I know of no casinos in Las Vegas that offer auto-hold, a feature on some video poker games where the machine offers a suggested play which the player can either accept or change. Years ago when I was teaching at Barona Casino, near San Diego, they had auto-hold on their video poker which was particularly bad. On a hand like 35678 of mixed suits, it would routinely suggest tossing the 8 (which left you with only four cards that could complete the straight) rather than tossing the three (which left you with eight such cards). The machine would regularly recommend holding a suited ace-ten in Jacks or Better — which is a horrendous play. And the auto-hold would treat all 3-card straight flushes as being equivalent, no matter how many gaps the combination had.
I came to the conclusion that, from the casino’s point of view, the purpose of auto-hold was to 1) increase the speed of play so as to make the casino more money, and 2) teach the players to play badly. Generally speaking, the customers at the casino were happy with the auto-hold. They would bang away on the machines without much thought or hesitation — like they were playing slot machines.
A few years later, IGT upgraded their auto-hold. Now it’s very close to perfect. When Barona installed the new auto-hold on their machines, players complained. The new holds, which were much more to the players’ advantage than the old holds, “looked wrong.” Players were used to the old auto-hold’s recommendations. Many players weren’t happy with the, “Trust me! It’s for your own good!” explanation as the reason for the change. Eventually, players accepted the new auto-hold.
It has been awhile since I gave auto-hold much thought; however, I recently received an email suggesting I talk about the following story– wweek.com — on my “Gambling with an Edge” radio show. I have heard nothing about this story other than what is contained in the article. It may well turn out that some of the “facts” in this story are incorrect, but for this column, I’m accepting as accurate what is written in the article.
In this article, a player in Oregon was upset because the Oregon Lottery had a very bad auto-hold feature on the video poker machines that they operate. A game that should have returned 90% (The thought of playing a game that tight makes me feel ill!) only returned 87% to the players. The player argued that if a machine was going to offer play suggestions, it was only right that those suggestions be very close to 100% accurate. Anything less is a rip-off. The player sued the Oregon Lottery Commission and presumably WMS Gaming who manufactured the machines to return the money ripped off from players in this way.
I mentioned this situation to a few players in Las Vegas. Most players thought the auto-hold should be accurate. I would expect players to want a 100%-perfect auto-hold, simply because players ALWAYS want more benefits. They want looser games, better point multipliers, and senior benefits as well! Casino executives talk about greedy players. Players talk about greedy casinos. Oh well. The guys on the other team are always the enemy!
Insofar as my personal view of this goes, while I’m not pretending to be a lawyer or understand the legal ramifications, I don’t believe the game manufacturer has any duty to provide an accurate auto-hold. If you want to accept the auto-hold suggestions, you can. If you don’t want to, you’re free to change the hold to whatever you like. Information on how to play the hands correctly is widely available should you wish to play well.
If a machine had a sticker that said “We guarantee that the auto-hold selections are the best possible according to the laws of probability,” then we’d have a different situation. But no such sticker is on the machines. On a crap table, you can put your money on the Big 6 or Big 8 in the corner of the layout or you can bet on the 6 or 8 in spots close to the dealers. The latter have MUCH better odds than the ones in the corner. Are casinos being sued because they quietly allow players to place their money in the inferior places? No. We accept that if a player is foolish enough to place bets on the Big 6 or Big 8, he is allowed to do so. How is that different from the video poker case?
Let’s face it. A 90% video poker game is a tax on ignorant people. Anybody with a clue would avoid that game. If the manufacturer created a better auto-hold, the state would earn many millions of dollars less in revenue each year. They either have to make up that revenue by creating another tax or decreasing benefits somewhere else. I know nothing about the situation in Oregon in particular, but I’m willing to bet that there are many, many agencies in Oregon that feel they are already cash-strapped and should get more money. My readers are video poker players, so we don’t want the money coming from us. But I assure you, whether we’re talking about Mental Health, Parks and Recreation, Highway Patrol, Education, or any other state department, they don’t want the money taken from their budget either.