Empire City Casino

one word= horrendous

Overall Empire City Casino (Racino), has a wide variety of slot machines (they are called video lottery terminals in New York State). Valet staff is very friendly and cars are usually retrieved in a timely manner even on busy nights. Customer service is below average in comparison to other casinos I've been too. Cage staff & Promotions booth personnel could be friendlier. If it's a busy night and you have a slot machine issue i.e. defect or ticket stuck in machine you could be waiting for some time even after pressing the service button. The player's club lines sometimes can be long, and they don't always have a sufficient amount of personnel to handle the amount of customers in a timely fashion. Promotional kiosks are often without paper or defective. Staff generally does a good job at keeping the place clean from what I've seen. Limited food selection (3 restaurants & food court). Avoid the food court, it is mostly low quality food ranging from fast food - pizza, fried chicken & fries, Chinese, etc. 

I've noticed many comments bad-mouthing this casino.  If you're comparing this to Las Vegas, then yes Empire is sub-par, but I'm a casual gambler and frankly I've had a blast here.  I've gone twice and the most recent time I was quite successful, with most of my fortune coming from the Family Guy game.  Also, being in New York it's one of a few in this country open to 18-20 year olds.  Security does their job, and a day trip here can be an interesting escape from the big apple.  One thing I wish were different is the minimum bets for table games; roulette is $10 while blackjack is $15, this can be discouraging for responsible gamblers who set a limit for how much they will spend before they leave.  While I like EC, Resorts World is better because it has more food choices and is more convenient (although both can be reached without a car) and less disorienting.  The first time at EC I lost my sense of direction; probably they make it that way as a temptation.

When I went, I first signed up for their players club and asked the question if their machines used a random number generator. I was told by the promotions supervisor that indeed they did and they were random. When I checked the video poker machines I surprised that the pay tables were the best that I had ever seen. With the match card plus full pay such as 9 6 for jacks or better, the video poker machines would return over 100 percent with perfect play if they were random. THEY ARE NOT RANDOM! I went online after I left the casino and discovered that these are lottery machines hocked up to a central computer. They do not have a random number generator chip in each machine. Perfect play or not it does not matter because each play is like a scratch off ticket. If you are supposed to win the machine will change you cards to give you the win. The return on their video poker machines is less than 92 percent compared to AC and Vegas video poker that pay 96 to 99 percent back depending on the pay table on each machine. If you play video poker you will lose much faster and have little chance of winning at the Empire Casino. If you just want to go to a casino and money does not matter, well then you can  have a pretty good time contributing to the state of New York.