I participate in both vpFREE and videopoker.com forums. Often players will hit some sort of jackpot, take a picture, and post it on one or both forums.
Some players have no shame when it comes to posting pictures. They can be playing a $1 6-5 Jacks or Better game, which returns slightly less than 95% when played well — but when a $4,000 royal pops up, these folks are so excited they snap a picture and rush to post it.
Strong players would be embarrassed to post such a picture. Letting other players know that their game selection criteria are hopeless isn’t something these players to want to broadcast.
But recreational players? They are tickled pink that they finally hit a royal! They are really happy about the $4,000. If others want to look down on them for playing lousy games, it doesn’t matter. They got the royal and they’re delighted about it!
I’ve been wondering what would make me excited enough to take a picture in a casino. Something I really wanted to share with others.
A royal flush? I’ve had more than 2,000 of them in my career. Always nice. Always appreciated. But not worth bragging about. If you play enough, you get these. If you play a lot, you get a lot.
A dealt royal flush? I’ve had 25 of those. I’ve had them on single line, Triple Play, Five Play, and Ten Play. I even had one dealt sequential royal. I haven’t yet had them on Fifty Play or Hundred Play. Maybe some day. But a lot of people have posted pictures of dealt royals. You see one picture of a Hundred Play dealt royal — you’ve seen them all. Yes sometimes the denomination varies — so it could be for pennies, nickels, quarters, halves, dollars or possibly even higher, but the picture is basically the same.
A BIG jackpot? Something worth $100,000 or more? I’ve had a number of those, including two that were dealt, but displaying such a picture frequently causes resentment.
So what should I take a picture of? As it happened, this past St. Patrick’s Day I finally came up with something in a casino that made me want to take a picture. It was a little bit after my seventh royal of the day.
First some background. St. Patrick’s Day was the only 2x point day for the entire month at both South Point and Silverton. To keep the biggest mailers coming at Silverton, I need to play about $200,000 per month. I’d played $2,500 each Monday (the maximum amount that counts toward the senior drawings that day), and a few times $250 a day because you’d get a scratcher that was worth at least (and usually) $5 but it could be more. I wouldn’t make a special trip for the scratcher — but if I was there picking up free play anyway I’d get the scratcher as well. Bottom line — I planned to play $190,000 coin-in St. Patrick’s Day at Silverton.
It’s possible that there could be a problem with playing that much that day and getting all of the points doubled. Sometimes there’s a limit on how much you can play and get multiplied and sometimes there’s not. A frequent promotion limit there is 80,000 points.
Separate from this, there is (or at least used to be) a daily limit of $1,000 worth of free play that you could download. That is 333,333 points — which you get from $166,667 coin-in on 2x point day. So I wouldn’t be able to download all the points earned — and if there was actually a limit, the excess points might be confiscated. I didn’t want that.
Possibly there’s a difference between the calendar day (i.e. midnight to midnight) and the casino day (2 a.m. to 2 a.m. at the Silverton). So my plan was to begin play at midnight and cash out points before 2 a.m. I’d then go to South Point and play — and deal with the rest of my day. Later I’d come back and finish my play at Silverton.
I was fortunate enough to get one of the two Hundred Play machines. Several other players were there before midnight, and the Hundred Play machine was the most desirable machine to many, but one of the guys playing prior to midnight decided to quit just when I came up at a quarter to — because he wanted to go to South Point. I can get about $60,000 per hour through the machine playing for quarters ($125 per hand).
If I hadn’t gotten on one of the Hundred Play machines there were three Ten Play machines (all full) and two Spin Poker machines (both empty) in the high limit room that would have sufficed. The best game on any of these is 8/5 Bonus Poker — which returns 99.17%. But when you play on 2x point days and add in the senior drawings and the mailers, it’s a decent enough play.
So I played $95,000 — half of my daily quota. I zeroed out my account — meaning I downloaded all possible free play and played it off. I hit a total of four $1,000 royals — and managed to hold my losses down to $600. I then left for the South Point.
At the South Point I played $1 Ten Play 9/6 Double Double Bonus Quick Quads ($60 per hand). Without giving a total play-by-play, I played $130,000 in coin-in, hit two more royals, lost $2,000, which was offset by almost $1,000 in cash back.
I then went to sleep for a few hours. Back to the Silverton. The Hundred Play and the Ten Play games were busy, but the Spin Poker machines in the High Limit room were not. Playing that at the $2 level ($90 per hand), I can generate enough play. Unfortunately you get a lot more W2Gs on this machine than you do at $2 Ten Play — because you often get quads or royals three at a time.
W2Gs aren’t particularly distressing for me — but they are time-consuming. On the only 2x point day of the month — LOTS of players were playing which made for LOTS of W2Gs. A W2G takes longer than average at the Silverton on normal days. On a busy day, it is MUCH slower than average. Fortunately there were two open machines side by side so I could easily move over to the second. I had a book with me in case I didn’t get two adjacent machines.
I hit one small jackpot when I got three sets of 3s ($400 apiece) and near the end of my play I connected on one $8,000 royal. So I was up for the day.
While I was waiting to be paid, I finished out my play on the adjacent machine and then zeroed out my account again. I wasn’t positive if I would be able to do it because it was possible that the $1,000 daily limit was midnight to midnight and I had already downloaded $570 at 1:40 a.m. The best way to find out was to try.
Fortunately I was allowed to download the remaining $570 from my account. I then clicked on my point balance. Since it takes 333 points to earn $1, I expected somewhere between 1 and 332 points. Instead I got a surprise!
The machine said my point balance was -7 points. There was actually a minus sign in my point balance! This meant I owed the casino a little more than 2 cents in slot club points. I’d never seen this before. A strong player was sitting next to me and I asked him if he’d ever seen this. He hadn’t either.
My photo opportunity had finally arrived!
A bit of epilogue is in order. After the fact I learned that players who didn’t cash out their points at the end of their play didn’t lose any — no matter how much they played. My maneuvering made no difference. But I didn’t know this before-hand. And I didn’t want to ask the booth how many points I could earn because sometimes just the question reminds them to close loopholes that I don’t want closed.
I know the picture is blurry. I’m still proud of it. I have no shame.