Sunday, March 17, 2013

Un-Fortunato for me

A few months ago I noticed a new slot progressive at Green Valley Ranch called Fortunato, which gives players at 18 $1 slot machines a chance to win three bonues, including one of a minimum of $10,000 and a maximum of $30,000.

I began watching the big electronic sign over the machines advertising the progressive bonuses when the big one reached about $16,000, thinking I would play it when it got close to $28,000. It took several weeks, but a couple of weeks ago it happened.

I knew that, mathematically, these "must hit by" progressives become a really strong play only when the meter gets very near the maximum -- in this case, $30,000. I also knew, having played similar set-ups before, that the meter usually moves a lot slower than you would think.

But I took a few other factors into account in deciding to jump on. First, the potential gain was huge. Second, the machines at the point were getting very little play. And third, I realized that several of the machines could be played with one coin, meaning a bet of $1 a spin -- less than the $1.25 a hand wagered by 25-cent video poker players betting max coin.

If that's confusing, let me try to explain. Video poker machines, and most slot machines, allow players to bet more or more "coins." In video poker, the range is usually 1 to 5 coins. In dollar slots, such as those in the Fortunato, it's usually 1 or 2 or 1 to 3 coins.

In video poker, a player who bets less than full coin is penalized severely if he hits a royal flush. That's because the return per coint for 1 to 4 coins is generally 250 per coin, but the royal pays 4,000 coins with max coin bet. If the payoff the the royal increased proportionately with each coin bet, as is the case for all other paying hands, the payoff for a royal with five coins bet would be only 1,250.

Some, but not all, slot machines similarly penalize players who bet less than the maximum. Usually all payouts but the top one increase proportionately with each coin bet, but sometimes, as in video poker, the top-ranking combination pays extra if max coin is bet.

I found one two-coin machine in the Fortunato that paid exactly proportionately for the top combination with a single coin bet, and several others where the bonus for playing max coin was negligable. The pay table for the machine with no penalty also suggested that it would have relatively low volatility, meaning fewer big ups and downs. I was most concerned about mimimizing my losses because I figured the machines in the Fortunato would be very tight to accommodate the progressive bonuses.

Long story short: I played the Fortunato for five or six days, dropping everything else the last three days or so. Until the last night, there weren't many players on it. The night before the progressive popped, I was able to play alone for several hours. The last day a few more people showed up and played longer. In talking with some of them I learned that they were regular slot players, not professional gamblers.

By the final night I did recognize one pro, and a few other people obviously had made the commitment I had to see it through to the end. Most were playing two machines.

The big bonus finally popped at about 2:15 a.m., with meter around $29,400. I was not the lucky winner.

I was a lilttle disappointed not to win after almost certainly putting in more time than any other player. But I know that on any progressive you have a small chance of winning unless you are the only one playing when it hits or are part of a team that has control of all  of the machines. The question was whether this was a good play, one that justified the time and expenditure involved.

My answer to myself was yes, that I will probably do the same thing the next time the bonus gets that high. As a video poker player who often plays for $25 a hand, I found the loss I incurred very bearable, and I am hoping the casino will give me a much better mailer next month because my play this month will be mostly on slots, not video poker.

As casinos tighten up on video poker and other recognized opportunities for advantage play, players need to widen their horizons in the search for profitable gambling opportunities. I plan to try to learn more about slot progressives, which might well offer some good plays into the future.

Palms pulls the plug on blackjack promotion

Further evidence of incompentence of the new management at the Palms, as if any were needed ...

A couple of weeks ago the casino ran a blackjack promotion. As advertised, it was to run from noon to 5 p.m. Monday through Thursday. The promotion modified the casino's regular single-deck game to give players a 6-to-5 payment on all winning hands, not just blackjacks. While the 6-to-5 payout on blackjacks, which has become common on single-deck games, is a rip-off, 6-to-5 vs. even money on other winning hands is a massive 20 percent premium that would easily outweigh the reduction on blackjacks. The maximum bet that would bring the bonus payout was $100.

(Deceptive advertising side note: Advertising for the promotion promised premium payouts for "all" wining hands, but the rules actually called for even money on the second hands created by splits and double downs.)

When I learned about this promotion, I tried to do a quick mental calculation of how much it would be worth to a player. I started with the assumption that tables would be full the and the game would be slow because dealers would need extra time to calculate the payouts. For number of hands per hour I picked a relatively low and round number, 50.

I also figured that the rules for this game, unmodified by the promotion, give the house an edge of 1.5 percent against a basic strategy player. So, figuring on betting the maximum of $100 per hand for 50 hands, a player would be wagering $5,000 an hour. One and half percent of that is $75, the player's approximate expected loss without the promotion.

To figure the effect of the 20-percent premium on non-blackjack wins, I first recalled that players win, on average, somewhere around 40 percent of the hands in blackjack. Applied to 50 hands an hour, that gives us approximately 20 wins per hour. About three of those will be blackjacks, so the 20-percent bonus would apply to an average of about 17 hands. At $100 a hand, that comes to $20 x 17, or $340 an hour. From that we have to subtract the house margin on the basic game of $75 an hour, which gives us $265 an hour.

Note that this calculation was done without even a pencil and paper, relying on memory for the percentage of hands won on average by players, and not accounting for split and double-down hands. So it is very, very rough. But it clearly shows that the players in this promotion would have a huge advantage.

On the first day of the promotion I was not able to get to the Palms until late afternoon. Surprisingly, the two single-deck tables were not full and most players were betting less than the $100 maximum, indicating that the advantage player community was largely unaware of the promotion. I had a run of bad luck and wound up dead even at 5 p.m., when the promotion ended for the day. Another player, who had been there for several hours betting $100 a hand, told me he was cashing out a $600 profit but had been up by more during much of the promotion.

The next day, the tables were packed and I couldn't get on. The day after that, Wednesday, I couldn't get to the Palms. On Thursday, which was to be the last day of the promotion, I made it a point to get there well before noon to make sure I could get a seat. Seeing no one else waiting, I asked if the promotion was still going on and was given the bad news. I wasn't able to determine exactly when it ended, but apparently it was sometime on Wednesday.

If there's one thing even the dumbest casino managers have learned, it's to reserve the legal right to modify or discontinue all promotions at any time, in their sole discretion. The Palms relied on this weasel wording to pull the plug. That gaming authorities allow casinos to get away with this when patrons incur expenses and expend valuable time to take advantage of promotions is patently unfair. I imagine that there can be legitimate reasons for a casino to change, delay or even abort a promotion, but  the failure of casino management to calculate the cost of its own offering is an entirely different thing. The law should require that when a casino offers a promotion, the players get the value of that promotion.

Of course, the Palms could have let the promotion run as advertised, absorbing the loss caused by its its own bad decision. That would have been the honorable thing to do.

More Palms incompetence: One of the things the new managment did was tear down the enclosure that formed the casino's high-limit slot room, replacing it with a less-attractive and awdwardly placed structure consisting of plain, low walls. Recently the location of this new high-limit corral was shifted to eliminate the problems causing by its original placement -- an expense that might have been avoided by use of pencil and paper before hammer and nails.

Finally, on my last visit to the Palms, I noticed that the color of the signs that in some cases inaccurately described "full pay" video poker games had been changed. Now, if management, which has been put on notice of the errors in these signs by me and at least one other person, would change their content ...