My wife and I just returned from our Las Vegas trip that was from 6/7/05 to 6/15/05 and we spent a lot of time going to all of the casino's that had the new strikes in the machines. The disappointment came when we saw that the new strikes were mixed in with the old strikes. At one of the casino's, I won (18) old strikes before I won one of the new strikes that I wanted. The problem with that is I already had the old strikes that I won and didn't need them, so to me that was my time and money being wasted on the old strikes when trying to win the new strikes I wanted for my collection. At Fritzgeralds they only had the new strikes in the machine and that was the only casino that had their silver strikes set up that way!
At the Four Queens we had a real experience!! My wife and I noticed that the machine near the main cage was nearly empty, but we could see that there was a Red Cap that visible to us along with a couple of clear caps, so we decided to play for the Red Cap that we could see hoping that there were more than one left in the machine. We put in a $100 bill and started to play and we won (3) clear caps and on the 3rd win the machine stopped. A female floor person came over and said the machine had to be filled! At that time I asked her if there was a chance that I could play for the remaining (2) strikes that were left, one of which was the Red Cap and she said she would have to get the Day Shift Slot Manager. Well over comes a man in a Gray Suit whose name was Fred and I asked him if I could play for the last (2) strikes that were left in the machine, one being the Red Cap since that is what we were playing for? He then called for the mechanic and another man who came over with a clip board to fill the machine. He did not answer me so I asked him again when the mechanic arrived to fill the machine, the answer I got from Fred was NO!! I told him that I felt that I was being screwed because there was still strikes in the machine that I could have won and by filling the machine that hurt my chances of winning the last (2) strikes one of which was the Red Cap!!! His response to me was he was not going to do that and the next thing I know over comes Security and stands right behind me with his right hand on his waist directly above his weapon (GUN) and said to the person with the clip board that he was called to come over in case there was any problems. At that point I waited until they finished filling the machine, got my third strike and cashed in the credits that I had on the machine. I then took the ticket and I turned to Fred and handed him my (2) Four Queens player cards and told him to destroy them, because you will never see me in this casino again. When I have to worry about being arrested or possibly shot over a $10.00 Silver Strike by a want to be cop, that is going to extremes as far as I am concerned and collecting silver strikes is not worth the aggravation that some of these casino's put you through. At this point any strikes I need I will buy them on the second hand market or at the convention, but I will never be put into an embarrassing or threatening situation with my wife at my side ever again!!!

Jerry Sacco SS#673