Hey everybody. I'm a Pokerfraudalert Radio listener and have a story where I was the victim of a theft. The theft was not by a mugger or a burglar, but rather the Agua Caliente Casino in Palm Springs, California!
Agua Caliente has been advertising a crazy good promotion where you get an extra $500 for every handpay jackpot you hit.
For those of you who don't know what that means, whenever you press a button on a machine and end up with $1200 or more ahead from that button press, federal law requires that the machine lock up and they pay you by hand, issuing you a W2-G tax form for it. This is true for all casinos in the US.
An extra $500 on a handpay is already sweet, but it doesn't take a rocket scientist to realize that if you play high limit machines, handpays will occur regularly, thus netting you a cool $500 each time!
Let me give you an example.
At video poker, if you play $1/credit, you will only get a handpay rarely. You'd need to either hit a royal flush ($4000), or something like quad aces with a 2/3/4 kicker ($2000) on Double Double Bonus. Since these are very rare hands, you would hardly get any handpays (if any), thus making this promotion not worth very much.
But let's say you play $10/credit. Then you would get a handpay every time you got quads ($1250) or better, making this promotion worth much more!
Now let's say you played $50/credit! You'd be getting a handpay every time you got a flush ($1500) or better, making this very frequent!
Therefore the strategy for this promotion is incredibly simple. Play big, hit jackpots frequently, keep collecting $500 extra each time, profit!
Here is a link to their promotion. Scroll down a little after getting there: https://www.hotwatercasino.com/multi...sizzlin-summer
I live in San Diego, so the drive isn't too bad to Palm Springs. 150 miles and I'm there.
I got there and clarified with the desk that the promo is really as it appears to be on the website. They said yes. For every handpay, no matter how many I hit, they will give me an extra $500. They did tell me video poker was not included in the jackpot promo, which was annoying, but whatever. Notice it's not on the website about that. I went to high limit slots.
I loaded up some money in the machine and lost a few thousand. No big deal, that's the variance of something like this.
Finally I hit a jackpot for about $1600, meaning I was due about $2100 after the promo. They paid me, and I was close to even again. I kept playing, with the confidence that I would probably walk out a good deal ahead, barring some very bad luck.
Then I hit another jackpot for $2200 or so. That meant I was due $2700. Instead of paying me, they told me I was being kicked out of the casino!
After feigning ignorance and claiming I was just a high limit player who heard this was a cool promo, they said they would let me cash out what was already in the machine, but were still refusing to pay the jackpot! Not only were they screwing me out of the $500 promo, but they were refusing to pay the jackpot I rightfully won!!!! This would be super duper illegal in Nevada or any other state-regulated casino in the US!
They cashed my ticket, threw me out, and told me I would be arrested if I came back.
I started asking around among friends and acquaintances in the gambling community, and found out some people got fucked even worse than I did.
A few people were thrown out upon hitting a jackpot and were not paid the jackpot OR allowed to cash out their tickets! One guy had like $30k in tickets, and they confiscated them.
In all my years in playing casinos, I've never seen anything like this. Every single casino I've known has always paid out all rightfully hit jackpots and honored all tickets, aside from certain cases where the person was already banned prior to playing. None of these people were banned prior to playing, yet a lot of jackpots were denied and a lot of tickets were confiscated and/or not allowed to be cashed!
They only stole $2200 from me ($2700 if you count the promo money I expected), but that's nothing compared to what happened to some others.
You would think after all this, they would stop the promo, but go take a look at the website! It's still going!
They are just kicking out anyone whom they suspect is there to take advantage of it, and confiscating both their jackpot and their tickets in most cases.
Not only is this really really unethical, but nobody is even trying to cheat or get away with shenanigans here. The promo says you get $500 every handpay during those hours on Wednesday, and all we did was play higher so handpays would come more often! Duh! Even amateur gamblers should be able to figure out that's the best move.
Unfortunately since it's an Indian casino, they are considered on sovereign land, and I cannot touch them legally. Can't sue them, can't complain to the state, nothing. They can just steal and get away with it. Motherfuckers.
Well that's all, just wanted to warn everyone to stay away from Agua Caliente in Palm Springs!
