An introduction to video poker progressives

Bob Dancer, the leading video poker authority and an active player, recently wrote a column for the Las Vegas Advisor (www.lasvegasadvisor.com) about why he does not play video poker progressives. His reasons were mostly matters of personal preference. He did not say that advantage players or other smart players should not play progressives, and many of us do. As time permits, I plan to write several blog posts about video poker and other progressives.

What is a progressive? Simply put, it's a game in which a small part of the money bet by the players goes into one or more growing jackpots. Progressives can be found in slots, video poker, keno (live and video) and table games. The concept has virtually unlimited possible applications in the casino environment.

Why would casinos allow progressives, rather than keep the money going into the jackpot for themselves? First, progressives allow casinos to offer larger than normal prizes to players. A full-coin royal flush in most 25-cent video poker games is $1,000; the royal in a quarter progressive starts at $1,000 and goes up from there, possibly to $2,000, $3,000 or more. Second, progressives, many of which have signs showing the amount of the jackpot, create excitement and attract players as they see the amount they might win growing rapidly.

Sounds like a win-win. The casino offers players more, but with the players' own money feeding the pot. But in reality, casinos often aren't willing to divert even a small percentage money wagered without making up for it -- or more than making up for it. With video poker, progressives are often found on games with substandard pay tables.

For example, a casino might offer as its best non-progressive game 9/6 (full pay) jacks or better, with a long-term maximum payback to players of 99.54 percent. A progressive game might be found on 8/5 jacks or better, with a maximum payback at reset of 97.30 percent. A big progressive jackpot can make this a good play, even a better long-term play than the 9/6 jacks, but you have to know when and how to play it. More about that later.

First, let's talk about how you find video poker progressives. Often they are advertised by electronic signs. These may be simply show dollar amounts or contain other information, such as the donomination of the game. Often these signs apply to a group of machines feeding into a single progressive jackpot. Progressives are also found on idvidual machines, in which case the only way to tell there is a progressive is to look at the pay table. The web site VPFree2 lists and gives locations for the better progressives at many casinos.

Many casinos offer progressives at their bars. Often there is a sign above the bar, or two signs if there are progressives of different denominations (typically quarters and dollars). Individual machines must be checked to see which progressives are on them (often only one denomination per machine). On multi-game machines, sometimes only one game will have the progressive, sometimes more than one or all the games will. Usually the screen that appears after you push the "more games" button will show which games have the progressive, and sometimes the jackpot amount.

At many casinos progressives can be found on the casino floor. Often there are signs, some quite elaborate, above banks of machines with progressives games. But as at the bars, you have to look at the pay tables to find some progressives.

You can go into many casinos and find several video poker progressives at popular denomiations. How can you tell which ones -- if any -- are good plays? A huge jackpot alone does not make a progressive a good play.

First, you must know that there are several versions of most popular video poker games, and that changes in pay tables can have a big effect on the payback of the game. A big factor in finding good video poker progressives is find progressives with good pay tables.

But, as noted earlier, even progressives with relatively bad pay tables, such as 8/5 jacks, can be good plays. A big progressive jackpot can make up for lower return of the underlying game. For example, the break-even point of a 25-cent 9/6 progressive -- the amount of the royal flush that brings the long-term return of the game to 100 percent -- is $1,220. The break-even amount for 8/5 jacks is a whopping $2,166.

The break-even amounts, of most versions of most video poker games can be found in the Frugal Video Poker Scouting Guide by Jean Scott and Viktor Nacht (RGE Publishing, Ltd.), which also contains almost 200 pay schedules and the maximum return for each game. The return of different games, including progressives, can also be determined using the software Video Poker for Winners, which, like the Scouting Guide, should be used by every serious video poker player.

In the field, you can estimate the return of a progressive game by adding 0.5 percent to the payback of the base game for every 1,000 coins added to the amount of the royal flush. For example, let's say you find a progressive on a $1 15/9 "pseudo not-do-ugly" deuces game with the royal at $6,000. The return on the underlying game is about just over 98.9 percent. The 2,000 coins added to the royal adds about 1 percent to the return of the game, leaving it just short of break-even, not counting the value of points and/or other icentives the casino might provide. According to the Scouting Guide, the actual break-even amount for this game is $6,244.

It's important to keep in mind that the return of any progressive is a long-term theoretical concept. You will get or exceed that return only after hitting your share of royal flushes and other rare hands. This is not likely to happen in one or a few sessions or weeks or months playing progressives. In most video poker games, a royal flush occurs very roughly once every 40,000 hands. For a fast player, that's once every 50 hours. And that's the average. You can and will go multiples of that many hours between royals if you become a serious player.

In the real world, a 9/6 jacks progressive at break-even and an 8/5 jacks progressive of the same denomination at break-even are far from equal. You will lose a lot more money between royals playing the latter than the former. That means you will need more money to play the latter, to survive the deeper negative swings. If you normally play 9/6 jacks for dollars, you might want to consider 8/5 jacks progressives only for 50 cents or less.

Another consideration is that the optimum strategies for different versions of the same games are different. If you normally play 9/6 jacks and want to play an 8/5 jacks progressive, to get even the meager return of the base game, you'll have to learn some changes from 9/6 strategy. In either version of jacks, further strategy changes are needed as the progressive jackpot grows to maximize the return of the game. (The work required to learn these strategy changes is one reason Dancer does not play progressives. He does not usually feel comfortable playing any less than perfect strategy.)

For these reasons, I tend to be very selective about the progressives I monitor and play. I usually won't play for any length of time any progressive where the underlying game pays back much less than 99 percent. I also look for progressives on games with strategies similar to those of the non-progressive games I normally play. One of my main non-progressive games is 16/10 "not so ugly" deuces wild. I'm comfortable playing progressives on 15/9 "pseudo not so ugly" deuces, which has a similar strategy. The other progressives I play most are on 16/10 deuces, 9/6 jacks and 8/5 bonus poker (with a stategy similar to that for 9/6 jacks).

There are other factors in deciding which progressives to play, and even more in deciding when to start playing. I'll discuss those in future posts.

Places we used to play

Since we started coming to Vegas about 10 years ago, we have probably played with some frequency at about 40 casinos. We're now down to about 10. In most cases -- all until quite recently -- the decision to stop patronizing a casino was ours. In the past few months, several casinos have cut off the offers that made it worthwhile for one or both of us to play there.

Over the years we have heard stories about video poker players being "no mailed" (mail offers stopped coming) and even being outright barred from playing. We learned that the players cards of those who patronized South Point only on double point days sometimes stopped working, that those who won "too much" at Ellis Island were asked not to come in any more, and that Station Casinos (slogan: "We Love Winners") had barred Bob Dancer from playing there.

But for years, we were the ones who got to decide, exclusively, where we would play video poker. We played where we thought we could make money, which meant places with good games, good players club benefits and good promotions. When any of those things changed significantly to our detriment, we were gone.

In the past 10 years, the main thing that changed was the games. Probably 90 percent or more of the changes were for the worse. There were many reasons for this. As good video poker books and software became available, more players were able to cut into the take the casinos expected from good games because a good part of that take resulted from player mistakes. Video poker, once considered just another form of slot machine, began to be seen more like blackjack, a game that players could beat. One way casinos could protect themselves was to take out high-payback games.

The recession worsened this trend, as did the additional self-inflicted financial troubles of some of the big gaming companies. In many cases players bore at least some of the burden in the form of pay-table downgrades and stingier comp policies,

In most cases we tried to work with the new realities. I think one of the biggest mistakes a player can make is to overreact to change. Even if can't do exactly what you had been doing at a particular casino, there may be other opportunities to make money there, especially if you're still getting mail offers.

But sometimes the changes are just too severe. We kept playing at several casinos as they removed one game after another, but you have to draw the line when there is nothing left that's worth playing.
The sad thing is that the public is so ignorant that these casinos have not been forced to relent and bring back better games, if not the best games they ever had.

The following is a list of some of the casinos we have stopped playing at, or are in the process of phasing out our play; the games we used to play there; and in some cases other reasons for our decision:

1. Club Fortune, Henderson, Nev. -- this neighborhood casino once had positive games, including 25 cent full pay deuces wild and $1 loose deuce deuces wild.

2. Hooters -- $1 full pay double bonus deuces wild and "not so ugly" deuces gave way to 9/6 jacks or better as the best game. We left after that came out and management decided 9/7 double bonus was too strong a game to allow point multipliers on.

3. The Stratosphere -- I think I burned out the $1 loose deuces when I hit the deuces three times in one weekend. They disappeared soon after; so did I.

4. Eastside Cannery -- $1 NSU deuces are long gone, leaving 8/5 bonus poker the best game for dollars and up. Points earned are not competitive with other casinos on the Boulder Highway, and promotions and mailers aren't making up the difference.

5. Peppermill's Rainbow -- this locals casino in downtown Henderson once had 50 cent full pay deuces. Without a players club, there's no reason to go there unless a progressive is high enough to be a positive play.

6. Jackpot Joanie's -- this chain of small casino-bars lost us as customers when it downgraded NSU deuces to "pseudo" NSU, changing the payback from 99.7 percent to 98.9.

7. Dotty's -- another group of casino-bars cut its point multipliers on video poker.

8. Arizona Charlie's Decatur -- there are good games, but you earn so few points playing them that a good mailer is needed to make playing there worthwhile. The mailers started out strong but faded with time.

9. The Palms -- My spouse still plays there a little, but all the changes since George Maloof was deposed have taken most of the value out of playing there. You can still make a little money, but not enough in my opinion to make playing there worthwhile.

10. The Orleans -- Video poker has been tight since we first played there, but for a while we got mailers with free play and giant point multipliers. When those stopped, we stopped playing there.

11. The Westgate -- When this near-Strip property was the Las Vegas Hilton, it was one of the best places to play, with the best tournaments in town, positive and near-positive $1 video poker, and great promotions. Through ownership changes, most of the benefits and the best video poker games for more than 25 cents disappeared. This was probably our biggest loss.