The Hazard of Short Pay Machines

           Last week, I glossed over the cost of playing less than full-pay machines.  This week, I'm going to jump into this topic a bit further.  Full-pay machines are the version of a particular type of video poker that have the commonly found highest paybacks.  The obvious example of this is what is called the 9-6 full pay jacks or better machine.  We call it 9-6 because this is the payout for the Full House and Flush.  What about the other pays?  Well since the bottom 4 pays are usually 4-3-2-1, we don't see much variation in these payouts.  Lowering any one of them would require an identical payout for two hands of different ranks.  Casinos try to avoid this where possible.

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Seek Out Full-Pay Machines

One of the key principles of Expert Strategy is to know which games to play.  For the most part, this means play the games with the highest paybacks possible.  If this is all that mattered, there would be a very long line waiting to play whatever game has the highest payback.  So, I say 'for the most part', because I recognize that if I'm going to argue that casino gaming is a form of entertainment, then the game you choose to play has to be fun for you.  This is a subjective decision.  You may hate playing video poker, or you may hate sitting around a table playing blackjack having people analyze all of your plays.

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