The one that got us out of the hole
March 2013: It was our second night at the Mirage. We just had a wonderful time attending the Terry Fator show. We had a great time and were enjoying every minute of our stay. We left the showroom and followed the masses into the casino. It was about 9:00 pm and we decided to play the ReelMONEY slotmachines since we had such a good time playing them the night before.

We sat dawn at the machines and donated some money to improve the Mirage’s bottom line (at least we were expecting that to happen). Before we knew it we lost our first $100. Bummer! The cocktail waitress brought us a couple of drinks while we continued to play. We talked about how much we liked the Terry Fator show and how these machines weren’t paying out the way they were the night before. After we had been playing for about an hour we heard some loud cheers coming from the casino floor, relatively close to us. Somebody was having some luck! We didn’t pay much attention and continued to lose money. Every ten to 15 minutes we would hear these same loud cheers and we were intrigued more and more by the minute. After about 2 hours and a decent amount of drinks we had lost substantially. We decided to call it quits.

The $1 Wheel of Fortune machines had been good to us in the past so we decided to donate the last $40 dollars we were willing to spend for the day on those machines. We walked over to a bank of $1 Wheel of Fortune machines and to our surprise we discovered all the cheering came from this part of the casino. There was a group of guys drinking some beers, giving eachother high fives and they were real chatty. This bank of machines had been paying out big time for the last couple of hours. They had just arrived in Vegas and these machines were the first ones they played and within a couple of spins they won $1000 on the Wheel of Fortune. People sitting next to them just won $400 on one of the other machines and another couple had won $500 not even an hour before.

There was one machine available so we decided to give it a try. But since these machines had been paying out for the last couple of hours we expected our $40 to be gone in a heartbeat. These machines don’t stay hot, they have to cool down at some point and return to eating your bankroll. Anyhow, we inserted our Mlife card and donated the $40. The group of guys stayed with us to look how we would do. At $2 a spin (max credit) we only had 20 spins to get a bonus spin and possibly win back some of the money we had lost earlier.

After 5 spins we got a spin symbol on the 3rd reel and a spin on the Wheel of Fortune. A miracle happend, the machine stopped at $500. SWEET, instant recovery for all of our losses. The entire group (us included) were really, really loud, giving everybody around us high fives, laughing.

Guess this bank of machines hadn’t turned cold yet. We decided to play some more, we had another drink and were anxious to see what would happen next. We had a couple of more bonus spins on the Wheel of Fortune during the next 15 minutes but those prizes were just enough to keep us playing without losing much money. During these 15 minutes the second machine to our right paid another $400 so the couple playing that machine became as loud as the rest of us instantly. Since no more big wins were coming our way and the machines turned cold we decided to cash out at $450.

All in all, this night turned out to be so much fun. We were so glad this win on the Wheel of Fortune machines completely made up for all our losses. This was a night we would remember for a long time!