But I can do my best to come up with one!

Could someone please explain to me how a slot tournament works, and why you'd want to enter one?

Sheepish Kes

How it works....A section of same type slot machines are roped off...Everyone is assigned a machine...They say GO...Push spin button...Repeat as required...(notice no coin insert since the machines are set to play play play)...After a given time they say STOP...High score wins.

Variables...multiple rounds with accumulated points...multiple days...door prizes...welcome parties...awards banquets...food comps...room rates included.

Reasons to sign up...get on mailing list...easy on the brain...fixed costs...get to know casino employees...much of your day is pre-planned...get to meet gambling neighbors sitting next to you.

Reasons not to sign up...get on mailing list...easy on the brain...predetermined dining...much of your day is pre-planned...get to meet gambling neighbors sitting next to you.

There is nothing wrong with a slot tournament if you like it. The casinos used to have fairly grand events and compete for who had the best tournament in the old days. Sometimes the Entry Fee would be in the thousands for a 3-5 day event, and include very luxurious parties, fine dining, nicer rooms, and cash prizes for most everyone. It would become a regular event for some. You might show up and recognize a third of the people from a previous tourney. The Sands had the best as far as I could tell. I still get offers from the Golden Nugget on tournaments every once in a while. Now there are daily tournaments where you just play a round or two. Small entry fee, small prizes, no comps, half your day taken care of. I've played more video poker tournaments in the last 10 years or so.

JMT pretty much covered it. Another reason to enter one is you get a lot of excitement for your money. A $20 buy-in might get you 1,000 credits on a machine you can play. When in tournament mode, these machines hit a LOT more jackpots then normal.

You can go thru $20 pretty quick just playing a normal slot machine. Here you might get an hours worth of play, might win the tournament, and have a good chance of at least getting your money back.

We stay at the "Fremont" downtown. They often have "slot tournaments that are somewhat different and invites are sent out to some of their slot card members by the Marketing Dept. They often give you your choice of dates and during this amount of time (72 hours as a rule) you play with a different slot card and your points are tracked. There is no entry fee and at the end of the month (or tourney) your regular slot card is credited with all points earned and the xxx amount of participants are sent a check depending on where they placed..You are comped rooms, some food, and a couple of other items! They always have one in June....The price is right!!....

It does sound like something to try at least once. How dod you find out about them - wait til you get to town, from the web sites, from joining slot clubs?

YES! LOL all of the above Kestal! Some slot tournaments are strickly invite only.
The LVA also publishes a list of upcoming slot tournaments and prices.
Mostly all the Boyd properties offer a daily slot tounament. If you want to get a taste of it, I suggest starting here.
One last thing to mention, a great many of these tournaments are not about the casino making money from the tounament. It's to get you in the casino and keep you there. Many of these tounament give back all or nearly all of the entry money as prizes to the lucky winners. The casinos know, if they get you inside the casino, chances are your going to gamble on the "real" machines, while you wait for the results or for the next round to begin.

Kes,
The IP has a daily slot tournament, I believe it's $15 to get into. Most casinos have daily tournaments some are free, just ask at the slot booth. The one at the IP I won, a t-shirt, a hotdog, and $300. The free one at Casino Royale I won diner, and 2 show tickets. So you see sometimes it's worth 15-20 mins of your time.

Larry,

Do you ever not win? We should all be so lucky!

Beth

Most of the daily tournaments I've been in have a registration period and the tournament is a few hours later. I believe this is even more incentive to get you to stay in the casino longer. For example, registration from 9am to 11am, and the tournament starts at 1pm. They may start a little late, run 3 session of 20 minutes each with 15 minutes between sessions, and 30 minutes for prizes. That could pretty much eat up your entire day. And if you lose int he first round and don't want to wait for a drawing prize at the end, it only takes up half of your day.

I receive tournament offer's in the mail all the time. They usally are in the range of a $300 - $500 entry fee, but that covers a room for 3 or 4 days, drinks, meals, and a party. With prize money anywere from $15,000 - $50,000, for the top prize.

My friend that tried to show me the ropes of the multi-day slot tournaments would look at the payout, but he focused more on how far out of first you had to be to get breakeven money. For instance a $50,000 top prize and payouts for only the top ten wasn't as attractive to him as a $20,000 top prize where 50th place prize was equal to the entry fee.

JMT,
I can understand your friends views, there is a better chance to break even or better. Your not just playing all for that one big prize.

So, you are in a tournement and they say "go"

Do you stop if you hit a high point spin? Or do you keep going the whole time, for cumulative points?

I see Aladdins offers a "no-risk slot tournement" $25 fee gets you in a 15 minute round, plus $20 credit towards their restaurants, $10 free play on over 1500 slot machines, and $10 credit towards a show ticket. Anyone try this one?Sounds like fun!

Kes

The winnings accumulate on a win meter. The starting credits used to be unlimited since it was a time controlled event, but I think many have gone to X number of starting credits in addition to time.

Kestral,

When I used to play in some nice VP tournaments, you were started with XXX credits to play. When you hit a winning hand, those points accumulated on a seperate "win" meter. So, you tried to play your credits down to zero within the given time alotment.

You really needed to pace yourself so you didn't waste any credits but didn't play so fast that you made a lot of mistakes.

Playing a slot machine, you don't have to worry about accuracy, just your fingers wearing out.