Cindy and I go an offer from Harrahs St. Louis that we just couldn't turn down. It was for 3 free nites at their new tower plus $60 in food. After we looked at a map we realized that it was only 6 hours to get there which wasn't too bad since it used to take us 7 hours to get to Tunica. The property is very nice since it is a combination of the old Players casino and the Harrahs. The first thing we noticed was that this is Missouri where they still have a $500 per 2 hours loss limit. That means that you must have your players card to get in and use it every time you buy in at a table or slot machine. They won't even combine a husband and wife's play since they have to keep the buy ins straight. I visited all 5 casinos in the area - Harrahs, Ameristar, Alton Belle, Casino Queen and President. Basically there was nothing new at any of them except Harrahs which has a $5 poker chip, Voodoo lounge and the newest one for the opening of the hotel as shown in the scan below. I have limited quantities available for $7.50 each delivered.

I also mangaed to find one of each of the Silver Strikes from Harrahs 1997 issue as shown in the scan that I would trade for other riverboat strikes that I need.

The biggest change at most casinos is their going to TITO. Unfortunately most of the cage people told me that when they did the change to TITO they destroyed all of their old tokens and any foreign chips they had laying around. The only tokens I saw in use at Harrahs was the $5 token being used at one machine. The President does still use tokens which was a good thing since their computer was down.

As you can see I did manage to get a few roulettes and have them available for trade for other roulettes I need.

The Misouri requirements that you put your slot card into the machine before it will let you buy credits means that there are no cards laying around. In 4 days of looking I found one card at Harrahs and very few at the other casinos. BTW - if you are going to Harrahs watch out for the valet. After unloading our luggage and moving the car Cindy decided that it would be quicker to just park in the garage since it was closer to the room. Fortunatley she was right since when I checked out that first trip to the valet cost me $5. There was no sign indicating a charge and no request for payment when I picked up the car. Sure glad I didn't use valet for the other 10 or 20 times I parked the car.

I really don't have much to say about the other casinos. Ameristar and Harrahs were the busiest. Alton Belle is a ways away (like 20 miles)from St. Louis and there is no easy way to get back to the downtown area from there. President and Casino Queen are across the river from each other downtown. The only other thing to report on is my luck at gambling which went from bad to worse. Normally when I lose money on the first day I make it back and more before the trip is over. That didn't happen this time. I lost regularly until the last night when I won a little and the morning we left I won a little more. Totaled out at a loss of $148 which is within my normal plus or minus $200 for a trip. It turned out that my luck wasn't bad but the dealers were killing everyone. It got so bad the morning I left I had trouble finding a table to play at. Every place I tried to sit down the players were grumbling about the dealer killing them. At BJ I lost a LOT of 20 hands and even had BJ's that didn't win. That is hard to do for an extended period. Fortunately I wasn't busting a lot, just getting beat by the dealer. We had fun and while I don't think my play was enough to get invited back again we do plan on another visit in the summertime.