If It Looks Too Good to be True . . .  

I just finished a two-part analysis of Maria Konnikova’s The Confidence Game where one of her warnings was (paraphrased) “If something looks too good to be true, it probably is. Very likely there’s something fishy going on.” Soon thereafter, a friend, “Sam,” who’s a knowledgeable video poker player, sent me the following pay schedule on a Bonus Poker game in the Palms High Limit Room:

(The numbers on the left represent the “new” pay table. The numbers on the right represent “standard” good Bonus Poker which is worth almost 99.2% if you play it appropriately. Compare the two sets of numbers and you’ll see why Sam was excited about the new game).

Royal Flush		800			800
Straight Flush		50			50
Four Aces		80			80
Four 2s-4s		40			40
Four 5s-Ks		25			25
Full House		9			8
Flush		7			5
Straight		5			4
Three of a Kind		4			3
Two Pair		2			2
Jacks or Better		1			1

The new game returns 111.2% and it can apparently be played from 25¢ through $5, Triple Play through Ten Play. My my!

Except, this was not a standalone pay schedule. It was on Dream Card.

Dream Card is a 10-coins-per-line game where you periodically get a Dream Card on the draw and that card turns into the best available card to go with the other four cards in the hand.

On Bonus Poker games, the occurrence of Dream Card has historically been 46.7%. If that same frequency is in effect on this game, that would turn this game into a 112% monster, or thereabouts.

Sam generously said that in exchange for my analysis of the game, I could play it, but I should please try not to kill it. After all, games this good don’t come around very often.

I told Sam that I wouldn’t play it at all. Although I’m allowed to play at the Palms now that Station Casinos owns it (and made it worse, in my opinion), I am severely restricted in the benefits I receive. The net effect is that I voluntarily stay away.

Still, on a 112% game where I could play up to $500 per deal, it wouldn’t matter much if I got benefits from the slot club or not. I would have major paydays as long as the machine and my welcome lasted.

The problem is that many of the slot department employees who now work there are the same employees who worked there back in the “good old days” and would instantly recognize me on sight. If I started hammering a machine, word would get to management within a few minutes.  If the game were really a mistake, either the machine would be pulled off the floor or I would be pushed out the door. So, it wouldn’t do any player any good if I tried the game at all. If it was a mistake, all my presence would do is help the Palms identify a problem. No thanks.

But I suggested to Sam that he play 100 hands on the game for the lowest possible stakes (which is 25¢ Triple Play costing $7.50 per deal) and keep track of the occurrences of the Dream Card. If it’s close to 46, which would be standard for Bonus Poker Dream Card, then he should go ahead and play it for the largest stakes he could afford. But if it’s a lot lower, we should do further research.

He did this. He actually played 200 hands and got 40 Dream Cards — which is less than half of the 93 or so he would get under the “normal” Bonus Poker Dream Card frequency. Whether playing 200 hands was statistically significant or not, he became convinced that it was and didn’t want to continue.

I told him I could contact a source I had at IGT — who is the guy both Michael Shackleford (the “Wizard of Odds”) and I use to get accurate information we can publish about games. But, I told Sam, if the game really was a mistake, likely my friend at IGT would notify the casino and that would be the end of it.

Sam said he wanted to know. He was likely done playing it and he didn’t see anybody else knowledgeable playing it, so almost certainly it wasn’t a mistake. Just “misleading,” because it would mean the frequency of Dream Cards wasn’t fixed for a game type.

It turns out that the game is worth 98.6%.

One of the unusual things about the game is that when you play five coins, the game is 7-5-4-3 Bonus Poker (returning 98.0%), but when you play 10-coins, it is 9-7-5-4. In the past, the Dream Card pay schedule was the same on the 5-coin and 10-coin versions, at least in my experience. Many of us would see the 7-5 Bonus pay schedule and not look any further.

Keep in mind that if the Dream Card frequency were zero, the return on this 111.2% game would be 55.6% (illegal in Nevada and many other places) because you’re betting 10-coins per line. I do not know the actual dream card frequency here, but it’s clearly lower than the normal Bonus Poker frequency, and higher than zero. Once I found out that the game is worth 98.6%, that’s all I needed to know.

It could well be that this is the best game in some casino someday where they have suitable-enough slot club and/or promotions to make this playable. Which is why the 98.6% number is important to me and may be useful information at that time. But until that time, it’s just a curiosity.

This again was a case of it looked to good to be true, and indeed, it wasn’t nearly as good as it looked. But we couldn’t know for sure until we did some further research.