It is the editorial position here at Okie Gamblers that when Oklahoma casinos fail to honor their advertised match play, we should do our best to publicize that behavior. The only way to incentivize casinos to behave better is to call them out when they deal unfairly.

This is from the advertising placard for the October promotions at the Holdenville Creek Nation Casino (one of our favorites):

That’s an unequivocal offer for $10 match play for ladies on Wednesdays in October.

So, on Wednesday October 31 we stopped in. I went to talk to the Silver Swords machine while Pixie went to put her $10 in the Skee-Ball game.

She played her $10. The little blue coins did not light up.

She went to the promotions desk. They said “No, it’s Halloween, no Ladies Day match play today. The Halloween promotions are drawings, it’s on the sign.”

Here’s what the advertising placard says about the Halloween promotion:

You could deduce from that — I guess — that the Halloween drawings might replace the (less generous) Ladies Day drawings scheduled for the same day. Although I have been to plenty of other casinos that have special drawings going on simultaneously with their regularly scheduled weekly promotions. In any case, we weren’t there for the drawings, and we weren’t expecting both sets to be happening.

However, there’s nothing about that Halloween advertising that hints or suggests that the Ladies Day match play would not be offered as advertised.

So once Pixie learned she wouldn’t be getting her promotional play, she was DONE. I imagine she’ll get over it eventually, but she hasn’t yet. And she didn’t have any interest in playing through the thirty or forty bucks we usually put at risk when we go there. So I cashed out my winnings of the moment (about $20) and we got the heck out of there.

Insult to injury: Holdenville doesn’t have a ticket-cashing machine, so to cash my ticket, I went to the cashiers window (located at the very back of the casino). On the glass in front of the cashiers were a pair of very tiny (index-card-sized) signs, which said something like “No Ladies Day Match Play Today” (I’m working from memory). So somebody in casino management knew this was a problem that gamblers would want to know about, but they buried the notice at the very back of the casino, where you won’t likely see it until you are cashing out before leaving. Was there any sign on the entrance doors, or near them? We checked on our way out, but you already know the answer: there was not.