REGGIE

A GUEST AUTHOR’s HARVEST STORY

TURNING STONE & UP STATE NY

CARL SHALIT

Since you’ve posted two of my New York State harvest stories, I thought I’d tell you of my most recent.
This was two months ago (February, 2017). February is not the greatest time to go to upstate New York but there was a very sad reason for going. For what it’s worth, a couple of weeks after the trip, where I was going got upwards of 30” of heavy wet snow, not the light powdery lake effect snow that many of us are familiar with.
There are three casinos that opened in New York in January and February of 2017: Rivers in Schenectedy, Del Lago in Waterloo, and Tioga Downs in Nichols. Schenectady is right on the way to where I was going so that was no big deal except it’s in the city of Schenectady. The other two are out of the way but, since I was going the day before I had to be where I was going, I had plenty of time. Good news also is that I drive a hybrid so I didn’t particularly care about the excess mileage.
I gathered all the chips I wanted but there are a couple of funny stories.
At one of them, the dealer asked the pit boss who said I couldn’t just buy chips without playing. I explained that I’m a collector and I showed him my CCGTCC membership card. He then let me buy the couple of chips but I asked what the problem was since I/we do this all the time. The explanation was the fear of money laundering! We all had a good laugh at the realization that I wasn’t really laundering the less than $20.00 I put up.
At the other two, the dealers also asked the pit bosses because they didn’t know if they could just sell me chips. Nothing to do with money laundering, it was just that they had not had the request before (remember the casinos had only been open a month or two, if that). The pit bosses said no problem.
I also stopped at Turning Stone to make my annual plea to buy a couple of their poker room drop chips. These had not been used for years and had just been sitting in the vault, but the floor and cage have steadfastly refused to let them out over the years. This time, however, they were using them again so I thought (YEAH!) maybe their policy had changed. Unfortunately that was not the case despite my pleading, begging, groveling!
So, while the reason for the February trip to upstate New York was sad, I did get all the chips I wanted from the new casinos. Next trip I hope to get further west to the several Seneca casinos in search of the handful of chips I’m missing from them.
CARL SHALIT