25 New Hosts Added

New: (3) $1 3/10 Play QQ : 99.54% JoB, 99.11% DB, 98.98% DDB next to All Star Poker and Big Times Draw Poker machine banks

New Location/Notes - 25¢ Prog : 99.11% DB outside high limit

New Location/Notes - 25¢ Prog : 98.39% JoB outside high limit

New: 25c Prog : 97.30% JoB at the bars

New: 25c Prog : 98.39% JoB unknown location

New: 25c Prog : 99.11% DB unknown location

i see no one has commented about this place in quite a while, so i'll give you a quick update as i was there yesterday (09-22-2009):

in a word , crap.
i have never been to the st Louis market before, and this trip managed to visit the Ameristar, Harrahs, and this joint. (unfortunately, we stayed here the first night, thanks expedia). hard to find where to park if your from out of town, really stupid check in people, non friendly staff, oh and yeah the video poker sucks. i could go on but why bother. as to should you come here? SKIP IT!

overall this is a nice looking place, that i am sure is an upgrade over the boat it replaced. however, they forgot along the way what may have made them popular in the past. i found every other casino i visited in the area to be better player wise.

I forgot to mention the hotel charged you 10.00 a night to park there. i had driven 6 hours to get there and after missing the entrance, (again, VERY poorly marked) and ending up in Illinois, i circled around and finally found the parking lot for the casino. (never did find the hotel parking, (which they charged me for). so i just left my car in the garage for the casino, it was free parking on Sunday night, and hoped i could talk my way out of a charge the next day. well Monday was free parking too, lucky for me...

There is 9/6 JOB in the high limit room at the $2/5/10 denominations. Walked around the casino and did not find any full pay at the dollar level or lower.

When Lumiere took over the President, they told players they would have more choices. What they didn't say was the cashback would be a .02 instead of .20 if you play video poker. They also would receive 10-20 per week instead of 70 per week bounce back cash. It will take you a month playing $1 video poker to earn a meal. Lumiere loaded their casino with the worse vp they could. They have insulted all vp players regardless of what they played. Good games or bad games. People who were playing 95% vp are done with the casino because of how they have been treated. Great marketing Lumiere! They might as well put a sign that says vp players not welcome here. People have realized the boat across the river is paying 12 times better cashback and better weekly cash coupons. You also get the same comps and cashback as the slot players. Lumiere doesn't realized that you can make money on vp player if you don't insult them. I think Lumiere will figure it out when they are in the red.

I was told that earning points depends on your card level and your play. Meaning that they dont know and if they did they wont tell. Well, I know more then they do/will tell. Points earned varies by machine (most likely by theo) and on the 9/6 JOB in HL it is about $45 CI for 1 point. This is .022% cash and comp rate, compared with Harrahs lousy .1% which almost 5 times BETTER. On the .25 spinpoker it is about $11 CI per point. It does not matter whether you have 5* or 0* it is the same CI per point (on my limited tests). It seems the 1 point earned is $.01 cash and .01 comp and 1 tier point. I believe they said you need 14,000 tier points per year to get 5*. The place is very nice with all new games, but it is not very big. I would say less then 1/2 the size of Harrahs. I have no idea what the % cash/comp rate is on slots. The parking garage has an odd layout and the potential for accidents is high, also the signage is very poor. I am not sure what their offers will be like, but with the extremely poor cash/comps they better be something special.

Three words-video poker wasteland. In a short, but not checking every machine-every paytable visit, the best game I saw in checking around 20 machines was 8/6 $2 JoB, probably a 98.5% proposition at best. Add .03 cash back, and every other casino in this market has better games available. If this is worth anything, I did not observe a single person playing that I would consider a knowledegable player, and I would think that in nearly 15 years of having casino gambling legalized in this area that I would know or recognize those in the know, as far as VP is concerned. I did not check $5 video poker.

It was hard to figure where you were supposed to park and even the parking garage gets confusing. If I wasn't paying attention someone else would have hit me going the wrong way in there. I heard rumors that it will cost money to park there soon. The gates were up when I was there on Saturday afternoon. It took me about 30 minutes to wait in line and get a player's card. They will match another casino's card level from harrah's and ameristar. I am not sure about the queen. They matched my star club from ameristar to a 3 star card there which is the 2nd highest card. I was given a brochure about their player's card program, but it doesn't say how much coin in equals 1 point or how many points equals a dollar cashback. Their website also doesn't provide this info. All of the video poker was in one section. They did have 9/6 double double bonus, but only on a bank of royal progressive dollar machines. There was nothing that I saw over 99%. Mostly everything was 98.5 and lower. My suggestion is if you want to see the new casino, great, go and look, but then LEAVE because there is nothing worth playing there. If anyone does find out how the point system works let me know. From reading about their different player's cards it sounds like the higher card you have the better the cashback rate? I heard from someone else that their cashback rate is only .03% Ouch!