| This year, Konami ventured into the growing trend of licensing pop culture icons for use in slot games. In the middle of the Komani booth was a boxing ring, complete with red ropes. And at the center of the ring were the company's new Rocky video slot machines, complete with Sylvester Stallone's image. That multiline, multicoin video slot could pack a wallop with Stallone fans, but the bigger crowds were gathered around a bank of reel-video hybrid games. The games have a set of reels inside, facing down. Players can't see the reels themselves, but can see an image reflected off a mirror toward the bottom of the cabinet onto a screen. During regular play, the top half of the screen shows the reels, while the bottom half shows graphics and animation. When the player reaches the bonus round, reels are no longer shown. Instead, the full screen is used for the animated bonus game. I tested a game called Ninja vs. Ninja, one of several using the hybrid format. My bonus round consisted of several levels, trying to find the ninja warrior behind obstacles such as brick walls. Failure to find the warrior ended the round. A couple of Fridays ago, just a week after returning from the Global Gaming Expo in Las Vegas, I found myself on the road to Michigan City, Ind. I'd been alerted that Blue Chip Casino had opened a new poker room on the third level of its boat, and I wanted to check it out. I arrived shortly before 10 a.m.--not yet prime poker time--and poker manager Dennis Jones took time out to show off his new card room. "I feel it's going to go over," Jones said, during the third week of operation. "At this time of morning, we have just one or two tables going. It picks up around noon or 1 o'clock." Indeed, as we entered, only one of the 12 tables was in use. But I couldn't help but be impressed. The room is spacious, with its own cashiers' cage and bathrooms. The four televisions had not yet been mounted on the walls, although Jones expected them within a few days of my visit. No smoking is permitted--a hot trend in card rooms, where customers frequently play for long stretches. "Even the smokers like it, although you can't please everyone," Jones said. "When you play for eight, 10 hours, you don't want to go home with your clothes all full of smoke." Blue Chip deals seven-card stud, high-low split 8s or better, Texas hold-'em, Omaha high and Omaha high-low 8s or better. In the first few weeks the room was open, play was split fairly evenly between Texas hold-'em and seven-card stud. "We haven't had a lot of Omaha yet," Jones said, "although we have had guys calling about Omaha." There's a progressive bad-beat jackpot, paid off when a player with a high-ranking hand loses a pot. In Texas hold-'em, the losing hand must be Aces full of 10s or better, in seven-card stud it's four 2s or better and in Omaha four 8s or better. The jackpot builds with play until the bad beat happens. A lighted board on one wall lists the jackpot amounts. "Stud hit the first week we were open," Jones said. "Four 8s to one customer, four Jacks to another." Limits depend on demand, but Jones said stud had been running $1-$5 and $2-$10; hold-'em at $4-$8, $6-$12, $10-$20 and $20-$40, and Omaha at $5-$10. Interest has been building since the room opened. Jones expected all 12 tables to fill the Saturday after I was there, after filling 10 tables the previous Saturday and nine the previous Friday. The night before my visit, seven tables were open, while in the first week the average was only three or four. Part of that was by design. Blue Chip was low-key in promoting the room at first, not wanting to swamp new personnel before they could handle it. When riverboat gambling was launched in Illinois in 1991, it was beyond my wildest flights of imagination that we would get to this point: A picky player is just as well off gambling on the boats and barges in Illinois and Indiana as on the Las Vegas Strip. |
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