In your record keeping do you count all the credits won in addition to the cash you put in the machine to arrive at your $18.00 average ? If you aren't keeping track of the credits won the true cost per strike is going to be much higher.
Looking back as it has been mentioned before on the message board this all started when the new style machines came out and it seems the single win line machine was about the same as the old style machines but the people wanted a multi pay machine again and voiced strongly to the casinos and I guess IGT, we got the new multi pay machine and the hold percentage seems to have gone way up on these machines. Also we have promoted ourselfs so well I do belive the casinos see us as a cash cow who will play what ever amount of money it takes to win new strikes and if we were to stop playing because of the high cost per strike the machines will start going away and then we won't have anything to play for, it seems to be a double edged sword.
Jerry said in his post he was not going to play a machine that had old strikes mixed with new but I belive this practice by the casinos will continue unless they are made aware of what Dennis said about they can return old strikes for full credit.
I would only hope the casinos lower the hold percentage but I don't see this happening but I will continue to play for the new strikes I want and find it more fun than playing a regular quarter machine.
Walt