Last week the Global Gaming Expo (G2E) was held in Las Vegas. This is the largest gaming show in the world and every year it is held in the fall somewhere in Las Vegas. Usually it has been held in the Las Vegas Convention Center, but this year it was held at the Sands Expo.
This show is not geared towards players. It is geared so casino decision-makers can see what is being offered. Video poker games are a very small percentage of what is shown at the show. Vendors at the show display slot machines, table games, surveillance equipment, uniforms, consulting firms, signage, carpet samples, personnel searches, chairs, and virtually anything else you’d find in a casino.
But for me, the video poker games are all I look at. I want to see what’s coming down the pike and what it will take to figure out how to play the game. I pretty much ignore the pay tables at the show. They are frequently way looser than what you’ll ever see in a casino, the randomizer is “juiced” so you get more interesting hands more often, and if that’s not enough, if you hit the “service,” button, you’ll get to select whether you want the machine to deal four aces, a straight flush, or a royal flush on the next hand. If you want to experience dozens of dealt royals in a single day, just show up at a gaming show! And nobody makes you sign a bunch of pesky W2Gs.
What I look at is whether the machine is likely to be interesting to play for a lot of hours. One of my major considerations is will a new strategy need to be developed to play the game. I really liked Super Times Pay when it came out because no new strategy was required. But this is not an absolute requirement for me to like a game. I predicted Quick Quads would have more success than it did.
In the past, most of the new games at IGT were labeled Action Gaming. This year they are labeled videopoker.com. It’s the same company. This company designs new games. They’ve had a nice run of games since they introduced Triple Play back in 1997. With the new labeling, it tells players where they can go to practice the new games for free.
Super Shockwave — In the original version of Shockwave, whenever you hit a 4-of-a-kind, if you hit another 4-of-a-kind you received 4000 coins. In this version you get to choose how many games will be needed to hit the second quad. If you want 20 games (the maximum), you will receive 2200 coins if you succeed. If you’re feeling luck and think that five games will be all you need to get another 4-of-a-kind, you’ll receive a bonus of 7800 coins if you succeed. The theoretical returns for each of the “windows of opportunity” are approximately the same, although proper strategy for getting the first quad depends on how actively you will go for the second quad.
Twenty Five Play — If you’re familiar with Ten Play and Fifty Play, you can figure this one out pretty easily.
Deal Draw — This is an updated version of the game Double Pay, where you get paid on the deal and paid on the draw. The main difference is that in this game it’s harder to make a mistake. In Double Pay, sometimes you could forget whether you were in the Deal mode or the Draw mode and accidentally throw away a hand. If you do that now you get a prompt that asks if you really want to do that.
Power Quads — in this game you are playing to hit all 13 natural quads. When you hit all of these, you get a 2,000-coin bonus. You do not need to hit all 13 quads in one session. You log in and save your results per denomination, so that next time you come back the machine knows that you still need to get sevens and tens, for example, to get your bonus for dollars.
Black Jack Bonus Poker — The pay schedule for this game is similar to Double Double Bonus, except the only “kickers” are the jack of spades and the jack of clubs. These kickers pay extra on all quads, but four aces with a black jack give you 4000 coins.
Dice Fever — you bet one extra coin per line and dice you see five dice being rolled and then re-rolled. When you get five matching dice, the score on your video poker game is multiplied. You use regular video poker strategy and the added dice game adds intrigue and variance.
Fast Fours — this is a similar game to Quick Quads, except that you only bet 5 coins instead of 6, aces count 1 or 11 (so AAA56 pays you for four aces), and jacks, queens, and kings are all worth 10 (so JJJ46 pays you for four jacks — but KQQ55 only pays you for two pairs.) Until player software is available, this game, like Quick Quads, has no real chance of becoming wildly popular.
IGT showed other games as well. These were the most interesting ones, in my opinion.
Aruze introduced a new game/box this year, and a test version may be currently found at Green Valley Ranch. I was told that a completely re-designed game is just around the corner so there is no need to describe the current version.
American Gaming Systems previewed a new game called Pay it Again Poker. You bet between one and five EXTRA coins, and whenever you hit a flush or higher, you get a bonus if you hit another one in so many hands. It is possible that you have bonuses for flushes, full houses, and four aces going simultaneously, each of which has an expiring progressive. That is, you might get an extra 800 coins if you hit four aces in the next 22 hands, an extra 122 coins if you hit a full house in the next 17 hands, and another 47 coins if you hit a flush in the next 26 hands. Each hand played decrements each of the counters.
While very interesting, the strategy for this must be very complex. On a hand such as 2♥ 2♣ 4♣ 7♣ K♣, the correct strategy depends on how high the bonuses are and how many hands you have to collect that bonus. If you have bonuses for both quad deuces and flushes, it could get complicated.
When I saw this game, I was touring the show with Frank Kneeland, who many of you know is a video poker progressive specialist. (Actually, Frank found this game and dragged me over to see it.) He was literally salivating at the prospect of this game coming to a casino near him. My reaction was that the game was much too complicated to attract my interest. I suspect we were both correct.