There are hundreds of video poker progressives in greater Las Vegas. As a general rule, I avoid these games. Progressives are not my bread and butter. Still, I occasionally do sit down at a progressive that catches my eye, and recently there was such a case.
A $2 9/5 DDB progressive at the South Point was at more than $16,000 for the royal, with additional progressives for aces with a kicker and 2s, 3s, and 4s with a kicker. Putting all the numbers into computer software showed the game was currently worth about 100.80%, plus a 0.30% slot club. Additionally, in general the more coin-in you have, the better your mailers are. So, I sat down.
I had enough cash on hand, I thought, including the availability of markers. I was used to DDB itself, which has a variance of a bit more than 40. Doubling the royal jacks up the variance to around 100. Although I have the tools to figure out bankroll for this, I wasn’t near my computer and I had to wing it. I figured I was up to playing for four or five hours. If the royal hadn’t been hit by then, I’d reevaluate whether or not I wanted to continue.
There are 20 machines connected to this progressive and perhaps a third of the seats were taken when I got there at 10 p.m. on a Saturday evening. At midnight, half of the machines were taken, and the progressive was more than $18,000. The 2s, 3s, and 4s, with a kicker progressive had been hit a few times. It started out at $1,600 and was usually hit by $1,700. The difference between this jackpot at $1,600 and the same jackpot at $1,700 is 0.14%. Not chopped liver, but it’s not the primary prize.
Aces with a kicker were worth more than $5,000. That added more than 0.6%, but even without that, the royal progressive was high enough that the game was worth playing. When the aces were knocked off, the royal progressive was more than $19,000, which is worth about 101% even without the lesser jackpots.
At about 2 a.m., the royal reached $20,000. About 2/3 of the seats were full and at that point, somebody hit the royal. Time to go home.
I had run $40,000 coin-in through the machine. I failed to hit any W2G (regular aces are worth $1,600, in addition to the other jackpots already discussed.) My score was $7,100 in the soup. No fun. But not really a big deal. DDB is a heaven-or-hell game, and special quads and the royals add a lot to the EV. Blanking on those is expensive in the short run.
Generally speaking, when playing a progressive, the person hitting the royal comes out way ahead and the others lose. In this case, the guy who knocked off the aces with a kicker was also probably ahead, but most of the rest of us lost. Such is the nature of playing DDB progressives. Play the game enough and you’ll get your share.
I recognized more than half of the players when the royal was finally hit. Some I hadn’t seen for several years. I assume most of them knew who I was, as I’m well-known in the Las Vegas video poker community, although not in the video poker progressive-playing community. I don’t know this for a fact, but it wouldn’t surprise me if a few phone calls had been made in the nature of, “You better come down here. It is so juicy even Bob Dancer is playing it.”
Am I going to do this again soon? Doubtful. But maybe. It’s a positive play, albeit one with large swings. Between casinos restricting players and the general tightening of machines, it’s hard to find good video poker opportunities in Las Vegas these days. This is one avenue to stay in the game, although it’s not my first choice.
We’ll see.
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I don’t know how you “winged it”, but this is how I would. The average return to player if you don’t get a quad or better is 76%, meaning you lose at a 24% rate on average, at 1000 hands per hour that’s a burn rate of about $2,400/hour. Eventually you should at least get a cheap quad, but that could take 4 hours or so, and only get you $500 for your trouble. You say you lost $7,100 on $40,000 coin in, my guess is you got 5 cheap quads. That would be about the average expectation. Am I close? If you add in the cheap quads, the average return is about 84%, or a 16% burn rate, or -$6,400 on $40,000 coin in.
Probably that’s close. I don’t remember exactly.
That”s probably close. I don’t remember exactly and I don’t have records of how many quads I hit during every play I make
Bob, thanks, I enjoy this kind of story! Two questions: I have seen progressives around 2.5 times starting value, what is the biggest you have seen? Do you know that all the players around you that night were playing the same game?
By law, at least in Nevada, since progressives are generated by player money (that’s how they work, a certain percentage of your bet goes to the progressive jackpot), the casinos can’t just claim them when they shut down a progressive. Instead they have to move the extra money to another progressive, for this reason you will often see a progressive suddenly jump to a really high value, and this is often what is happening. Of course, sometimes casinos just add some extra money to the pot (“pot sweetener”) to entice more action.
I’m not Bob…But I saw (AND COLLECTED!!!) an absolutely massive jackpot when you figure the value compared to the base royal. The game was a 100 penny game with a -3%TDB game that had a 3% RF meter.
With a 1 con bet, the RF resets at $800. This was about a year ago, and sadly the game disappeared, not because it was pulled, but because the casino changed the carpet and broke the meter and was too lazy, cheap or stupid to fix it. I hit it for a bit over $7200. Aside from that, the biggest RF I ever saw, again compared to the base RF was a 9/7/5 prog in KC for about 5200. I did not collect.
Search for “casino refuses to pay million dollar jackpot”.
Biggest one I took down was in excess of $70,000 on a five dollar single line game, Apparently they had another progressive and they had to put it somewhere — and they did.
I was walking though Gary Indiana at the Majestic Star — and there it was!
So, did ya get a free burger with your SEVEN THOUSAND DOLLAR LOSS?
Folks like you who do not understand how the game is played are very tiresome to those who do.
Wow, there are lots of stories of casinos refusing to pay. The most recent is of Veronica Castillo. When she recently won $8.5 million on the slots at Lucky Eagle Casino in Rochester, Washington, the establishment refused to pay her winnings.