Farewell to Dotty’s — Part II of II

In last week’s blog, I discussed the W-2G promotion at Dotty’s and how they have removed the best games for playing that promotion. I suggest you read that blog before you look at today’s, because today I’ll continue the discussion without much review.

Compare this promotion on 9/6 Bonus Poker Deluxe with 9/6 Jacks or Better:

For me, the critical numbers are highlighted in red. JoB returns 0.098% less than BPD, and the W-2G promo is worth 0.130% more on BPD. That’s a 0.228 “shortfall” on a game that already had a “too skinny for comfort” edge. The reason for the greater value of the promo on BPD is that this game returns 80-for-1 for quads while JoB only returns 25-for-1. JoB “makes up” for this by giving more for two pair, but two pair isn’t part of the W-2G promo and quads are.

For other players, the numbers in green might be significant. Because BPD returns 80-for-1 for quads, you could get a $1,200 W-2G by betting $15 per hand. You’d need to give up the 0.006% for straight flushes, but that’s not such a big deal. In JoB, because of the paltry 25-for-1 for quads, you need to bet $48 per hand to get the same $1,200 W-2G. There are players for whom $15 per hand is within their comfort zone and $48 per hand isn’t.

I could, I suppose, undertake a “scorched earth” tactic and play $200 per hand on 40-coin $5 JoB until this game is gone as well. The W-2Gs I’d earn for flushes and full houses would make up for a lot of the missing EV. Still, I’d be getting W-2Gs every 40 or so hands and it takes five minutes to be paid. Each place would run out of $100 bills after a while. I could move on to the next Dotty’s, and the next, and the next. While most Dotty’s have 9/6 JoB, not all of them have it in $5 denominations, which would be required to get up to $200 per hand.

My tactic would last a day or two and then those games would be gone as well. I wouldn’t be getting many hands played because of the lengthy W-2G process and my edge would be very small. Playing with large stakes for only a small edge strikes me as way too much gambling for my taste. I prefer the plays where I grind out the advantage over time.

In addition, this would burn out the 9/6 JoB game while I would only be gaining a small, short-term edge. There will be players who want to play this game in the future whether I think the game is playable or not. If I were gaining a sizeable edge, say $20,000 or more, I wouldn’t care much whether the game remained for others. Since my expected win is significantly less than that, the “saving it for others” consideration rises in my list of priorities.

There was another tactic to play the W-2G promotion, also now obsolete, that some players used. In many Dotty’s, there were machines that would offer the double up option on every win. These players would continue to double up until they either got to $1,200 or lost.

The best stakes to play this for was $75 per hand. Doubling $75 became $150, and then $300, and then $600, and then $1,200. If the game paid you 4-for-1 for a straight, this was $300 which only had to be doubled twice. If you were playing this option, JoB was much superior to BPD because in JoB you ended up with two pair every 7.7 hands which “only” had to be doubled three times to reach $1,200 — which happened 1-in-8 times. Two pair on BPD had to be doubled four times for the same W-2G, which was only successful 1-in-16 tries.

Since the bonus on $1,200 W-2Gs was worth $12, a 1-in-8 shot at this was worth $1.50 and a 1-in-16 shot at this was worth $0.75. That means JoB led to a $0.75 higher bonus every 7.7 hands. This is a significant amount to me. Maybe not so much for others.

If you played the double up game, you basically never got any mailers. That’s the way Dotty’s punished you for playing that way. Still, although it varied depending on the game you played, any game that returned more than 99% was a positive play when you played this way.

Today they still have signs on machines that says the double up option is enabled, but the signs are incorrect. The feature is turned off and the bartenders are not allowed to turn it on.

I enjoyed my run at Dotty’s. But as most successful players know, good things never last indefinitely.