That's what I averaged for each hour that I played in a slot club points tournament which was held February 1-21, 1998 at the President Casino on the Admiral in St. Louis. The concept was to accumulate as many slot club points in the allotted time as possible. First prize was a BMW Z3 roadster, second prize was $10,000, third prize was $5000 and then they scaled down to 20th place which got $500. There were also weekly awards, so if you were the top scorer from Sunday through the following Saturday, you'd get $2000; the second-highest scorer got $1000; third, $750; fourth $500 and fifth $250.

I figured a bunch of retirees would win most of the top prizes, but entered anyway and went to the casino on Sunday, February 1st. I didn't get back there until Tuesday, so I was really surprised to see I was in the top 10 for the week with just the points I'd earned on Sunday. Tuesday was 'double points' day, so I got in about six hours of play and added to my score.

This is a good place to point out that the Admiral has mediocre video poker. While they offer both All American and Double Bonus in quarter formats, their dollar VP basically sucks. The best is a 3-dollar 9/6 Jacks machine which pays only $1875 for a Royal, so the long term payback is just 99.1%. Their quarter Double Bonus is 10/7 full-pay, but the dollar game is 9/7 and, it too, returns just 99.1%. But, I knew it would take dollar play to stay in the running, so I bit the bullet and went at the $3 Jacks game. Before the first week was finished, I had hit 3 $1875 royals, so I was way ahead of the curve and knew that I'd likely show a profit or at least break even for the rest of the contest.

If I'm being somewhat vague about the details of my performance in the tournament, it's because I obviously entered under my own name and if I say too much about my standings, etc, it will be easy to identify me. I know most people really don't care who I am, but the casinos do and, since they function as my banks (where the withdrawals far exceed the deposits), I ask your indulgence.

Anyway, I got some weekly money from the first week's play and was well up in the top 10 of the tournament. The second week found me at other casinos quite a bit, so I didn't get to play that much, but was still able to hold onto a top spot and again, to collect some weekly cash.

I really went at it in the third week, though the poor payback on the dollar machines began to take their toll. I was losing steadily, but still felt that I'd show a modest profit from my play, in addition to all the weekly money and the final prize. The last week saw the competition heat up as players began hitting the 5-coin dollar machines and even the $5 Jacks or Better machines. At a rate of one slot-club point for every dollar played, the bucks were going into the machines at a quickening pace. Many players were doing it on slots, but the guy who was in the lead ( a retiree, of course) was on the $3 Jacks machines. He didn't know how to play them, but he was getting a lot of points. I later heard he had lost a total of $8400 in winning the first prize.

After all was said and done, I had a small loss at the machines, but had three weekly prizes, plus cash back from my slot club points and that, coupled with the tournament prize, gave me earnings of $56 an hour for three week's part time work. Not bad.

Keep an eye out for events like this in your area; the returns can be considerable, especially if you can play video poker instead of slots.

©copyright, 1998 The GameMaster Online, Inc.