Ellis Island capitulates

This is long overdue, but I did want to follow up on what happened at Ellis Island after that casino switched its 9/6 jacks or better to 9/5. Apparently I wasn't the only one high-limit player who boycotted the inferior game because about five weeks after the change, the 9/6 jack were back, in denominations up to $5.

Better than that, on the same machines, Ellis added 16/10 "not so ugly" deuces, also up to $5. This game pays back 99.73 percent with perfect play and max coins bet, considerably better than the 99.54 percent for jacks. There are only a few places that offer this version of deuces at more than $1.

Even better, Ellis offers point multipliers of up to 6x. With points worth 0.1 percent, the 16/10 deuces are highly positive on point multiplier days, not even counting the value of promotions and monthly mailers.

Alas, when something in a casino seems too good to be true, it is not likely to last. I expected the 16/10 deuces to disappear, at least at $5 and maybe also at $2. Instead, Ellis reacted by excluding all the games on the machines in question from multipliers and a particular four-of-a-kind poromotion. Because of other promotions there is still some value in playing these games, but not nearly as much as there was with the point multipliers.

All in all, I think Ellis Island handled the situation quite well -- after the initial decision to downgrade the 9/6 jacks. The casino obviously had lost a considerable amount of business from its biggest players, and correctly determined the reason. The great thing about the casino's reaction was that it not only gave back what it took away (the 9/6 jacks), but gave its aggrieved players something extra (the 16/10 deuces) to make up for the original offense and build some additional goodwill.

In my experience, casino managers generally don't understand or don't want to admit that downgrading games can cost them business. It seems they think returning the theoretical return on a game by changing, for example, the play table, will increase their hold in amount similar to the increase in their theoretical win. This apparently failed to happen at Ellis Island.

An interesting test case will the the recent downgrading of the pay tables on a $1 triple- and five-play progressive at Green Valley Ranch. The best game on these progressives was 15/9 "pseudo not so ugly" deuces, with a maximum payback of 98.94 percent, not counting the value of the progressive jackpots over the regular royal amount. A few days ago I noticed that the deuces games had been downgraded to 12/10, a version of deuces that's common on the Las Vegas Strip but relatively rare in locals casinos because of its low payback of 97.58 percent.

Here's my theory as to why this game was downgraded: These machines don't seem to get a lot of play when the progressive jackpots are low, but when they get high enough, there is a regular group of players who will play them long and hard. I am sure the casino makes a lot of money when this happens.

Months, maybe a year, ago, the number of machines in the bank of progressives was cut from six to three. This might have had an effect on the total amount of play they got. For whatever reason, the progressives don't seem to have gotten big enough as often to attract the players who sometimes hit this game hard. The machines weren't earning as much as the casino wanted, so someone decided to squeeze the lemon harder.

My guess is that the downgrading of the deuces pay table started a death spiral that will lead to the removal of this progressive. The progressives now have to be much higher to be attractive, meaning the machines need more play when the jackpots are low. Because of the bad new pay tables, its likely they will get less play, rather than more. I'm not sure what the managers at Green Valley could or should have done, but my prediction is that the course they have taken will lead to the loss of these games -- and a lot of business from some of the casino's biggest players.