A Deuce Requiem
When I recently heard that the classic FPDW game (full pay Deuces Wild) had been pulled from all the Station properties in Las Vegas, a feeling of sadness came over me – and a rush of memories filled my thoughts. Yes, Brad and I have moved away from Vegas and this game disappearance doesn’t impact us personally. In fact, we hadn’t played this game for many years even though we were living in Las Vegas, near to a casino property that offered it. But because that 100.7% pay table was only offered on low denominations, mainly quarters, we had been finding other positive plays at dollars and above. However, we had always been very happy to find these on a good deuce game, albeit one with a lower-EV pay schedule but connected to a good promotion or players club benefit to put it in positive territory.
FPDW was our exclusive game choice for many years. In fact, it was the game that lured us away from the blackjack tables where we had started our frugal gambling casino adventure. I’ve often told the story about how, on December 31, 1991, Brad and I walked from the Westward Ho to the downtown Gamblers Book Club to get Lenny Frome’s book that contained the FPDW strategy. Then we started playing those old coin-dropper quarters at the Ho, Brad hitting the buttons as I kept checking the strategy chart to be sure we were being accurate. I finally got tired and left for the room, leaving the strategy book with Brad and admonishing him to check if he had a puzzling hand. Of course, this had a storybook ending: Brad hit a royal (our very first) just before midnight, and came back to the room and dumped the whole $1000 in cash on the bed!
In 1995, we got brave enough to leave the quarter machines to go up to playing dollars and that meant learning and choosing other games. But we continued to find some FPDW in 50-cents and occasionally in dollars up through the summer of 1997. After that I never played it, but Brad would sometimes kill time at the Palms, waiting while I got my nails done in the salon, playing the quarter progressive FPDWs.
I see vpFREE2 has FPDW listed only in one casino – Sam’s Town in Vegas. Whether there are others in “secret” locations that players don’t want to reveal – in Las Vegas or any other place in the world – I don’t know. But I do know that losing this game will have negatively affected many skilled advantage players who wanted/needed a lower-level denomination and were willing to spent many hours grinding out a small but steady profit.
Actually, with all the VP pay-schedule downgrades for many years, I am surprised that this game lasted as long as it did. But now it seems like the sad End of an Era!