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Lucky Streak Continues at Barona

Posted in Blackjack, Slots, Table Games on January 25, 2011 by thebaronacasino

By Maylette Garces

‘Twas the season to be lucky at Barona!  Now that the holiday decorations have been put away until next year, it’s time to celebrate Club Barona’s biggest winners of the season.  The holidays were a very lucky time at Barona for many people but they were especially lucky for three of Barona’s guests, including one who hit the biggest jackpot of the season!  And, our Loose Troop continues to patrol the casino floor in search of ways to keep those jackpots hitting!

$595,000 MARILYN MONROE JACKPOT WINNER

Christmas came early for Marilyn Monroe SlotClub Barona member Maria S. From Carlsbad, who hit a $595,000 jackpot just days before the holiday while playing the $1 Marilyn Monroe™ slot machine.  We all know that “diamonds are a girl’s best friend,” but in this case a jackpot was a girl’s best friend.  I think it’s safe to say that Maria is extremely  happy with her big payout.  Cheers erupted throughout the casino when she won and the entire floor was buzzing with excitement as word of her good fortune spread among the other players.  It certainly put us all in the Christmas spirit and we were all so excited to help celebrate her win!

POKER PLAYERS POCKET SHARE OF $100,000 WITH “LOSING” HAND

I know it sounds crazy, but a lucky poker player started 2011 on an exciting note by winning $41K with a “losing” poker hand and other players in the room split the rest of the jackpot.  Here’s how it happened: His four 2s were beaten by four 9s, something that’s rarely seen at a poker table.  Luckily for him, his losing hand actually won the Barona Poker Room’s $100,000 Ginormous Bad Beat Jackpot, where the second best hand loses the pot but is awarded the jackpot.  When this happened, the lucky losing player wasn’t the only winner – every player in the poker room’s jackpot game won a share.  Eighty-one players at other tables each won $200 just for playing, and six additional players at the winning table each got $3,491.  And that’s not all.  The player who won the hand with four 9s took home $20,950!  As you can imagine, it was quite a big payout day for the poker room, with lots of smiles to go around.

BLACKJACK PROGRESSIVE PAYS OUT $52,600 TO ONE LUCKY GUEST

It’s usually a big bummer when a black jack dealer beats a “20” with a seven-card “21.”  Well, that wasn’t the case for one of our recent guests who hit a $52,600 jackpot while getting beat by the dealer.  Barona’s Bad Beat Blackjack Progressive invites players to cash in on a side bet when the dealer beats their “20” with a “21.”  The bonus is paid out based on how much the player bets and the number of cards in the dealer’s hand.  Not only does the Bad Beat Blackjack Progressive reward players for getting beat by the dealer, but it also offers a better payout depending on how many cards the dealer draws to get to “21.”  In this case, when the dealer drew seven cards to reach the magic number, our lucky guest took home 100 percent of the jackpot, continuing Barona’s recent lucky streak of winners!

Come to Barona to make your own winning story!  I wish you a fantastic new year!

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A Top Chef Shares Secrets of Mexican Wedding Cookies & Barona Restaurant Month

Posted in Restaurants, Slots, Table Games with tags , , , , , , , , , , , on September 15, 2010 by thebaronacasino

By Executive Chef Jim Phillips

If you’ve been looking for an entirely new way to hit the jackpot at Barona Resort & Casino, September is your month. I’m excited to say that we’ll be dishing out half-off dining discounts for entrées during Barona Restaurant Month at six of our award-winning restaurants.

Banana Foster

The deal is good for up to two Club Barona members who earn 500 Club Barona myPOINTS within the same calendar day or equivalent table games play. It’s as easy as swiping your Club Barona card at a kiosk and printing out a Barona Restaurant Month coupon to earn the special! This special promotional pricing is only available for guests 18 and over.

You’ll then be on your way to taking a personal tasting tour at the Barona Steakhouse, The Plaza, Sage Café, El Rancho Grande, or the Italian Cucina while taking advantage of the 50 percent off deal. And, you can’t beat Barona’s Seasons Fresh Buffet, offering all-you-can-eat dining, where you can also enjoy the Restaurant Month pricing for both lunch and dinner.

If you decide to head over to our Seasons Fresh Buffet during Restaurant Month, don’t hesitate to try our famous Mexican Wedding cookies. These melt-in-your mouth, nutty shortbread-like cookies are hand prepared daily by our chefs. They are one of the most popular desserts at the buffet where you can also enjoy dozens of other dishes from around the world.

Barona Italian Cucina

A typical sweet served at traditional Mexican weddings, hence the name, these cookies are usually served after the wedding meal as a symbol of hope for a rich and full married life. The butter and sugar symbolize the richness of love and unity while the powdered sugar is said to represent purity.  They are so delicious they are now served a round the world at other celebrations, holidays and any day.

We get many requests for the recipe for these traditional treats.  They are one of my favorites too, and with one bite, you’ll see why. We’d like to share the recipe with you so you can treat yourself to their crumbly-goodness any time:

Mexican Wedding Cookies

Ingredients:

1 lb. Whole butter
6 oz. Powdered sugar
1 lb. 5 oz. All-purpose flour
1 lb. Chopped toasted pecans
½ teaspoon Pure vanilla extract

Preparation: Using an electric mixer, paddle the butter until soft. Add all the ingredients and mix until smooth. Form into small 1 inch balls and bake at 350 degrees until slightly brown. Do not overcook. Roll in powdered sugar. Recipe yields four dozen cookies.

I know you’ll enjoy the recipe for the Mexican Wedding cookies and you hope you’ll take advantage of the great deals during Barona’s Restaurant Month!

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Here’s the Magic Formula: You Can’t Win if You Don’t Play!

Posted in Blackjack, General Barona Info, Poker, Slots, Table Games with tags , , , , , , , , , , , , , on July 16, 2010 by thebaronacasino

by Mike Patterson, Vice President of Table Games

After rolling out our new table games progressive jackpots a few weeks ago at Barona Resort & Casino, the word around the casino is that players really believe it’s magic!

Already, we’ve had a number of winners including two guests that placed a wager on the dealer’s hand and split the progressive jackpot — over $296,000!  

What was the secret to their big win and the more frequent jackpots and more winners we are seeing in general at Barona? It’s all in the magic of new technology including the new side wager options Barona’s Magic Progressive offers. And, the progressive is available on so many of our table games – Let It Ride, Caribbean Stud, Mississippi Stud, three-card poker and four-card poker – there are more chances for our players to win beyond their main table bets and on a greater diversity of games. Add in the live dealer action and you’ve got one really exciting progressive game.

You might hear us talk about technology a lot at Barona. But why does it matter and what does it mean for our guests? It’s the latest gaming technology that makes this new Magic Progressive possible.

It allows us to link several different kinds of table games together so that the jackpot climbs higher, faster and increases the frequency of winning. Creating these types of opportunities for our players to enjoy more winning moments gets me excited to go to work every day!

The main reason technology is so important is that we get to provide games and experiences that no other casino is offering. Truly, they watch us and follow our lead further on down the road. So, Barona’s players get to try everything new here first. That really keeps the games at Barona fresh, exciting and exclusive.

You’ve also heard a lot about our Loose Troop and Manufacturer’s Best slot programs. No doubt these programs have made our slots the loosest in Southern California and we are proud to work with the leaders in the industry to certify our games as the luckiest around.

Additionally, from Barona’s point of view the table games and other games we provide are also “customer certified” – yes by you! Your loyal support and patronage is proof of this.

So, if you keep coming out to Barona to have fun and want to join our growing list of winners I have one tip for you: you can’t win if you don’t play!

And, I truly believe you’ll never find a better place to win than Barona.

We’d love to hear your thoughts about the new Magic Progressive. Have you won a mystery prize? Have you made any side wagers? Have you bet on the dealer’s hand? Let us know how we can make your visit to Barona the best it can be.

See you at Barona soon!

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Manufacturer’s Best Slots Payouts

Posted in General Barona Info, Slots, Uncategorized with tags , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on May 13, 2010 by thebaronacasino

by Chuck Hickey, VP of Slots

Many companies offer quality assurance or price matching or price guarantees so that when you visit their store you can have some assurance that the price you pay for whatever it is you are shopping for is at least competitive and maybe the best in town.  Just like shopping for a new washing machine  – you know that Brand X machine might be offered a bunch of different prices – so are casino  slot machines.

Every slot player has a favorite slot machine.  Yours might be Rome & Egypt and your friend’s might be Red Rooster, while your brother’s may be Kitty Glitter and his wife’s is Silver Sword.  How in the heck do you figure out where to go to play them?  Each manufacturer sends to the casino a computer program for each style game when it is ordered from the factory.  In that program there are usually a variety of possible pay back percentages that the casino can choose from and that range of percentages can sometimes be quite wide ranging for example from 98% return to 85% return.  It is up to the casino to choose one of those percentages when they install the game.  Of course no machine pays back exactly what it is set at over a short period of time.  If they did; no one would ever play them.  You would have to be crazy to play a 98% machine if every time you put in a buck you got 98¢ back.  There are always going to be swings when the game pays back way more than your bet – and sometimes less.  Over a long period of time the game will end up paying back 98% of the money bet into it (assuming that was where it was set) and there will have been many happy players on the upside and many folks who “fed the kitty” so to speak.

Barona’s price guarantee – or Manufacturer’s Best Payback represents the BEST that this particular game can be.  Manufacturer's Best Casino Slots at BaronaIt will be the highest payback percentage available and you cannot find this game set in a looser configuration anywhere else.  You might find the same setting in some other casino – but you will never really know.  What you can absolutely count on is that Barona has set these games to be the best.  Who says so?  Well – we have worked with the major manufacturers that represent about 90% of all the games on our floor to work with us on this project.  WMS, IGT, Bally and Aristocrat have all agreed to monitor the settings of our games so that they can be assured that we are in fact putting their best feet forward – it’s certified!  They know that their games are being played at the best configuration that they designed.  And while they cannot pledge the settings at our competition – they can promise that no one can find a better setting anywhere.

Simply put – Manufacturer’s Best Payback is Barona Casino’s price guarantee that you can’t find this slot game set looser anywhere else – and not only do we say so…. But so do the people who built the machine in the first place.

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The Legend of Barona’s Loose Troop

Posted in Casino Management, General Barona Info, Slots with tags , , , , , on April 5, 2010 by thebaronacasino

by Chuck Hickey, Vice President of Slots

If you watch TV at all or read a newspaper or print of any kind, then you know about Barona’s Loose Troop. If you don’t know about them – then let me fill you in on why, what and who they are.

Why the Loose Troop? Every casino talks about their loose slots so all the talk gets lost in the clutter. What is loose? Is one casino’s loose another casino’s tight? Who says the slots are loose and what does it all mean, anyway? Barona has always been pretty proud of our reputation for being a loose casino. After all we offer the loosest table games rules anywhere, so why wouldn’t our slots be the same? Our goal at Barona was to expose some of the mystery of how slot machines are set. So we created the Barona Loose Troop to clear up some of the mystery. We also wanted to do something totally different than our competitors during these difficult economic times. Something totally OUTRAGEOUS. So, while some casino companies are asking manufacturers to create even tighter slot machines – Barona decided to zig while those guys were zagging and loosen up our already loose games. “Prove it!”, you might say. So the Barona Loose Troop was born.

Who are the members of the Barona Loose Troop? Well – they are the people you see in the ads and on TV, really! They are a group of our expert slot technicians and auditing staff that don’t sneak around the casino – they actually advertise themselves on the casino floor by wearing the snazzy Barona Loose Troop vests, push the Barona Loose Troop cart around and even ring a bell when they head out to the casino floor to loosen the hold percentage of our slot machines. You can even watch if you have an interest. Afterward, they put up a sign on the loosened slot, date it and sign their initials indicating who did the task. The TV commercial with the cute little old lady stealing a sticker off the slot machines actually comes from a real life incident when we first started this program. We actually witnessed a guest who literally ripped off a sticker so no one would know that her favorite machine had been loosened so she would be the only one to know about it (we put one back on the game so you can still find it). But even if her game is taken it isn’t hard to find the loosened games on the casino floor because they are clearly marked and frankly, they are EVERYWHERE.


What started out as a fun way to give something back to our guests has taken on a life of its own and while we started just adjusting nickel slot machines, we have continued to include a variety of denominations and games. We already had the certified loosest poker machines around, so we didn’t need to look there for candidates, but we did move through every denomination, including our already famously loose Dollar machines. You can read all about it in Casino Enterprise Management Magazine.

Have you seen the Loose Troop on the casino floor? Tell us about it!

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