Category: Video Poker

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Comparing Two “Super” Games

Super Double Bonus (SDB) and Super Aces Bonus (SAB) are both variations of Double Bonus. In “regular” Double Bonus, four aces get paid 160 for 1, four 2s-4s get paid 80 for 1, and four 5s-Ks get paid 50 for one.

Each of the variations we’re looking at today keeps that basic structure for the quads, with one exception each. In SDB, four Js-Ks receive 120 for 1 rather than 50 for 1 (and you receive more for the straight flush as well). In SAB, four aces receive a gigantic 400 for 1. In both games, the amount for the full house and flush is adjusted downward until it gets into the “acceptable” range. This means the pay schedule returns enough to attract the players, but not so much that the casinos are afraid of it. The two pay schedules discussed in this article are the highest allowed for these particular games. In many casinos, you’ll find lower pay schedules than these, but that won’t affect the discussion that follows.

 

9/5 Super 8/5 Super
Double Bonus Aces Bonus
Royal Flush 800 800
Straight Flush 80 60
Four Aces 160 400
Four Js-Ks 120 50
Four 2s-4s 80 80
Four 5s-Ts 50 50
Full House 9 8
Flush 5 5
Straight 4 4
Three of a Kind 3 3
Two Pair 1 1
Jacks or Better 1 1
Return 99.69% 99.94%
Variance 38.0 63.4

 

The strategies for the two games are very similar. This is largely because they receive identical amounts for flushes, straights, and two pair — which are the three pay-schedule categories that matter most when it comes to strategy.

In today’s column, I’m going to present four hands that are played differently in the two games. Your job is to figure out both plays. Even if you have never played either game, you have two important clues to help you out:

  1. The plays are different. This is a HUGE clue.
  2. The plays are different because of the pay schedule.

 

  1. 5♣ 6♣ 7♣ 8♣ 9♥
  2. A♥ Q♠ J♦ 9♣ 3♠
  3. A♠ Q♥ 8♦ 4♣ 3♠
  4. K♥ T♥ 8♦ 7♣ 6♠

 

Where dollar and cent amounts are indicated, it assumes you are playing for dollars, five coins at a time.

 

  1. There are only two reasonable plays here. The “chickens” keep the straight and the “gamblers” go for the straight flush. The different returns for quads has no bearing when you hold at least four cards of different ranks, so the determining factor must be that SDB returns more for the straight flush. In SDB, ‘5678’ is better by $2.87, and in SAB, 56789 is better by $1.39. Obviously neither play is close.
  2. With three unsuited high cards including an ace, the “standard” play in both Jacks or Better and Double Bonus is to discard the ace and hold the other two high cards. That’s the correct play in SDB by 10.6¢. In SAB, the much greater return for four aces means that you go for them more. In SAB, holding the single ace is the better play by 20.6¢.
  3. This is very similar to the last hand. In SDB you hold AQ by 2.6¢. In SAB, you hold the solitary ace by 19.6¢. And the reason, again, for the difference is the large amount you receive for four aces in SAB.
  4. This last hand is intentionally tricky, in that there are more than two choices. Holding ‘KT’ is obvious. Holding the inside straight, T876, is also an eligible choice. It takes some experience to know that inside straights with no high cards are worth considerably less than either single high cards or a single high card with a suited ten. Perhaps the hardest option to see is holding the king by itself. Some players can’t bring themselves to break up royal combinations no matter what the pay schedule. Once you realize that the king by itself is a viable option, then since SDB pays more for four kings, holding the single king in that game is the better play by 2.8¢. In SAB, the “normal” play of ‘KT’ is better by 3.0¢.

 

So how did you do? As a test, this wasn’t too difficult. But as a learning experience, there were some important things to remember. First of all, each game has its own strategy and those of you who use more-or-less the same strategy for most games are taking the worst of it. Second, sometimes the reason for the differences in the strategies is obvious once you closely examine the idiosyncrasies of the pay schedule.

Finally, I want to leave you with a hand that’s played the same in both games, assuming you are playing with the best pay schedule. K♥ K♠ 9♥ 9♦ 3♣. Although many seat-of-the-pants players will just hold the kings, in SAB, holding KK99 is better by 79¢. In SDB it’s a closer play because four kings pay so much, but KK99 is still better in that game by 19¢. If you find yourself playing a version of SDB where the full house pays only 40 or less instead of 45, that’s enough to change the correct play to KK.

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Interesting Promotion at the M

I received a postcard from the M where they are trying to get new players. The promo was:

  1.         I get $100 in free play right away for bringing in a new player,
  2.         The new player also gets $100 in free play — plus a kiosk spin (usually $5 in free play, I think, but it could be more),
  3.         For every point the new player earns in the first day, I get 10x points, up to a total of 50,000 points,
  4.        Good (if you got the postcard and the new player has NEVER had a card at the M) from June 1 to July 31.

The slot club is 0.3% (slightly more, actually, because they give you $3 for $999 coin-in rather than $3 for $1,000 coin-in). 50,000 points is worth $150 of free play — which is way more than the house’s expected win if you’re playing the best machines.

The loosest game is $2 9/6 Jacks or Better. There are two such machines — newly installed — in the high limit room. There is no choice as to the denomination and no telling how long they’ll last. 10x points (which is worth 3%) on top of a video poker game returning 99.54% seemed possibly like a mistake, except that it was limited to $150 max which might be a reasonable cost for a new player.

I don’t actually know if this was a mistake or not. I hooked up with a player friend, “Kevin,” who lives near Aliante — which makes the M geographically undesirable for him. Which is why he didn’t already have a card. I know some non-players for whom I technically could have played the free play, but that’s strongly against the rules there and I’m well known. No thanks. If I had to use a non-player, I would have let them play and talked them through their $105 in free play — which we would probably have played on 25¢ 8/5 Aces Bonus. If they were a non-player, any possible W2G could have been a problem for them.

As it happened, June 1 was a normal free-play pick-up day for me (they have 6 to 7 such days per month). Kevin and I agreed to go in and play the promotion on the first day it was active.

We were certainly not going to ask for clarification as to whether the 10x points included video poker or not. The booth personnel (who are also the cashiers) would likely have said, “I don’t know. Let me make a phone call.” If they did that, it’s possible that signs would have been posted saying “slots only.” If we could arrange it, we didn’t want such signs posted until after we played.

Our deal was, we would play the promotion and also play an additional 850 points which entitled us to a “free” lunch buffet. Other than the amount of my free play, we split everything based on my $850 worth of play and his $5,850. Whether this split was overly generous or not didn’t concern me. Kevin is a friend. And enjoying lunch together was part of the attraction of the “date.”

I often play for a buffet on my free -play pickup days there. There have been incidents where players who only picked up free-play without any additional play were punished for this. As a known professional player, I am hyper-sensitive about creating situations where it would be easy for them to justify restricting me.

The $205 in free play we got between the two of us more than covered the expected loss of playing $5,850 for him and $850 for me. If we got the additional $150, great, but it was still a decent play if we didn’t. (And yes, we could have lost, but the decision beforehand is made based on EV, because you don’t know what your actual result is going to be.)

I had him play $5,850 rather than just $5,000 because the M usually doesn’t allow you to “double dip.” If there’s a gift of the day you can get for 800 points and you also want the free buffet, it takes 1,650 to earn both. We only had one shot at this and if they decided to give us 10x points on only 4,150 points (which would be 5,000-850), that would cost us $28. No thanks.

We didn’t split the $150 on the day we played because I wasn’t certain whether or not we were going to get it. It could be that they “intended” it to say “slots only,” but they didn’t put that in writing. How it would be enforced down the road was an open question.

I hadn’t decided how aggressively to pursue the 10x points if they denied that it applied to video poker. It was “only” $150 (split between two of us) and you need to pick your battles. In a somewhat similar situation at the Silverton I wrote about a few months ago, we were talking about an $8,000 difference between getting the multiple points or not. I’m willing to fight a lot harder for $8,000 than I am for half of $150.

Eight days after we played, I received an email saying that 50,000 points had been placed on my card, so I sent my friend an email saying that I owed him $75 next time we saw each other.

I never had to decide how hard to argue for this. It’s possible that future players will be told “slots only” when they sign up. I don’t know. But this was a case of taking advantage of the situation before they made changes to it. If they keep the promotion “as is,” then whether we did it early or not doesn’t matter. If they restrict it later to slots only, it matters $150 worth. For me it was a no brainer to do it as early as possible.

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You’re Not a Poker Player

In early June, Bonnie and I were at a square dancing workshop and there was this guy, Scott from Alabama, who showed up. He had played a few days before at the Colossus event in the World Series of Poker, did well enough to get his money back plus $500, and was killing time before his flight back home. He had arranged his stay through the last day of the Colossus in case he made it that far. He hadn’t, but that was why he was still in town. Square dancing events are publicized if you know where to look, so he found us and danced. He was very welcome.

The Colossus is a $565 buy-in tournament with starting flights over several days. Re-entries are allowed. He was very proud of the fact that he cashed in his first WSOP event, which gave him the confidence to come back next year. He had to tell me, of course, about the hand he blew out on and that he was ahead until his opponent paired on the river.

I asked him if he had considered re-entering and he said, “No.  If I’m not a good enough player to win on my first try, I’m not going to throw good money after bad.”

I told him that I didn’t know anything about his personal bankroll, but that didn’t make any sense to me. He probably had $500 in expenses to get to and stay in Vegas for five days. That made his first entry cost $1,065. His re-entry would cost “only” $565, or basically half price since he was already in Vegas. If the first one was a good deal for him to enter, re-entry must be a great deal. Why come back next year and pay another $1,065 and not get the same equity right now for only $565?

In any tournament with several thousand entries (there were 18,000+ entries in this year’s Colossus), there is a considerable amount of luck insofar as how long each player lasts. The hand where he blew out (in 400th place or so) could have easily happened much earlier and he would have gotten nothing at all. No less skill on his part. Just the luck of the draw.

You can’t conclude, I argued, that just because you cashed this time that you are a good player or just because you didn’t cash any particular time that you’re a bad player. No player cashes every event. Your record over a whole lot of tournaments says a lot about your skill. Your result in a single tournament says very little.

He asked if I was a poker player. I told him no, that I was a video poker player, but that I’ve been a successful gambler for several decades and believe I have some knowledge and experience about how it all works.

He informed me that since I wasn’t a poker player, I really didn’t know what I was talking about and he didn’t want to discuss it anymore. Okay. A square dancing event is mostly a social activity and if he didn’t want to “talk shop,” that was fine with me. I went over and spoke to someone else. Whether or not I could get him to agree with me was not something I cared about very much. He had never heard of me and self-professed video poker experts are not people he considers worth listening to.

But you, my reader, I do care whether you agree with me or not. I assume you accept that I am generally knowledgeable about these things or you wouldn’t be reading this blog.

This is another case of paying undue attention to short term results. This example looks a bit different in live poker than it does in video poker, but the principle is the same. Perhaps this example is easier to understand than in the ways I have expressed it previously.

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Who Cares?

I was out walking for exercise and my iPhone rang. Had I looked at the caller ID, I would have seen “UNKNOWN,” usually a tip to avoid answering, but I was busy doing nothing at all important so I hit the green button and heard a recorded voice saying, “Now is the time to refinance your home because . . . ” I never found out what the specifics of the offer were. I hung up after nine words.

I find such calls mildly irritating. They take up a few minutes of my day, but to me they’re not a big deal. However, I’ve been around other people who slam down the phone in anger and loudly curse the machine making the call, “Why don’t you take your &%#!@& offer and shove it up your dial tone?” Or something like that. As though the machine making the phone calls cares.

The machine is dialing numbers according to a list, or perhaps according to a formula. When the last person hangs up, for whatever reason and with whatever emotion, the next one is called. Whether the current person places an order or not, the next call will be made as soon as the current one hangs up or perhaps is transferred to a real person. The machine will keep on calling as long as it has numbers to call and it’s within the hours prescribed for it, which might be something like 10 a.m. through 8 p.m.

A video poker machine is like that. When a new hand is triggered (which might be by hitting the deal button), the machine looks at its internal clock (in nanoseconds), checks one other “seed” (which is required for a random number generator to work, varies by manufacturer, and isn’t important to this discussion), and deals the cards. Sometimes people will say, “The machine is in a cold streak.” Nonsense. The machine is just dealing cards. The fact that you haven’t won in a half hour is totally irrelevant to it. One lady I knew said things like, “Sixes are running today,” and usually when she played accordingly, it didn’t help.

Others will say, “I hit two royal flushes yesterday so it’s making up for it now.” Nonsense. The machine is just dealing cards. Or, “Because I’m (pick one or two: on a winning streak, on a losing streak, fat, Armenian, over-drawn at the bank, using a slot club card, divorced, voted for Trump), the machine is . . . ” Nonsense. The machine is just dealing cards.

I think that people ascribe human emotion or motives to video poker machines because these people are trying to understand their results. They lost today and they won yesterday so it must be because . . .   They’ve lost six times straight, so the reason must be because . . .  Or perhaps they use the machine’s “behavior” as a good reason to change machines, or denomination, or change games within a machine. Or instead of trying to understand their results, perhaps these people are attempting to assign blame. Such as, “It was not really my fault. The machine was colder than a witch’s elbow. Nothing I could do about it.”

Perhaps surprisingly, the last explanation above is one that I might use. AFTER a session is over, it is possible to assign descriptive terms to that particular session. You can say it was “hot” (meaning that you won), “cold” (meaning that you didn’t), “so so” (meaning it was so so), or whatever. MIDWAY though a session, you can describe what the session has been so far, but there’s no way in the world to predict how the rest of the session is going to go. The “best guess” of what the future will bring is the average of what this type of machine under these particular conditions (i.e., dollars, NSU Deuces Wild, at a casino that pays .25% cash back, on a day when double points are being offered, during a month when you get a jacket if you hit a royal flush) typically offers over a million hours of play, given your particular skill level. You ARE PRETTY SURE the “best guess” will be high or low this time. You just don’t know which (i.e., Will it be higher or lower than normal this time?), and by how much, until after you are finished.

To make your next year of play better than your last year of play, you can choose better games (e.g., if one returns 98.9% on average and another returns 99.6% on average, the second is “better” than the first), stick to the good game once you’ve identified which one is best, practice that game on a computer or by studying a Winner’s Guide for the game, play at casinos with good slot clubs, and do most of your play only during good promotions. Doing these things will help you. Believing in such things as “The reason this machine started to pay off is because it was on a dry spell and the dam finally broke,” won’t.

 

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A Look at a Wheel Spin

Today’s column isn’t specifically about video poker, but it concerns a gambling situation that video poker players encounter in a casino. And most video poker players don’t care whether a $1,000 prize comes from a jackpot, a casino drawing, or a tournament.

Assume a casino is giving away money. If your name is called, you get to spin a fair wheel, where the possible prizes range between $5 and $1,000 in the following ratios:

 

Number of Prize
Occurrences Amount
1 $1,000
1 $500
4 $250
4 $100
5 $50
10 $20
15 $10
20 $5

 

If you add this all up, you’ll see there are 60 slots on the wheel, and the sum of the prizes adds up to $3,600. This makes the spin worth $60 on average ($3.600 / 60 slots = $60 / slot).  A few of the prizes are quite a bit larger than the average, and three-fourths of the prizes are $5, $10, or $20. To make the problem more interesting, assume the casino offers a $50 buyout. This is less than the $60 average, of course, but it’s a lot better than 45 out of the 60 prize and equal to another five out of the 60 prizes.

If somehow you were in the enviable position of being allowed to spin the wheel 400 times, you’d be a fool to take the buyout of $20,000 (400 * $50 = $20,000) rather than the average of $24,000 ($400 * $60 = $24,000) that would come if you spun the wheel every time. Spinning 400 times is close enough to the “long run” that you figure to hit the $1,000 and $500 enough times to make spinning pay off more than the buyout. It doesn’t HAVE to work out this way, of course, but the odds are in your favor.

The more interesting case is if the spin is “maximum once per person.” Now if we choose to spin and end up with a lousy $5, we have forever lost the $45 we could have gotten from the guaranteed $50. We will never get it back from this promotion simply because we wouldn’t be allowed to spin again, so the results could never average out. In this case, is it better to take the guaranteed $50 or spin for the prize with a bigger average (but a significant probability for a smaller result)?

To my way of thinking, whether we get the opportunity once or 400 times is not an important distinction.  I believe spinning is correct in either case. All of us have MANY gambles, and we are NEVER in balance in all of them. To the smart gambler, we take the advantage every time we can and trust/hope that it all balances out in the end.

If the numbers were “large” (which is personally defined), then it can certainly make sense to take the “bird in the hand”. For example, if we were guaranteed $5 million or could spin the wheel and get an average of $6 million, I would take the $5 million in a heartbeat.

Even though the math is the same, $5 million is such a potentially life-changing amount that there is no way I can feel comfortable gambling with it. But $50? For me that’s pocket change and I’m going with the math.

It’s possible that $50 is not ‘pocket change’ to someone in this position. If that’s a large amount to you, by all means take the sure thing if that will make you feel better.

Also, please note that I’m stipulating that the wheel is fair — meaning each of the 60 positions are equally likely to come up. In the real world, that’s assuming away part of the problem. You have to use your judgment here. In Nevada casinos, I’m going to assume the wheel is fair. I’m not sure I’m going to make the same assumption everywhere.

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Learning from Munchkin

My co-host on the Gambling With An Edge podcast is Richard Munchkin, a table games player who’s been successful at gambling for several decades.

We often answer listener questions on the show and if anyone asks about a table game, Richard is the go-to guy. Sometimes I’ll have a bit to add, but mostly what Richard says covers the subject very well.

He has used one particular phrase in his answers over and over again. The questions vary, but part of the answer stays the same.

For example, some blackjack player is using one particular count and is considering learning another count because it’s more powerful. Richard will discuss the features of each count, but say, “You’re stepping over dollars to pick up pennies. A slightly better count is NOT where the money is in blackjack. There are far more important things to spend your time learning.”

I’ve heard him say variations on this numerous times and I started to wonder if the way I tackle video poker makes me guilty of stepping over dollars to pick up pennies?

As many of my readers know, I try to learn most video poker games at the 100% level. In NSU Deuces Wild, for example, letting a W stand for a deuce, I play W 4♠ 5♠ 3♥ J♥ differently than I do W 4♠ 5♠ 3♥ J♦.

For the five-coin dollar player, if he holds W 4♠ 5♠ both times he is making a quarter of a penny error half the time. If he holds just the W both times he is also making a quarter of a penny error half the time.

I avoid this small error. I learned the game this well when I was playing $25 games so the error every other time is 6¢ rather than a quarter cent. I still have that play memorized even though the larger games aren’t available, insofar as I know.

Although this particular distinction is one of many many I have memorized, it is safe to say I’ve spent dozens of hours, probably more, learning these exceptions in the first place and reviewing them often enough to keep them memorized.

Have I gained enough to make the difference between learning these things worth more than even an additional $2 per hour over all the hours I’ve spent studying? Probably not.

Without spending this time learning these exceptions, could I have played games worth substantially more than $2 per hour and been better off financially? Definitely yes, insofar as finding games worth more than that.

So, is this a case of stepping over dollars to pick up pennies? Have I been violating Munchkin’s advice (never mind that I spent most of those dozens of hours studying that game before I ever heard Richard give that advice)? Maybe, but if so, as
they say in Traffic Court, I plead guilty with an explanation.

Although in the Dancer/Daily Winner’s Guides for both NSU Deuces Wild and Full Pay Deuces Wild, we distinguish between penalty cards and “power of the pack” considerations, for the sake of simplicity today I’m going to include both of these into the term “penalty cards.”

The underlying assumption behind the question “Is learning penalty cards worth it?” is that without studying the penalty cards you can play the penalty-free strategy perfectly. For me, at least, that assumption wouldn’t track with reality.

Just the study and practice I undergo to learn the penalty cards causes me to be practicing the basic strategy simultaneously. For example, the difference between W J♦ 9♦ 5♣ 6♣ and W J♦ 9♦ 5♣ 7♣, which is a basic strategy play, is probably ignored by all players who have not also made a serious attempt at learning all the exceptions. Even though this play is clearly shown on the Dancer/Daily Strategy Card and Winner’s Guide for this game, I suspect most players simply ignore it or don’t understand why the two hands are played differently.

So, while learning the penalty cards might only return $2 an hour on my study time, I also gain considerably more than that because I learn the basic strategy better during the process.

For me personally, since I’ve chosen a teaching career and a how-to writing career, there are additional income streams available to me for learning this stuff that wouldn’t be available to most others.

Plus, I like being a student. I was good at school and continue to try and learn new things. So even if learning penalty cards doesn’t make great financial sense, it brings me pleasure. Can you really put a price on that?

I’m going to conclude that Richard’s “stepping over dollars to pick up pennies” warning doesn’t apply to me in this particular case. And I make this conclusion knowing full well that others may disagree with my conclusion. That’s okay. I’ve made my own bed here and I’m perfectly happy sleeping in it.

Yes, I know I mentioned that certain hands were played differently than others, but I didn’t explain what the differences were. If you want to know, you’re going to have to look up the information for yourself. If that annoys you, so be it, but the learning process isn’t easy and you need to go through it to become a strong player.

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When 9/5 Was Better than 9/6

One of the very first lessons taught by virtually all video poker teachers, including me, involves the game Jacks or Better. We explain how the game pays 25-for-1 for all 4-of-a-kinds, 2-for-1 for two pair, and the difference between the good version and the bad version depends on how much you get for a full house and a flush.

The best reasonably common version is 9/6, returning 99.54%. The game in second place is 9-5, 98.45% requiring a similar but not identical strategy.

If you don’t know what I mean by 9/6 and 9/5, compare the two pictures at the bottom of this page. The one on the top is 9/6 and the one on the bottom is 9/5. The key numbers used in naming the games are shown in red.

Under normal circumstances, because of the approximately 1.1% difference in the returns, any player who played 9/5 when 9/6 was available is a player without a clue as to the winning process.

And, yet, for a couple of years ending a few years ago, I personally played millions of dollars of coin-in on a 9/5 game when 9/6 was available. As did many other knowledgeable players. What gives?

It had to do with “theoretical.”

Theoretical is the hold the casino expects to make from players as a whole. If a game is rated with a theoretical of 2%, it means that for every $100,000 coin-in the machine gets, on average the casino expects to hold $2,000.

The 9/6 JoB had a theoretical in this casino of approximately a half percent. For that same $100,000 coin-in, the casino expects to make $500. The “perfect” 9/6 JoB player only loses $460 for that play.

This casino had a policy that if you agreed to earn $5,000 in theoretical, they would give you $3,500 in free play as front money. If they figured the theoretical correctly, this would give them an expected profit of $1,500 on this much play to cover their expenses and profit margin. On the 9/6 JoB, this was no bargain for the player. Your expected loss was $4,460, even if you played perfectly, so while getting $3,500 back was certainly better than nothing, you were still in the hole.

For whatever reason, the 9/5 JoB game was assigned a theoretical of 4%. This meant that it took $125,000 coin-in to generate the $5,000 in theoretical. And playing that much on a 98.45% game meant that you expected to lose a little less than $2,000 on average if you played perfectly.

Losing $2,000 is no fun, of course, but the casino was giving $3,500 to ease your pain. That meant that you had a net expected profit of a little more than $1,500 each time you did it, plus your points were worth something, and there were significant other goodies as well, including a couple of free room nights. We could do this at least once a month, and sometimes twice a month. This was an inadvertent mistake by the casino. We hoped it would be several years before the casino fixed it.

Sometimes I’d lose $8,000 or so “earning” this EV, but other months I would win. Looking at individual months, you could sometimes question whether this was a good deal or not, but over time, it became clear that this was a moneymaker for the players who knew about it and exploited it.

I learned about it from someone who swore me to secrecy. I had to promise not to write about it. I honored that while that situation was still in effect. Now that it’s been over for more than a year, I believe it’s okay to shine a little light on it.

Eventually, the casino figured out that a 4% theoretical for this game was inappropriate and changed it to about 1.6%. Now it costs you almost $5,000 to earn $5,000 in theoretical, and if you get “only” $3,500 back, it’s no bargain. So, knowledgeable players don’t play that game anymore.

I used a 4% figure. Actually, it was slightly different than that and it varied slightly from machine to machine. And it could be “fixed” by the casino at any time. So after we played, we went to talk to a host and asked what our theoretical was. If it was under $5,000 we played some more. We wanted to get the theoretical high enough so that we’d keep getting the offers.

The time it came back as a theoretical of $2,000 for the normal amount of play, players knew that this particular party was over. Disappointing, but all good things end eventually. Calls went all over the player grapevine, and within a few days most of the players who played this promotion were notified.

I’m not mentioning the name of the casino where this took place. There will be many readers of this blog who know whereof I speak. Should any of them choose to comment on this article, please leave the casino name unspoken.

 

 

Royal Flush 250 500 750 1000 4000
Straight Flush 50 100 150 200 250
4-of-a-Kind 25 50 75 100 125
Full House 9 18 27 36 45
Flush 6 12 18 24 30
Straight 4 8 12 16 20
3-of-a-Kind 3 6 9 12 15
Two Pair 2 4 6 8 10
Jacks or Better 1 2 3 4 5
Royal Flush 250 500 750 1000 4000
Straight Flush 50 100 150 200 250
4-of-a-Kind 25 50 75 100 125
Full House 9 18 27 36 45
Flush 5 10 15 20 25
Straight 4 8 12 16 20
3-of-a-Kind 3 6 9 12 15
Two Pair 2 4 6 8 10
Jacks or Better 1 2 3 4 5

 

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Paying to Avoid Royal Flushes

Assume you are a 5-coin dollar player playing 9/6 Jacks or Better and are dealt 3♠ A♥ K♥ T♥ 5♥.  The only two plays to consider are holding three hearts to the royal flush and holding all four hearts.

If we check out EV, we find holding three hearts is worth $6.43 and holding four is worth $6.38. That nickel’s worth of EV has always been too much for me to ignore and I go for the royal every time.

BUT, I file as a professional player and get lots of W-2Gs. Let’s say you don’t get a lot of W-2Gs. In that case, each one that you do get has some serious tax consequences. What if you held the four hearts in order to prevent the W-2G?

Once every 1,081 times on average, AKT turns into a royal flush. If you gave up a nickel each of those 1,081 times and ended up getting one fewer royal flush, it would cost you $55 (rounding slightly).

This is probably not too high a price to pay because a $4,000 royal has far more than $55 worth of tax consequences.

AKT (and AQT and AJT) are the weakest 3-card royal flush draws for two separate reasons. First, the presence of the ace eliminates all straight flush possibilities and reduces straight possibilities. Second, the presence of a ten reduces the chances for a high pair.

If we compared the preceding hand to 3♦ A♣ K♣ J♣ 5♣, holding this 3-card royal flush is better than the 4-card flush by a little more than 17¢ and avoiding the $4,000 royal flush over 1,081 opportunities will cost you $185. That’s quite a bit more than the $55 we were talking about earlier.

Going for the flush from 3♥ K♠ Q♠ T♠ 5♠ costs us $683 over the 1,081 draws, and from 3♣ K♦ Q♦ J♦ 5♦, it sets you back $770. Finally, from 3♠ Q♥ J♥ T♥ 5♥ you’ll lose a whopping $1,095 over the 1,081 hands by going for the flush every time.

So where do you draw the line? I’m not sure. I go for the 3-card royal on all of these hands. You’re going to have to decide for yourself what avoiding a W-2G is worth.

Other factors: If it were a multiple point day and/or there was another juicy promotion which gave me a considerable advantage playing this game, I would be more inclined to go for the flush. After all, time is money and it could easily take 5-20 minutes to be paid.

If I were playing in a state where royals were penalized (say Mississippi which has a 3% non-refundable tax on W-2Gs), that would make going for the flush mandatory in our first example and a closer play in the others.

If I were playing near the limit of my bankroll — either actual or psychological — I would tend to go for the flush, which is a play with a much lower variance.

On the first hand, you get skunked about 70% of the time going for the royal and “only” 68% of the time going for the flush.  If I were someone for whom today’s score mattered, I might go for the flush.   I certainly don’t recommend that you worry about today’s score, but some players just can’t help themselves.

This wouldn’t happen to me because I don’t do this, but if you were picking up someone else’s free-play and a royal flush would be awkward and you insisted on playing dollars anyway because you were in a hurry, I would go for the flush every time on these hands.

There are other hands in this game and every other game where it could make sense to avoid the possibility of a royal flush if it could be done at a low cost. But you should look at them one-at-a-time BEFORE YOU PLAY so you know which “inferior” plays are cost-effective. Trying to figure it out at the machine is very difficult. It’s easy to over-compensate when you’re doing this without study beforehand.

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A Good Game Gone for About Five Years

Someone posted a picture of a $50,000 royal flush on wizardofvegas.com and that brought back memories. Although this particular jackpot was hit by someone else, I’ve had more than my share.

The game was called “Deuces Plus” and was a 10/4/4 version of Deuces Bonus with a 1000-for-1 royal flush. They were available at fewer than ten 15-machine bars in the Gambler’s Bonus system on the east side of the Las Vegas valley. Village Pub (more than one store), Rae’s, Doc Holliday’s, Franklin’s (which changed names several times), and maybe a few others. Not only was the game 100.35% by itself, these places had 0.10% or 0.20% slot clubs and pretty juicy bonuses. The bonuses were cash (up to $500 for hitting a royal flush on graveyard at one place), “points” (you’d get 20-coin to 50-coin bonuses for various things like four 3s, or maybe a full house including all royal cards, or whatever), and sometimes other things (like “squares” in an upcoming Monday Night Football game where winners got $100 or $500).

Plus, big players always were eligible to get two meals to go. These were 10-coin machines, up to $5, so a $50 bet could turn into $50,000. I hit more than 20 of these jackpots before eventually being 86’d from everywhere they were dealt. Some months later, the pay schedules were no longer offered anywhere.

One of the irritating things about the system back then was that you could download only $100 worth of points (i.e., accumulated free-play) per midnight-to-midnight 24-hour period. Even showing up at 11:45 p.m. and then downloading for “today” and then a few minutes later for “tomorrow” didn’t solve the problem because you easily could re-generate more than you downloaded if you played for several hours and/or hit some of the bonuses. I played on both my card and my wife’s card so I could get $200 before and $200 after midnight, but still I had several thousands of dollars of free play to download when I finally had no good-game places to play.

I ended up playing off $400 per trip at Gambler’s Bonus locations without the good games. It took a while, but downloading $400 “free money” per trip (even played on 98% games) made it worthwhile. Leaving the house at 11:30 p.m. wasn’t the most convenient, but you do what you have to do. Being “irritated” doesn’t sound like the right word to outsiders because, after all, it was a very juicy game and we were making bunches of money, but it certainly wasn’t as player-friendly as we would have liked.

This was before I had an iPhone, consequently I don’t have any pictures — so I “borrowed” the pictures shown below. Four deuces with an ace ($20,000), which occurred slightly more often than a royal, would have been worth a picture too. Maybe even the $10,000 “regular” four deuces shown below — again hit by somebody else — but I easily had more than 50 of them.

In one case I was dealt a royal flush — and had to hold the buttons because the (then) 30-year-old technology on the machines didn’t have auto-hold on royals. It took 20 or so minutes to be paid as the bars didn’t have that much cash on hand and drivers would come out and deliver the money. I know they paid you for $4,000 “five aces” jackpots from an on-property cash dispenser and had to call out for $10,000 “four deuces” jackpots. Whether the actual cutoff was at $5,000 or $10,000 I don’t know because the game I played never hit in that range.

When they had to bring in money from the outside, they paid you in $5,000 “straps.” One bartender liked to put the money into food take-out boxes as a form of disguise. One night I came home at about 4 a.m. and left the box containing $50,000 in the bathroom sink at home when I went to bed. My wife initially cursed me for leaving food un-refrigerated but screamed in delight when she finally opened the box to see what food I had brought home.

During one 18-month period, I probably was playing 20-30 hours a week on this game, mostly after midnight, spread out over as many locations as I was welcome — averaging about $250/hour profit throughout that period. Although the machines were old, I ran well for the entire time and did better than expectations said I should.

I generally do not tip very well on jackpots. At these places it was different. An 8-hour “shift” would give me an EV of about $2,000 every night — in front of the same bartenders over and over again. Tips in the range of $50 per night if I lost, or $100 if I won, and more than that if I hit for $20,000 or more, felt about right to me. I wanted the bartenders on my side as much as possible when the discussions came as to who should be kicked out.

Another idiosyncrasy of these machines was that if you hit a hand-pay, any points you had accumulated since the last time you pulled your card disappeared. Since this included wild royals ($1,250) and higher, you’d hit one of these taxables every 375 hands on average. The cards were “virtual” — meaning you had to enter your 6-10 digit account number and password on a keypad to go through the log-in process, unless you mis-keyed and then it would take maybe another 30 seconds to log off and log back on again. I used the rule of thumb that if I had earned $20 worth of points since the last time I logged out, it was time to do it again. That way I never lost too much due to this idiosyncrasy nor did I waste too much time logging off and on. It was a “compromise.” These points were valuable, but the rest of the play was more valuable.

If you want to criticize/condemn me for helping to burn out the game — knock yourself out. I plead guilty. I certainly was one of the people who did this. If I found this opportunity again, I very likely would play it the same way.  (And many would criticize/condemn me again.) You only get so many chances at such an opportunity. You know it’s going to end eventually. You know others are out there doing the same thing. You simply have to get while the getting is good.

A year or so after the play ended, I was in one of these places playing another promotion that was pretty good. Not $250/hour good, but pretty good. The manager (who knew exactly who I was) told me someone was talking about bringing back the old Deuces Plus game for high stakes somewhere and wanted a lot of action. Was I interested and could I help spread the word among other big players?

Yes and yes.

Then I thought some more about it. I speculated that this was going to be some kind of money laundering deal for whoever the owner would be. Even giving up 1.5% or so to the players (it would be less than that as there would be a lot of “normal” players as well who lost — but probably 75% of the coin-in on the $50-per-hand games was from knowledgeable players), he could still launder his money fairly cheaply. Assuming people who needed to launder money could very well be related to the mafia or maybe a drug cartel, I wondered if doing too well could be dangerous to my life expectancy. I was second-guessing my “yes and yes.” Well, it never happened so it’s all speculation on my part. It’s possible there was nothing shady about it at all — but in that case I couldn’t figure out how the owner could possibly be making money with this business plan.

I currently don’t have any plays this lucrative on an ongoing basis — although three times in the past two years I found such a game on a short-term basis. Players regularly complain that the games aren’t as good as they used to be. That is true, but this particular game lasted two years or so and ended only about five years ago, not 15 or 20. While some players knew about it, there were a lot of pros in Las Vegas who didn’t. (Even out-of-towners could have played while they were here. A $250 per hour play was likely more lucrative than their other options here. But for whatever reason, the play was kept reasonably quiet.)

It is not unreasonable to expect plays this juicy in the future. You just have to search for them, recognize them for what they are when you find them, learn the requisite strategy, and then play them for as much as you can afford for as long as they last. If “normal” video poker software won’t tell you how to play the game, you need to do your own programming or have a good programmer on call or on retainer.

Preserving your bankroll for special opportunities like this, which you may or may not find during your gambling career, is a form of “keeping your powder dry” for when you need it. Playing less than 100% games just because you can’t find anything better at the moment is the opposite of keeping your powder dry.

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When the Rules are Not the Rules

The M Casino Resort is located along I-15 at the southern edge of the Las Vegas valley. The location was picked expecting the Southern Highlands development to explode, but that didn’t happen. The 2007 housing bubble hurt that development big time — and this casino as well.

I live about 8-10 miles from the casino, depending on whether I take the freeway or not. I know having a casino this close would be a luxury for many of my readers, but it’s actually too far away for me. Although I do drive and will drive, I do not particularly enjoy “spinning my wheels.” I much prefer playing at closer casinos if I can find suitable ones.

To make matters worse, it’s the kind of casino where you must come in and pick up your free play multiple times over the month. Sometimes up to 10 times.

For the past seven years or so, up until the end of 2016, I had a “special deal” at that casino. This consisted of me coming in once a month and doing all my play at one time. Usually the figure was $200,000 of coin-in played on a $10 single line 8/5 Bonus Poker machine.

In exchange for this, I received all my free play for the month in one lump sum and was guaranteed to receive 2x points (worth a total of 0.60%) each time I came in. If you included the free play and the benefits of being an ICON member (their highest tier), including a certain amount of food each month, this was sufficient to entice me to play there.

Although the arrangement evolved over time, for the last few years I was unwelcome at most drawings and invitational tournaments. The reason for this was that most tournaments included “second chance drawings” where players would play during the weekend event and, based on $5,000 coin-in for one drawing ticket, tickets would be drawn to give away money. The reason for the second chance drawing was to induce extra play out of the players. I was excluded from these drawings because the $200,000 I would play wouldn’t be extra play — it would just be normal monthly play. This would give me an unfair advantage, or so the managers believed.

In late 2010, the M was sold to Penn National Gaming, effective sometime in 2011, but the former owner, Anthony Marnell III, still had a management role. So, most of the special deals that were allowed when Marnell owned the place were still in effect. Eventually Marnell moved on to other opportunities and the new General Manager was a PNG employee with no ties at all to the way the casino was run in the past.

I was informed in November 2016 that my deal was going to end on December 31. I was still welcome to play but I would receive the normal mail for an ICON player — based on how much I continued to play. I would need to pick up my free play in whatever increments the other players got their free play and would be eligible to participate in tournaments and drawings should my play warrant it. If this wasn’t acceptable, I didn’t have to play there at all.

I appealed this decision to the GM, but to no avail. It took until about the end of January to get me back on all mailing lists. I had been manually excluded by the former Vice President of Marketing (because of my special deal), and each of those manual over-rides had to be found and removed.

For March, I decided to play on Thursday, March 2, primarily because there was a drawing on Friday, March 3. I figured my equity in the drawing would help make up for the inconvenience of having to travel to the casino so many times. According to an over-sized postcard I received in the mail, so long as my tickets to the drawing were activated prior to 7 p.m., I was in the drawing. So, I played more than $200,000, at a bigger-than-average loss, and activated my entries at 6:45 p.m.  Unfortunately, I was totally skunked in the drawing.

Since there were 75 names drawn and I probably had more tickets in the drum than anyone else, it was highly improbable that I didn’t get picked anywhere. A “top 10” finish was likely, I believed, with a decent shot at winning the $4,000 first prize. I didn’t think I was intentionally excluded from the drawing (although with the manual overrides the former VP of Marketing had instituted, it was possible that one forbidding me from participating in drawings was still inadvertently in effect). I thought the most likely explanation for me not being called was that they pulled the 75 names before my tickets were in the drum.

The following Tuesday I spoke to the man who was responsible for pulling the tickets the previous Friday evening. He told me he pulled them at 6:30 p.m., as he had been instructed to do. I asked him who told him to pull at 6:30 p.m., because that would be the first person I called — if I decided to follow up on this.

It was not clear that following up on this would yield good results. Using aphorisms, we can say the squeaky wheel gets the grease (which means I should definitely follow up on this), but we can also say the nail that sticks up is often hammered down (which means I should just let it go). Playing “aphorism roulette,” I decided to pursue this.

I left voicemail messages explaining what I wanted to talk about to two different Marketing Supervisors. Whether they were in town and received the messages or not, I don’t know, but they didn’t return my calls. So, I next directed a written email to Patrick Durkin, the Vice President of Marketing. I told him I didn’t want to go to the Gaming Control Board if I could avoid it, but I strongly felt I was short-changed.

He sent me a return email saying he would research the matter and get back to me by the end of the day. He did, although he said he preferred to talk face to face. We set up a meeting for the following week, but he also told me the written rules and the postcard sent in the mail had different information on it.

This was an unusual twist. The rules said to swipe before 6:30 p.m. and I didn’t read those rules until afterwards. The mailer — which included a LOT of detail including small print disclaimers — seemed to cover everything and contained what were certainly at least “pseudo rules.”

I hoped the casino wouldn’t argue that the written rules were the only relevant ones and the mailer wasn’t official. I’ve heard LOTS of strange arguments from casino employees through the years. I would just have to wait until the meeting.

I certainly didn’t know how the meeting would go. They could give me some free play. They could say “sorry Charlie.” Or they could restrict me in some minor or major way. I’ve seen variations of all of those. But I wasn’t going to get anything if I didn’t go to the meeting, so I went.

Insofar as the mailer went, I didn’t take it with me. I did, however, take an iPhone photo of both front and back and had that with me. (Years ago, some employees at the Suncoast, after it was purchased by Boyd, disputed that I had received a postcard invitation and asked to see it. I gave it to them and they took it into the back room. I never saw the postcard or them again. Since I couldn’t prove I received the postcard, the Suncoast’s official position was that I hadn’t received one. Although I didn’t think the M would operate in such a rinky dink fashion as the Suncoast, I wasn’t taking any chances.)

At the meeting with Mr. Durkin, he couldn’t have been more gracious. We chatted for 10 minutes or so — one professional to another. He had worked at several casinos over the years and I had played at many of them. We knew many of the same people. I am somewhat of a “special case” in the player community and he wanted to get to know me. He had only worked at the property for a few months and, although we had exchanged some emails and phone calls, we hadn’t met each other prior to our meeting.

When it came time to discuss whether I was going to receive any compensation for trusting the mailer, he told me the promotion had been designed by his predecessor, who now worked elsewhere. Although he and his staff checked the rules and the mailers, they missed the “6:30 vs 7:00” difference. Without admitting any error, he asked what would satisfy me. I, of course, would have preferred that he come up with a proposed amount of free play first. But at least we were finally talking turkey.

I won’t go into exactly how the negotiation to find the “right” number took place, but we came up with an amount of free play that both of us could live with. Maybe a better negotiator would have gotten more. Maybe some players would have gotten less. Being able to negotiate effectively when you have to is a player skill that is underrated.

I came away impressed with how Mr. Durkin handled this. He understood that his company had made a mistake and my grievance was legitimate — and he treated it as such. None of us can guarantee we will never make a mistake, but we can try and clean it up afterwards when we fall short. And that’s what Mr. Durkin did without giving away the store.

To my mind, the fact that I had lost a bit more than usual this time made it easier for him to award me free play. Had I hit a $40,000 royal flush and ended up considerably ahead on the play, it would have been more difficult for him to justify the additional payment to his bosses. So, you can be sure I mentioned my loss in the negotiation. Had I won during the play, he probably would have mentioned that.

While idealists can make a pretty good case that my results shouldn’t have mattered in this case, these things do matter. Thinking they don’t would be naïve.