Casino Chip of the Day
(emphasis added)Quote: DocThe concept is that on roughly a daily basis when I am not in travel status, I will post a photo of one of the $1 casino chips in my collection, along with some comment about the chip and/or the casino and/or some extraneous issue that the chip brings to my mind.
Thank you.Quote: kenarmanHappy Anniversary...
You are welcome -- it is time and effort devoted to an obsession.Quote: kenarman...and thank you for the time you have put into this thread.
I was pleasantly surprised by Sky Ute. When I heard that there were two Native American casinos in the middle of nowhere in Southwestern Colorado, I was prepared to see two pretty awful casinos. But, they're really very nice. I suppose they need to be destination-quality in order to draw in tourists and survive.
Quote: kenarmanHappy Anniversary and thank you for the time you have put into this thread.
+1
This is a very nice thread Doc, and really appreciate it. Especially since you go into significant detail with the casinos you visit.
City: Towaoc
Casino: Ute Mountain
As noted yesterday, my collection of Colorado casino chips is quite limited – just the two that I picked up on a side trip of my latest excursion. By the time I visit the rest of the state's casinos at the end of May, I will already have run out of chips to post in this thread and will have turned the lead role over to rdw4potus not just as a fill-in but for the duration of his collection. When he gets us back to Colorado again, I hope/expect to have more chips to post in response to his.
The Ute Mountain Casino Hotel Resort is owned and operated by the Ute Mountain Ute tribe, descendants of the Weeminuche, on their reservation near Towaoc, CO. I had just as much trouble finding historical information about this casino as I did for the Sky Ute Casino discussed yesterday. Again, there is no Wiki page for the place, and the MOGH catalog gives no opening date. The oldest chips shown there are listed as being issued in 1992, while the MOGH chip like mine does not indicate an issue date at all.
The casino's own web site describes their games as consisting of slots and video machines – I assure you that I played $5 blackjack at a $3 table there just over a week ago. Guess some folks don't care to keep their web sites up to date.
I don't play blackjack very often any more, so I don't know how commonly the tribal casinos have specialty cards. The ones in use at the Ute Mountain Casino caught my eye, and I asked the dealer whether there was any way I could arrange to take photos of the face cards. He offered me one better and asked the supervisor to give everyone at the table a souvenir deck of cards. Here is what the face cards look like:
I have read claims that the traditional Kings, Queens, and Jacks of a deck of cards are supposed to represent specific individuals from history, though I have no idea whether there is any truth to that. I also have no idea whether these Native American card images are supposed to represent anyone in particular.
I also thought the Ace of Spades and the jokers were interesting. That Ace includes a map of the four-corners area where the casino is located. The other aces do not have anything special.
The chip shown below is a white Chipco ceramic chip with different images on the two sides. One side shows a mountain background behind the casino name, the denomination, and the city and state. The other has a promo for their "Annual Pow-Wow & hand game tournament."
The casino web site does not provide any information as to what is meant by a "hand game." However, on the Sky Ute Casino site there is a description of a "Hand Game Arcade Room" that is inside their bowling center and offers "a wide variety of games including a dance machine, driving games, Golden Tee and more, there is something for everyone in your family to enjoy." I don't know whether the Ute Mountain hand game tournament refers to such arcade games, since it is not a term with which I am familiar.
The Ute Mountain Casino is located just a dozen miles down the road from the city of Cortez, CO, and I passed through Cortez both coming and going to the casino. Along the way, I passed an auto salvage yard about halfway between the casino and town. It had the usual field of rusting wrecks, but what caught my eye was the set of metal sculptures on the top of the building there. I took a couple of photos, and I thought I would share one of them. I think the owner of the business must have a pretty good sense of humor.
I could find the building on GoogleMaps Street View, but their photo seems to be pre-sculpture.
Quote: bigfoot66Thanks for the good work and congrats on a year of excellent posts.
You're welcome, and thanks. At present, it appears that if I post a chip every day, then my collection (now totaling 346) will run out in mid May, not long before WoVCon ]I[. If I take my wife on the beach trip that she has in mind for April and if I can entice rdw4potus to cover for me again, then my own chips would not run out for a few more days. I'll try to keep making interesting posts until the well is dry, then I will just post whatever additional chips I may acquire that fit in with whatever RDW and others who lead this thread in the future may be posting. I think the thread has had a pretty good run so far and that there is still a lot of mileage left in it, even if I don't have the chips to support it myself.
City: Santa Fe
Casino: Buffalo Thunder
And we are quickly to another new state for this thread….
The Buffalo Thunder Resort opened in August 2008 and is located on the northern edge of Santa Fe, on the highway up to Espanola and Taos. Though the casino's web site does not seem to acknowledge the fact, it is owned and operated by the Pueblo of the Pojoaque. The resort hotel is operated by Hilton, and there is an affiliated Cities of Gold Casino just down the road that offers slots and bingo only.
When the Buffalo Thunder facility is viewed from the highway in the daytime, it looks like a fairly nice casino. At night, with lights shining from all over the buildings, it looks enormous, like an entire town just on its own.
CasinoCity.com claims the casino has 61,000 sq. ft. of gaming space with 3,500 machines and 18 table and poker games (with 8 of them being for poker), ten restaurants, and a 395-room hotel. The casino's own web site agrees on the gaming space and number of tables but only claims 1,200 slot machines. Seems like a rather large discrepancy to me.
Of the casinos I visited on my recent trip, this was the first one to have a craps table open, after I had played blackjack in 14 different places. I played $5 craps at Buffalo Thunder and got wiped out. Maybe I should stick to blackjack – I lose just as consistently but more slowly at that, though I don't derive as much entertainment value.
The chip shown below is a blue RHC Paulson with two edge inserts in black and orange and oversized center inlays. One side has an inlay with a dark blue outer band surrounding a multi-toned sky with buffalo-shaped clouds emitting lightning bolts and rain upon the mountains. Nice graphic to match the casino name. The denomination is in brown and looks like needlework. The border between the outer band and the sky contains several images that I assume are of some significance to the tribe, but I don't know what they are.
The other side has no text other than the white, needlework denomination mark in the center. Otherwise, it is strictly a combination of Native American graphic images that I cannot interpret.
UV light reveals the repeated name of the casino covering the center inlay, with an "error" similar to what we have come to expect, this time with a double misspelling. Isn't there anyone on this forum with an inside connection at Paulson who could get the real story behind this common hidden feature?
The MOGH catalog indicates that this chip was issued when the casino first opened in 2008.
Quote: DocUV light reveals the repeated name of the casino covering the center inlay, with an "error" similar to what we have come to expect, this time with a double misspelling. Isn't there anyone on this forum with an inside connection at Paulson who could get the real story behind this common hidden feature?
I don't know, but If I ever own my own casino, I'm going to put a word search in UV.
Quote: DocUV light reveals the repeated name of the casino covering the center inlay, with an "error" similar to what we have come to expect, this time with a double misspelling. Isn't there anyone on this forum with an inside connection at Paulson who could get the real story behind this common hidden feature?
Just what I've already stated.
The thing about security features to prevent counterfeiting, is that they usually become widely known, or at least widely known among counterfeiters. If you can find an old bank note, say from the 80s, you'll notice few such features. By now it's amazing how much can be put on one bank note: watermarks, color-shifting ink, holograms, polyester strips, UV printing, transparent "windows" (on polymer notes), micro-printing, raised printing, etc. And many notes still use the misspelled word just the same.
For all that, if I may toot my own horn a bit, the few times I caught counterfeit bills, I first noticed it the instant I touched them. Wood-pulp paper feels very different from linen-cotton paper. Oddly, these counterfeits feel almost, but not quite, like crisp brand-new notes. So I check new notes more thoroughly than old, worn ones.
Soon RFID chips will be cheap enough to put into every casino chip, even the $1 denomination. I predict by then some will keep the UV printing with misspelled words.
Quote: NareedJust what I've already stated.
But, as I've already stated, why put any special security features at all on a chip that would cost a counterfeiter more than face value to copy? Is there really any risk of having counterfeit $1 chips passed at the tables or cage? What's the downside to accepting anything that looks reasonably like one of your legitimate chips and doesn't stand out like something carved out of a piece of soap? If a $1 chip doesn't look like a complete piece of junk, then it is almost certainly a real chip that the casino bought in bulk from the legitimate manufacturer.
Quote: DocState: New Jersey
City: Atlantic City
Casino: Bally's
Bally's Atlantic City is located at the intersection of the Boardwalk and Park Place, two addresses popularized and made famous as the high-end properties in the board game Monopoly (a favorite of the Wiz, I believe), which had most of its squares named for places in Atlantic City.
Bally Manufacturing (the Chicago-based pinball company) bought control of an ongoing project to build a Park Place Casino and attached their own name. The casino opened in December 1979, using the pre-existing but renovated Dennis Hotel for its lodging space. At least one resource I found says that the place opened under the name "Bally's Park Place," but the MOGH catalog shows some early chips that just say "Park Place Casino." I don't know when they really started treating the company name as part of the casino name.
In 1995, the company was bought by Hilton Hotels, which then split off all of its casino business in 1998 as Park Place Entertainment. In 2000, the casino name was changed to Bally's Atlantic City.
In 2003, Park Place Entertainment was renamed Caesars Entertainment (early edition) and was bought by Harrah's Entertainment in 2005, with Harrah's officially changing its name to Caesars Entertainment (current edition) in 2010. Thus, the Bally's Atlantic City casino is now once again one of Caesars properties. (Enough with the boring history lesson? Most of it was harvested from the ever-reliable Wikipedia anyway.)
I'm not sure when I got my souvenir chip from Bally's Atlantic City. My first visit to the city was in August 2004, and I expect I collected most of my New Jersey souvenir chips on that visit, but I don't have any records of where I went or how my gaming turned out.
In 2011, Hard Rock International announced a plan to build a casino in Atlantic City, at the south end of the boardwalk. Then in August 2012, there was a thread in this forum about Hard Rock planning to buy Bally's.
However, some months before that, a comment about 2/3 the way down the page on this article from an AC site said the gossip was specifically about the Seminole Hard Rock Casino making the purchase and had discounted that as an "ill-found rumor."
Last September, there was an announcement that Hard Rock International would not be constructing a casino in Atlantic City after all, but I am not privy to info about a possible purchase of Bally's or any other establishment. Anyone got any updated gossip? If we can't share facts, we should at least be able to spread rumors; after all, this is the internet!
The chip shown below is a custom white Paulson with four dark brown/purple edge inserts. It also has a few very interesting features. The two center inlays are different, with one showing currency and coins flowing down behind the denomination, while the other shows crossed six-guns. I'm not sure, but I think that must be a reference to the Wild Wild West casino. Wild Wild West was part of the Bally's complex starting in 1997, but I don't think there were ever any chips issued with that name. I understand that it recently pretty much closed down.
But to me the really interesting feature of the chip requires that you look closely at the background. On either face, behind where there is the printed "Bally's Atlantic City," you can see that the molded chip has the impression of "Park Place."
In fact, comparing images in the MOGH catalog, it looks to me as if this is the exact chip that was previously used for Park Place Casino, just with an oversized center inlay used to conceal the Park Place name. It even looks a bit as if there might be small/normal center inlays (flowing cash and crossed six-guns) with an additional oversized inlay covering that and adding the "Bally's Atlantic City" text to cover the earlier name. Moreover, there was an interim chip (shown on the MOGH page) that has an oversized inlay saying "Bally's Park Place" covering a Park Place Casino base chip.
I don't know whether it is really possible to add an overlaying center inlay after the fact, but it sure looks as if they had a supply of old Park Place Casino chips and kept slapping labels on top as the name evolved over more than two decades. The MOGH catalog does not indicate issue dates for any of these chips.
UV light reveals a hidden Paulson logo in the center plus four glowing spots near the edge. Initially, I thought that these were triangular edge inserts fluorescing through the center inlay, but that doesn't seem to match what can be seen on the visible-light images. The positions of these UV spots align with the edge inserts, but the inserts are not triangular. What's more, there is no fluorescence outside the boundary of the oversized center inlay. It's as if these small inserts don't really fluoresce at all, but something else aligned with them is fluorescing through the edge of the center inlay in a triangular shape.
I don't have any idea what that implies, so I'll let others speculate for a while. What do you think?
pretty late here, but i did want to add a photo of my old "park place" chip before it was branded as bally's.
Quote: DocState: New Jersey
City: Atlantic City
Casino: Tropicana
Ramada purchased an existing hotel on the Boardwalk with the plan to renovate it as their casino property. Even though just such a plan had been approved for the Resorts casino hotel, the New Jersey Casino Control Commission rejected the Ramada plan. The whole concept of using casinos to rebuild the Atlantic City and New Jersey economy was based on expected new construction, not just what was referred to as "patch and paint" remodeling of existing hotels.
The NJCCC told Ramada they needed to tear down the old hotel and build new from the ground. In response, Ramada threatened to sue. A compromise was reached that allowed/required them to use just the steel structure of the original hotel, gutting and totally rebuilding it. The complex opened in November 1981 with 521 guest rooms and has been expanded extensively with several additions. Ramada had recently purchased the Tropicana Las Vegas and chose to build on the recognition of that name by using it in Atlantic City.
Less than a year after it opened, they added an indoor amusement area (a bit like Circus Circus, I suppose) and subsequently renamed the whole place TropWorld. The amusement area was removed during some renovations in the mid-90s, and the name was changed back to Tropicana in 1996.
By then, Ramada had split off their casinos as Aztar Corporation, which was bought by Columbia Sussex in 2005. By early 2007, Aztar had been incorporated in Columbia Sussex's other casino operations under the name Tropicana Entertainment LLC. Along the way, they had taken drastic measures to reduce expenses and increase profit by major reductions in staffing. There was a lot of concern that these reductions might be leading to violation of some gaming regulations.
By late that year, the NJCCC was holding hearings, and by the end of the year they had denied renewal of the license. The property was placed under trustee control, eventually being sold under a bankruptcy auction. The new owner was known as Tropicana Entertainment, with it being stressed that this was a different company than the previous Tropicana Entertainment LLC. At least one source says the sale was not completed until 2010.
My wife and I stayed at the Tropicana on our first visit to Atlantic City in 2004. Two things I read along about that time helped me put a bit of the casino resort picture a little more in perspective. One was a report that the Tropicana had the largest hotel in the entire state of New Jersey. That probably has changed by now, but that's what I read then. The other point was that a hotel the size of the Tropicana Atlantic City would be run-of-the-mill on the Las Vegas strip. I thought that showed a clear distinction between the two markets.
Not too long after that, we were back in Las Vegas, and I was playing in the Tropicana LV casino. A player did something that a dealer wanted to belittle him for, so the dealer made the crack, "This ain't Atlantic City." I was right on the verge of saying, "You're right – in Atlantic City, the Tropicana has a much bigger and nicer casino than this." I was able to restrain myself, though. While the Tropicana LV casino is much smaller than the one at the namesake place in Atlantic City, the Las Vegas hotel is bigger -- bigger than any hotel at that time in the entire state of New Jersey while looking like a rather small place on the strip!
The chip shown below is a custom white Paulson, with four pink edge inserts. The name of the casino is molded twice into the outer ring of the chip, along with the denomination twice. This same basic chip design is used on almost all of the non-commemorative Tropicana Atlantic City chips shown in the MOGH catalog.
I really like chips with the casino name molded in and recently noticed how common this type of custom Paulson chip is in my collection of New Jersey chips. The same basic custom chip configuration was used for my chips from Bally's, Caesars, Hilton, Showboat, Tropicana, and all three of the Trump-named casinos that I haven't yet covered.
This Tropicana chip has different center inlays on the two sides, with one just having the denomination inside a center circle and the casino name and city (no state) around the outside on top of the molded name. The other side shows a red/orange-suited harlequin character in the center holding a five-card (poker?) hand and the casino name, city, and denomination around the outside. I think it's an interesting touch that the back of the harlequin's cards have a diamond shape, like the Welcome-to-Las-Vegas sign -- that shape is used in the Tropicana logos used by both the Las Vegas and Atlantic City properties, and perhaps by the other Tropicanas.
UV light reveals the hidden Paulson logo in the center and the fact that the edge inserts fluoresce, making those triangular spots where they shine through the center inlay. Why is it that the glowing spots are so much bigger than the edge inserts? I still don't know.
And here is my very old Tropicana chip.
The MOGH catalog lists issue dates for some chips, but not for the two that you just posted. Can you tell us approximately when you got them? The Park Place chip would have been issued very early, before they started using the Bally's name and likely in 1979 or 80. I don't have any idea how long they stayed in play after the name change or even exactly when the Bally's name was added.
Quote: DocThanks for sharing your Park Place and Tropicana chips, sodawater. We're going to have to find some way to keep you current on this thread. ;-)
The MOGH catalog lists issue dates for some chips, but not for the two that you just posted. Can you tell us approximately when you got them? The Park Place chip would have been issued very early, before they started using the Bally's name and likely in 1979 or 80. I don't have any idea how long they stayed in play after the name change or even exactly when the Bally's name was added.
I received both chips the same way -- in $3-$6 hold'em poker pots in 2005. The trop chip, I got in the tropicana $3-$6 game... someone had been playing with it in his stack.
I received the Park Place chip that same year, playing $3-$6 hold'em in the Taj Mahal. Someone had used it to bet and the dealer did not notice.
City: Tesuque Pueblo
Casino: Camel Rock
I do not mean to be culturally insensitive at all, so I'll just attribute this comment to my own ignorance: I really don't know when to use the word "pueblo" to refer to a village and when to use it to refer to a band of people who might live in such a village. Should I say that the Camel Rock Casino is owned by the Tesuque Pueblo or that it is located in the Tesuque Pueblo? I think both are correct, but I still have some difficulty with the usage. The village and casino are located about ten miles north of Santa Fe and three miles south of the Buffalo Thunder Resort discussed yesterday.
According to a page on the casino's web site, the people's native language is Tewa, and the name Tesuque is a Spanish variation of the native name for the people, Te Tesugeh Oweengeh, meaning "village of the narrow place of the cottonwood trees."
Other than that little tidbit, the casino's web site wasn't of much value for me in preparing this post. It's home page has a promo for a Halloween Costume Contest to be held last October, and the page for Table Games has only a promo for the "now available" Casino War and the "Exciting Side Bet" of Lucky Ladies. Nothing else – no listing of other games offered or anything. Their craps table was closed when I was there, so I played $5 blackjack and broke even. No, I did not play the side bet.
Also, I couldn't find anything about the history of the place. There is nothing on the casino's web site, no wiki page, and the MOGH catalog just says, "Opened: Unknown." The CasinoCity.com page claims that Camel Rock has 530 gaming machines and six table games. With such limited info available, it seems to me the casino could use a publicist.
The chip shown below is a blue RHC Paulson with either eight edge inserts or four double inserts, depending on your perspective/preference. The edge insert colors are yellow and peach. One of the center inlays shows a photograph of the casino, while the other shows the nearby rock formation for which the casino is named. UV light reveals a hidden Paulson logo
Since I started a few days back posting chips from my recent trip to Arizona, Colorado, and New Mexico, I have already included several photographs other than chips: Montezuma Castle near the Cliff Castle Casino, the cards in use at Ute Mountain Casino, and a metal sculpture in obscure, irrelevant association with the Ute Mountain Casino. I thought I could add one more photo today to verify that the Camel Rock shown on the casino chip is a real place, easily visible from the highway.
Quote: DocState: New Mexico
City: Tesuque Pueblo
Casino: Camel Rock
I do not mean to be culturally insensitive at all, so I'll just attribute this comment to my own ignorance: I really don't know when to use the word "pueblo" to refer to a village and when to use it to refer to a band of people who might live in such a village. Should I say that the Camel Rock Casino is owned by the Tesuque Pueblo or that it is located in the Tesuque Pueblo? I think both are correct, but I still have some difficulty with the usage. The village and casino are located about ten miles north of Santa Fe and three miles south of the Buffalo Thunder Resort discussed yesterday.
According to a page on the casino's web site, the people's native language is Tewa, and the name Tesuque is a Spanish variation of the native name for the people, Te Tesugeh Oweengeh, meaning "village of the narrow place of the cottonwood trees."
Other than that little tidbit, the casino's web site wasn't of much value for me in preparing this post. It's home page has a promo for a Halloween Costume Contest to be held last October, and the page for Table Games has only a promo for the "now available" Casino War and the "Exciting Side Bet" of Lucky Ladies. Nothing else – no listing of other games offered or anything. Their craps table was closed when I was there, so I played $5 blackjack and broke even. No, I did not play the side bet.
Also, I couldn't find anything about the history of the place. There is nothing on the casino's web site, no wiki page, and the MOGH catalog just says, "Opened: Unknown." The CasinoCity.com page claims that Camel Rock has 530 gaming machines and six table games. With such limited info available, it seems to me the casino could use a publicist.
The chip shown below is a blue RHC Paulson with either eight edge inserts or four double inserts, depending on your perspective/preference. The edge insert colors are yellow and peach. One of the center inlays shows a photograph of the casino, while the other shows the nearby rock formation for which the casino is named. UV light reveals a hidden Paulson logo
Since I started a few days back posting chips from my recent trip to Arizona, Colorado, and New Mexico, I have already included several photographs other than chips: Montezuma Castle near the Cliff Castle Casino, the cards in use at Ute Mountain Casino, and a metal sculpture in obscure, irrelevant association with the Ute Mountain Casino. I thought I could add one more photo today to verify that the Camel Rock shown on the casino chip is a real place, easily visible from the highway.
I think the term "Pueblo" refers to the place rather than the inhabitants. However, isn't there a city in Colorado named, Pueblo? That's like naming a city in Indiana, "Metropolis"
Would the name "Camel Rock" come from the tribe? I doubt the Native American's had any experience with camels before the land was settled. With the history of the U.S. Government moving tribes from reservation to reservation, I would not be surprised if the current location wasn't settled until the mid to late 19th century. So the tribe could have been educated about camels, but I doubt they were given the honor of naming the landmarks.
It does look like a camel though. One hump or two?
And if you're a sophisticated big-city snob like me, it also means any spot on the map with a population of under one million. Really, a "city" of 100,000 people? I pass that many people on my way to work!(*) :p
(*) Ok, not really. But on a typical drive far into the city, or from end to end, I surely pass by a lot more than 100,000 people. I don't sdo that every day, but often enough.
Quote: AyecarumbaI think the term "Pueblo" refers to the place rather than the inhabitants. However, isn't there a city in Colorado named, Pueblo? That's like naming a city in Indiana, "Metropolis"
Would the name "Camel Rock" come from the tribe? I doubt the Native American's had any experience with camels before the land was settled. With the history of the U.S. Government moving tribes from reservation to reservation, I would not be surprised if the current location wasn't settled until the mid to late 19th century. So the tribe could have been educated about camels, but I doubt they were given the honor of naming the landmarks.
It does look like a camel though. One hump or two?
I think Nareed has the right info about "pueblo." I just have some difficulty with the multiple meanings. And by the way, Metropolis is in Illinois.
As for Camel Rock, the U.S. Army used camels in the southwest during the 1850s, mostly in Texas I think, but as far west as California. At least some folks in the area would have known what they looked like, and the rock really does show a similarity. The rock looks like the one-humped camel, or dromedary, though the army did use a few Bactrian (two-humped) camels, also.
And if Buzzard were still reading this thread, I would have expected some sort of comment about that photo I posted a couple of days ago of the auto salvage yard sculpture. But the last comment he posted here was more than a month ago, so I suspect he is no longer a reader.
I came back here and saw that the first new post was from 3/5! Sigh....
Anyway, the prime reason I came back is because today's Question of the Day on Anthony Curtis' site has several links to some vintage Vegas websites.
http://www.lasvegasmikey.com/a_downtown_list_alpha.htm
http://www.inoldlasvegas.com/downtown.html
http://www.ccgtcc-ccn.com/Fremont%20Street.pdf
http://www.thechipboard.com/archives/archives.pl/bid/321/md/read/id/1101767/sbj/rofl-rofl-lv-khoury-s-club-savoy-rof/
I think these (and/or their domain home page) are prime candidates for inclusion the "Handy Reference Links" at the bottom of the first post.
Sigh, I'd edit that post and add them myself, but I lost that power recently....
Well, it seems you are only two weeks behind; shouldn't take too long to catch up. I don't know which is bugging you the most -- having less time at work to browse the forum or a bit of secret-admin withdrawal. ;-)
I had seen the QoD about the Savoy in the TV series, but I hadn't looked at the links. Some of those links are to pages for which other pages at the site are already in the list of handy links. I'll take a look at these and add some of them to the list soon. Thanks!
City: Church Rock
Casino: Fire Rock
The town of Church Rock is located in northwestern New Mexico on I-40, eight or nine miles east of Gallup and about 30 miles from the Arizona line by way of the highway. It is within the Navajo Nation lands and is named for a natural formation that I did not photograph or even notice.
There doesn't seem to be a whole lot located there, which is probably typical for Native American communities, but on GoogleMaps I noticed a "Solar Road" heading out of town. I rather expected it to lead to a photovoltaic array or at least a solar pond – maybe even a sweet spot to watch a sunset – but I couldn't find anything like that on the satellite image. Then I noticed the other roads in the village had names like Challenger Road, Mercury Loop, Pioneer Loop, and Telstar Road, so I surmised that the town was laid out by a fan of NASA.
The Fire Rock Navajo Casino is located just outside of Church Rock, right against the I-40 frontage road. I don't know whether there is really another rock formation in the area that has that name. The only significant thing I noticed in the vicinity of the casino was what looked like a natural gas processing facility that was set up to serve a very large number of rail cars. I know nothing about the gas industry, so I don't know whether this was some kind of refining/separating plant or just a place on a pipeline where they transferred the product to rail. I did see a pipeline under construction not too many miles to the north of Gallup and numerous facilities in that part of the state that appeared to be gas wells and or pumping/compression stations for the pipelines. There were a couple of oil well pumps running, too.
Once again, I had difficulty gathering information about the casino. Its web site was quite useless for my research. The pull-down menu for Gaming has three options: Slots, Table Games, and Bingo. All three options go to the same view, which shows two drawing promos and a "Play $5 & get $5 Casino Cash" promo for slots. Nothing describing the games offered.
There is a very short Wiki page for this casino. It says the place opened in November 2008 and has approximately 900 slots, 1 roulette table, 7 blackjack tables, and a poker room. The CasinoCity.com page says the gaming area is 64,000 sq. ft, and that there is a bingo hall, 740 gaming machines, and eight total table game and poker tables. I didn't bother to count tables myself, but I suppose that if there really is 1 roulette table and 7 blackjack tables, that doesn't leave many of the eight total tables left for poker games. I played $5 blackjack for an hour and broke even.
My souvenir chip shown below is a white RHC Paulson with two sorta-triangular edge inserts in dark blue and peach/orange. The center inlay is reddish and rather plain, with the two halves of the Fire Rock name separated by a graphic that could well be a representation of a namesake formation. I did see a few formations that looked a bit like that, but the ones I photographed were located well to the north of there, near Shiprock, NM.
I'm hoping to get my NM pics taken tonight, so I'll catch up with the pictures then.
Perhaps the "Fire Rock" name was chosen because expensive market research revealed that no one would go to a casino named, "Church Rock", and if they used, "Red Rock", Frank Fertitta would sue their nuts off?
City: Albuquerque
Casino: Hard Rock
The Hard Rock Hotel & Casino is located on the south side of Albuquerque, about 15 miles from the center of the city and a mile and a half off I-25. It is owned and operated by the Pueblo of Isleta. The casino hotel, their RV park, and the affiliated Isleta Eagle Golf Course appear to be the only things in the immediate area.
There is no Wiki page for this casino, but the CasinoCity.com page says that it has a 100,000 sq. ft. gaming area with 1,700 gaming machines and 34 table and poker games. The casino's own site only mentions roulette, craps, and blackjack as their table games, plus poker, bingo, and "over 1,600" slots. The pueblo also operates the slots-only Palace West casino some five miles down the way.
The Albuquerque Journal published a couple of reports last November that the casino's ties to the Hard Rock brand will be coming to an end, and the name will revert to "Isleta Casino." One article indicates that the casino operated under the Isleta brand for twenty years before aligning with Hard Rock three years ago.
If there is a projected date for the change back, it was not included in what I was able to dig up. There was no clear evidence of an impending change when I visited a week and a half ago. Guess maybe I'll have to make a return visit to Albuquerque some day for an Isleta chip.
By the time our Arizona, Colorado, New Mexico trip had carried us as far as Albuquerque, my wife had grown quite tired of casinos, so I left her at our non-casino hotel while I visited the Hard Rock. It was a good thing I didn't drag her along, because it was a miserable experience. I played craps only long enough to get the dice for a single hand, and that took an hour and a half.
Ordinarily, having the dice progress that slowly around the table indicates that people are having very long turns, rolling a lot of numbers, and I'm making some money. That was not at all the case that night. I lost money, as did probably everyone at the table, I think. The slow progress was related a group of players at the far end of the table from me. They were placing an outrageous number of prop bets on every roll, and we had to endure the time required to figure and disburse any payouts, and the excruciating amount of time required for the players to decide and get down whichever prop bets they wanted on the next roll. It was clear from the dealers' behavior that they knew those players well and expected to be going through such an exercise for the entire evening.
I didn't notice what level of tokes those players were making to compensate the dealers for their labors, but it was probably worth it to the house to put up with the slow play, what with all of those high edge bets on the table for every roll. And the way the rolls turned out, even my pass/odds and place 6 or 8 plan was losing money.
The chip shown below is a white Chipco ceramic chip with four red marks on the perimeter of each face and four more on the chip edge. These may be supposed to look like edge inserts. They don't. And the marks on the chip edge are a different width than the ones on the faces.
One face has a blue image of a two guitarists performing in front of a frenzied audience, with a label of "We will rock you!" Since when did Queen only have two members? The only other mark on that face is the denomination. The other side of the chip has the city (no state), the Hard Rock logo, and the denomination mark in front of what looks like a fire and brimstone depiction of Hades. Is this a prediction of what a hard rocking life will lead to? (Note the Chipco International mark at the bottom.)
Quote: DocOne face has a blue image of a two guitarists performing in front of a frenzied audience, with a label of "We will rock you!" Since when did Queen only have two members?
I prefer "We Are The Champions."
To be fair, only to members of Queen played guitar; if you count the bass as a guitar, that is. Fred Mercury sang and sometimes played keyboards, if memory serves.
Quote: Doc
Since when did Queen only have two members?
Now, I think. May and Taylor remain, with Mercury and Deacon having moved on to the great amphitheater in the sky.
Quote: NareedI prefer "We Are The Champions."
To be fair, only to members of Queen played guitar; if you count the bass as a guitar, that is. Fred Mercury sang and sometimes played keyboards, if memory serves.
He also played guitar.
Quote: rdw4potusMay and Taylor remain, with Mercury and Deacon having moved on to the great amphitheater in the sky.
Quote: chickenmanHe also played guitar.
OK, so I'm not the most knowledgeable fan of their music. The Hard Rock chip probably wasn't referring to Queen anyway.
I checked Wikipedia, in spite of how often I point out their unreliability. They list Deacon as retired but still alive. They are inconsistent in reporting on Mercury's instruments. They list him mostly as lead vocals and piano but also note that he wrote Crazy Little Thing Called Love on guitar and performed rhythm guitar on the recording and when the group performed the number live, saying it was "the first time he ever played guitar in concert".
He tired of the piano because he wanted to roam the stage...
But, and this is the most important thing by far, I hope they keep the Hard Rock name until at least mid-June when I go to get my chip:-)
Personally, the "Hard Rock" brand is the main reason I would not visit the joint.
City: Farmington/Upper Fruitland
Casino: Northern Edge Navajo
After three days of rock casino names – Camel Rock, Fire Rock, and Hard Rock – we have something a bit more complex, the Northern Edge Navajo Casino, located in the northwestern part of the state about twenty miles south of the Colorado border and a little more than fifty miles from Durango via a highway that I struggled to drive in the darkness.
If the photo of my souvenir chip below looks faded and out of focus, well, that's exactly what my chip looks like. It took me one heck of a long time to figure out what that fuzzy scribble is below the words "Northern Edge" at the bottom of the graphic and just inside the blue/black circle. At first, I thought it was a series of W's, but I finally figured out that it is really two lines: The first one says "Navajo Casino" in extremely small print, and the second one is that Lego triangle graphic just like the one on Tuesday's Fire Rock chip. In fact, if you just took the same two lines from the Fire Rock chip, changed them to black, reduced the size by about 60 percent, and made the whole image fuzzy, then I think you'd have what appears on my Northern Edge Navajo Casino chip.
I don't know how a chip could look so worn out when it is from a casino that opened just fourteen months ago. (The GoogleMaps satellite view available today shows the casino facility still under construction.) All of the $1 chips I saw in play during my visit looked just this faded. This lack of image durability doesn't do much to promote the Icon brand of chips.
The MOGH catalog has a much better image of a similar chip on their page for this casino. I suspect someone got a chip image right after the casino opened. MOGH also has a better description of the graphic on the chip and the source of the casino name than I could come up with on my own, so I have just borrowed it.
Quote: MOGH pageThe name Northern Edge Navajo Casino was selected by the Upper Fruitland Chapter. The name was researched and has cleared federal trademark laws. Northern, represents the geographic location of the casino, which is in the northern area of the Navajo Nation. Edge also describes the physical location of the casino, which borders the city of Farmington and the Upper Fruitland Community. The black triangles represent the North sacred mountain, Mount Hesperus, Dibé Nitsaa, located within the La Plata Mountains. The element of water is incorporated to show the presence of the three rivers located within the area, the La Plata River, San Juan River and Animas Valley River. The colored triangles within the mountains represent the two casino towers that will be highly visible at night. Overall the logo represents the Northern Edge of the Great Navajo Nation.
I don't think that description is original to the MOGH site. The use of the words "will be highly visible at night" suggests that this description came from a write-up that pre-dated the opening of the casino last year. I'm just not sure to whom I should offer proper attribution. I found this January 2012 news item that uses the exact same words and attributes them to the casino's web site, but the casino's site now just has two pages: (1) a home page with directions to the place and a list of monthly promos and (2) a "contact us" form.
About all I can add as a description of the casino's chips are that this $1 chip is white (as expected) with four marks imitating edge inserts in black, orange, blue, and almost-invisible-on-my-chip gray. Also, the Icon manufacturer's logo "I" appears in the 3:00 position of the blue/black circle. Would that make it an Icon icon?
UV light reveals that a small portion of the central graphic fluoresces, though its outline only partially matches outlines seen under visible light. I don't think it's really a hidden image, but I don't understand why that portion of the graphic is treated differently, so I thought I should include the UV image for comment by others.
Quote: rdw4potusMy "day" job is eating me alive.
C'mon, get your priorities straight!
Quote: rdw4potusThe blurriness of the chip itself caused my camera to fail to auto-focus properly. Is there a way to correct for that with a point-and-shoot camera?
More often than not, I'm using my Nikon DSLRs as point and shoot cameras, and I don't think I have encountered that problem due to trying to photograph blurry images. Sometimes the problem arises if there is no distinct line or spot to work with (photographing a blank wall or a clear sky) or a scene with an intense, repeating pattern, such as a grid of dots that could be confused with each other. The same thing can cause difficulty in focusing vision. Does your camera offer manual focus?
City: Espanola
Casino: Ohkay
I listed the city for this tribal casino as Espanola with some reservation, no pun really intended. The chip shown below indicates the location as San Juan Pueblo, but (according to my favorite infallible source Wikipedia) in November 2005, the official name of the pueblo reverted to its pre-Spanish name of Ohkay Owingeh. While I have not been able to determine when the casino opened, the listing in the MOGH catalog indicates this chip was issued in October 1999, so the use of the old name for the pueblo is quite understandable.
In the Tewa language, Ohkay Owingeh means "place of the strong people." The pueblo, by any name, is adjacent to the town of Espanola, between Santa Fe and Taos, and the casino is located right on route 68 there.
I have seen the name of the casino listed as Ohkay, OhKay, and OHKAY, so I don't really know whether there is a rule on the correct capitalization. Perhaps in the transcription from Tewa to English there are problems equivalent to whether the name of the Libyan colonel and former leader should be spelled with a K, a G, or a Q. Each spelling of that name was recommended by at least one style manual.
According to CasinoCity.com, the Ohkay Casino and Resort has a 30,000 sq. ft. gaming space with 600 machines and six total table and poker games, including five blackjack tables, craps, poker, and roulette. Yeah, interesting arithmetic. Data from CasinoCity.com is about as unreliable as that from Wikipedia. I visited Ohkay two weeks ago this evening and played $5 blackjack for just a few minutes for a $40 loss. I played in four casinos that day, breaking even in one and losing in three. Not one of my better gaming days.
The souvenir chip shown below is a white Chipco ceramic chip with what seems like an uncountably-infinite number of triangles on each face. (If you don't think so, just try counting them!) The center graphic shows an eagle cradling an entire village in its wings. There is probably a lot of symbolism there. I'm not sure what those two items are on either side of the eagle's tail feathers. Are those the bird's feet? They look a bit like a couple of skulls lying on the desert sands.
City: Rio Puerco/Albuquerque
Casino: Route 66
No comments at all on yesterday's casino? Well, I guess that's OK. ;-)
So today we have another casino with some lack of clarity as to the correct city for its location. The chip shown below very clearly states that the Route 66 Casino is located in Rio Puerco, NM. According to Google Maps, however, Rio Puerco, NM is in an extremely remote area of the state, northwest of Los Alamos and well away from any numbered highways. In truth, the casino is located about 85 miles from that GoogleMaps point by theoretical line of sight and more like 150 miles by what roads there are.
Disregarding what it says on the chip, the casino is located directly adjacent to both I-40 and the remnants of Historical U.S. 66, about 20 miles west of downtown Albuquerque. Both the MOGH catalog and the casino's own web site just list it as being in Albuquerque. I think that "Rio Puerco" is also an area of Albuquerque, although calling it "Rio Puerco, NM" is probably not really correct.
The casino is owned and operated by the Laguna Pueblo, a tribe that in their native language of Keresan is known as the Kawaik. An interesting side note from Wikipedia is that Laguna Construction Company, owned by the tribe, is "one of the largest U.S. contractors in Iraq, with reconstruction contracts worth more than $300 million since 2004" (end date unspecified.)
The Wiki page about the tribe indicates that they operate three casinos on their reservation, but the tribe's own site only mentions two: Route 66 and Dancing Eagle, a slots facility some thirty miles or so farther west on I-40. I have no idea what Wiki's third casino might refer to, although I have found some references to a Casino Express that appears to be in the same facility as the Route 66. For all I know, that's a coffee bar.
Specifically regarding the Route 66 Casino, the MOGH catalog indicates that the place opened in September 2003, while the casino's own web site gives a fair description of their offerings. They have 1,700 slot machines, bingo, blackjack, craps, roulette, PGP, 3CP, and UTH. According to CasinoCity.com, they also offer mini-baccarat, but the casino apparently doesn't choose to acknowledge that on their site.
For the younger set, they have a youth entertainment center plus licensed child care for those 6 weeks to 12 years of age. For those who consider themselves adults, the place has an ENVY nightclub with a dress code of "Upscale Trendy Night Club Gear." Yes, they come right out and list that code on the web site. There is also a 2,800-seat Legends Theater venue, with such diverse upcoming shows as Tesla, Bill Cosby, the Steve Miller Band, and women's welterweight boxing. Something for most everyone, I suppose.
The casino has a very interesting décor, highly built around the theme of the historic namesake route. All of the aisles in the main casino are wide, winding, and with the carpeting marked like a two-lane highway, complete with a center dashed line. Cute.
The night I visited the casino, some group I hadn't heard of was performing in the theater, and the crowd was young and a bit wild. I roused an idle crew at a $5 craps table, quickly drew a crowd with green/black chip action to it (didn't get any commission from the house ☹ ) and played for just 20 minutes, losing $85. I probably would have stayed around, trying to recover, but this was shortly after I spent an hour and a half waiting for the dice to go around the table just once at the Hard Rock, and I think I had tired of the game for a while.
The souvenir chip below is a white Bud Jones plastic injection molded chip with orange/tan bands and dots. Other than the color, the base chip is identical to the chips I posted from the Hacienda in Boulder City, NV and the Golden Acorn in Campo, CA. The Route 66 chip's center inlay has a nice highway graphic, the denomination in red, and a very-questionable city name. As with many similar chips, the entire white area of the center inlay fluoresces under UV light, but there is no hidden image.
Quote: DocState: New Mexico
City: Espanola
Casino: Ohkay
I listed the city for this tribal casino as Espanola with some reservation, no pun really intended. The chip shown below indicates the location as San Juan Pueblo, but (according to my favorite infallible source Wikipedia) in November 2005, the official name of the pueblo reverted to its pre-Spanish name of Ohkay Owingeh. While I have not been able to determine when the casino opened, the listing in the MOGH catalog indicates this chip was issued in October 1999, so the use of the old name for the pueblo is quite understandable.
In the Tewa language, Ohkay Owingeh means "place of the strong people." The pueblo, by any name, is adjacent to the town of Espanola, between Santa Fe and Taos, and the casino is located right on route 68 there.
I have seen the name of the casino listed as Ohkay, OhKay, and OHKAY, so I don't really know whether there is a rule on the correct capitalization. Perhaps in the transcription from Tewa to English there are problems equivalent to whether the name of the Libyan colonel and former leader should be spelled with a K, a G, or a Q. Each spelling of that name was recommended by at least one style manual.
According to CasinoCity.com, the Ohkay Casino and Resort has a 30,000 sq. ft. gaming space with 600 machines and six total table and poker games, including five blackjack tables, craps, poker, and roulette. Yeah, interesting arithmetic. Data from CasinoCity.com is about as unreliable as that from Wikipedia. I visited Ohkay two weeks ago this evening and played $5 blackjack for just a few minutes for a $40 loss. I played in four casinos that day, breaking even in one and losing in three. Not one of my better gaming days.
The souvenir chip shown below is a white Chipco ceramic chip with what seems like an uncountably-infinite number of triangles on each face. (If you don't think so, just try counting them!) The center graphic shows an eagle cradling an entire village in its wings. There is probably a lot of symbolism there. I'm not sure what those two items are on either side of the eagle's tail feathers. Are those the bird's feet? They look a bit like a couple of skulls lying on the desert sands.
Just because I was bored tonight 105 (35 x 3) triangles including the ones partially hidden by other images.
I found my NM chips today and got some pics taken. I'll have them cropped, sized, and uploaded by sometime tomorrow.
Quote: kenarmanJust because I was bored tonight 105 (35 x 3) triangles including the ones partially hidden by other images.
Man! You must have even less of a life than I do.
I don't follow your method though. I don't see where the 35 comes from. Are you sure it isn't 36? My way of looking at it was that on the outer ring there are 18 triangles pointing inward and 18 pointing outward. On the inner ring, there are 18 double triangles pointing inward and 18 double triangles pointing outward. That gives me a total of 108. While the number of triangles may not be infinite, I'd say that it qualifies as "uncountable" for at least one of the two of us. ;-)
And to think that the number of triangles is the most discussable aspect of these chips and casinos.
