November Update

11 new chips have been added to the collection since the last update.  They are:

1.  Blackbird Bend Casino - Iowa.  Just north of Omaha and on the other side of the Missouri River, I visited this casino on a work trip.  We ate at their less than stellar buffet for dinner one night.  One of the least busy casinos I've ever been in.  Even for Iowa standards.

2.  Isle Casino - Cape Girardeau, MO.  Another casino visited while on a work trip.  This one was pretty new and modern looking.  Not the easiest place to get to when you are just trying to make a quick stop on your way to the airport in St. Louis though.

3.  Horseshoe Casino - Cincinnati, OH.  The last of the four land-based casinos in Ohio to open (Ohio also has a handful of Racino's).

4.  Horseshoe Casino - Baltimore, MD.  Just opened in August of 2014, this is the 4th casino (with live table games) in Maryland.  A planned 5th is set to open in 2016.

5.  Rocky Gap Casino - Cumberland, MD.  Opened in early 2013, this was the 3rd casino in Maryland to open.  Guess I'll have to track down chips for the Hollywood Casino and Maryland Live! before too long.

6.  Linq - Las Vegas.  The Linq replaces the Quad, which was the Imperial Palace.  The name "The Quad" lasted for about 18 months, so the Linq has a low bar to clear.  We'll see if it's still in operation in June of 2016.

7. SLS - Las Vegas.  The SLS is the new Sahara, and opened in mid-2014.

8.  Cromwell - Las Vegas.  This replaces Bill's, which replaced the Barbary Coast.  The Coast is still one of my top 3 favorite places to gamble (along with the Monte Carlo and the Bellagio between 3am and 5am).

9. Westgate - Las Vegas.  The Westgate is the new LVH which was the new Las Vegas Hilton.  This name change happened in July 2014.  Westgate is known for being a time-share company, so it'll be interesting to see if the old Hilton shifts from casino/hotel to time share/casino.

10.  Grand Casino Romania.  Julie's Aunt Linda picked this one up for me while on a long boat cruise of the Danube.  This casino is located in the Marriott Hotel in Bucharest.  The front of the chip reads "10 Ron" which I think means it is worth roughly $3 in U.S. equivalency.  Hopefully, the exchange rate brings the value up as it would currently rank last amongst my chips for face value.

11.  Holland Casino.  Aunt Linda got this one for me on the same trip as the above.  But the Holland Casino was located inside the Shiphol-Airport, which seems really nice and convenient to me.  5 Euros makes it worth about $6.25, which places it as the second most valuable chip by face value, just behind my chips from London.

Birthday 2 - Punta Cana

I now have one chip from the Dominican Republic!

1.  Paradisus Casino -  Thanks to Geoff & Tasha Kimmerly for bringing me back this chip from their Honeymoon in Punta Cana.  It's from the Paradisus Casino where Geoff tells me he lost nearly every hand and spin of roulette.  Which sounds like fun!  The Paradisus is an all-inclusive resort with their own on-site casino which actually sounds like fun.  Kudos to Geoff and Tasha for not losing everything and having at least $5 to get a chip for me.

London

Spent a week in London to go to a couple of English Premiere League games and while I was there I visited 5 of the London casinos (they have lots).  All five were within easy walking distance of the hotel in Picadilly Circus and I played at two of them.

1.  Hippodrome.  Biggest one of the ones I visited.  Pretty nice.  Tried to play there twice; the first time they didn't let us in because we were too drunk and the second time it was too busy and we couldn't find an open table.

2.  Casino at the Empire.  Also denied access to play there due to drunkenness.  Hey, it happens.  And we saw people get asked to leave bars because the bouncer felt they had had enough.  Who knew the Brits were such hard-asses?

3.  Napoleon's.  Right next door to the Empire.  I don't remember not getting into this place so either we tried and were denied.  Again.  Or we skipped over it.

4.  Grosvenor Casino.  Played blackjack at the G two nights.  The first night, we were once again told we were too drunk, but managed to talk our way in.  Or we offered the door guy a chicken schwarma.  Either way.  We finally made it inside one to play!  The first night there were three of us and we had no trouble finding a 5 pound table with three open spots.  I guess at 4am that's not hard to do, once you pass a field sobriety test.  Luka was the best dealer I've had in years.  He even half-laughed at our Second Floor jokes.  Normal rules, nothing crazy, just good ol' regular blackjack.  Even won a few hands.

The next night we returned to the G and played the table next to Luka because his was full.  The new dealer was pretty good too - even comping us a couple of beers (they don't hand out free booze in London casinos)... but she beat our brains in.  The G is a fairly small casino with only a couple tables and no craps (none of the Picadilly casinos offer craps, you have to travel 15-20 minutes by the Tube to find that game) but they were really nice.

5.  Golden Nugget.  Played here the last night.  Couldn't find the Michigan-IU game on ESPN America, but they had no trouble finding MMA for us to watch.  Uh, thanks?  Rob and I each started with 50 pounds on a 5 pound table and played for a while before finally succumbing.  With a 6am wake-up call for my flight home and seeing how it was nearly 2am we would have been smart to call it a night.  Or would we have?  We re-loaded, hit the roulette table and played our favorite Michigan and MSU athlete numbers.  Remarkably, we won.  A bunch.  I think Tom Brady hit a couple times and maybe Andre Hutson once or twice.  Trey Burke hit once, but Denard and Stauskas came up empty.  We left after Woodson hit back to back and I hadn't played it, but we still got back most of our losses from the blackjack session.  All in all, a pretty good time.  And I still have roughly 20 casinos to hit the next time I'm there.

Casino Chip Show, Part 2

The next batch of chips I got at the Battle Creek Casino Chip show were actually the first ones I bought there.  I had pulled up a chair and was flipping through a binder marked "NY/Canada" hoping to find a Mohegan Sun or Foxwoods chip.  I've been within 45 minutes of each casino on various work trips, but never made it to either, so I figured this might be my best chance at scoring chips from the two mega-casinos.  I didn't find those chips but I did find:

1.  Turning Stone Casino - Verona, NY.  This casino sits between Utica and Syracuse.  It's another casino I was in the vicinity of on a work trip, but never made it inside.  Pretty lucky that I just happened to find it flipping through some random binder.

2.  Casino Windsor.  This casino is 90 minutes away and I've never been there.  Not even to run in and grab a chip.  It's cool looking, too... with a big Maple Leaf on it.  I like it.  I might have to actually drive over and check this place out one of these days.

3.  Casino Niagara.  Never been here either, but it's a nice looking chip, with a drawing of the Falls on it.  It was in the binder next to the Windsor chip, so I grabbed it.

All told, I spent 15 minutes at this guy's booth and spent $15 on three different $5 chips.  Good deal for me.

Winnipeg

A work trip to Manitoba allowed me to pick up a "Casinos of Winnipeg" chip.  There are two pretty big casinos in Winnipeg, and the two are linked.  One is called Club Regent Casino and the other is McPhillips Station Casino.  They have the same chip, which kind of bummed me out.

I visited Club Regent (with plans to go to McPhillips also) on my way to the airport.  I ran inside to get a chip at the cage but was told I had to get chips at the table.  So, I found an empty table and asked the dealer for a chip.  I told him I collected them and asked if they had anything other than the standard house chip and he said no, and that the other casino (McPhillips) had the same chip, so it saved me a trip for nothing.  Club Regent was a tropical themed casino, McPhillips a train station themed one.

The dealer then asked me where I was from and we had the following, brief, discussion.

Me - "Michigan."
Him - "What are you doing up in Winnipeg"
Me - "Filming some shows for the Outdoor Channel, goose and duck hunting."
Him - "You a Lions fan?"
Me - "I guess so."
Him - "What's up with their quarterback.  Fucking guy is KILLING my fantasy team.  I might have to cut him, eh?"
Me - "Yeah, that's a tough one.  So, uh, thanks for the chip."

The Detroit Lions.  Disappointing Canadians everywhere.

Mid-January Update

One new chip added to the collection, courtesy of Michelle Lange (@LangeM77). She spent two weeks in Australia and visited one of the countries 17 casinos. This one is from the casino in Cairns, called The Reef. It's on the northeast side of the country.

Their website is pretty slick (http://www.reefcasino.com.au/), when it initially loads up, it actually has an image of a rotating casino chip. The casino has a dress code, requiring "smart, clean clothing and suitable footwear." I'm not sure I want to know the story behind the "suitable footwear" clause. Wait, since Lange was there, I think I know the story.

This is my first chip from the Eastern and Southern hemispheres. I need to get cracking on some Euro chips.

Overall, this is a pretty nice looking chip - complete with a mini-seahorse type creature design on it. And, bonus!, the $5 Australian chip is actually worth around $5.16 US. Which makes it about 3% more valuable than my other chips! Thanks again Michelle!

Aruba, again

Because I had collected 14 chips while I was actually in Aruba and because my chip frames hold chips in rows of 9, I thought it was a good idea to procure 4 more Aruban chips from eBay, in order to give me 2 complete rows of Aruba chips. Mission Accomplished. But not in the George W. Bush way, I actually accomplished the mission. They are; the Seaport Casino, The Palm Casino, the Aruba Palm Beach Casino, and the Aruba Caribbean Casino. None were still open when I was there. In fact, I didn't even see old, bombed-out closed buildings that could have been them. But here they are anyway.

Aruba, Part 7

My final Aruba update... the last night we were there we stopped at the Alhambra Casino which was just a short walk from the resort. They offered $3 blackjack from 6pm to 7pm, although that went to almost 8. The $3 tables in Aruba attract some unconventional players, to say the least. To start, there were two kids in the middle of the table who did such things as;

-stay on 12 against a 20
-not hit an 8
-try to double a 13 against a 19

All in all, they were definitely not a fan of basic strategy. Later, some drunk dude with a beard sat in the middle. He proceeded to not hit a 14 against a 20. Two hands later, I had an 11 against the dealer's ace and took a hit. He told me I should have doubled. I wanted to pull out a gun and shoot him in the mouth for even attempting to tell another player how to play... especially after not hitting a 14. But such is life. I didn't take any chips from the table because earlier in the stay I got them from the cage. Since they don't offer blackjack until 6pm and I walked in at 11am to collect them, this was a slight problem. I had to tell the cashier I was leaving that day, and before 6pm, so she could call a supervisor over to unlock the super secret chip room. She did hip me to not just the house chip, but also a 25th anniversary chip that features Rerun on it. If anyone knows the true identity of who this is... let me know. I'm dying to find out. And if it is Rerun... I'd kill for a Jimmy Walker chip.

Aruba, Part 6

The very first night in Aruba, I got the house chip to the Crystal Casino at the Renaissance Resort downtown. This resort has a mall attached, too... and they actually boat people from the inside of the mall to a private beach. Pretty cool. The second-to-last day in Aruba, we played there and I actually found they had two older chips in play, so I was able to collect those... and experience my most profitable table stay. So I kind of like the place.

Aruba, Part 5

On the night of my birthday, I played at the Casablanca Casino at the Westin. I came out exactly even. Which is kind of a waste, I guess.

Aruba, Part 4

Next I played at the Riu Palace. This was easily the nicest, fanciest, newest resort on the island. And what did they name their casino? Cool Casino. Seriously. It was pretty fricking cool though. Nice plasma TVs all over the pits (tuned to soccer of course). Didn't have much luck at blackjack here, but at least I didn't spill any beer.

Aruba, Part 3

On to the places I actually sat at a table and played some cards. First up, the Casablanca Casino at the Hyatt.
This chip was in the early running for nicest looking, but I must have collected the ugly ones first. Very Vegas-y look to it. Table was okay, but the beer service was pretty good. They even brought me a Balashi after I cashed out and was sitting at a slot machine.
But seriously, try the Balashi. It's muy bueno.

Aruba, Part 2

More from Aruba and the places I did not play at. First, The Occidental Grand. Conveniently located across the street from Tomato Charlie's Pizza. Which, has extremely slow service.
Then there's Excelsior, which was at the Holiday Inn Sunspree Resort. A good place to find tips on art galleries, but not to play blackjack apparently.
And finally, The Casino at the Radisson. Not exactly the most creative name. Not the best looking chip either.

Aruba, Part 1

Fourteen new chips collected while on vacation in Aruba. I visited all 9 of the current casinos. Two have recently closed so I'll have to scour eBay to find those chips and complete the island set. First, the Stellaris. Located at the Marriott, it was roughly 29 miles away from our condo. Which is impressive on an island 18 miles in length. It took us a long time to walk out there and find it, but once we did I found two chips. One house and one... I'm not sure. One with monkeys, but I'm not sure why. Didn't play at all at this place, way too tired from walking.

Update - Last sans camera edition

Three more chips added to the collection, bringing the number I still need to take a picture of and catalog to 17. I think this will be the final update/addition with no camera. So there's that. The newest three:

- Kewadin (Sault Ste. Marie) $5 Limited Edition ARCA Racing, Summer '98
- Great Canadian Casinos $5 house, Victoria, British Columbia
- M Resort $5 House, Las Vegas