Frugal Fridays – November 2006

11/2/2006

How many of you, who come to this Web site every week to read Frugal Fridays, have spent much time cruising the other pages of it?

If you haven’t dug a little deeper into all the data on this site lately, you should do yourself a favor and look around. Since Anthony Curtis and his able crew redesigned the site a couple months ago, LasVegasAdvisor.com has become what has to be the best Web site on Las Vegas. It’ll take you hours to get through the Vegas Info alone.

There are a whole lot of Las Vegas Web sites on the Internet and some of them have good information. The problem is that an enormous amount of what’s out there is woefully out of date. Now, I have a little inside info about LasVegasAdvisor.com; Huntington Press is my publisher and I’ve had a weekly column on LVA.com for going on seven years. So I can tell you that all the information on the site is updated on a regular monthly schedule by two dedicated researchers who do almost nothing but make sure the data is up to date. That puts this site head and shoulders above almost all the other sites out there.

After you’re done reading this column, go back to the home page and click on the first link under the “Vegas Info” banner: Activities. The introductory paragraph at the top says it with flair: “One thing’s for sure: The only way to arrive in Las Vegas and not find fun things to do is in a coffin.” Under Activities, the first heading is bowling, where you’ll find links to current and comprehensive information on Vegas’ ten bowling centers, each with its own page of vital statistics, including hours, prices, specials, notes, and an interactive function where you can rate the facilities and experience.

Next comes Exhibits, with everything from a coffee-roasters tour and M&M’s World to the American Cocktail Museum and Backstage at Jubilee — each, again, with its own page of data, ratings, and comments.

After that comes Free Spectacles, with a baker’s dozen of listings of freebie entertainment around town; you could spend a whole day seeing them all, without investing one thin dime — music to my frugal ears!

Then there are all the movie theaters in the valley, including the IMAX and drive-in; every thrill ride available in Las Vegas and vicinity; and all the shopping opportunities, such as the five major malls, the outlet centers, and the casino promenades. Finally comes the two theme parks, the Adventuredome at Circus Circus and Star Trek at the Las Vegas Hilton.

And that’s just for Activities alone!! There are also complete listings under the other headings, including Buffets, Casinos, Graveyard Specials, Maps, Convention Dates, Nightspots, Restaurants, Shows and Events, Spas, Transportation, and much much more.

Allow me to add, here, a note about Transportation. One of my most frequently asked questions is about the free casino shuttles that run around town. This is important information for people who don’t rent cars, are too frugal to take taxis, and find the public buses too crowded or slow or inconvenient. But the shuttles are difficult to keep up with, because schedules and routes change frequently (and casino hubs, like the Stardust, even close!). But on LasVegasAdvisor.com, you’ll find complete schedules, maps, and phone numbers to verify whatever information you need. It’s the best presentation of free casino shuttles I’ve ever seen.

And it’s all free. You don’t have to be a subscriber to the Las Vegas Advisor newsletter. You don’t have to register on the site. All you have to do is show up and surf. Of course, the member areas are also highly recommendable, especially the newsletter and its archive, which dates all the way back to March 1999. Not to mention the member forums, which are among the most active in terms of Las Vegas on the Internet.

I’m proud to be one small (but vital!) cog in such a well-oiled and useful machine.

11/10/2006

For this week and next, I have a guest columnist, Dan Paymar, who’ll give us a historical view of the development of slot and video poker machines. It’s an interesting story.

The Nine Ages of Slots and Video Poker – Part 1
by Dan Paymar

Casino gaming machines have evolved over the years. Here’s a history, broken down into nine phases. Of course, there’s considerable overlap of the ages.

The Iron Age
This was the age of the mechanical slot machine. Most machines had three reels with 20 stops per reel. Since each stop had equal probability (limited only by the precision of cutting the internal gears and wheels), the probability of any particular 3-reel combination was one in 20x20x20, or one in 8,000. This limited the size of a jackpot. With one bar on each reel, a jackpot combination of three bars could be expected, on average, once per 8,000 plays.

For the intelligent player, this offered one advantage. With less than an hour of play, one could map the symbols on each reel. With that information and knowing that each symbol had one chance in 20 of appearing, it was easy to calculate the expected return of the game. Of course, the manufacturers knew this, and therefore set up the symbols for the desired casino hold. To enable larger jackpots, some machines were made with four, five, or even six reels. The problem was that this made the handle harder to pull, and maintenance became more of a problem.

The expected return (ER) was always under 100%, so it would seem that there could not possibly be any way of beating the machines, but some players found that by adjusting their delay between one play ending and pulling the handle for the next play, they could control the stopping position of at least one reel. This was a windfall for a small number of skilled players, until the manufacturers added a “”randomizer”” mechanism to make the games much harder to beat.

I kind of miss these machines. I enjoyed playing nickels at the Pioneer Club in downtown Las Vegas in the ‘60s when I knew very little about gambling and had very little discretionary money. I could play several hours a day and not lose more than $20 over a weekend trip, and sometimes I went home a small winner.

Of course, this was before I learned anything about gambling math. Unfortunately, these machines are unlikely to be seen in any casino today other than for display only, and they’ve become collectors items. You can buy one of these old machines for something in the range of $1,000 to $10,000, depending on the make, model and condition.

The Electronic Age
This began when manufacturers added flashing lights and other embellishments to mechanical machines, but electronics also allowed progressive jackpots. For these, the computer adds a small percentage of the coin-in action to a progressive meter. For the player, this has the benefit that the game can exceed a 100% expected return when the meter gets high enough.

Progressive jackpots started as an addition to mechanical machines, making profitable slot teams possible, but real electronic machines soon started taking over. The big difference is that the outcome is determined by a random number generator in the machine’s internal microprocessor, then the reels are spun by stepping motors to display the result. Typically, there are 40 physical stops on each reel, made up of 20 symbols with intervening blank stops.

There may be 512 logical stops for each reel, allowing the manufacturer to assign any number of those to each physical stop. Three reels with 512 logical stops each makes it possible for the jackpot to have a probability as small as one in 5,123 or one in over 134 million, thus allowing huge but very rare jackpots.

The drawback is that it’s impossible to determine the game’s basic payback, because we don’t know the mapping of logical stops to physical stops unless we have some inside information. This put a big crimp on the slot teams.

The Early Rebate Age

11/16/2006

This week Dan Paymar concludes his history of casino slot and video poker machines.

The Nine Ages of Slots and Video Poker – Part 2
by Dan Paymar

The Age of Progress(ives)
As the graphics and buttons improved, so did the action. The casinos wanted to increase the 800-for-1 payoff for a royal flush to attract more players, but without reducing their hold (net profit). The answer was the progressive jackpot. It was effective on reel slots, so why not on video poker? A portion of the action (coin-in), sometimes as much as 1% or even 2%, was added to a progressive-jackpot meter. Realizing that this would cut deeply into the casino’s hold, the payoff schedule was reduced, usually to what we now call an 8/5 game. When a royal is hit, the meter resets to the base value ($4,000 on a dollar game). At that point, the game’s payback is a bit under 97.3%, but it wasn’t long before a few sharp players realized that if the meter climbed above $8,700, the expected return was over 100%. That’s when professional slot teams began attacking banks of progressive video poker machines. If you’re interested in how the slot teams worked, watch for a new book that a friend and I are currently working on. It will be announced on my Web site, and many other places.

The Age of the Average Man
To attract even more players, new variations were developed. The first flat-top game (fixed 800-for-1 for a royal) to offer over 100% was a Joker Wild game. Lenny Frome was the first to publish a strategy that actually yielded somewhat near that ER. Then came Deuces Wild, which had an even higher ER if anyone knew the correct strategy, but Frome’s analysis put it at less than 99%, so it didn’t get a lot of play until the first edition of my Video Poker – Precision Play was published in 1992, giving an easy-to-learn strategy that yielded over 100.7% on full-pay Deuces Wild. Finally, anyone willing to put in the small effort to learn the strategy could play at an advantage over the casino.

The Age of Diminishing Returns
As a result of Frome’s books and mine, thousands of players became skilled enough to achieve over 100% ER on certain video poker games. The casinos over-reacted, just as they did in the ‘60s when Beat The Dealer showed that it was possible to gain an advantage in the game of blackjack. The managers just couldn’t get it through their heads that it was the perception that the game could be beat that attracted thousands of new players. Instead of reaping the profits from all those players who would never put in the effort to learn the necessary strategy, they changed the rules and drove a lot of those losers away. The casinos were still getting a reasonable hold, because the vast majority of players didn’t bother to learn an accurate strategy, but they cut the payoff schedules anyway, again driving away many losers, not because they could no longer beat the casino, but because their money didn’t last as long. Of course, the casinos couldn’t really be blamed; many good plays were burned out by players who became affectionately known as “”vultures.”” These weren’t slot teams, but independent self-proclaimed “”pros”” who’d lock up all the machines and give one up only to a buddy. So, of course the casinos lost money and were forced to cut the payoff schedules.

The Age of Promotions
Las Vegas casinos have always offered comps (complimentary meals and rooms) to high rollers, typically giving back up to 30% of their expected win, and free booze for everyone who’s playing. But now slot clubs and promotions were becoming a variation on the comp system to attract low-limit slot and video poker players. For a while, some slot clubs were offering a cash rebate of 1% or more of a player’s action. Now it’s more likely to be in the 0.05% to 0.3% range, but some casinos frequently offer double or triple points. There are other types of promotions too varied to go into detail here. The point is that now you must include comps

11/24/2006

Recently, on the vpFREE forum, someone wrote about wanting to follow in a VP hero’s footsteps. He then went on to list the things that made Bob Dancer his VP hero:

– VP strategy “”perfected””
– A million-dollar win
– His books, strategy cards, vp software
– Big gifts/prizes/cars won in casino promotions

But then he posed a question, “”If you see your hero lining up for $50 drawings or eating burgers or hotdogs at the Gold Coast, would you still want to follow your hero’s path?””

This post got me thinking.

Liking those Gold Coast juicy hot dogs on warm buns with all the trimmings – and only 75 cents plus a quarter tip – you don’t have to be hero material to love them. They’re one of our favorite treats – and we sometimes make a special stop there when we have no other “”business”” in the casino. We don’t play there anymore because they took our name off their mailing list – but we haven’t been barred from their hot dog cart!!

What level we play has nothing to do with what we get hungry for. We might stop off at Taco Bell for a Mexican pizza after playing $5 Five Play ($125 a hand) at Caesars. Slot club boothlings and hosts are always trying to force upon us comps for gourmet restaurants. But in spite of comp banks worth thousands of dollars, we usually insist on a buffet or the coffee shop.

$50 drawings? Most high-level players wouldn’t make a special effort for one of these, but they might participate if they were playing in the casino at the time anyway. We don’t make a special effort anymore to use $5-10 BJ coupons, but we’ll stop by any BJ table we pass if I have a coupon for it and there is a seat open, no matter how small the coupon is. For me that is still fun. Brad laughs at me. We’ll lose $3,000 at Ellis Island, but after we finish dinner I get happy winning with the two $5 BJ coupons I cut out of their restaurant placemats.

We do have to think about the use and value of our time when we analyze which promotions and offers to do. However, being a successful VP player has always been a grind-out-the-profit endeavor. Sure, once in awhile you might get real lucky – like Bob Dancer’s one six-month period he wrote about in Million Dollar VP. But most of the time – and I’m sure Dancer would agree – it is a day-by-day grind, always playing in positive situations. It’s a continuous roller coaster ride, spending lots more time in the valleys but keeping the faith that you will reach hilltops every once in a while – and the mountaintops on special but rare occasions.

If I wrote a book, I’d have to give it a much less glamorous sounding title, like Grinding Out A Million Dollars in 25 Years. Oops, I did just write a book on the subject. But I went for short and just called it Frugal Video Poker!