One of the main reasons I planned my trip to Vegas was to go to California to pick up slot cards from the Indian casinos and to harvest Roulette chips. Before I go any further, I need to talk a little about how Roulette is played in California. If you are used to playing Roulette in Nevada, Atlantic City or on the Riverboats around the country, you will be amazed on how they play Roulette in the Indian casinos of California. According to state law the use of “regular” roulette wheels to determine the outcome at the Roulette tables is prohibited. The results at the California casinos must be determined by cards or bingo (ping pong ball) machines. Almost every casino has a different “spin” on how the game is played.

I love to play roulette, but the California style of the game drives me crazy. I normally play a section of the wheel – the area around the double 00s and I hope that the ball will land somewhere in my section 3 or 4 times in a row. As I win I increase my bets and each time the ball lands in my section I win more and more.

In California there are no sections of the wheel to play that make any sense. At Harrah’s in Rincon they have no wheels at all and they simply use the Bingo style – ping pong ball machine to determine the winning number. At Pechanga on the other hand they use a regular single 0 wheel with a roulette ball, but the spin of the wheel only determines which one of 3 cards they turn over to reveal the winning number. If the ball lands in the numbers 1 to 12 on the wheel the first card dealt will be turned over to reveal the winning number, if the ball lands on the numbers from 13 to 24 the second card dealt will be turned over to reveal the winning number and if the ball lands on the numbers from 25 to 36 the third card dealt will be turned over to determine the winning number. I talked to the pit boss at Pechanga and he said they are using a “regular” roulette wheel to get players used to playing the game in a normal fashion because in a year or two “regular” roulette would probably be allowed in California. The other casinos I visited used various types of wheels with different colored sections, cards, etc to determine the winning number. So, if you go to California to play Roulette be ready for a very different sort of game.

Now back to my trek thru California. When I left the Paradise casino in Yuma I circled around and got back on I-8 heading toward San Diego. As soon as I crossed the California state line I saw the brand new Quechan Casino Resort which was scheduled to open on February 13th. I was about 9 days too early to see this new casino. This new casino will replace the California portion of the Paradise casino that I had visited in Yuma, so the unique set up of having a casino straddling both sides of the state line will be gone. The first open casino I came to on I-8 was the Golden Acorn – no roulette here but I did have a nice lunch in there café. I had visited this casino about 5 years ago and they still had my name in their data base so I didn’t qualify for any free play for being a new slot club member. Right up the hill from Golden Acorn was the La Posta casino. I had never visited this casino before, so as a new member I got $15.00 of free play. I played the $15.00, won a little bit of money, but played it all back before I left the casino.

While I was at the Golden Acorn a very helpful casino employee gave me a large detailed map of San Diego County showing the location of all the casinos around San Diego. This map was very helpful in locating the casinos I wanted to visit. My next stop was the Viejas casino in Alpine, CA. I got blanks of all their slot cards and I also was able to harvest some nice roulette chips that I had never seen before. This had been a good stop. Back into the PT Cruiser and on to the next stop the Sycuan Casino. At Sycuan I got a couple more blanks of their lowest level cards and I also found a few cards “laying around”. They had a couple of roulette tables at Sycuan. One table was not open and it had generic roulette. I wandered over to the other table and much to my delight it had some nice roulette chips with the Sycuan hotstamped on them. They had a roulette wheel at the table but it was not used at all. I went up to the table and asked the dealer how the game was played and what the wheel was used for. He glibly said “The wheel is for show and the cards are for the dough.” I acted like I had never played and walked off since there was no one playing and there were 2 other pit bosses hanging around the wheel. I went back downstairs and sat down at a slot machine where I could see the roulette wheel. I watched the wheel for about 45 minutes until I saw a couple of other people sit down to play. The time now was right for “Harvesting”. I bought in, got the roulette chips in my pocket and was back on the road again in about 10 minutes. Heading North my next stop was the Barona Casino. At Barona, I got some nice blank slot cards and a room key. They had roulette chips but they were generic Chipcos with A – B – C on the chips. It was getting kinda late, so I headed for Harrah’s Rincon where I would be staying for the next two days. I wound my way thru El Cajon and up and down and around on narrow and winding roads until I reached Harrah’s. I had stayed at Harrah’s last June when I was in San Diego for the US Golf Open. It is a very nice hotel, even though it is out in the middle of nowhere. I checked out the roulette tables and to my surprise the old hotstamped B chips had been replaced by some nice new chips with the outline of a Sailboat. The only problem was that during the entire time I was there the table with the Sailboat design was never open. I however was able to get a couple of more colors of the Palm Tree design off the other table.

On Thursday morning, I got up and went to the Santa Ysabel Casino up on top of a hill about 20 miles East of Harrah’s. Since I was a new member of their slot club I once again got $15.00 in free slot play. They did not have any roulette tables in this small casino. I took my $15.00 and sat down at a penny slot machine. I was able to win a little and I cashed out with $20.00 to play in other machines. The third machine I played was a 7 times 7 penny machine that paid 49 times your win if you got two 7s on the same line. I played for a while and was up to about $45.00 when lighting struck – I got 3 double bars with the two 7s on the same line. I was playing 5 pennies per line so my payout was 150 times 49 times 5 = $367.50 !!! Cool, they had given me $15.00 of free play that I had turned in to more than $400.00. I played a little while longer and cashed out with $400.00. This was the biggest jackpot I hit on my entire trip. After leaving Santa Ysabel with a major grin on my face, I headed back toward Rincon. I stopped at Casino Pauma and Casino Pala. They both had roulette chips but I had all of the chips from these two casinos except some chips from table 3 at Pala and that table was not open. It was raining fairly hard and as I was coming down from Casino Pauma the road was flooded and water was everywhere. I decide it was time to get back to Harrah’s and call it a day.
At Harrah’s I played some roulette and actually got lucky and won $125.00, I also hit a another slot jackpot for $100.00 This was by far the best day of gambling that I had on my entire trip.

It was still raining a little Friday morning when I headed North toward LA. On the way I stopped at Casino Pechanga and finally reached Soboba Casino in San Jacinto, CA. There were only generic roulette chips at Pechanga, but at Soboba I got some Roulette chips as well as some blank slot cards for my collection.

I left Soboba and drove West toward Cerritos, CA where I would spend the next 3 days with friends of mine who used to live in Delaware. My friend Roman had to work late on Friday night, so his wife Jeanette, their son Omar (who I call my “brown” grandson) went out to dinner at Omar’s favorite restaurant – Macaroni Grille. Roman got home about 12:30 am after completing contract negotiations with Disneyland. Roman is a union representative for the Teamsters Union which represents about 2500 employees at Disneyland. On Saturday, we toured around LA - visiting Olvera Street and eating dinner at Pinky’s famous hot dog stand – the Polsih sausages wrapped in a tortilla with all the trimmings were really great and well worth the 45 minute wait in line. On Sunday morning we got up and went on a ferry ride to Catalina Island. Joe Benon, who I had seen at the Superbowl chip show, had told me to get the fish and chips at Armstrong’s in Avalon on Catalina Island. Well Joe we ate a Armstrong’s, but I had the grilled scallops, shrimp and fish kabobs and they were outstanding. We went back to Cerritos and watched the Grammys and had pizza. It really is good to do simple things with good friends. My last stop in California was on Monday February 9th in Apple Valley for another lunch with old, old friends who used to have a cottage next to my home when I was 10 years old (53 years ago). We spent about 3 hours just remembering the good old days when we were kids in a very different time and a very different place.

Well that’s it for the California portion of my trip – only a couple of more days in Vegas and I’ll be on my way home. Stay tuned for final and Part –IV of my Vegas trip report.
Take care,
Jerry