The standard slot machine gives the casino a 10 percent advantage, which means that statistically, it returns to the player roughly 90 percent of everything he puts in. What made the deal particularly good was that Sands’ video poker machines were considered slot machines, and accepted the free-play money - until last week. Others buy the cards at a discount, sometimes by the dozens, hoping to shift the gambling odds in their favor.

After selling the cards, they often spend the day in south Bethlehem, walking along the Greenway, sitting by the river or strolling along Lehigh University’s stately campus to kill time until their bus returns to New York.

Some are low-income or even homeless people who ride every day, and sometimes twice a day, to raise money to live. That deal had become so popular that it created an underground market in which many riders sell their casino cards moments after stepping off the bus in the Sands garage. Those video poker machines had become the favorite of players, some of whom would buy dozens of free-play cards a day at a discount from mostly Asian bus riders in hopes of using the odds-friendly machines to take money from the casino.Īnd at the heart of that was the best casino deal in the region - $45 in free slot machine play for anyone willing to pay $15 for a bus ticket. Players say Sands cracked down on the practice a day after The Morning Call revealed in a March 30 investigation how more than 50 buses a day from the Asian neighborhoods of Flushing, Chinatown and Brooklyn had spawned an underground market in which free-play cards were being routinely sold and used in the video poker machines. And that free-play card that only days ago could be sold for $40 on the underground market dropped overnight to $30. The machine he counted on to give him the best odds of keeping his money no longer accepted the free promotional play card Sands gives away to New York bus riders. Twice a week for the past four years, David Kravitz has hopped on a bus from Brooklyn for the $45 in free-play money from the Sands, hoping to beat the Bethlehem casino on its video poker machines.īut when he did that last week, nothing happened.

Flushing to foxwoods casino