Tulalip casino info and report

Edit: Damn I should have put WA in the title :)

I really enjoy all the people who take time to give us some info about Casinos, so I thought I'd write a few things when I visit Casinos in the Northwest . Casino websites are so terrible we rely on fellow gamblers to get any info.

Tulalip tribal Casino, about 45-60 minutes north of Seattle.
I am mostly a craps player but I looked a few other things for fellow gamblers.

Black Jack -
From what I could see the Blackjacks paid 3/2
Dealer hit on soft 17
Did not see single decks or double deck
10 minimums (Saturday night - from 4PM to 8PM)
Did not look at what kind of side bets they had

Video poker
All I saw were .25 and 1$ Double Double -> 50-9-6
They had a bonus where you match the fifth card to a random card would earn you a bonus, it claimed it was from 5 units to the Royal flush payoff. I hit it for a few units 3-4 times in 30 minutes.
If you guys go there try to find my 20$, I lost it in one of the .25 machines.

Craps
- 10x odds
-Table minimum stayed at 5$ from 4pm to 8pm, even if they were a decent amount of players
-Field is double-2 , double-12
-The payoffs sucked, they were doing the "this FOR that" instead of "to" for all the prop bets. Is that what they call Strip odds?
-They had the fire bet , the one that pays on 3 points:
3 paid 7 FOR 1, 4 paid 30 FOR 1, 5 paid 150 FOR 1, 6 paid 300 FOR 1


I liked the Staff in general, but some were very incompetent (see below). Players club had a huge line (10-20 people) but it went really fast and person I talked to was very competent. I did not play card games but someone in my party did and they said the dealers were good.
Some areas were really smoky, part with higher ceilings was better. A bit close quarters for the card table in my opinion. Most of the other players were rather pleasant. I did not see one person tip but me. Dealers were very grateful for tips, I tipped a few $ directly and some passline (they got a few naturals from those which was cool).


My night:
Well basically I got hammered. I am pretty new to craps but I learned a lot since the last time I played. I wanted to try many of the things I had learned, I got hammered to about 1/6 of my bankroll in about 45 minutes then fought all night (3.5 hours) to claw my way back up, only made it back to about half my bankroll.

Lesson is that Odds bet is very good but taking 3-4-5 odds exposes too much of my bankroll and increases my volatility, either that or it was just one of these cold table nights. To claw back up I played single odds, inside place bets, press once before alternating between collecting and pressing one unit. When I get in the black for the roll I sometimes place the 4-10 as well and press the hell out of those. I got a good streak on the 4 once, it hit twice after I had pressed enough to buy it. (pretty sure they collected the Vig after I won, in all honesty I was a bit flustered when they hit and I don't remember)

I was having pretty good rolls for once, hit the 3 fire bet twice and except for the very first roll, I always had 8-15 rolls long ones, I guess. One of them I kept hitting craps numbers after the point was made so I rolled forever but got very little out of it. One roll I hit 5 naturals after I had made a point, that one we made money. It is fun to have a good roll, you see everybody upping their bets, nodding at you when the dice comes back to you :) .


Now for the bad dealers:

-Craps
One of the dealers was non-stop talking to people and not paying attention. He missed a roll and did not pay one of my placed 6, I'm new so it took a few seconds for me to realize and make sure I was right. When I told him he said the roll was a 5, but the point was 5 so I told him to pay us all our passlines and odds then. At that same moment he got "tapped out" by a new dealer. I complained to the boxman but he said he had not seen anything. It was not much money but it pissed me off, especially when you are trying to claw yourself up from being way down. I took my chips and went for a walk after we 7 out. And here I thought being one of the only people tipping would have helped my case.

Later, 3 drunk loud guys came in (in their 20s), they were obnoxious and just throwing the dice, half the time they flew off the table. They all had money on the 8 and were not paid by different dealer when it hit. I exchanged looks with my neighbor and we both shrugged, the drunks had not noticed.



-Roulette
I don't know anything about roulette dealers but I watched my friend play, there was nobody else at the table and she was not giving him enough time to put his bets down. Are they required to keep a certain pace? Sounds stupid to me when there is no one else there to not leave as much time as the player needs to arrange all his bets.

I really like the chip of the day thread so I started my own tradition....

Like most (all?) WA tribal casinos, the video poker doesn't involve skill. It's a video lottery terminal. If the electronic "ticket" says you hit 4 of a kind, and you discard such that you can't hit the 4 of a kind, the "bonus" will pay out the equivalent, probably by providing the 4th card you need. I think it's pretty deceptive, and with the WSGA would just legalize and mandate real VP.

Nice report Wonko!

I believe Tulalip had 21+3 Extreme and Buster Blackjack as BJ side bets the last time I was there. Not sure what 21+3 Extreme pay table they are using.

By the way, the rooms at Tulalip are top notch.......I stayed there once for a conference and decided in my next life I wanted a shower/master bathroom at home like the ones at Tulalip. Truly a very nice hotel/resort experience!

Quote: Paradigm

By the way, the rooms at Tulalip are top notch.......I stayed there once for a conference and decided in my next life I wanted a shower/master bathroom at home like the ones at Tulalip.

Nicer than the rooms at Bellagio?

My Tulalip memory: the Indians sold "illegal" fireworks for the Fourth of July, all the really dangerous, loud stuff, and people bought them like crazy.

Problem was, the local cops had a sting running where they'd watch people buy then pull them over and ticket them as soon as they left the rez.

Caveat emptor.

Quote: MrV

Nicer than the rooms at Bellagio?

Well, I can't say.......haven't stayed at Bellagio but my guess is, "no", as you are talking 5 diamond status at Bellagio and Tulalip is 4 diamond.

But for the Pacific NW location, I would say that Tulalip Resort is top notch. It has a 100 store premium outlet mall onsite (no up to the Forum Shops or the like in Vegas) with higher end brands at better prices. It also doesn't have a fantastic outside pool (we are talking Washington State folks......it rains quite a bit).

All the being said, it has nice conference facilities, exceptional hotel rooms and the casino is very nicely appointed. I would say only Snoqualmie Casino is as nicely appointed, but there is no hotel associated with that property as of yet.

Quote: Paradigm

Well, I can't say.......haven't stayed at Bellagio but my guess is, "no", as you are talking 5 diamond status at Bellagio and Tulalip is 4 diamond.

But for the Pacific NW location, I would say that Tulalip Resort is top notch. It has a 100 store premium outlet mall onsite (no up to the Forum Shops or the like in Vegas) with higher end brands at better prices. It also doesn't have a fantastic outside pool (we are talking Washington State folks......it rains quite a bit).

All the being said, it has nice conference facilities, exceptional hotel rooms and the casino is very nicely appointed. I would say only Snoqualmie Casino is as nicely appointed, but there is no hotel associated with that property as of yet.

Yeah, here a good pool is an inside pool :)

Quote: travisl

Like most (all?) WA tribal casinos, the video poker doesn't involve skill. It's a video lottery terminal. If the electronic "ticket" says you hit 4 of a kind, and you discard such that you can't hit the 4 of a kind, the "bonus" will pay out the equivalent, probably by providing the 4th card you need. I think it's pretty deceptive, and with the WSGA would just legalize and mandate real VP.

Thx , I did not know that, there I was torturing myself trying to remember the basic strategy , lol! Good practice I guess.

So does that mean they payout as poorly as slots?

I like Snoqualmie more, but Tulalip >> Muckleshoot.

10x odds is nice, but I'm not looking to put down that kind of money at a local joint.

I can't wait til they finally build the mega-casino north of Portland in La Center, Wa.

The Cowlitz are backed by Mohegan Sun: supposed to be pretty big, but not as massive as Tulalip.

Been tied up in court, but about to start construction within the reasonably near future.

Stay tuned.

How many UTH, three card poker, high csrd flush, crazy 4 csrds, let it ride, baccarat and others???

Quote: Wonko33

Thx , I did not know that, there I was torturing myself trying to remember the basic strategy , lol! Good practice I guess.

So does that mean they payout as poorly as slots?

Probably. They're the same as "slots" in Washington, so I'd expect the casino would have them set to about the same payback percentage.

I put "slots" in quotes, because they're also VLTs. When you hit "spin" the machine pulls a virtual ticket off the electronic stack. That ticket determines the payout for the spin. The "slot" machine aligns it's reels to match the payout, including any bonus round. Sometimes -- and this is my gut feel and nothing I've read -- a badly programmed machine will back-load the bonus round, so you get crap for most of your free spins and then get a good final spin.

(As a reminder, true modern slot machines have a RNG that assigns selects random numbers the correspond to reel locations, and bonus rounds are truly random.)

Washington video poker is the same. You hit "deal", it picks a ticket off the stack, and displays what it needs to to award you the pre-determined result. Your card choices are, sadly, irrelevant. That's why when I go to Vegas, I OD on video poker. It's one of the few games that's not available in the state.

(There's a few bingo-based machines, where the result is determined by a virtual bingo drawing, but those are rarer to find, and the end result is sill pre-determined before the bonus round starts. I don't know if there's bingo-based video poker, but I don't see why there wouldn't be.)

Quote: RoyalBJ

How many UTH, three card poker, high csrd flush, crazy 4 csrds, let it ride, baccarat and others???

I saw one UTH, I think it was 10 minimum
They had at least 3-4 baccarat
I'm pretty sure they had a high card flush because I had just learned about that game and it struck me when I saw it.
The had a free bet blackjack table, I wanted to try but it was always full. I never liked blackjack before but I want to try it now, I need to find a quiet time for my first sit down

Did not see let it ride, or crazy 4 but I can't confirm. I'll take better notes for my next casino.

Should I write down the side bets at baccarat and other table games, is that something people usually want to know?

As for other casinos around here, I want to try Snoqualmie pretty soon, I've been to Muckleshoot a few times and I like it for some personal reasons, this is where I learned to play craps and my wife and I really enjoy the non-smoking area. It is big and well separated from smoking side even if I think it is dumb that most of the food choices are on the smoking side.

I should be visiting 1 or more south of Vancouver Canada pretty soon, I'll try to take some notes about them too. My wife loves those because they are all non smoking in Canada from what I have seen, also 10$ minimum are a bit easier to deal with when Canadian money is worth 70 cents. I heard they will exchange back to US money without a fee if you keep your receipt when you change US to Can.

Wonko33,
Regarding the missed payout on your Place 6.......

If you are certain you have not been paid, stand your ground. You can, and should, be polite, but be very firm. You have every right to insist the game does not advance until you have been paid. If the dealer still says no, and the box says No, then get the Pit manager involved. Remember, time is money to the casino. They don't want the game stopped.
If you still can't get it resolved, demand that they call security and review the 'tape' (digital recording these days). Usually by this point they will just pay you if it was a small wager.

However, since they also missed paying the drunks, it seems like that may be SOP for that casino. Not sure why they would systematically want to cheat their players, but it's not unheard of.

great report. i definitely would have spoken up about all mis pays and stopped the game. even for the drunks, i would have elbowed one and said 'hey dont' you have money on that??'

having a casino knowingly mispay is ridiculous. they're already offering a rigged game....