Archive for loose

Barona’s Players Have Spoken: More Chipless Games Please!

Posted in Blackjack, General Barona Info, Poker, Uncategorized with tags , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on June 9, 2010 by thebaronacasino

by Mike Patterson, Vice President of Table Games

When Barona Casino’s players speak…we listen. And overwhelmingly our players have told us they love our new chipless table games. So just a short time after introducing our first bank of chipless Rapid Baccarat, Barona Blackjack and Barona Roulette tables, I am excited to share that we’ve have responded to the request and have already added more of these games on the casino floor.

What do our players like about these games? First, they are easy to play. Second, they can place lower minimum bets compared to other games. Finally, these games offer multiple feature bets and even more ways to win. Easy. Low bets. More ways to win. And, more fun. What’s not to like?

For those of you unfamiliar with the chipless concept, it’s really pretty simple. You still play with live dealers and playing cards but there are no chips. Instead, players place bets on individual touch screen computer terminals. It’s as easy as making an ATM or credit card transaction but a lot more fun!

To show you how these games are played, we’ve even created a short video.

Barona is always on the cutting edge of innovation and was one of the first casinos in the country to offer these chipless games to our players. It’s another Barona technology “first” and we are incredibly proud of it.

Smartphones and iPads have forever changed the way we communicate and we believe chipless games will have a lasting impact on casinos — much the same way that the coinless slot machines Barona developed and introduced in 2000 revolutionized casino floors across the country.

Barona’s players are a very savvy bunch when it comes to new technology. And as long as they continue to be excited about it and embrace traditional games with electronic wagering, we will continue to create them.

I’d love to know what you think about our chipless games and new technologies of any kind. Please share your feedback. You never know…your idea might be the inspiration for a new game or service here at Barona.

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.

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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