. I told him, in front of them, in a joking manner, you have to wait until they turn or walk away. They agreed. They didn’t care if a picture was taken, as long as they didn’t see it. Anyway, the attendant didn’t have to leave to get money, as she had a huge wallet of cash with her. Alas, I did not get a picture.

We played for a while longer, and I decided to go downstairs and get an update on the tournament. I went up to the scorer’s table, and saw that I was now in fifth place as of 2:00. There was only one more session left. It looked pretty good that I might be in the top 10 for a guaranteed payout.

We walked around and played various machines, and managed to get decent playback money. At 2:45, I went back to the tournament scorer’s table, and they were calling out the winners. I had indeed finished in 8th place, and won $1,000!!! Yay me! Not bad for a comped buy-in.

After standing in line FOREVER to get the paperwork finished and get the payout from the cashier, Frank and I went back to playing slots. We were going to play until 6:00, win the Cadillac, and drive home! LOL

6:00 came, and someone else won my Cadillac. Can you believe it?!? After I loved on that car all weekend! LOL

We left the casino around 8:00, and I had money in my pocket! A rarity. Frank has been talking about an iPhone for weeks, so I gave him some money, said “Merry Christmas—go buy your phone.” I got my original investment back, plus enough money to pay my property taxes.

Which brings me to a question for the forum. I have never really used a casino host before. I’ve always handled all of my reservations myself, and never had the good fortune of getting high dollar meal comps or entries into VIP tournaments before. I would like to take a gift to my host next time I visit—but since I have never met her in person, I don’t know what a good gift would be. Any ideas?

WILynn

Jim congrats on the tournament and slot wins! Great report. I've found that most of the casinos now allow pics of your wins. (With the exception of my local and obviously Horseshoe Indiana). Fitz doesn't really allow them, but they turn the other way and let you take them. I think the big deal for the pics is to make sure you don't have casino patrons in them. I could imagine they'd be worried if you were taking pics of the security cameras or something, but of a win on a machine? Give me a break!

Hey, you had some good play, good food and nice wins. Can't beat a trip like that.

I tend to bring the host a gift card. Usually from Wal-Mart, since there's usually a wal-mart everywhere and there's bound to be something they can buy there. I think a lot of places have a limit, so I usually do $25. Others often bring something local from the area where they live. (i.e. cheese from Wisconsin, Pecans from Georgia, things like that). If you know of your hosts interests, you can always select something in that line.

Thanks for the report, Jim.

GaPam

WTG Jim! It was looking a little bad at first and it turned into a winner trip. Gotta love that!
You had me cracking up about that car. You'd think after all the love you showed that car that it would have been yours for sure. LOL

Thanks for the report, I really enjoyed reading it, especially with all the humor you inject into it. Congrats again on the wins.

Jean

Great job, Jim! I really enjoy reading your trip reports, love your humor.

I liked the IN Horseshoe casino, that is one long haul from the hotel to the casino though. They have a shuttle (golf cart) to take you back and forth, but it was always at the other end.

You really had a good run with the slots on Sunday. Congrats on the wins!

Nice finish in the tourney....WooHoo in the MONEY! WTG!

Like Lynn, I usually get a Walmart gift card for $25 for my host. I think using a host gives you a edge when you might like to go on a busy weekend. Hosts have a number of rooms available for their clients that reservations can't assign.

Thanks again for a great (and fun) report.