Imitation is the Sincerest Form of Flattery

            A couple of weeks ago, I two days walking the halls of the Sands Expo at the Global Gaming Expo.  If I had to pick one word to describe the event, it would definitely be "SLOTS".  Like last year, I think they dominated the show.  For those who have been reading me for years, you know my thoughts on Slots from a Player's perspective.  But, I do give the slot manufacturer's a lot of credit for creativity.  This year, they kept it up, not only in the games that are being developed, but in terms of the marketing.  There were zombies everywhere.  I'm not sure if there was only one manufacturer who had a zombie themed game or if there was more than one.  But there were a lot of zombies in some really good make-up all over the halls.

            As much as I write about video poker in my column, my real love is table games and that's what I'm at the show to really see.   This year, brought a particular trend to its apex (or perhaps more appropriate, its nadir).  Besides the three big table game companies (SHFL, Galaxy and DEQ), there were virtually no new table games.  I did see a couple of other new games, but they were almost afterthoughts from gaming companies involved in other aspects.  I saw exactly ZERO small independent game inventors showing any new games.  I recognize that the cost of a booth at the G2E is not cheap and could easily wipe out the budget of a small inventor, but I always found it fun to talk to someone new about their game.  I didn't get a chance this year.

            I did get introduced to a few inventors who did not have booths at the game who wanted to talk to me about their ideas.  I find that most ideas seem to fall into two categories.  The first is the rather 'far-fetched' category.  These are ideas that aren't necessarily bad, but I have to wonder about their odds of commercial success.  One inventor remarked to me about how all the casino games are poker-based.  He found this to be problematic.  I find this to be indicative of what is likely to be successful commercially.  It is NOT that games that are not poker based haven't been invented and tried, it is that none have ever had the staying power in the casino.  Some might be fun and social for a few hours, but they don't seem to have the ability to create repeat customers the way poker-based games do.

            The second common category of games are the copycats.  People look at a game like Three Card Poker, which is undeniably the most successful proprietary table game (both financially and in terms of number of tables) and try to emulate it in some way.  Now, many table games have some form of patent protection on them (many do not!).  But I am not talking about copying to the point of patent violation.  I'm simply saying that people look at Three Card Poker as some magic formula and try to replicate it.   You know this is happening when they begin describing their game with "It is just like Three Card Poker but......."

            For the past several years, the casinos have been going through a Texas Hold'em craze.  While I think it has peaked overall, it has still left a lasting impression.  Games that might have been developed as 7-card Stud games are being developed with 5 community cards in Texas Hold'em style.  After the dust settled, there are currently 2 very successful Texas Hold'em table games.  The first is Texas Hold'em Bonus Poker - developed by Mikohn/PGIC and purchased by SHFL Entertainment a few years ago, and Ultimate Texas Hold'em - developed directly by SHFL.  I did the original math on UTH for SHFL.  It was by far the most challenging game I had ever worked on to that point and perhaps since.  It was also one of the most rewarding because of the success it has become.  It is generally acknowledged as the 2nd most successful game of all-time with several hundred tables in the market place and is the only game on the horizon that has any chance to knock Three Card Poker out of the number 1 spot.

            Like Three Card Poker, one of the surest signs of the success of UTH is how many times I have heard the phrase in the past few years from an inventor, "It is just like Ultimate, but....."  There is an old saying that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery.  I guess if everyone is trying to create a game just like UTH, then UTH must be a pretty darn good game.   Is it possible to improve upon Three Card Poker or UTH?  I suppose it is possible.  But, 15-20 years after the invention of Three Card Poker, it is not a minor improvement to Three Card Poker that might take it out of the top spot.  It is a game that while still poker-based, introduce many new concepts.  It is a game that has more uniqueness to it than similarity to Three Card Poker.  I think if someone wants to knock UTH out of the number 2 spot, it won't happen because someone tweaks UTH, it will be happen because someone comes up with a new and better idea. 

            To all the inventors out there, don't think of new ways to flatter the existing games by imitating them.  Come up with new games with new ideas if you want to make your mark.

It is not about the Medium

            I don't think there is a game in the casino more misunderstood than video poker.  Even in the days when slots were mechanical, most people considered video poker to just be another slot machine, but one with a computer screen.  I think many people just think that it was too hard to create a mechanical machine using cards, so they digitized it all, but it still plays like a slot machine - all because the hardware looks roughly the same.  It is NOT the hardware that makes the game.

            This past week, I met a gentleman who told me he likes to play keno slots.  I have to be honest and say I had no idea what he was talking about.  He explained that he picks a certain amount of numbers from 1 to 80 and then the machine picks 20 numbers and he gets paid if the 20 picked includes at least some amount of the ones he picked.  I politely looked at him and said there is nothing 'slots' about what he just described.  He simply was playing keno in video version (hence it is called 'video keno').  He was playing the EXACT same game as if he was playing in a keno parlor marking the little pieces of paper and handing them to the scantily clad woman.  Ironically, the video version of keno tends to pay higher than the old fashioned version because the Player can play far more hands per hour.  I explained to this man that the machine pulls 20 completely random numbers and throws them onto the board.  It does NOT decide ahead of time that you will hit 3 of the 8 you marked and then decide which numbers to pull to make that happen.

            This is in essence the very difference between a slot machine and a video keno machine or a video poker machine or a video blackjack machine.  In the latter three games, the machine uses a random number generator to decide which card to deal or which ball to draw.  You win or lose based on the specific cards/balls it randomly draws.  In a slot machine, the machine first determines whether your will win or lose.  If you are to win, it will decide how much you will win and set the symbols in the appropriate fashion.  If you are to lose, it will decide exactly which symbols to show you - always a losing combination - but potentially set up to make you feel like you almost won. 

            Over the years, when I've been asked what I do for a living and explain that I analyze casino games, a frequent follow up question is if I do it for live games or electronic games.  Since the majority of my work is in table games my response is usually just that, but I tell them it really doesn't matter what medium the game is in.  As long as the game is using essentially a random deck of cards (or ping pong balls) where each card has an equal chance of appearing, it does not matter if you are playing a game with a real life dealer, at a casino on an electronic multi-player table, on a stand-alone machine in the casino or playing at home on some software.

            Video blackjack has existed for years in the casino.  They were not always easy to find, but many Players relished the idea of playing for only $1 per hand and having the same experience (well, mathematically) as playing at a live table.  I would certainly understand those that feel that playing on your own machine is not as sociable as playing at a table, but that's not a mathematical difference. 

            In the past few years, many casinos have added multi-player electronic versions of popular table games (i.e. Shuffle Master's TableMaster games).  These games play identically to the live games.  There are times when for one reason or another the casino chooses to employ different paytables, but the probabilities of winning a hand or losing a hand or being dealt a particular hand remains the same.  Any changes to the payback as a result of paytable changes cannot be sneaked past the Player.  These payouts must all be visible on the machine.   Because the digital cards are as random as real cards, we can always calculate the exact payback of any of these games based on the paytable. 

            While the name "Slot machines" presumably comes from the different slots the wheels are in (well, were in when they were mechanical), and there is a little bit of similarity in the notion that video poker cards are in 'slots' in the machine as well, this is where the similarity ends.  The critical difference between games like video poker and slots is that in video poker your cards are determined randomly and you win or lose based on the pattern of these cards.  With slots, whether your win or lose is determined by the machine and then you are presented with symbols to match the pre-determined outcome.   Slots could never be replicated on a live table, but games like video poker, video keno and video blackjack are (or could be).

Eyes Wide Open

            I finally discovered something that has a lower payback than slot machines – New Jersey Turnpike tolls!  As I write this, we’re back on the East Coast for personal business.  After landing at Newark, we had to drive up to the Boston area.  I couldn’t believe the toll from Newark airport to northern end of the Turnpike.  It was $3.60 to go about 20 miles.  Throw in the $12 toll to cross the George Washington Bridge to cross into New York and I was out more than $15 after only being on the road for 25 minutes!  It takes quite a bankroll to drive on these roads, and with NO chance of winning.  We had only left NJ less than a year ago and all these tolls had gone up considerably since we left!

            On a more serious note regarding slots, I received a very good question from a reader this past week.  He acknowledged what I had written several weeks ago that the average slot machines paid only 92-93% and that video poker generally paid 97-100+%.  He asked that given that casino gambling is just a form of entertainment, what is so bad about the idea of taking $100 of your bankroll to go for a huge jackpot on a slot machine, especially given that winning a similar amount at video poker would take a long time with smaller wins along the way.  I have to admit, that it took me a little while for me to come up with a response.

            I think the best I can come up with is that if you go in with your eyes open as to what you are doing then I can’t really say there is anything wrong with it.  Gambling is entertainment and if it brings you enjoyment to take part of your bankroll and put it into a low payback slot machine with a jumbo-sized jackpot, that is your choice.  If I have any issue with the concept it is that it is very hard, if not impossible to go into this with your eyes truly open.  Yes, you can know the size of the jackpot, but you don’t know the probability of actually hitting it. 

            The other issue is that it is standard practice in casino gaming that if the game has a huge jackpot (usually Progressive) then the payback of the game tends to be even lower.  This is true for both slot machines and even table game sidebets.  Outside the casino, this is even truer for things like Lotto.  Most state lotteries have paybacks in the 50-60% range.  Players are willing to play games with very low paybacks in hope of winning that life altering prize.   Again, however, in the case of Lotto, we are able to compute the probability of winning the top prize.  This is not the case for slots.

            While the low payback of regular slots is concerning, and the presumed even lower payback of a Progressive slot is even more concerning, the biggest concern still belongs to the notion that there is no way to know anything about a slot machine.  We don’t know the probability of the jackpot spin or any other result.  We have no way of knowing the overall payback of the machine by a simple glance at the glass.  In a place like Nevada, the payback can be no less than 75% so that is about all we really know.

            So, that all said, if you feel that you want to play a game that has a life-changing jackpot with a portion of your bankroll, I can understand the desire to try your hand at a slot machine.   It is probably the only chance you have for a multi-million dollar prize.  If you are looking for a gigantic jackpot, I would personally recommend a Pai Gow Poker sidebet or the Six-Card sidebet for Three Card Poker.  The prizes will only be in the few hundred thousand to $1 million, but you’ll still be playing games with higher paybacks.

            In the end, it is your money and you have to decide how you want to spend it and what provides you the most enjoyment.  If chasing a mega jackpot on a low paying machines with a portion of your bankroll is what brings you joy, I won’t stop you.

            

Jackpot Power

            As we get deep into the political season, we're all going to be frequently reminded how it is possible to make numbers say just about anything we want them to.  Quite frankly, it is not just the arena of politics this happens in.  It can be done with all types of math - casino math, included.

            By now, many of you well know that a full-pay jacks or better machine pays about 99.5%, which is a very solid number for a casino game.  Many of you may even be aware that the Royal Flush contributes 2% of this amount.  But what does this really mean?  It means that if the machine was defective and NEVER dealt a Royal Flush, but dealt all the rest of the hands in the frequencies we would expect, the payback of the game would be closer to 97.5%.   This is about the same payback we would get from a short-pay (8/5) jacks or better machine so should we expect roughly the same experience?

            ABSOLUTELY NOT!  One of the measures I like to use is what I call a 'session simulator'.  This process simulates a session of play for a particular game.  For video poker, I use 3 hours of play at 700 hands per hour.  For this particular demonstration, I ran 1000 of these sessions under 2 conditions.  The first was a full-pay jacks or better machined that NEVER paid a Royal Flush.  To be clear, the only way this could ever really happen would be if the machine was broken or rigged.  As I don't believe the latter happens in any reputable casino, nor would a broken machine likely stay on the floor for this many hands - this is merely for illustration purposes and to prove a point.

            In this scenario, the Player still managed to walk away a winner about 28% of the sessions.  This compares to about 29% when a regular full-pay jacks or better is played.   Why is there such little impact to this?  Under normal circumstances, the Royal would hit only about every 20 cycles or so.  Some of these cycles would already be winners, so the Royal Flush doesn't change this.  It only changes the magnitude of the win.  In the cases where the session was about to be a loser, the Royal most likely flipped ONLY these into winners.  However, when we look at the long run, the overall payback of ALL the sessions put together was where we expected it to be - at about 97.5%

            When we put the 8-5 jacks or better machine (with the Royal occurring as it should), we find that the Player wins only 14% of his sessions.  His winning sessions are cut by half!  The overall payback of all the sessions is also what we would expect it to be at 97.5%.

            So, why do two different machines paying about the same amount create such different short-term results?  This goes to a concept of volatility.  There is a mathematical formula for volatility, but I'm afraid if I start explaining it at that level, you're all going to turn the page.  That is why I like to use the session simulator as a means of explaining what volatility does and is.  When a large amount of the payback is concentrated into a very infrequently occurring hand, there is a larger degree of volatility.  In the case of the full-pay jacks or better game without the Royals, I removed a large degree of the volatility.  This is why a game with a considerably lower payback that the original version can still have a not very different short-term result.

            So, what does this all mean for you?  There are two points I'd like you take away from this week's column.  The first is to realize how important the Royal Flush is to your long-term results in video poker.  If you are on a cold streak of Royals, your short-term results may not look all that different from 'normal', but you may find that your larger bankroll is suffering.  If you play for 3 hours at a time, you may find that you're still leaving the casino a winner 3 out of 10 times, but for some reason your wallet still seems a lot lighter than it should.  The good news is that in the long run, those Royals will show up as often as they should (assuming you are playing Expert Strategy).  Ironically, when the Royals are running hot, you'll still walk away a winner about 3 out of 10 sessions.  But, a few more of those sessions will be big winners.

            The second point I want everyone to think about is if a 'mere' 800 unit payout occurring roughly every 40,000 hands can make this type of impact to a game, imagine what happens on a slot machine that can pay hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars for a 'hand' even more infrequent.  The average payback on a slot machine is ONLY 92-93%.  If we consider that many of them will have a massive top pay that might occur only every few hundred thousand hands (or million hands), what % of the overall payback does this account for? 

            With these occurrences being so infrequent (and COMPLETELY unknown as to how frequent), the payback of the machine without the jackpot could easily be 80-90%.  I'd put this through my session simulator but as it is not possible to know the frequency of all the payouts, there is no way to do it.  Just for fun, I built an 82.5% video poker paytable and put it through the process and it showed that the Player will walk away a winner only 5% of the time.  As we've already shown, it would then be possible to create an infrequent, very high paying jackpot which will push the overall payback up, while barely changing the short-term results. 

            The end result is one that we know all too well for slots.  Very few people walk away a winner even in the short run, which pays for the handful of people who win the big jackpots.  I'll take video poker any day!

Smackdown! Video Poker vs. Slot Machines

            

            This past week, I received an e-mail regarding last week's article about slots.  In that article I talk about how casinos can legally and do make sure that slot machines are created so that they produce a large number of near misses to make the Player feel like he almost won.   A reader wanted to know if the same is true of video poker.  He wrote:

             I'm always interested in the little things casinos do to try and influence how a player thinks.  Your article spells out an excellent example of how a slot machine display can create the illusion of coming close to a big win. I was wondering if the same thing applies to some extent to Video Poker.  If I'm holding 3 to a royal flush and my 2 new cards don't create a winning hand, but one of those 2 cards is one of the cards I need for the Royal, then I might be influenced to think that I was close to hitting a royal, even though the hand is as much of a winner as any losing hand.  Do you think that VP machines are set up this way as well?

            My answer depends on the definition of "set up".  Are video poker machines specifically programmed to have Player get more near misses than one would expect to occur randomly?  Absolutely not (in most jurisdictions).  In places like Nevada the law requires that any game that uses a real life object (like a deck of cards or die) in digital form must play as random as the real-life object.  In other words, if the game uses a deck of cards, every card must have exactly the same probability of being dealt as every other card. 

            Thus, the casino CANNOT program the video poker machine to have one of the two remaining cards for the Royal Flush be drawn just so it looks like the Player came close to winning - EVEN if it doesn't change the overall outcome of the hand.   So, if the Player is dealt a suited 10-J-Q and the two cards that are supposed to be dealt are the 8D and 5C, the machine cannot change the 8D to the suited King just so the Player comes closer, but still loses.

            What makes Video Poker so superior, in my opinion, to slots is that there is no need for the casinos (or the manufacturers) to do this.  One of the beautiful things about almost any game being played with a deck of cards is that the suspense is built into the game by the very fact that a deck of cards is being used.  True, once in a while a hand is so bad, there is no suspense, but this is infrequent.  How many times have you played a hand of video poker where the first 2 cards are a Pair or 2 cards of a Royal Flush?  Your heart skips a beat as you begin to be believe you're about to be dealt Four of a Kind or maybe a Royal.  That suspense turns to much when the final 3 cards are a mess and help your hand not at all. 

            Conversely, how many times have you been dealt very little (a single High Card) and you wind up being dealt a Flush, a Straight or even a Four of a Kind?  Nobody is forcing these hands to come out of the machine.  They occur because of the nature of the random deck of cards which generates are near misses for us.

            When we look at my reader's question about a 3-Card Royal being dealt one of the necessary cards, we find that it is not such an unusual occurrence.  For a simplistic way to approximate the likelihood of this, we simply have to know that we are going to be dealt 2 cards and we are looking for one of 2 cards to appear.  So, this is roughly equivalent to giving us 4 chances to be dealt 1 card from 47 cards in the deck.  This works out to be about 8+% of the time, hardly making it a rare occurrence.

            I think this leads to an interesting question.  Does it really matter if near misses are occurring because of the nature of a random deck of cards or if it is purposefully being programmed in by the manufacturers.  Quite frankly, by itself, I don't think so.  However, I believe what this tells us about video poker machines and slot machines is the critical part. 

            Everything about a video poker machine is the result of using a random deck of 52 cards.  So, while it is random, we also know all of the probabilities with 100% certainty and thus we can calculate a payback, determine a strategy and know what to expect over the long run.  We can look at the paytable and know everything there is to know about the machine.  We KNOW that if we see 2 machines with identical paytables, they have identical paybacks.

            With slot machines, we know NOTHING.  We can look at 2 slot machines standing side by side with identical paytables and still know absolutely nothing about either of them.  We have no idea how often winning hands will occur.  We have no idea which losing hands are programmed into it and how often it will 'tease' us with near misses.  A moment ago I gave a rough estimate of how often we can expect to get a near miss when drawing on a 3-Card Royal.  This can be calculated with absolute precision too (8.3256%).  You can't do this with a slot machine just by looking at it.

            I guess in the end it comes down to the difference between NFL Football and WWE wrestling.  I don't know who will be the next Champion, but I prefer the NFL version where it comes down to the best team and not the WWE where someone decides who should win and then puts on a good show to make it happen!

SCIENCE FICTION: BELIEVING YOU CAN WIN AT SLOTS

            When I tell people that I help develop new games for the casino industry by doing the math behind them, I'm invariably asked if I work mostly on slot machines.  Ironically, I've never worked on the math behind slot machines.  I try to explain that in my opinion slot math is amongst the easiest math in the casino. 

            Developing a casino game is really two parts.  The first is the creative half that determines the specifics of the game. The second part is the math behind the game, which can frequently cause some changes in the first part.  This dependency mostly evaporates with slot machines.  Virtually every slot machine is a clone of another game from a math perspective.

            I'm a big fan of science fiction.  So, if I wanted to invent a slot machines based on Star Trek, I merely need to come up with 20 to 30 symbols that are identified with the shows.  Maybe I use the characters (Captain Kirk, Mr. Spock, etc...) or I use the different shows (the original Star Trek and The Next Generation).  It really doesn't matter.  Most importantly, I simply have to decide what determines a winning hand.  I list out all the winning hands on a spreadsheet.  I add the amount each of these winning hands should pay.  I then determine the frequency that each of these hands occur.  I do a few simple computations and play with the numbers to get a payback to my liking and I'm done.

            Now I'd like to create a slot machine based on Star Wars.  I don't need to change any of the numbers.  I just simply need to swap out Mr. Spock for Hans Solo and Captain Kirk for Luke and I'm done.  In theory, every single slot machine could be based on a single spreadsheet of probabilities and payouts. 

            How can this be done?  because essentially, slot machines are rigged.  No, they don't know who's playing, so it's not like someone with a Player Card is going to lose and someone without one is going to win.  Nor can it tell the difference between a local and a tourist.  When I say it is 'rigged', I mean that nothing about a slot machine conforms to the notion of what you see is what you get.  When you spin the wheels, you may see more Captain Kirks than any other single symbol, but that doesn't mean the probability of lining them up is any higher. 

            In that little spreadsheet I mentioned earlier, I need to list out all the losing hands too.  The slot could simply be programmed to randomly pick a losing hand a certain percent of the time, but what fun would that be?  Instead it is programmed to give you Captain Kirk, Captain Kirk, Tribble more times than you can count.  Just for good measure there will be a Captain Kirk above or below that Tribble 50% of the time.  OH, you were SO CLOSE to winning!  In reality, you were just as far away as if the screen showed, Klingon, Romulan and Ferengi!

            To put it in more familiar terms, just because the screen showed you 7-7-orange with a 7 just below the orange doesn't mean you were any closer to winning than if it showed Orange-Plum-Banana.  If you kept drawing the fruit salad, you might get bored and leave.  But by showing you 7-7-orange, you get a false sense that you just missed.

            I would love to hear from those of you who are reading this column who continue to play slot machines.  Why do you do this?  The average slot machine in Las Vegas pays about 92.3% which makes it about the worse play in the casino.  I supposed it is fun to sit down and play a slot machine with your favorite tv show on it, but is it really worth all that you are losing?  Wouldn't it make more sense to learn to play video poker or blackjack and simply buy the complete series of your favorite show on Amazon with the money you're saving?

            Maybe Ballys and IGT should introduce video poker that is themed to tv shows and movies?  They just simply need to make the deck take on the theme of whatever show we are talking about.  Imagine Batman Joker Poker where the Joker is the actual Joker from the show.  Batman can be the King and Robin can be the Jack.  Batwoman can be the Queen!

            These characters won't change the game any, which is what happens in the slot versions too.  Maybe we can get more people to give up slots and become video poker Players if we simply put their favorite characters onto the cards? 

            As we head into 2012, I don't really care what gets you to break the slot habit, I simply implore you to do so.  In the end, I think you'll have a lot more fun and your wallet will definitely thank you!

Blurry Lines

            Recently, one of my ‘friends’ on my Gambatria Facebook page posted up a poll.  They asked people what they play when they go into the casino – table games, slots or other.  I wasn’t sure what to answer.  I tend to split most of my time between blackjack and video poker.  In the end, I decided that video poker was probably the most appropriate answer for me, though.  So, my first reaction was to check the ‘other’ box, but then I began to wonder if maybe the creator of the poll may have included video poker in the choice for ‘slots’.

            If you’ve read my column over the years, you know how much I hate it when people consider video poker to be slots.  They’ve been frequently categorized as such because of the physical similarity of the machines.  Once upon a time, slot machines meant mechanical reels in a wooden box, while video poker was a computer monitor in an identical wooden box.  Then slot machines went digital too and now both are essentially computers in a box.

            But, is this REALLY how we categorize casino games?  By physical characteristics?  It is ironic that originally video poker machines were put into slot-machine boxes and then over time, slot machines were put onto video poker computers in those same boxes.  While they are not so easy to find anymore, if a Player plays a stand-alone video blackjack machine are they playing slots because of the hardware?  Not in my book!

            As the technology of the casino has evolved, the lines have become even more blurred if we look only at the technology and/or hardware that the game is being played on.  Some jurisdictions don’t allow live dealers and/or actual cards, so they only allow some of the newer hardware in – fully electronic tables, where chips and cards are digital and there is either no dealer to speak of or perhaps just a moving image of one.  If you play blackjack on one of these machines are you still playing slots?  Or, are you only playing slots if the machine looks like a slot machine and you’re playing in a non-social environment?  On the other hand, if you’re sitting at something that looks like a blackjack table (or does it look like a set of new fangled slots all hooked together?) then you’re deemed to be playing a table game?

            These new electronic tables have proven the folly of considering a video poker machine to be a slot machine.  We can’t categorize games by the technology that they are played on.  A mistake was made a long time ago to not consider video poker machines as their very own category.   In most ways, they are actually far more like table games than they are slot machines. 

So, perhaps the real mistake was not considering video poker machines to be slots, but to not recognize that slot machines are like nothing else in the casino industry.  They are truly what their long nickname implies – one-armed bandits (only they no longer even have the one-arm!)

            When you sit down at a table game or a video poker machine, I can tell you the exact payback of every wager on the table.  Some of the wagers require learning a complex strategy, others are simple and yet others require no strategy at all.  But, even this last category has known probabilities for each of the paying hands.  When you play Pair Plus (of Three Card Poker) you have nothing to do, but you know exactly what the odds of getting a Three of a Kind is.

            Video poker fits this mold perfectly.  In fact, the strategy required to play video poker is on the complex end of the scale.  It could be argued that this is the exact reason why it was created for a digital platform.  In theory, a casino could put out a blackjack table and deal a paytable version of draw poker.  Each Player could get five cards face down and discard as few or as many as they want.  The payback of this game would be identical to that of a video poker game with the same paytable.  Voila!  ‘Video poker’ is now a table game!

            None of this is true for slots.  Not only is there no strategy whatsoever, you also have absolutely no way of knowing what the payback of a machine.  Two machines sitting side by side appearing to be identical could be set to pay either identical paybacks or paybacks differing by 10% or more!  A machine could be changed overnight to pay 10% less than it was set to the day before and there’s no way of you knowing this.  Absolutely NOTHING is know about the probabilities of a slot machine by the Player and there is no way to get this information. 

            Saying that video poker is slots would be like saying the Space Shuttle and a coffee maker are the same thing because they are both machines.  It just doesn’t add up.  To help you better understand video poker machines and to break the slot habit, our special for June continues.  You can get Expert Video Poker for Las Vegas for just $7.95 (reg $9.95) by sending a check or money order to Compu-Flyers, P.O. Box 132, Bogota, NJ 07603.  

A Slot Upgrade?

             This past weekend, we had some friends over for lunch.  Invariably, the conversation winds up on my relatively unique profession.  Somewhat ironic in this case as one of the other guys is a hedge fund manager who counts as one of his clients one of the top poker players in the world.  Then again, some would argue that we’re both in the same general profession – casino gambling!

            I got asked the usual question of what the best games to play are and how I got started in the profession.  At one point, the subject turned to slot machines.  There was both good news and bad news to report here.  On one hand everyone seemed to agree that these were amongst the worst payers in the casino.  On the other hand, not everyone admitted that they would never play one.  For those whom are intimidated by the table games, the slots still are the mainstay – no matter how bad they pay.

            I remarked how I had just read an article talking about a comeback that is being made by ‘old fashioned’ mechanical slots.  Everyone in the room agreed that the older slots were better than the newer ones.  A few reasons were cited.  One was that they actually had a handle to ‘pull’.  Another was the clinking of the coins coming out when you won.  I actually commented that I wasn’t sure if the machines making the comeback are ticket-in/ticket-out or truly old-fashioned in that they accept and pay out real coins. 

            One of the reasons I cited for the popularity of the mechanical machines was that you could actually tell when you won or lost.   As I’ve written many times in my column in Gaming Today, I have occasionally put a $5 machine into a penny or nickel video slot machine in order to kill some time.  I then press a button that says “Play max lines” and press another that says “Spin”.  When the reels are done ‘spinning’, the machine then tells me that I either won some number of coins or that I lost.  No matter how many times I try to figure it out, I can’t tell on my own WHY I’ve won when I do!

            I’ll see several identical symbols on the same line only to find that’s not really a line to this 5 ‘reel’, 27-line machine!  Someone should tell some of the slot manufacturers that a ‘line’ usually denotes a STRAIGHT line between two points, not an up and down line that looks more like a heart monitor!  Is it any wonder that people are not having fun playing slots anymore?  It wasn’t good enough when the casinos were essentially taking the Player’s money with 92-93% slot machines, now they have to do it in a way that most Players have absolutely no idea what is going on?  For anyone reading this, please tell me – are you really having fun playing the newer video slots?  I’m sure it’s a lot of fun when you get to a Bonus Round on something like Wheel of Fortune, but do you even know why you got there? 

            I remember playing one slot machine that put me into some sort of Bonus Round.  I won about $25 (on a nickel machine) in under 5 minutes.  I couldn’t tell you why I wound up in the Bonus Round or what I was trying to do while in it!  It just kept telling me to pick boxes and I did.  Each time it opened one, I won more coins.  Hey, I was very happy to win $25 in a few minutes, but I have to be honest.  I can’t really say I had any fun doing it.  I could’ve just as easily lost my bankroll (okay, it was only $5 for the slot machine) and been just as clueless.

            As I raised this point to my guests, there was universal agreement.  While some of them admitted to still playing them, none said they had fun while doing it.  My hedge fund manager friend does all he can to dissuade his wife from playing the slots at all – just based on their horrible paybacks.

            Of course, I have mixed emotions about a comeback for the mechanical slots.  They still have the worst paybacks in the casinos and I would much prefer that slot machines go the way of the dodo bird.  There are SO many better games to play in the casino with better paybacks and that are more fun.  I know that one of the reasons people avoid them is sometimes they are intimidated to play new games that they don’t know how to play.  So, we try to make it a bit easier with our books and booklets.

            Today, May 12^th, 2011 would have been my father’s (Lenny Frome’s) 85^th birthday.  So, for the rest of May, we’re offering some special prices on our titles:

•         Winning Strategies for Video Poker and Video Poker: America’s National Game of Chance (both books) for $19.26 (his birth year)
•          Expert Video Poker for Las Vegas or Expert Video Poker for Las Vegas for just $5.12 each.
•          Any of the Expert Strategy series books (Three Card Poker, Four Card Poker, Let It Ride, Spanish 21, Caribbean Stud Poker, Mississippi Stud or Blackjack Switch)  - 1 for $4.85, 2 for $8.85, 3 for $11.85 or all 7 for $19.26

            To learn more about any of these titles, go to my website at www.gambatria.com and click on the “Products” tab.  If you would like to order any products, just send a check or money order to Compu-Flyers, P.O. Box 132, Bogota, NJ 07603.