I am ashamed to admit I did not tip as much as I probably should have, but when the dealer warranted it, I did give a little 'george.'Ĭasino Arizona, 101 and McKellips (Salt River): This creates a much more pleasurable gaming experience, as each dealer works to make the experience fun and engaging otherwise they know they will not get tipped. None of the casinos comp alcohol, but sometimes they will give you a free 'drink ticket' or write you a comp if you are playing table games.Ī good thing about AZ casinos, in my opinion, is that dealers go for their own tips. (As an aside, a buddy of mine won a $10,000 drawing at Casino Arizona a few years back, and they didn't take any tax out, because it is an Indian reservation). Casino Arizona put $10 cashback on my card at certain times, which was appreciated. I saw a lot of gift-giveaway promotions, and there were a lot of drawings and sweepstakes. I never seemed to get much in the way of comps, but I never gave them a local address for a mailer, so it is hard to say what marketing offers they sent out. This negates the building of large 'slot barns' and makes the casinos much more managable, if sometimes crowded.Įvery casino has a players' club, and the Casinos Arizona and the Gila Rivers use the same card. One notable feature about Arizona casinos is that they are small - there is a limit to the amount of slots and table games a casino may have. Others are more typical of Las Vegas locals joints.

I was actually surprised at how nice a few of the casinos are - they could give Red Rock and M a run for their money.

The casinos in Phoenix run the gamut from classy to kind of dumpy. The largest casino tribes, the Salt River Pima Maricopa tribe and the Gila River Pima Maricopa tribe, are some of the wealthiest in the country with very high 'per-cap' distributions to tribal members. The casinos have been quite the boon for tribes that are lucky enough to be located close to Phoenix. Now all Class II and Class III gaming is allowed, as are card-based table games (but not craps and roulette, although there are now physical/digital hybrids).

At the outset, there was a tense standoff at one of the casinos when the cops tried to seize one tribe's slot machines and the tribe barricaded themselves inside the casino. Gamblin in Arizona has been a contentious issue between the state and the tribes, and has only recently been resolved. There is no legalized gambling in the state of Arizona - all gaming is done on Indian reservations pursuant to the 1986 federal Indian Gaming Regulatory Act and a 2003 compact with the state. Being new to the area, I visted all of them at least once. There are seven major casinos in the Phoenix metropolitan area.

Phoenix casinos