It’s a Stampede (April 2011)
We discovered this machine at New York-New York Hotel & Casino. We were walking through the casino when we heard a loud “Rope em in Cowboy” coming from a bank of 3 stampede machines in front of Il Fornaio Italian Restaurant at the edge of the casino floor. We had a look at the machines and thought this game could be fun so we decided to sit down and give it a try.

The Stampede machine is a penny slotmachine with a max bet of $0,90. To activate a bonus game you have to get 3 Stampede symbols, one on every reel. When the bonus game is activated the machine shouts “It’s a Stampede”. During the bonus game you rope in a number of cows. There’s 4 different progressive jackpots. Rope in 3 pink cows and you earn about $5, rope in 3 blue cows and you earn about $15, rope in 2 brown cows and you’ll get about $95 dollars and the grand prize for 2 green cows is about $500. Of course you will only have a shot at these progressive jackpots when playing max bet.

We sat down and donated $60 to the “Help MGM Resorts Through Summer Fund” and started playing max bet. We were playing for about 5 minutes when two other couples sat down at the other 2 vacant Stampede machines. Our machine wasn’t showing us any love! Do you ever have the feeling you picked the wrong line at the cash register in a super market? That seems to be the story of our live. The people playing the other two machines started their play and got bonus round after bonus round. They were up from $20 to about $200 within 15 minutes. During the same time, we lost our first $60 and put in another $40.

We were close to giving up when we got 3 Stampede symbols for a bonus round. This bonus round lasted pretty long and in the end we got 2 brown cows and some other wins for a total of $102. We cashed out and put our TITO away since it was the first day of our trip. We would put it in our safe and use it at a later time during the trip. At least this win made up for our losses.

We reconsidered and decided to play a little longer since the other machines were hitting constantly so we pulled another $40 out of our wallet and fed the machine. We hoped to get lucky like the couples sitting next to us. Within 10 spins we got 3 Stampede symbols again which triggered a new bonus round. First we got a blue cow, then a pink cow and after that a blue cow again. We figured: “well this is going to be another $15 bonus”. Then a green cow showed up on our screen. We only needed one more green cow for the grand prize………The machine spinned and spinned but no cows in sight, no other small prizes either. Than lightning struck: BOOM, the second green cow stopped on the third reel. JACKPOT!!!!

See the pictures below, we won the biggest progressive jackpot of $450,08. A nice start of our trip. Since we were drinking our second 32 oz. frozen margarita we were extra cheerful. What a way to start a vacation in Vegas.

Vegas baby…………..