Gone are the days where you play pennies or nickels or even quarters. The slot machines in AC don't accept coins at all. If you sit down at a nickel machine, usually the lowest amount you can play is a dollar (20 nickels). The machines accept cash in the form of bills, or you can simply insert these gaming vouchers and play off your winnings. When you win, a voucher like this is what you get; no more coins dinging musically into trays. The casinos also have ATM-style redemption machines where you insert a voucher, the machine scans it, then spits out your cash. All this technology has probably eliminated some casino jobs, but it also probably gives casinos more money because it's easy to slip a voucher in your pocket, then leave the casino w/out redeeming it.
Overall, most everyone came close to breaking even for the weekend. I ended about $30 down, but the only way I was able to limit my losses was simply by not playing anything—I lost basically every time I played. The big winnings went to Mr. P, who entered a no-limit Texas Hold'em poker tournament yesterday at 2 p.m. The tournament had a $40 buy-in, with unlimited re-buys in the first hour (or something like that), plus one available "add-on" after the first hour. Six hours (and countless hands) after beginning, having invested a total of about $100 in the game, Mr. P walked away w/a $600 pot. Not bad, not bad at all! Congratulations, Mr. P!
