By our Guest Reporter: John Skater (www.johnskater.com)
Not having any previous gambling experience prior to moving to Las Vegas, my parents couldn’t have had any better luck than in having The Silverton, then known as Boomtown, become their nearby and most frequented casino. The reason for this is because no matter what casino game one plays or how well one does at it for the day, a person is bound to be rewarded with many dining comps at The Silverton, which are good for any of the casino’s three high-class restaurants, as well as its much better-than-average buffet.
Up until just around the beginning of 2011, the only items for which you could use your Silverton rewards points, earned at either slot machines or at the tables, was food. I – as the burgeoning video poker and comps player – could only watch with detached scientific interest as my parents earned over a thousand dollars worth of cash back on their player’s card, but the only thing their comps could be used for was food. I think at a rate of .20 percent for every 1,000 points put through the machines. But these days, The Silverton has a much more competitive .30 percent slot club, which equates to about $3 cash-back for every 1,000 dollars played through a machine. These comp dollars can also be downloaded directly to the machine, and played back immediately as cash.
According to gambling wizard, Victor “Vegas Vic” Royer, even before the recently improved cash back points system The Silverton was among the few casinos that had one of the best cash back mailers. If you played regularly, and earned these points – preferably utilizing the many “multiple points” days The Silverton frequently offers (usually 5 or 10x points for slot machines, 2x for video poker), about three months later you would receive a certain amount of “free play” in the mail, with amounts spread throughout the month in a convenient calendar format.
For high rollers this amount of cash back can be in the thousands, but even for the low roller, like me, hovering at the Gold level, even a little bit of play almost guaranteed me 1 or 2 free $10 or $15 dining credits, as well as $5 or $10 of free play once a week. Sometimes more. And that was pretty good.
For slot players like my parents, who are at the platinum and diamond level cards, the highest they have to offer, a bit of their normal slot play earns them on average at least two $40 dining credits, plus about $50 to $100 a week worth of slot play. Sometimes the total amount is spread out over many periods at $20 per period, to encourage physically coming into the casino more often, but that’s no problem because besides the mailers, dining comps at The Silverton come in all shapes and sizes and its not uncommon for us to find ourselves eating at The Silverton, sometimes a dozen times a month. We aren’t about to let good dining comps go to waste – and that in itself is a great casino tip!
There are three great restaurants at The Silverton. The Sundance is a wonderful “Denny’s style” restaurant with a similar menu. Its is open 24 hours, and has almost anything you could want — except perhaps complicated or exotic cuisines. The Twin Creeks – located in the middle of the casino – is the more high-scale restaurant, where sometimes you have to wait a bit in line even if you are VIP. The food is great, mostly steaks and seafood, and it has a one of my favorite bars and retreats, a place that actually has a bottle or two or real Absinthe!
Mi Casa is the Mexican stylized dining that also has great food (I suggest the cheese enchiladas), and a layout that looks like it was inspired by Dale Chihuly, for there are a number of exquisite colored glass sculptures hanging from the ceiling and embedded into the walls, lit from within for a nice effect. Mi Casa also has a very nice bar that is not often crowded, and my 2-cents-worth would be that they put the bank of 9/6 Jacks or Better progressive machines back into the counter, because that’s one of the best games a player can find in a casino.
The buffet has any and all of the types of food that you can’t find in the other restaurants, and is well worth paying full price to eat there. The Polynesian themed days are especially good, and overall they have some of the best seafood you can find in a casino buffet anywhere.
As a casino player, I’d be a lot happier if The Silverton put in a few banks of low denomination “over 100 percent” video poker machines, such as 10/7 Double Bonus or Full Pay Deuces Wild. Classic bread and butter video poker games which the old school pros would actually play, and earn serious profits. But I guess those comps can’t be too easy to earn. The removal of the live poker room back in January is also a bit of downer, considering that I was just starting to get into the action there.
Overall, if you enjoy playing a variety of casino games, be they slots, video poker, or keno, and would like to play in a casino that has a really great atmosphere – does a large tanks of swirling jellyfish at the Mermaid Bar and the largest free standing indoor salt water aquarium in the United States sound good to you? – then The Silverton could be the place for you. It’s not too hard to earn great comps and cash back, plus the comps you do earn, especially the dining, are actually worth coming back to redeem, over and over again.
For more information about the Silverton, visit their web site at this link:
http://www.silvertoncasino.com/
