Somebody's going to get fired for this

The Downtown Grand is a casino a long block from Fremont Street, the center of the action in downtown Las Vegas. Formerly the Lady Luck, the property has been nicely renovated and contains a small but attractive casino. I was no-mailed there a few years ago and haven't played there since -- until this week.

One of the players at a locals' casino told my spouse the DTG had put in lots of full-pay video poker games, including full pay deuces wild, at denominations up to $2. We went there Tuesday, expecting to be disappointed, but we were not. Just about every video poker machine in the casino had been programmed with all full-pay games at denominations up to $2. The only bad news was that stickers on the machines disclosed that points are not earned on video poker.

The games offered were the best generally available versions (that's the definition of "full pay") of bonus poker, bonus poker deluxe, deuces wild bonus poker, double bonus poker, double double bonus poker, triple double bonus poker and deuces wild poker. Some of these games pay back an average of more than 100 percent over time with optimum play and maximum coins bet. Some, like bonus poker, pay back less -- in this case 99.17 percent. Even the games paying back just over 100 percent -- and certainly those paying less -- are in my opinion not worth playing if you're not getting any free play, comps or cash back.

But one of these games is very much worth playing. Full-pay deuces wild pays back 100.76 percent. At a moderately fast 800 hands per hour, a player can run $8,000 an hour through a $2 machine. Multiply that by the 0.76 player edge and you get a profit of more than $56 an hour.

Years ago, full-pay deuces was widely available in Vegas in all denominations, but since I started playing a dozen years ago, it has been found almost exclusively at quarters and nickels, at a shrinking number of locals' casinos. I last saw it for dollars about 10 years ago. My spouse was playing at Red Rock Resort and learned from a player there that Arizona Charlie's Boulder had put in $1 full pay deuces. We went there and found two big banks of machines, a total of about 15 in my recollection, with the elusive pay table. Nothing advertised the machines as offering anything special, and most of them went unplayed during the three or four weeks we hit them hard.

We never could figure out why Arizona Charlie's put the game in, and the motivation of the DTG is equally obscure. Most casinos that have 100 percent payback games use them like a supermarket uses loss leaders (although they probably do make some money because many players fail to use optimum strategy and some play short-coin). The machines usually have special glass or signs identifying them as offering 100 percent payback, and usually there aren't that many of them. And limiting the best games to quarters or less makes them unattractive to video poker professionals. At quarters, even full pay deuces pays only a little over the minimum wage.

The DTG did three big things wrong with its new video poker program. First, it put the full-pay games on almost every machine in the casino, including those at the large central bar. That leaves no bad video poker for the masses, most of whom are blissfully ignorant of pay tables and happy to pay whatever garbage they come across. It's a video poker truism that the bad games and bad players make the relatively few good games demanded by good players possible.

Second, it failed to market the new games to the public and thereby attract the kind of player it can make money off of. There should be signs on the machines and outside the casino; I saw none this week. As a result, word of the new games spread through the advantage player community, resulting in lots of play of the $2 full pay deuces, the worst game for the casino.

Third, the DTG did not have to go all the way to $2 to draw players to its full pay deuces games. $1 would have created almost as much excitement and  cut the casino's risk considerably, as well as eliminating the burden on employees of making hand pays to players hitting four deuces on the $2 game. Even offering full pay deuces at 50 cents would have drawn business from the locals' casinos where it's offered at no higher than quarters. Even offering the game at quarters would have drawn business from other downtown casinos, none of which offer the game at all.

It's unclear how long the $2 games at the DTG will last; my guess is that when the results for this month come in, the games will come out, alienating players, damaging the casino's reputation and leaving it with the task of devising a new video poker program. What the DTG is offering is great for players now, but too good to be true for very long.