If you are concerned about your trips to a casino becoming too frequent and bringing an onset of slot machine addiction, I have found a wonderful cure: Suquamish Clearwater Casino.
As you drive into the spacious parking garage, get whisked up a fast elevator to the pleasant fourth floor casino floor, it may be easy to overlook the large number of worn out cars being attended to by sullen patrons carrying free promotional kitchen trinkets out of the casino. They "won" something, but perhaps not what they really wanted. Your inner voice kicks in: "But not me. Not this time. I've lost money 15 times in the past 16 visits, but this will be different. This is a midweek, early afternoon trip right before the payday scalping party begins. It's the 13th, and Venus just transited the sun. And heck, a week ago on this day there were plenty of handpays--at least 10 over 1,000.00. So, I'll just watch and jump in when enough people have been bled on my Video Terminal bank."
Your strategy works out great (as usual) for the first thirty minutes or so. In my case, I was up a full 34 bucks (gasp!) on my first 100 bucks playing dollar bets and having 3 bonus games.
Then it gets bad. You switch machines. You pace out the play. Nothing works. But this casino must have at least 82% payback programming chips in these games, right?
I'm not an MIT trained math whiz, but what the house edge means for me is that playing here costs me 300.00 every time I play dollar bets. Win 100, lose 400. If I play .25 bets, I lose 20 bucks an hour; play .50 bets, lose 40 bucks an hour, and so on.
For a slot machine addiction to work properly, I would expect a healthy symbiotic relationship to occur. You escape to a relaxing environment to "pray to the God of Chance" (as one author describes it), win some--and lose more. Perhaps pour a bunch of cash into a bank of slots and nail a huge, thrilling bonus that gives you back half or more of your losses. The way I see it, casinos (and their programmers) have a choice every day: milk their cash cows weekly or have one big BBQ and be done with it.
Roger Upjohn's trip report (below) hit it right on the head. Clearwater decided to have a BBQ with me. I lost almost a thousand in one day playing dollar bets on the same bank, at the "right times", with no results. Playing dollar bets with no bonuses for 800 spins will do wonders for your addiction issues. It also helps to have people blowing smoke in your face, passing gas, hitting jackpots on .10 bets, or telling you in a drunken stupor how they are faking a disability to play next to you today.
I tried the self barring route at a few Washington casinos. It's worthless. Don't expect any enforcement, unless you win a hand payout. The Clearwater has found a better way to cure gambling problems. If you suspect that you or a loved one has a gambling problem, play at the Clearwater Casino a few times and you will be cured.