{"id":121107,"date":"2020-07-21T10:09:45","date_gmt":"2020-07-21T17:09:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/gambling-with-an-edge\/?p=121107"},"modified":"2020-07-21T10:09:50","modified_gmt":"2020-07-21T17:09:50","slug":"gamblers-bonus-reminiscences-part-i-of-ii","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/gambling-with-an-edge\/gamblers-bonus-reminiscences-part-i-of-ii\/","title":{"rendered":"Gambler\u2019s Bonus Reminiscences \u2013 Part I of II"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

For a five-year period ending about a decade ago, I played a lot at certain 15-machine pubs in the southeastern section of the Las Vegas valley. Places such as Village Pub, Raye\u2019s, Doc Holliday\u2019s, and Franklin\u2019s. Most of these places have changed owners and names since then. All have removed the game I played.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

My game of choice was a version of Deuces Bonus in the Gambler\u2019s Bonus system called Deuces Plus. Today, the best IGT version of this game pays 45-20-20 for straight flushes, quads, and full houses with a return of 99.45%. The version at the pubs paid 50-20-20 with the royal returning 1,000-for-1 rather than 800-for-1. This made it a 100.35% game. Plus slot club. Plus bonuses. And all these places had the game for ten-coin $5 — meaning $50 hand.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

All Gambler\u2019s Bonus locations participated in a bonus system where every time you hit a natural four of a kind — or a five-of-a-kind with exactly one deuce — your card got marked electronically. If you could get all 13 ranks in few enough hands, you could earn up to $50,000.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

After 10,000 or so hands, the $50,000 would start to decrease, depending on your denomination. It would end up at $39 if enough hands passed before you scored all 13 ranks. Deuces Wild variations aren\u2019t the most efficient games for a natural 4-of-a-kind bonus, so out of the 200 or so times I collected this bonus, perhaps 180 of them were $39. I think I once got a bonus of $500 or so.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But there were also bigger bonuses. Sometimes, for every full house made up of picture cards, you\u2019d receive 20 coins. That was $100 on the game I played. Sometimes every time you got four threes you earned 30 coins. Sometimes every natural straight flush earned you so much. These and many others were all within the Gamblers Bonus \u201ccatalog\u201d and the bar owner selected the ones he wanted to offer that month.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

One place gave you a $500 bonus for every royal flush hit between midnight and 6 a.m. (Guess when I played?)\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

They had a slot club that returned at least 0.1% — and more if you had played enough to belong to one of the higher tiers. The promotions varied and each place was a little different, but overall, I figured I averaged a 0.6% – 0.8% edge on a game where you could play $40,000-per-hour. Plus, they all had kitchens where regular players could eat for free and take stuff home for the wife.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Most of these places let a player hit two or three $50,000 royal flushes before the player was deemed \u201ctoo good\u201d to play there anymore. One place allowed me to hit thirty of these before I was asked to leave.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Those days are long gone. Gamblers Bonus removed this particular game from their menu and their best game today returns less than 99%. They still have bonuses available, but it\u2019s a rare situation where the bonuses make the game playable. It still happens sometimes, so periodically I check in to see what the latest promotion is, but it\u2019s rare.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This was a play that I only wrote about after it was gone simply because one or two extra $50-per-hand full-time players would have killed the golden goose. There were only a few such places and they were all small.\u00a0 Each additional $5,000-a-week drain on the system came that much closer to shutting the places, or me, down.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There are a lot of my readers who lived close enough to play this game when it was alive. Even if they only played the 25 cent or dollar version of the same game, it would have added up.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

With this environment as a background, next week I want to share an unusually profitable situation related to this game.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s possible it was related to organized crime. I truly don\u2019t know.<\/p>\n\"Facebook\"<\/a>\"twitter\"<\/a>\"youtube\"<\/a>\"instagram\"<\/a>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

For a five-year period ending about a decade ago, I played a lot at certain 15-machine pubs in the southeastern section of the Las Vegas valley. Places such as Village Pub, Raye\u2019s, Doc Holliday\u2019s, and Franklin\u2019s. Most of these places have changed owners and names since then. All have removed the game I played.\u00a0 My […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":6498,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"spay_email":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"Gambler\u2019s Bonus Reminiscences \u2013 Part I of II by Bob Dancer","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false},"categories":[29,2],"tags":[428,1543,196],"yoast_head":"\nGambler\u2019s Bonus Reminiscences \u2013 Part I of II - Gambling With An Edge<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/gambling-with-an-edge\/gamblers-bonus-reminiscences-part-i-of-ii\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Gambler\u2019s Bonus Reminiscences \u2013 Part I of II - Gambling With An Edge\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"For a five-year period ending about a decade ago, I played a lot at certain 15-machine pubs in the southeastern section of the Las Vegas valley. 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