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Bob Dancer writes a video poker column for beginners to experts. He also writes a column with Jeffrey Compton, "Player's Edge", featuring information on promotions at various Las Vegas casinos. Player's Edge is published each Friday in the Neon section of the Las Vegas Review-Journal. Click here to send Bob Dancer an e-mail.

For a 3,000-word preview of Bob's juicy new novel, "Sex, Lies, and Video Poker", visit www.bobdancer.com.

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Jun 26, 2007

When A Mistake Happens

At the Palms, I get $50 in free play eight or nine times a month. This free play needs to be played at least once before I can keep the residual. I usually play it off in the High Limit room, as points earned there can be "sold" back to the casino at a rate of 0.125%. Although you earn free play instead of cash for your points, I consider them essentially equivalent.

Three weeks ago when I was playing off my free play and I checked out the pay schedules of the machine next to the one I was playing. For Double Double Bonus, it had a pay schedule I'd never seen before. It was a 10/6 pay schedule (usually returning 100.07%), but the straight flush on this game returned 200 instead of 250. This was a single-line, slant-top game, and you could play for $1, $2, $5, $10, or $25 denominations.

I went home and checked out the game. It returns 99.96%, which is WAY more than NSU Deuces Wild, which is normally the highest-returning game in the High Limit room at the Palms. Before I could play it, I'd have to learn the game. I've never played DDB before, of any denomination, before, as it's never been a lucrative enough game. Even when I was playing for dollars and the game was available, 10/7 Double Bonus was also available. 10/7 DB both returns more and has a lower variance, so it was a no brainer for me to play DB over DDB.

I wasn't a complete novice at the game, of course. I've taught it and co-wrote both strategy card and Winner's Guide for the game. And the game has many hands in common with 9/6 Jacks, which I know perfectly. It took me about an hour to get to the 99.9% level, which is the minimum I consider acceptable before going to play. There were several combinations which I figured out, but didn't have completely memorized.

Hands containing a 'JT' (where the quote marks indicate the cards are suited with each other) and an off-suit ace are particularly complicated. If there is a flush penalty to the 'JT', you ALWAYS hold the ace by itself. But if there is no such penalty, then we need to look at straight penalties to the 'JT' (where a 9 is worse than an 8 which is worse than a 7), straight penalties to the A (where a 2, 3, or 4 are worse than a 5 because they are potential 'kickers' in addition to being a low straight penalty to the ace), and whether any card is suited with the ace, where again a 2, 3, or 4 is a bigger penalty than a 5 which is a bigger penalty than a 6, 7, 8, or 9. Often there are two penalties in the hand to sort through. You can cover all the cases in about 7 or 8 rules. I figured them out, but it would take a lot of experience to get them mastered. I hoped the game would be around long enough for me to gain that experience, but who knew for sure? It was, after all, a mistake for the casino to have the game there and it could be pulled at any time.

The first couple of weeks, I played twice at the $10 level for about $150,000 each time. You need to play a certain amount (nobody knows for sure how much) every month at the Palms to keep the free play coming, and it was refreshing to play at a game where I had the advantage --- including the ability to sell my points back. Usually I tread water at the Palms, playing a certain minimum at NSU (at a slight expected loss) to keep me on the "good promotion list", and then play heavily during the promotion where I have a bigger edge.

Finally a good promotion was announced. "Days that Pay" is an almost-monthly promotion at the Palms where they offer 0.25% free play for your play, plus retire an equivalent number of old points at 0.25% over a 72-hour period. Since I earned the old points thinking they would be worth 0.125%, I consider this promotion to be equivalent to 0.375% cash back. Plus they always have something extra.

This time the extra was there was going to be a drawing for $30,000 on Sunday where you earned drawing tickets for your play during a specific 20 hours. It is hard to put a percentage on this, but I frequently play more than anyone else and have been drawn first (worth $15,000 this time) a few times at these drawings. Add this to an already-juicy game and I couldn't wait until it started.

These events usually bring out a lot of strong players. They are used to seeing me play $5 Five Play NSU Deuces Wild during these events. Seeing me playing DDB would be a surprise. Each of these players would casually come by and check out what I was playing. Everybody invited to this event was a strong enough player to recognize that a 10/6 DDB game in a high limit room was very strange. Whether or not they noticed that the straight flush was shorted, many of these players would want their turn on this good machine.

There was a problem, however. This time the flyer announcing the "Days that Pay" promotion said the free play was for reels and video reels only, and it wasn't clear whether the buying off of old points was good on video poker or not. Even if it wasn't, the $30,000 drawing was lucrative enough for me to be interested in playing during 12-15 of those hours whether or not the free play was in effect. Of course earning 0.375% cashback in addition would be much better since I planned to play $2,000,000 during the promotion if I could, and an extra $7,500 in free play is always welcome.

If video poker didn't count for the point redemption, that would actually increase my chances in the Sunday drawing. Playing NSU Deuces Wild with only the 0.125% cash back makes it a lot more expensive to play for the promotion so I figured that most of the normal suspects on these promotions would choose to skip it. (This turned out to be the case. The only players who showed up in the High Limit room were those who hadn't noticed that the promotion said it didn't apply to video poker this time.) There were some dollar players hammering the 10/7 Double Bonus progressive because it was so high, but dollar players can't keep up with $25 players in terms of points earned.

Before the promotion starter, however, I sought out Mark Englestead. I don't know his official title, but he's the guy in charge of these particular promotions. I wanted to get the rules clarified. He told me that video poker DID count. It was a mistake that the "slots only" paragraph had been in the flyer and that the real rules, which he said he wrote and were at the booth, included video poker. Great! Especially if nobody else knew. That will allow me to earn a lot of free play and there will be a lot less competition on Sunday. Perfect!

So far, nobody else had found out about the 10/6/40 DDB. And if fewer people showed up for the promotion, maybe it would last awhile. I showed up at 4 p.m. on the first day and it was unoccupied. (You could earn drawing tickets between 6 p.m. and 10 p.m. the first day). I played for a little while and had the machine locked up while I went to the buffet to eat. This way I was sure to get the machine during the hours when I could earn drawing tickets, and I would have lots of time to play.

While I was playing, an acquaintance (not a friend) came and told me that the slot club booth was telling people that video poker didn't count for the point redemption. Had this person been a friend, I would have shared what Mark had told me. But since she wasn't, I didn't. I told her I was playing for the drawing on Sunday --- which was true, so far as it went.

At about 5:45 p.m. I began to play at the $25 level. I'd brought $25,000 in cash with me and have a $50,000 line of credit there, and I hoped that would be enough! I did hit four fours with a kicker once ($20,000), but I never hit aces (with or without a kicker) and ended up down $40,000 for the day. Whose idea was this anyway? I did qualify for a few thousand dollars of free play and I had lots of tickets for Sunday's drawing, but those numbers paled next to the loss.

On the next day, Friday, my luck was significantly better. I played about six hours and ended up dead even, earning more cash back and drawing tickets. I was still $40,000 down but it didn't seem so big this time.

On the last day for playing, the drawing ticket period lasted from 10 a.m. to 10 p.m. I got there at 11 a.m. and immediately started hitting. Within fifteen minutes, I'd hit two $6,250 "regular" quads and a $20,000 set of fours with a kicker. This is more like it! I went through a $10,000 "losing hour" and then nailed a $20,000 jackpot followed ten minutes later by a $10,000 hit. For a brief period of time, I was actually ahead for the promotion.

The next few hours were generally downhill, with a few jackpots along the way. Finally, after I'd played seven hours on Saturday and seventeen hours on the promotion, the slot department woke up to the fact that they had never seen me play DDB before, and nobody ever got so many hand pays for a full house (50 $25 credits equals $1,250, barely over the $1,200 limit. When full houses return 9-for-1, which is the usual case for DDB and several other games, the full house on a $25 machine is $1,125 and no tax form is generated).

They decided to check out every other machine in the high limit room and they discovered that I was playing the only 10/6 game. Clearly this was a mistake. They decided to come over and tell me they were going to shut the machine down. I was a little surprised they didn't let me finish playing and then shut it down (which is what the MGM Grand did in 2000 when they accidentally installed $5 Five Play NSU Deuces Wild --- at a casino where they were offering slot club benefits worth about 0.80% at the time). But this was not to be. I was told to cash out, and I did.

I ended up down about $12,000 for the play --- but earned about $6,000 in free play and another $3,000 in the drawing. All in all, the Palms didn't get hurt by the mistake and neither did I. (I was down about $6,000 for $2,000,000 of play on volatile $10 and $25 machines. On these machines, such a score is very close to zero.) I was surprised it lasted as long as it did. It was, after all, being hammered by a well-known strong player.

Before deciding whether to play at the $25 level for the promotions, I debated "slow playing" the machine, hoping it would last longer. Playing for $10 wouldn't generate the "tell-tale" W2Gs on full houses so maybe the casino wouldn't get suspicious. I rejected this argument (that I was having with myself).

I figured, rightly or wrongly, that with the "Days that Pay" promotion going on one weekend and a slot marathon going on the following weekend, there was no way the machine would last whether I slow played it or not. Both of these promotions generally get a number of strong players, so the machine could definitely not remain a secret. (See my novel, "More Sex, Lies, and Video Poker" for a good idea of what slot marathons at the Palms are like.) Even if the casino employees weren't savvy enough to recognize the difference between a 10/6 and a 9/6 machine, other players would be. And even if I were "only" playing for $10, it would still be a different game than the one I usually play and eventually they would become suspicious.

So the almost $2,000,000 I ended up playing on this machine represented a large percentage of the total play on it. There will be players who didn't get a shot at playing (and likely didn�t even know about it until this article) who will accuse me of burning the play. I suppose I did. But given my strong belief that it would be gone shortly anyway whether I played heavily or not, I don't feel my actions were wrong in any sense.