Why I Don’t Play Progressives

A month or so ago on vpFREE a poster asked why I don’t play progressives. I thought about my answer for a while and decided to write about it here.

Before I start, I should say I “usually” don’t play progressives. There have been exceptions, which I’ll mention.

Playing progressives is MUCH more difficult than playing 4,000-coin royals for several reasons. First, the correct plays at 4,000 coins are not the same as they are at 5,000 coins — or 6,000 or higher. Mastering a lot of strategies for a particular game, and learning at exactly which royal level the strategy changes, is very difficult. Since I can find enough 4,000-coin games where I think I have an edge, it’s much easier for me to become competent at these “stationary targets” than it is to have a similar level of competency at a moving target.

Second, you have to FIND the progressives when they are high enough to be profitable. I live in Las Vegas. There are probably more than 1,000 video poker progressives in Clark County. (I don’t know the actual number, but I’m pretty sure it’s at least that high.) It is physically impossible to check every progressive every day. Teams that play these progressives hire one or more scouts to do this. When the scout finds a “play,” or a bank of machines that is getting close, he calls in the “troops”. For a lot of reasons, I do not wish to be part of a video poker team.

Third, when you find a good play, you have to stay there until the royal is hit. It might be 20 minutes. It might be 20 hours. If you’re going to leave before it is hit, you’re giving up a lot of the value associated with finding such a play. It’s one thing to play for many hours when you’re young and have no other responsibilities. But I’m 68 now. Playing for 20 hours straight isn’t something I want to sign up for. And on the rare occasions I have played that much, it took me several days to recover. No thanks.

Plus I now have responsibilities apart from sitting at a machine. I have a radio show; I teach classes; I have writing responsibilities; I’ve agreed to take Bonnie to a certain number of square dancing events each week and sometimes out of town for a weekend. I have talked her into letting me out of an occasional square dancing workshop when I learned about a special play, but I’m not going to skip the radio show or a video poker class to play a progressive. For a video poker team, such outside responsibilities might not be allowed. Which is another reason I’m not on a team. They probably wouldn’t want me!

There are some progressives in Las Vegas that are positive more or less regularly. At the Orleans, for example, there are a couple of banks of Triple Play progressives where the best game is 9/7 Double Bonus. This game returns 99.11%, and the casino offers 7x points periodically (0.70%), so the progressive doesn’t have to be very high to be at least even money. But being slightly positive on a game where you invest $3.75 a hand doesn’t add up to very much. I’m just not interested (although on occasion I’ve played that progressive while killing time waiting for a drawing to begin.)

I don’t play at Sam’s Town anymore, but they had a $5 8/5 Bonus Poker progressive that was their best play for that denomination. Sometimes I played it. “Unfortunately,” I hit too many royals on $2 9/6 Bonus Poker Deluxe machines at the Suncoast a couple of years back and that killed my mailers at Orleans, Gold Coast, and Sam’s Town as well. So I don’t play at those casinos any more. I’m still allowed to play but I don’t get mailers and the extra multipliers that mailer recipients receive that are not available to the rest of us. No thanks.

Back in 2007, I found a $5 NSU machine in Indiana with a one-machine $70,000 progressive on it. The casino had dumped $50,000 worth of accumulated jackpot money onto one machine and I happened to be passing by and spotted it. I sat down and played it. I didn’t know the exact strategy, but on a game worth almost 105% where I could average $20,000 coin-in or so an hour, giving up a few tenths of a percent was of far less concern than was getting the machine back if I left. That was a case where I was willing to play more than 20 hours straight if I had to. I had to grab 6 hours of sleep after only playing 10 hours or so, but I was able to get the machine back and wasn’t willing to relinquish it until it hit. Fortunately it did hit while I was still awake and playing.

Should I find that situation again, I’ll sit down again. But I’m not holding my breath.

It is possible that in two years or so the only positive plays I’ll be able to find will involve progressives. It’s possible that if I didn’t live in Las Vegas and the opportunities were different, I would be more willing to play progressives. Who knows what the future holds? But for now, progressives aren’t my thing.

If I were going to start playing progressives, I’d study Frank Kneeland’s The Secret World of Poker Progressives. It’s the only serious work on the subject I know about, and if that’s going to be my profession, I’ll want to be the best I can.