Hello, Old Buddy

When the M Resort opened a little over a year ago, it had a video poker game I had never seen before. It was the same as 16/10 "not so ugly" deuces, except that it paid 15 instead of 16 for the five of a kind and 11 instead of 10 for the straight flush. These seemingly small changes bring the game's return with max coins bet and optimal play to 99.96 percent, compared with 99.73 percent for the 16/10 deuces. (The higher payout for the straight flush, which occurs more often, more than offsets the lower payout for the five of a kind.)

This game was available for a while at the M at quarters on triple play machines. That casino also had full pay deuces (100.76 percent payback) at the time, but only in single line quarters, and at one quarter the points awarded for playing most other games. The 15/11 or "almost positive" deuces were wildly popular. Then one day they were gone, to be followed by the M's 16/10 deuces.

Tonight I came across the 15/11 deuces at 50 cents at the Skyline, a small casino on Boulder Highway in Henderson. What's more, it's on a progessive. This game is break-even when the jackpot hits a whopping $2,054, as opposed to the base $2,000 for the 50 cent game.

I expect to be playing this one a lot.

Learning a new video poker game

My wife and I both started gambling more or less seriously as blackjack players, but about four years ago, when we started coming to Las Vegas for vacations, she decided to start playing video poker. As a music teacher, she was going to approach this like learning a new instrument, which meant practicing until she could play well. But first she had to decide which video poker game to learn.

Many experts suggest learning jacks or better first. Full pay or 9/6 jacks is easy to learn. It is widely available in all popular denominations. Most important, it is the basis for many other popular games, including bonus poker, double bonus poker and double double bonus poker. The big drawback of jack is its payback -- 99.54 percent with optimum play.

She became interested in full pay deuces wild, mostly because of its strongly positive payback -- 100.76 percent. Full pay deuces is harder to learn than full pay jacks, but not extremely difficult. It’s also more volatile -- wider swings of wins and losses -- but not dangerously so. The game was available almost exclusively in quarters, but that is what she wanted to play. And it was more widely available then than it is now and the casinos were giving more points and other comps for those playing it.

She decided to learn full-pay deuces, and it served her well. When we moved to Vegas three years ago, I followed in her footsteps. We both later learned other deuces games, including loose deuce deuces wild and “not so ugly” (16/10) deuces, which allowed us to play at the dollar level.

Recently we decided to take another look at 9/6 jacks, mostly because it is now the best game available at some of the casinos we want to play at, including the M Resort. And we have discovered some good full pay jacks progressives.

I have started playing using the simple strategy found on Wizard of Odds Web site (I learned to play the full pay deuces using the Wizard’s simple strategy for that game). This strategy uses words, which I am more comfortable with than the symbols used in the more advanced strategies. There’s a trade-off in payback -- the simple strategy gets you 99.4 percent instead of the game’s full potential, 99.54 percent. But it’s a good stopgap until I can learn the advanced strategy.

As casinos change their video poker inventories and the rewards they offer for playing different games, it is necessary to learn new games to take advantage of new opportunities. Fortunately, learning jacks or better has been -- so far -- a lot easier than I had expected.

The value of free play

Those who have been reading this blog know that serious gamblers in general and video poker players in particular often think in terms of percentages, particular the percentage return of a particular game. What we hope to find are advantage plays -- situations where a game returns more than 100 percent. Although some “full pay” video poker games such as deuces wild, joker poker and double bonus pay back more than 100 percent in the long run with optimal play and max coins bet, advantage plays also can be found in combinations of other games, slot club benefits and promotions.

I’m going to describe two current casino promotions to illustrate how this works. In particular, I’ll explain how to put a percentage value on free play, a benefit commonly offered both as a slot club benefit to a casino’s regular players and as part of many promotions. A few casinos still give “bounce back” cash instead of free play, and the principles for putting a value on it are the same.

In the first promotion, the Eastside Cannery on Saturdays is offering a minimum of $10 in “mystery” free play to anyone who earns 300 points. Players may earn a maximum of two free play awards. Some players are mailed postcards entitling them to one free play award and can earn a second; those who do not get a postcard can get two by earning 600 points.

On video poker, the Eastside Cannery awards one point for every $2 coin in. (As noted in an earlier post, this does not mean $2 deposited in the machine; it means money played through, including the proceeds of winning hands.) So two “mystery” free play awards require running $1,200 through a machine. This gets the player a minimum of $20, or 0.167 percent.

The best video poker game at this casino is 16/10 “not so ugly” deuces wild, which returns about 99.7 percent. Slot club points are worth 0.125 percent. If we add the percentage return of the game and value percentage value of the slot club points (0.167, 99.73 and 0.125), we get just over 100 percent, essentially break-even. However, the play involved in taking advantage of this and other promotions is likely to result in a mailer with additional free play and other benefits, making this clearly, but not spectacularly, an advantage play. (For players who got a postcard and/or more than $20 in mystery free play, the promotion itself is an advantage play.)

One caveat: Playing through more than $1,200 “dilutes” the percentage value of the free play, making the promotion less valuable. A typical quarter player probably needs about an hour and a half to earn 600 points, but a dollar player needs only a quarter of the time. Playing longer may or may not be worth the extra benefits, but there’s no way of knowing until next month’s mailer arrives.

A promotion at the Silverton is more mysterious than the Eastside Cannery’s mystery free play. The Silverton has mailed pull tabs to many of its customers. These little cardboard squares have a tab on the front that must be pulled at the casino, in an employee’s presence, to reveal what the player has won. In addition, all players can earn 1,000, 5,000 or 10,000 points in a day to receive a pull tab. The tabs for the different point totals are kept at the players’ club in separate boxes, and presumably the ones for the higher totals have better prizes.

My spouse and I received pull tabs in the mail even though we have played very little at the Silverton in recent months, since the casino took out what had been its best video poker game, $1 16/10 “not so ugly” deuces. We took our first week’s tabs to casino last Saturday. She won $50 in free play and I won $25. We found a good play on the quarter 1/9/4 “pseudo not so ugly” deuces progressives near the Flare (could they have meant “Flair”?) Bar. With the jackpot at more than $1,500, this game, which has a base return of just under 99 percent, was nearly positive. We decided to go for the 1,000 points and another pull tab each, about an hour and a half’s play for me, less for her. She won another $10 in free play; I won another $25.

The value of Silverton points, nominally 0.2 percent, is not the same to all players, because they can be used only for comps, not for cash back or free play. So if someone has no use for the restaurants or rooms there, or already has more points than he can use, the points are worthless. For the sake of discussion, let’s say our progressive was break-even with slot club benefits considered. My wife’s $50 in free play added a full 5 percent to the game’s return for the $1,000 coin-in needed for another pull tab. That’s like a bank account paying 5 percent not a year, but instantly -- a very strong advantage play. Even my $25 increased the return to 102.5 percent, nothing to scoff at (keep in mind that these figures represent the long run return for playing under these circumstances, not necessarily the result of a single session.) The second set of pull tabs yielded $10 for the spouse and $25 for me, in both cases in free play. So for the first day at least, the promotion turned out very well for both of us.

It would have worked out well even if the progressive had just been hit. They are, however, worth 0.2 percent to those who can make good use of them. The best games in the house, not counting our juicy deuces progressive, are 9/6 jacks or better in dollars and a quarter progressive, with the base game paying back 99.54 percent. Add the slot club points but not anything for the progressive and those games return 99.74 percent. The promotion would have been highly positive for us had we been playing jacks instead of the deuces progressive.

The next day we were able to go back and use the second pull tabs we got in the mail. This time my wife got a bottle of wine and I got $25 in free play. It’s hard for us to put a value on the wine because neither of us is a wine expert, and its value to us is probably negligible because with so many casinos giving out wine these days, another bottle is something we don’t really need. The pull tabs we got for earning 1,000 points each were for a free buffet (worth about $15) and for dinner for two at Mi Casa, the Silverton’s Mexican restaurant. It’s hard to put a value on that one because the tab itself doesn’t make clear what’s included, but I’m guessing it’s worth $25 to $40 -- not bad at all. We’ll definitely be back at the Silverton this week with our next set of pull tabs.

Although the amounts of free play, free bets, match plays and other cash equivalents most players receive might not seem like much -- $5 here, $10 there, an occasional $20 or more -- over the course of time it can make a substantial difference in the bottom line.