Dirty trick at the Riviera? You decide

I recently returned to the Riviera with my wife to play the remaining $500 in credits I had from their $1,000 loss guarantee for new players club members. I headed to the machine I had played during my first visit, which had what appeared to be $1 8/5 bonus poker on it, which would be the best video poker game in the casino with a long-term payback of 99.17 percent with maximum bets and perfect strategy.

Except that, as my spouse noticed immediately, this game wasn't really 8/5 bonus poker, even though the pay table showed payouts of 8 per coin for the full house and 5 for the flush. What my spouse saw was a very unusual change near the bottom of the pay table. Instead of paying 2 for a full house, this game paid only 1. Because two pair occur very often in bonus poker, this change makes a huge difference in the game's theoretical payback, bringing it all the way down to 86.31 percent -- yes, that's 86, not 96 -- and making it by far the worst video poker game I have ever seen.

This alteration is perfectly legal, as long as it's disclosed on the pay table, which this was. The main lesson here is to look at all the numbers on the pay table before playing any game at any casino for the first time. Most of us are in the habit of looking at certain numbers on the pay table to determine what version of a game is in front of us -- in bonus poker, what varies is typically the payouts for the full house and flush -- but any number on the pay table can be changed. Also of note is that the same change in payout will have a bigger effect on the return of the game the farther down the pay table they are. That's because the closer you get to the bottom of the pay table, the more frequently the hands occur. One coin less for two pair hurts a lot because two pair is a very common hand in bonus poker.

I was glad I was able to avoid playing this awful game but couldn't help wondering if the pay table was the same during my first trip to the Riviera, when I played the same machine. I know I didn't check the bottom of the pay table, but I would hope I would have noticed the short pay for two pair as I played. Maybe the payout for two pair at that time was the standard 2; maybe I didn't notice the short pay. Either way, I hope I'll never fall for something like this in the future.

Since this happened, I've given a bit of thought to the ethics of it. It's standard for casinos to offer different versions of the same video poker games, but usually with the common variations in the pay table. For example, 9/6 jacks or better and 8/5 jacks or better, the first numbers referring to the payout for the full house and the second numbers for the flush. Video poker players with any level of sophistication know about these "standard variations" and look for them before choosing a game to play. The ethics question posed here is whether it is fair for a casino to make a highly unusual change in the pay table, one that most players would never think to look for -- especially one that makes an enormous difference in the payback of the game. In my mind the Riviera's pay table raises the question of what other ways it might try to take advantage of the people who play there (I have seen absolutely no evidence of anything else at all questionable). I'm not sure whether people who would do this are the kind of people I want to do business with.

Incidentally, I got the information on the payback of the Riviera's version of 8/5 bonus poker from the invaluable "Frugal Video Poker Scouting Guide" by Jean Scott and Viktor Nacht. That the Riviera's version of 8/5 bonus poker was in the book indicates that it has been found in other casinos (the book predates the current management regime of the Riviera). That doesn't make it any more fair, but it does reinforce the message of buyer beware when playing any video poker machine for the first time.