Bargain Shopping

The GameMaster's Secrets
Bargain Shopping

Whenever I visit the local casinos, I take a few minutes to walk around and see if any new Video Poker machines have been added or if any of the progressive Royals are higher than normal. While visiting one casino recently to sign up for their Blackjack tournament, my "tour" took me by a bank of 25-cent Double Bonus machines that have a progressive Royal and progressives on all the various four-of-a-kind hands.

This is a 9/7 game that has a basic pay back of 99.1% and the return goes up, of course, as the various progressives increase. Most people look at the Royal, but for a short-term play, it doesn't carry a lot of weight with me. What I scrutinize is the 4K progressives, which are in this case, the four Aces, four 2,3,4s and the four 5-Kings, because those are hands that can be hit relatively quickly. My goal in a play like this is to either clean out some or all of those, but if not, to walk away when others hit them. I call this "bargain shopping", because I don't normally play these machines except when there's a nice, fat progressive to be hit. When I checked the game, there were no seats available, but I saw that the Aces were at $225, the 2-4s were at $115 and the 5-Kings progressive was at $74, which is very unusual. On a non-progressive machine, the values are $200, $100 and $62.50, respectively.

I signed up for the tournament and went back to the machines. While waiting for a seat, I pulled out the card I always carry to see what the game was worth at this point. Here's the information that's on that 3 x 5 index card:

$.25 9/7 Double Bonus w/progressives
Basic Game: 99.1%.
Royal: each $100 adds 0.17%
Aces: each $10 adds 0.17%
2,3,4: each $5 adds 0.20%
5-K: each $1 adds 0.12%
Royal is worth 1.74% at $1000.

What this all means is that the overall return goes up as the progressives increase over their reset values in the proportions shown. For the game I was at, some quick math showed this: The basic return of 99.1% is enhanced by 0.43% from the Aces, by 0.60% by the 2-4s and a whopping 1.38% by the 5-K progressive. That totals to a long-term return of 101.51% (no, I wasn't that accurate, but I knew it was over 100%) and if the return of the Royal, which was at $1025, is ignored, the short-term return was 101.51% -1.74% = 99.77%. With a 0.25% slot club, the return was over 100% without the Royal!

The only problem was that I was certain someone would hit the 5-Kings four-of-a-kind any minute. This bank has 8 machines and if those with seats were playing at a rate of only 400 hands per hour, that means the game is seeing 3200 hands of play each hour. Since a 5-Kings four-of-a-kind occurs, on average, once every 623 hands, one should show up about every 12 minutes, so the progressive rarely gets above $64 or $65.

I vowed that if the 5-Kings progressive was hit, I'd walk away (and that discipline is really the key to success for a "play" like this), but after a while two people got up and I took a seat. The 5-Kings progressive was now at $77.50 and I still felt it would be hit shortly, but at least I had a shot at it. About ten minutes later, the guy next to me hit 4 Aces, but the progressive didn't reset to $200. At first, I thought maybe the machine was malfunctioning, but I looked again at his machine and saw that he had only three coins in, so he got a nice 480-coin return, but it takes 5 coins in to hit the progressives. That got me thinking that many people must have been playing "short coins", so that could explain why the 5-Kings 4K was so high. Every coin played adds to the progressives, but only those who play 5 coins get the "jackpots". This might be a sign of the times, meaning that people are short-coining to make their $$$ last longer. That creates opportunities for the prepared player, so keep it in mind.

Anyway, I began playing as fast as I could (by now it was, at least mentally, "my" four-of-a-kind), but I couldn't hit diddly. However, the overall return was growing, so I kept shoving $20 bills into the machine. After putting $140 into it, I finally hit a 4K. No, it wasn't the 5-Kings, but it was the 4 Aces! By that time, all but two other players had left, the 5-Kings progressive was at $82+ and I had hit the quad Aces for $238. That set the Aces back to $200, but the return was still over 100%, I quickly figured, so I played on.

I knew the "little" 4K would show up anytime now, although I figured that the others who were hanging in there were playing less than 5 coins at a time. In fact, both of them were what I call "pumpers". These are people who play for a while, then cash out all their coins, then pump them back in. I gather people do that in order to make their $$$ last longer, but I like my philosophy better: Win and your $$$ will last longer. Unless some other max-coin player came along, that 5-Kings 4K was mine.

And I got it. About 10 minutes after hitting the Aces, I was dealt four 5s. Now, there's a little trick here that you can use when you're dealt a hand like that. If you hold all the cards and just sit back, the progressive will continue to grow, but that leaves you at the risk of someone else hitting it. Had it been one of the other, more difficult-to-get progressives and had more people been playing, I might have done that, but I'm no gambler as you all know, so I cashed that rascal in for $83.50 and left.

I had gone to the casino to pay $200 for a Blackjack tournament and ended with a $181.50 profit from the VP machine, so that's what I call a good night. It definitely pays to do some bargain shopping at times.

See you here next time.

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Bargain Shopping

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The GameMaster's Secrets Bargain Shopping