I'm not opposed to progress, but those video machines were not my idea of steps ahead. Really, I have to say that I was pretty disappointed by Four Winds. I didn't totally hate it; it is huge, and looks great, and you can tell they sank a lot of money into high-tech. The staff were friendly, if not a bit clueless (some of them, anyway), and the contact I was given regarding collecting chips, turned out to be one big dud. He was nice enough, and I don't want to speak ill of him for being caught unawares; but he was busy with last-minute fixes (he was putting together a roulette table when I was introduced to him), and had no idea what I was talking about when I said that I was told there would be a table set up for collectors. I had to do all my chip collecting the old fashioned way, which was made more difficult because that stupid video poker room of course doesn't have chips. On top of that, the WPT commem chips were vaporware; but again attempting to be helpful, a co-worker of my contact took my card and said he'd call me when those chips came in.

All in all, it was a bad day to be a collector. If I were into the casino experience, and liked the modern-day idea of a casino-as-theme-park, it would've been ok. All the video games (slots, crapless craps, video roulette, etc) are custom-made for people who like the pretty lights. Me, I like the feel of real chips and cards, and even the possibility of arguing rules with a dealer. I'll go to Disneyland if I want a theme park.

And I can't say enough that that poker room SUCKED. The video table reps kept trying to sell us on it, but when their own cards failed to work and some of the machines blue-screened, I couldn't help but to think of Windows. The one redeeming thing, though, was the heads-up table they used for free demos. My husband and I wound up playing on those, and not bothering with the paid game. Didn't take us long to get bored with them, either.

What with the long redemption lines, multiple broken machines, lack of quarter slots, heavy traffic, and terrible sandwiches at Timbers, the most we got out of the joint were some nice chips (though not as many as I would've gotten had they had a real poker room) and $40 won at the slots using the free money provide on our player's cards. bah