Sigma Derby was mechanical and clunky and wonderful.
Sitting there was in some ways like sitting at a table game but without a dealer. When people sit around the new giant Wheel Of Fortune, they are still all isolated from each other. At Sigma because of the table design, it carried all the personal nuances of a live game.
If the people at Sigma were cool, or at least interesting, then okay. If they were not, out come the headphones.
I've sat there at 3 or 4 a.m. enjoying the slow cheapness of it all, with the added entertainment of watching the occasional cowboy get escorted out, or perhaps to the hoosegow in some cases. The perp walk was from Gilleys to Sigma Derby, to the main exit (valet driveway).
Often, security would announce, "look out, coming through" as they hurried someone out. It didn't matter if there was no one in their way, they would always call it out. I suspect that "look out, coming through" was their code phrase for "hey civilized patrons, check out this one."
For this entertainment the best seats were the two which faced Gilleys.
During the final days of The Frontier, first one, and then a second seating position broke in some way, and instead of repairing it, the coin slot was simply taped over with yellow tape. On the final day of The Frontier a third position malfunctioned, and it's coin slot was taped over as well. The three broken positions all happened to be the three in a row which were on the sports book side.
Here we see the crowd at Sigma Derby 27 minutes before the close of The Frontier. [I just don't see the point of calling it The NEW Frontier anymore.] The guy sitting with his back to the camera is at one of the three broken positions. I guess that is why there are so many people on the other side.
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