If you are concerned about your trips to a casino becoming too frequent and bringing an onset of slot machine addiction, I have found a wonderful cure: Suquamish Clearwater Casino.
As you drive into the spacious parking garage, get whisked up a fast elevator to the pleasant fourth floor casino floor, it may be easy to overlook the large number of worn out cars being attended to by sullen patrons carrying free promotional kitchen trinkets out of the casino. They "won" something, but perhaps not what they really wanted. Your inner voice kicks in: "But not me. Not this time. I've lost money 15 times in the past 16 visits, but this will be different. This is a midweek, early afternoon trip right before the payday scalping party begins. It's the 13th, and Venus just transited the sun. And heck, a week ago on this day there were plenty of handpays--at least 10 over 1,000.00. So, I'll just watch and jump in when enough people have been bled on my Video Terminal bank."
Your strategy works out great (as usual) for the first thirty minutes or so. In my case, I was up a full 34 bucks (gasp!) on my first 100 bucks playing dollar bets and having 3 bonus games.
Then it gets bad. You switch machines. You pace out the play. Nothing works. But this casino must have at least 82% payback programming chips in these games, right?
I'm not an MIT trained math whiz, but what the house edge means for me is that playing here costs me 300.00 every time I play dollar bets. Win 100, lose 400. If I play .25 bets, I lose 20 bucks an hour; play .50 bets, lose 40 bucks an hour, and so on.
For a slot machine addiction to work properly, I would expect a healthy symbiotic relationship to occur. You escape to a relaxing environment to "pray to the God of Chance" (as one author describes it), win some--and lose more. Perhaps pour a bunch of cash into a bank of slots and nail a huge, thrilling bonus that gives you back half or more of your losses. The way I see it, casinos (and their programmers) have a choice every day: milk their cash cows weekly or have one big BBQ and be done with it.
Roger Upjohn's trip report (below) hit it right on the head. Clearwater decided to have a BBQ with me. I lost almost a thousand in one day playing dollar bets on the same bank, at the "right times", with no results. Playing dollar bets with no bonuses for 800 spins will do wonders for your addiction issues. It also helps to have people blowing smoke in your face, passing gas, hitting jackpots on .10 bets, or telling you in a drunken stupor how they are faking a disability to play next to you today.
I tried the self barring route at a few Washington casinos. It's worthless. Don't expect any enforcement, unless you win a hand payout. The Clearwater has found a better way to cure gambling problems. If you suspect that you or a loved one has a gambling problem, play at the Clearwater Casino a few times and you will be cured.
Well, the ClearWallet has done so well off with our money they are open 24 hours as of May 1st. In my experiences with Washington casinos, this makes it much harder to find a good time to play.
You can try coming in and playing at strange hours of the night, but any visit over 2 hours means losing slot winnings rapidly. This casino can dish out big wins when the time is right, but they really turn the hurt on for the trouble. When I've played those strange hours of the night (not rush hour), the formula seems to be win 100, then lose 300. The Tribal Based lottery terminal system has a way of turning 75-88% paybacks into losing 5 out of 6 times. These are not pure RNG slots like Nevada. There are a certain number of bonus winning "scratch tickets" out there, and the tribe will have no trouble leaving a few out to make sure you hand back all of your winnings and bankroll. The rule of "if you are up, get up" is especially important here. The casino has a pleasant atmosphere and good food, but it comes at a high price. A few years ago, I would hear patrons talk frequently about playing through the night and going up and up, but not anymore. It's like all of the tribal casinos are daring each other to do a better job of assaulting and mugging their players. Where's the fun in watching 6 people come in and lose their shirts, and maybe finding one person walk out slightly ahead?
The facility, in regards to the restaurants, rooms gym and such are not bad. However, the services in the gaming room is horrible. Especially in the poker room. It seems this place caters to locals and the good old boy locals. In fact staff routinely derides players within earshot. Save the gas and turn around!
Stayed there over Holidays w/friend. Rooms were decent. Bad internet and lame cell coverage and staff could care less that I needed decent internet for some work related stuff but generally okay. What made it not so cool was the casino itself. Wish Id seen the comments about the slots before I went. Seems like they were just killing the Holiday crowd. Never experienced such tight slots before. E V E R ! Like so tight that you don't even feel like you're playing slots so much as just dumping money into a machine. Its wayyy weird and so lame. I wanted to punch the machines I was playing. Ran out of cash early as they sucked it all up and took early flight back before New Years. Made for brutal vacation and crappy holidays but glad to get out of there
NEVER gives back. My husband and I have been to just about every casino in Vegas and Atlantic City and Western NY and never have we spent $1600 on slots in 2 days without winning anything. I'm not talking about taking money home but just winning enough to keep you playing for a while. They are so greedy they can't even offer a customer that. We played machines I've played in other casinos that paid so it's not the machines themselves. This was the worse experience we ever had at a casino! The slots were so tight it was horrible! It's absolutely ridiculous! Entertainment" IT'S A RELATIVE TERM. So ask yourself this (metaphorically speaking) : Is it entertaining for you to have an ARROGANT RICH PERSON come up from behind you, JAM a gun into your back and while laughing at you say -- "Give me all of your money… Your money is ours and if you say a word about it we will have you thrown to the pavement. Now stop playing and hand over your money you stupid idiot!" . . . If THAT'S the general feeling of what you're looking for from a Casino experience then Suqaumish Clearwater Casino IS THE PLACE FOR YOU. . . IF however you want more of the regular Casino experience where the odds favor the house but nonetheless offer some chance of winning, well then you must go to any other casino then Clearwater.
