Mesquite 7/24/11-The Sad Story of Degeneracy

You're welcome! Please note that I'm not necessarily saying that you should give up entirely on slots in order to have some fun (and I do understand very well the bonus fun that's involved) and that luck is involved in there with both Slots as well as Video Poker, but with the return rates that are offered, at least usually (but not on all occasions), slots tend to return less percentage-wise than Video Poker (unless you maybe are playing Video Poker with pay schedules that end up offering overall returns of less than 99% and/or are volatile on top of that).

Do also be aware that there is the possibility that the Video Poker that you could be playing could actually offer a worse (lower) return than some slot machines depending on the pay schedule. So for example, 8/5 Jacks Or Better in the Long Run (when you factor in all of the paying hands including the Straight Flush and the Royal Flush) returns about 97.3% and that could be a lower retun than some Slot Machines (if they are paying more than 97.3% -- such as 98%).

But with Video Poker, I do know that using proper playing strategy (that is playing each hand in the way that gives the player the best chance of getting some kind of return) will make the difference for the Player since it will increase the likelihood of the Player being able to be around for luck to come by. If a player is not playing each Video Poker hand in the best possible way (a good strategy chart will help with that), that can end up lowering the game's overall return by anywhere from an additional 2% to Six Percent (which is really significant) and so that can end up making even a good looking game pay badly.

And definitely, also playing when you're tired can end up being bad (it's at least just about as bad as when drinking alcohol. Impaired playing is impaired playing.

If I start getting tired while I'm playing, I stop dead in my tracks because I know that impaired play could cause an increasing amount of Player strategy errors as well as it increases the Player's chances of staying around at a machine for longer than they should!

And although anything can happen at anytime, if you have any chance to play any of the machines whose return ranges are listed in the American Casino Guide, the higher the range of return rates that are offered, the better off the Player is likely to be.

RecVPPlayer

Thanks, maybe I will post more often.

The lecture from VP player just rankled me yesterday! I know all about EV, perfect play, good pay tables, etc., but those odds are projections over hundreds of thousands of hands! Who plays that much unless you are a professional? I have bought the software & practiced at home on VP but I'm sorry, I just find it monotonous and very,very boring. When you look at the pay table above the machine , you know the most you will win is 4000 credits. If you are playing $25 or $50 per hand , that is exciting. If you are playing $5 per hand it will make you feel good for a few days. If you are playing $1.25 per hand, not so much. Anything less than that isn't worth an honorable mention.

When you are playing a slot machine, you could win anything from $10 to millions of dollars. My biggest single hit was $10,000 on a dollar slot. I had invested $21 to win it. Over the years I have learned a lot about what to avoid & what to play. I will NOT play any 3 reel 25 cent machines. Those are sucker bait.
With the advent of TITO it opened up a whole new world of play for 5 cent & 1 cent games.

I will not play any games with less than 30 lines. ALWAYS play the max on progressive penny machines! I watched a woman "lose" over $40,000 one night because she was playing 30 cents instead of the $3 max coin. But hey-she saved $2.70 on that spin, right?

I know that slot machines aren't for everyone, but if you know which ones to play, you can do alright.

The other advantage to playing slots is the comps that you receive. Much more than strictly VP players. I haven't bought a meal, a show ticket, paid for a room or paid for anything else in years. I know,I know, you're thinking "well, that's because they love to have people like her come to a casino because she will spend thousands & pay for all of the above." Not so fast. I may play thousands, but can only remember one time when I did not come home in the plus column.

Well anyway, I know I haven't changed any minds, but don't be so quick to accept the conventional wisdom that VP is the only way to go. Because it's not!

Actually the vp "wannabe" is because I'm such a poser! I just flit from machine to machine on a whim for fun; no SERIOUS vp action here but I do enjoy it sometimes

In the last post that I made, if a person reads it carefully, I did say that there are times when Slot Machines may end up returning an even higher percentage rate than Video Poker if the Video Poker pay schedule is bad (and there are actually many bad pay schedules out there that can make the game offer returns of about 98% or less -- which are not good rates at all for Video Poker).

And so I do say that Video Poker is not always necessarily the be all and end all that many people have been lead to believe that it is!
But often (altough not in every single instance), Slot Machines can end up giving players some decent-sized losses -- most especially when the returns that are offered can be a lot lower than Video Poker -- since at least usually states say that the return rates for Slot Machines can be (although certainly bonuses can help) down as low as about 85 Percent or so.

And many people though will just play any old machine instead of knowing which machines to stay away from (those which tend to return less).

People (at least those who have a copy of the American Casino Guide) now can not claim that they don't know what machines' return rates are and so they now can't claim to not know which ones can offer a higher return rate.

Now as for someone getting paid $1,000 for a Royal Flush on a Quarter machine, that definitely still is very nice (although it is true that that can be a lot less money than some of the slot machines can pay.

But there are some slot machines that can offer a lot higher of a Variance (Volatility rate) than Video Poker and so a player's money can last for a lot less time than on a Video Poker machine.

In the end it all boils down to the question of how much play time a Player wants to get out of the machine as well as how much risk is the Player willing to deal with (the risk can at times be a whole lot higher on a Slot machine than on a Video Poker machine.

I'm very well aware that Slot Machine pays can end up being a lot higher than what Video Poker offers.

It can also be not good with Slots when a machine tells the player that they have won when they were paid back many coins less than their original bet (such as when a player for example bets 30 Credits on a machine (say on a Penny machine) and the machine tells the player that they won when they were paid back 10 or 8 coins which can drain a player's money even faster than they think.

At least with a
Video Poker player getting their bet returned back to them as an actual "Push" (not an actual "win" when in a Jacks Or Better based Video Poker game they end up with a High Pair (as opposed to a player on a slot machine who many times is told by the machine that they "won" when they actually lost a lot of their initial bet -- which is definitely not a great thing either which also can offer players false hope), this player for all intents and purposes ends up getting another free shot at ending up with some kind of a paying hand which will also give a player more playing time as opposed to a slot machine player whose money ends up being kind of underhandedly chipped away.

But when a player ends up losing on a Slot machine, that should not necessarily cause the player shame because with gaming, losing is going to happen at times (although it can end up being easier for a player who isn't doing something where major thinking is involved to lose control of what's actually going on with their money -- especially with the Credits actually being real money instead of just being some number).

So at this point in time, I urge Slot Machine Players to get as much information as possible on what the ranges of return that the machines producers are offering the casinos are (this information can at the very least now be gotten through the American Casino Guide book) so that a Player can not only make a more informed choice as to what game gives him/her the best shot at ending up with some kind of a payback but which also can help the Player to slow down on their potential rate of losing).

RecVPPlayer

Well, I look at it this way....maybe you had a losing day so you can have a big, fat winning day when you are out with your friends! I have had my share of losing days and I've had some great wins.
For the most part, we are gamblers be it high-roller (not me) or low rollers (that's more like it) and aren't we lucky to have these boards to share the wins and the losses!

I'm headed out to LV in Sept. and you can bet this little, old slot-slut will have a good time regardless and if I can remember everything, I'll even post it!

Hang in there...let us know how the next trip goes!