OK. So YOU were the one that cleaned out the machines ;-) Made it to the Palms on Sunday morning and all three Strikes were completely empty and shut off. I talked to the floor person at the high-stakes area and was told "a group came in last night and cleaned us out. We are completely out of strikes at this time. Chris is off today but will be back tomorrow and will hopefully be able to tell you when more strikes are likely to arrive."

I unfortunately never made it back on Monday or Tuesday to see if the strikes ever got re-filled. Anyone know?

Played at the 4-Queens and everything was Clads. All they had were the 4-Vices (and 80%+ of those seemed to be Horses) and no red-caps. The machines were paying out pretty well at about 8-9 strikes per $100 on average.

At Sam's Town one machine was super-super tight (6 strikes in $200 but had to keep playing since two of the bottom strikers were red-caps) and the other was pretty loose (I got 8 strikes in $100 and a friend got 11 strikes in $100). Every seventh strike was a red-cap Eagle (between two friends and myself we got 6 red-caps and they were all Eagles). 80% of the strikes were Clad Fawn or Couger. The rest were a mix of the Boyd's (some were Clad and some .999 Silver for the exact same strike) and got two other random strikes (Bingo or something like that plus a Slot Machine) that were both 999 silver.

Binion's had already pulled their machines and the three floor folks I talked to did not know when they would be replaced.

I didn't go to Planet Hollywood since I already have way more than enough strikes from there (they don't seem to have changed their strikes in 12+ months).

I have been collecting strikes casually for about 15 years (probably 300-400 strikes total). I must say that unless the casinos switch back to the .999 silver strikes, I probably won't be collecting them in the future. Most of the machines now have a sticker that says "Strikes with .999 silver stamp contain at least .5 OZ of silver. Strikes without this stamp are silver plated copper." I don't mind the casinos going from .67 OZ to .5 OZ, but for a strike to have no intrinsic value what-so-ever somewhat take the fun out of it. They might as well just fill the machines with plastic $10 tokens at this point. Same difference.

Hope everyone has fun at the convention.