I spoke to Rick Ronca, the slot manager for the Plaza today. There will be two additional machines for ONLY the special issue convention strikes which will be put in play on Wednesday, May 30 at 9 PM (or 2100 hours for you military types). Play on the machines will be limited to those in attendance at the convention who will be given a coupon in the registration packet. Coupon holders will be able to play until five strikes are obtained, then must vacate the machine. The strikes will be mixed in these machines BUT are limited to the Club and Chapter strikes and will not contain the regular issue strikes.

After the convention closes, the remaining strikes will be fair game for any player.

The reason for the restriction is the tactics used by two chip dealers (one of whom regularly sells strikes). These two folks monopolized the machines by paying people to play the machines until the twofers ran out, thereby depriving collectors of the opportunity to at least try for a twofer and making the twofers a monopoly item for just two dealers. Perhaps we should propose some sort of a ban in the Club Code of Ethics. On our host message board, www.thechipboard.com, there is a long thread about a chip dealer who purchased virtually an entire Limited Edition run of chips, excluding all others. There is also a thread dealing with the purchase of an entire run of chips from the another casino and someone has named a casino employee as the perpetrator. Sometimes greed needs to be curbed, by either ban or boycott.

We all ought to be appreciative of the Plaza's effort to protect the supply for the collectors.

Come and meet Rick at the Silver Striker's Forum on May 31 at 4 PM. He will be joined by Tom Power, the Production Manager for Sunshine Mint. Bring your questions about frosting, coin-aligned, Limited Editions and the process of approving strikes. Should be fun.