I was in Reno the last 2 days and went there to play for the new Sundowner strikes, here is what I learned from the cage lady and two suits and a few casino workers ( The suits weren't very pleasent )First, the Sundowner remains open as of 10 A.M. today 10-1-03, lots of talk amoung casino workers as to if and when they will close, seems the casino purchased a short term permit to remain open ( don't know what that means ). As far as the strike machine goes it is a very unfreindly machine, our average per strike for the ones we brought home was $30 each. When we started playing the machine we won 18 strikes, all old ones before the hopper was empty, we tried everything we could to trade old for new and this CAN'T be done anymore due to a person returning 6 racks ( so we were told )of old and raising a fuse until they traded him for new ones, after asking what was going to be put in the new fill we were told there would be some new ones. We had to play through the whole hopper to get 2 sets of new strikes and a couple of dups to bring home, when we asked if there would be anymore new strikes in the next fill we were told there would only be OLD strikes put in the machine until all of the old ones were gone, I saw 5 racks of strikes on the counter in the cage and the lady said they were only old ones and she couldn't get any new ones from the vault until the old ones were gone ( these orders came from a Mr.Moon whom I was told runs the place ). So for sometime it seems no new strikes will be coming out of the machine. Another bit of news is that the casino only got delivery of 100 of each of the 6 new designs, a total of 600 strikes( yes 6 are or were in play, not the 5 that have been selling on ebay etc. ) There was no word if they would be ordering more and this I guess was because they are unsure of how long they might be open.
So that is the latest word from the Sundowner, only time will tell when the new strikes will be back in play and if anymore will be ordered or if they will close, one thing for sure, the whole time we were there the wasn't more than 25 people in the casino playing, the place looks like a ghost town, but we got to talk to lots of casino workers.
Walt