Category: Video Poker

I’ve been playing NSU Deuces Wild for more than 20 years. It’s a simple game to play at the 99% accuracy level. It’s easier than most other video poker games to play at the 99.9% accuracy level. But it’s virtually impossible to play 100% accurately. The appendices to the Dancer/Daily Winners Guide to NSU Deuces Wild contain hundreds of exceptions to the basic strategy. Even the basic strategy has some real toughies in it. 

Consider the following nine pairs of hands. In none of the pairs are the two hands played identically. Do you know which is which? As difficult as this test is, it is much simpler when you have the clue that the two hands are played differently, than it is when you face any of these while playing. 

As is my custom, a W stands for a deuce. In the answers, bold italics means the cards are suited with each other. 

Test: 

1. W 4♠ 5♠ K♠ T♥ versus W 4♠ 5♠ K♠ J♥

2. W 4♥ 5♥ Q♥ K♣ versus W 4♥ 5♥ Q♥ J♣

3. W 6♦ 7♣ 8♥ K♥ versus W 6♦ 7♣ 8♥ K♠

4. W 4♣ 5♣ 3♥ J♦ versus W 4♣ 5♣ 3♥ Q♦

5.  K♦ T♦ 6♦ A♠ 9♥ versus K♦ T♦ 6♦ A♠ 9♠ 

6. K♠ T♠ 5♠ A♦ 3♦ versus K♠ T♠ 5♠ Q♦ 3♦

7. 8♥ 9♥ Q♠ A♣ 4♣ versus 8♥ 9♥ Q♠ A♣ 3♣

8. A♣ T♣ 9♥ 7♠ 5♦ versus A♣ T♣ 9♥ 7♠ 5♠

9. W A♦ K♦ T♠ 8♠ versus W A♦ K♦ J♠ 9♠

Answers:

1. W45 and W
2. W and W45
3. W and W678
4. W45 and W
5. KT and draw 5
6. KT and draw 5
7. 89 and draw 5
8. AT and draw 5
9. WT8 and WAK

Don’t fret too much if you didn’t score well. The test was my way of supporting my statement that it was virtually impossible to play this game perfectly. Each of these nine examples have a lot of similar hands to learn. Learning these particular 18 hands still leaves you with several hundred different tough hands to struggle with.

As it happens, until some casinos change their inventory, I’ll be playing NSU Deuces Wild more, dollar-wise, than all the other video poker games I play. So even though each of these distinctions are worth fractions of a penny if you play for quarters, I’m playing enough hands for large enough stakes that it makes sense, to me anyway, if I spend time mastering them.

I could have an exact list of hands in a PDF that I could carry with me on my smart phone. In addition to it being illegal in Nevada and some other states to use cell phones to help you make gambling decisions in a casino, I find this tedious. I’m playing games where I have the advantage, everything considered, and taking 15 seconds to make sure I have the correct play by a tenth of a penny makes no financial sense.

It may surprise you, but I would not have aced the test I presented today. In question 5, I would have drawn five new cards both times, in question 6 I would have held KT both times, and in question 7, I would have drawn five new cards both times. The other six hands I would have aced.

So, what gives? Why would I play these hands incorrectly?

I have worked out a strategy that is “good enough.” I have the Level 4 strategy completely memorized, and for the appendix material, I use the shortcuts provided there. These shortcuts are relatively easy to memorize and get me close enough. I don’t have the tools to accurately measure how accurate my “simplified” strategy is, but I suspect it’s well over 99.99% of what is possible. And I can play it relatively fast.

It’s a far bigger risk to make mistakes by oversight. I know the right play, but maybe I don’t see it, or maybe I get momentarily confused. This happens to me more as a senior citizen than it did a few decades ago.

At least two casinos in the Caesars system (in Cherokee, NC and Danville, VA — possibly others) offer next day bounce back for your slot and video poker play. I have not been to Danville, but I can describe the promotion in Cherokee.

Video poker players receive 0.75% next day bounce back while slot players receive double that. At least some “unprofitable” players receive a smaller percentage. To make it work for the casino, mailers and other offers have been reduced. Still, some of the mailer offers (spa credit, for example) are useless to some players, while “extra” free play is welcomed by all. If you want to go to the spa and no longer get as much spa credit, use the money derived from the next day free play and use it at the spa.

You earn your free play from 6 a.m. to 6 a.m., and it’s put on your card at noon. It’s good for 90 days. There are a few other “fine points” to the promotion, so if you go to one of these casinos, make sure you read the rules.

There’s always the question of when do you count this extra free play? Do you count it when you earn it or when you redeem it? While either methodology is defensible, personally, I count it when I redeem. 

What I mean is I do most of my play there on $5 deuces wild. At the outset of my trip, I take a marker and get a supply of $2,500 TITO tickets. My score generally goes up and down, mostly down, until I hit four deuces ($5,000) or a royal ($20,000) when I get paid in tickets. 

As I play, I put in these tickets and keep track of how many. Sometime after noon, I download the free play I’ve earned, but I don’t record that as money inserted. At the end of the day, I record my net win or loss. If I had $500 in free play (meaning I played about $67,000 coin-in the previous day), that money will end up as increasing my win or reducing my loss for the day. And, legally, this free play is as taxable as the results from playing the game.

The machines I play on are $1, $2, and $5 denominations, where the return on the game is highest on the $5 games. While I was playing a $5 game one day, I was next to a player playing $1 7-5 Bonus Poker. I heard him recount his score to his wife.

He said, “I started with $1,000 of my own money, and had $50 in free play from yesterday’s play which I downloaded. I earned 1,000 Tier Credits ($10,000 coin-in), so I’ll get another $75 tomorrow. Since I cashed out for $950, I really made $25 today. Let’s celebrate at the bar!”

This player was counting his free play twice in his mind. He counted yesterday’s $50 in free play and today’s $75 in the same session. Tomorrow, he’ll count today’s $75 again. It’s a mind game. The thing is, he only gets the $75 once.

Relatively few of you will play at these particular casinos, but this same principle happens at other casinos as well. In August, South Point is offering free spins Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, where you will earn free play up to $100, for playing $500 in slots or $1,500 in video poker. 

The day I’m writing this, playing on both Bonnie’s and my card, I earned a total of $140 in free play that’s redeemable until the end of the month. I could redeem it immediately, but there’s no need. I’ll be back in two days to play the promotion again and use the $140 as “ammunition” for my play next time. My results of that will then be recorded.

As of today, I don’t know the exact ending date for redeeming this promo. I’ll earn some free play on August 30, and am not planning on playing again until Tuesday, September 3, which is usually when my regular Tuesday-Thursday free play will be available (Sometimes there’s a different pickup schedule but I won’t know that until I receive the September mailer.) I’ll check the rules before then to see if the free play from the August spins will still be on my card when I pick up my first September free play. If the free play will still be there then, I’ll wait. If not, I’ll redeem it on August 30.

Another local casino in Vegas (Four Queens/Binion’s, which use the same card) gives you $160 for earning 1,200 points during the month. They regularly have variations of this promotion where you earn some amount of free play, comps, and/or gifts of some sort. I count the money when I redeem it.

Taxes aside, even if you’re playing recreationally, it’s good to know how you are doing. Fooling yourself into thinking you’re winning more (or losing less) by counting this kind of promotion twice gives you an erroneous picture of the profit or cost of your gambling.

At the same time, this is a clever way for a casino to run a promotion. Even when the rules of the promotion are perfectly clear, this makes it easy for players to think they’re getting more than they actually are.

About 2½ years ago, McCarran International Airport underwent a name change to Harry Reid International Airport. Under whichever name, it’s a major portal to and from Las Vegas, with 57.6 million passengers passing through it in 2023 — probably more this year. In terms of passenger arrivals and departures, it’s the19th busiest airport in the world (8^th busiest in the U.S.).

Because it’s Las Vegas, there are legal slot and video poker games to be played at the airport. The slot machine concession at the airport is owned by Michael Gaughan, who also owns the South Point casino in Las Vegas.

The South Point, of course, is one of the best places to gamble in Las Vegas. At the airport, maybe not so much. Michael Shackleford, the Wizard of Odds, estimated that the airport slots are as much as 8% tighter than slots in Vegas casinos. Why this is so is because the airport has a captive audience. If your plane is delayed by an hour or two, very few of us would hop into an Uber to go to the South Point or elsewhere to receive a better gamble. If you have the urge to gamble (and that’s not so rare among passengers in the Las Vegas airport), you gamble in the airport as you’re killing time. 

As a video poker player, I’ve always avoided gambling at the airport — just as I usually avoid gambling at video poker on cruise ships. When casinos have captive audiences, the odds are not in the players’ favor. And since I live in Las Vegas, I have good games available to me 24/7 and do not need to play bad games to scratch any gambling itch I might have.

That all changed when I started playing slot machines a few years ago. Certain slot machines store up value. Although there are many formats for beatable slots, a common one has three or four meters, which rise with coin-in and eventually, randomly, give you however many spins are on the meter. And the meter is then reset to a lower number. Players learn that on such and such a game, if the mini meter is 20, or the minor meter is 30, or the major meter is 40, or the mega meter is 140, it’s a winning bet to sit down and play. You don’t always win, of course, but you’re playing with an advantage. If you find these games at the airport, you probably want to bump your strike numbers up to 22, 33, 44, and 155. The lower return to players (RTP) means that you do not get as much per spin in the bonus round as you do in casinos with a higher RTP.

In regular casinos, when the meters get high enough, players continue playing until the meters go off. But at the airport, if they call your flight and you HAVE to get home today, most players will leave the machines and get on the plane — no matter how high the return percentage currently.

As you might expect, this has given rise to airport slot hustlers. Some players will buy refundable tickets in order to get past airport security, and then walk (and take free shuttles where available), from one terminal to the next. I’m guessing it’s three or four miles of walking to check every machine in all of the terminals. If you have a refundable ticket, once you’ve checked all the machines (and played the ones you believed were positive), you leave the airport without even getting on a plane. And then you do it the th e next day. And the next.

As a general rule, casinos do not like the idea of certain players always beating them. Casinos in Nevada are allowed to 86 such players — for virtually any reason at all that doesn’t involve discriminating on the basis of sex, skin tone, national origin, or a few other categories.  Harry Reid International Airport, however, is United States Federal property. MJG Airport Slots does not have the right to 86 players from the airport. 

I’m not sure of exactly what legal rights MJG Airport Slots has to prevent unwanted players from playing their machines, but it definitely takes actions. They know the slots that the pros commonly examine and if you show up several times a week checking those machines, in all the terminals, you will be noticed. The airport has security cameras all over the place. Perhaps MJG Airport Slots has access to that camera feed — or has its own cameras which it uses.

If they believe you are an advantage slot player, you will be approached and told not to play the airport machines anymore. Your picture will be taken. You will be told that if they catch you again playing these slots, the police will be called.

If we still had the Gambling with an Edge podcast, I’d ask Bob Nersessian to tell us what rights players have and what rights MJG Airport Slots have. 

I fly in and out of this airport a couple times a month. Sometimes I’ll allow time for a slot run before or after the flights. Since MJG Airport Slots senior personnel used to work for Michael Gaughan and have paid me hundreds of jackpots over the years, I assume I’m recognized on sight and considered an advantage player. Making extra trips to the airport to check these slots wouldn’t be worth it to me. I’d be picked off for sure. For me, if I were asked not to play there and the police would be called if I did, that would be sufficient grounds for me to cease. 

The Reno Airport, which is much smaller than Harry Reid, also has slot and video poker machines. I assume there are slot advantage players there as well. I don’t know how they are dealt with in that airport.

Last week I set the stage where I was playing slots and ran out of cash on hand. It was a game I evaluated at $2,200 and I didn’t have a line of credit at this casino. After being unsuccessful at getting a gambling buddy to come and help, I called my wife Bonnie who agreed to take Lyft and bring me some money. 

Eventually Bonnie shows up — safe, and with an inconspicuous bag of cash. It had taken more than an hour since I first started calling. I was relieved that she made it safely. Once we got set up with $500 inserted into the machine and on the correct game, I asked her if she’d prefer to play or to supervise. She wanted to play!

So, we reviewed the necessary instructions. We do this every time. She might not remember from last time. The key part was to keep hitting the button until one of the bonuses went off. After it’s completed, I’ll re-evaluate whether we should keep playing or quit. Probably a bigger key part was to make sure we were on the right game! The buttons to change denomination are very easy to hit accidentally, or maybe activated when you lay a bottle of water down. It is not that hard to stay on the right game — but it is very easy to inadvertently switch and instead of playing a 125% game you’re playing an 84% game. Bonnie sometimes forgets to concentrate on this. Not often recently, but it has happened and so we review it every time.

The two lower bonuses eventually both go off. The lower of the two going off twice. The net from when Bonnie got there was $1,500 — meaning I lost about $500 on the play. A slightly disappointing result — but the variance on these games is pretty large and that’s part of the game. I had estimated it to be worth $2,200. The fact that it was lower than that doesn’t mean my estimate was bad. Ask any sports bettor about the actual best guess of a score before the game is played — and the final result when it is over.

Bonnie wasn’t ready to go home yet so we walked around until we found another playable game. This time we lost again. Then we found another positive game. And lost again.

The net score was about even from when Bonnie got there — meaning my score would have been the same had I simply abandoned the game and gone home. But I believed the position was worth $2,200 and I was going to try to find a way to turn that into cash if at all possible.

While I was at the casino, I never considered using the ATM machine there. The rates charged in casinos to get your own money are outrageously high and I have always avoided them. In actual fact, I put in $500 when Bonnie got there, and we never added more money. Had I known that would have been the result, it would have been an acceptable option to use the ATM machine.

I don’t know how much these machines charge these days — it probably varies from casino to casino — but $25 would have been cheap enough. The Lyft was $20, and I also had to get Bonnie involved for a couple of hours. But I didn’t know it would be $25. I could have gone through another $2,000 or $3,000 before the bonuses paid off. Even if Bonnie weren’t answering her phone (not intentionally, but sometimes her phone is in a different room than she is) I would have walked away from this “$2,200 opportunity” rather than use the ATM.

But the next day, I submitted a line of credit application at two downtown casinos. I play enough downtown that I need the ability for some “fast cash” on occasion. Not very often, but sometimes. I have been using casino credit for 30 years and have a sterling record of repaying by debts. There is a Central Credit Agency in Las Vegas where all credit information is stored, so getting more credit isn’t a problem. 

And when the lines come through, I will use them a few times even when I don’t need to. When I’m going to be making a big play at one of the casinos, I’ll withdraw $5,000 in cash — no matter what my cash-on-hand status is. And then at the end of the play, I’ll pay the cash back. This establishes a record the casinos want to see.