A false economy

If Las Vegas were a country, video poker would be the national pasttime. Many people play, but few know much about pay tables and strategy. I used to wonder how these "ploppies" managed to stay in the game.

Over the years I've come to the unscientific conclusion that most do it by playing for small stakes. They think that, by doing so, they are minimizing their costs (losses). But in many cases it's like always buying the smallest box of laundry detergent rather than the economy size, You pay less in the short run, but a lot more in the long run.

Actually, with video poker, it can be worse than that. The difference can be between losing money and making money.

A case in point: The Station Casinos and Fiestas all have machines labeled "up to 99.8 percent payback." These machines carry a variety of games at denominations ranging from nickels to dollars.

The key words in the labeling are "up to." Most of the games pay back less than 99.8 percent, and the lowest denomination games in particular. This makes sense because the casino wants to make a certain amount of money off each machine, and to accomplish that it has to take a larger percentage when a player is putting less money through.

I was playing "not so ugly" deuces on one of these machines yesterday, when the Stations were giving six times points on video poker. The game pays back just over 99.7 percent. With the point multiplier, it paid back 100.3 percent. I was playing for dollars.

The man next to me was playing for nickels. But the version of deuces wild he was playing was very ugly -- "Colorado deuces," which pays back 96.77 percent. At least he was playing maximum coin, which for this game was 10 coins. Had he been playing fewer coins, the return would have been even less.

He appeared to be playing at a moderate pace; let's assume 700 hands an hour. At 50 cents a hand, he was putting $350 an hour through the machine. Let's further assume, probably unrealistically, that he was playing near perfect strategy and was achieving a long-term return of 96.7 percent. (The reason it's unlikely he was playing this well is that Colorado deuces is a game nobody serious about video poker would play, let alone study and practice.)

If he was getting back 96.7 percent of his money, the house was getting the rest -- 3.3 percent. That comes to $11.55 an hour. By contrast, I was playing $5 a hand (max coin of five). Assuming the same speed of play, I was putting $3,500 through the machine. But the house was getting only 0.3 percent -- or $10.50 cents an hour! The dollar game is actually cheaper than the nickel game!

But wait, there's more. As noted, we were both earning points at the rate of 0.6 percent. That gave the nickel player $2.10 an hour, cutting his loss to $9.45 an hour. On my $3,500, the points added $21, giving me a profit of $10.50. (I actually play a bit faster than the rate in this example and therefore earn more.)

Although in this case playing for dollars is obviously better than playing for nickels, you need more money to survive the larger swings of the dollar game. I wouldn't recommend that a nickel player switch to dollars because of the larger bankroll required. But many nickel players would be comfortable moving up to the quarter deuces game on the "up to 99.8 percent payback" machines.

But even for nickels, there are much better options at Station properties and some other casinos in Las Vegas. Stations has machines with 100 percent payback games, including games for nickels. The deuces game on these machines is full pay deuces wild, which pays back 100.76 percent with optimum play. These machines are not eligible for point multipliers and points accrue at a much lower rate than on the 99.8 percent machines, but who cares? With the full pay deuces you're making money rather than losing money.