Several recent events have me wondering about the future of my second-favorite game. Blackjack will always be nearest and dearest to my heart, of course, but I really do enjoy spending time at the VP machines. However, it's beginning to look like the party's over. The first event that sparked my thinking was what can only be described as a "mass barring" of VP players at the Greektown Casino in Detroit. Now don't get me wrong; some casinos in Las Vegas and other areas have barred VP teams, especially if they were tying up all of the machines in a "bank" or of a particular type. But as I understand it, the people that were unceremoniously tossed out at Greektown were just regular players that visited the casino fairly often, but were (gasp) winning! How rude of those people to have the temerity to win. Shame on them! The casino's reasoning for dismissing these players was that they wanted to continue to offer attractive games to all of their customers, so it was better to ask this group of winners to leave than to remove or change the games. In other words, "suckers only, please".

A different tactic was used by the St. Louis Harrah's Casino. To the best of my knowledge, they've never asked winning video poker players to leave, but they have been altering the pay schedules of many VP machines, in order to increase their edge, ever since they took over the Player's Island Casino that had been their competition at the Maryland Heights, Missouri location. Gone are the quarter 9/7 Double Bonus machines with the 4-way progressives; gone are the $1 9/6 Jacks or Better games with a progressive Royal and now, gone are all the quarter and dollar All American games that offered a 100.7% return to the rare player that had mastered its complicated strategy. The wholesale removal of the AA games happened in January, not long after one of my VP buddies hit the dollar games for two - count 'em, two - $4000 Royals on the same machine in the same night! (Just for the record, he's blaming himself for the removal of the games, but he's not going to return the $$$ he won. Well, at least he feels guilty.)

In the case of Harrah's, I know for a fact that the elimination of these games has cost them a lot of business, but will they really care? Obviously, from their point of view, the business they've lost wasn't profitable anyway, but it's all in how they measure it. When considering the AA games only, it's probably true. But what they may not know is whether or not a dedicated AA player also played at other casino games, such as craps, etc. Were they able to identify, by name, the AA players and then researched their playing habits, an accurate cost of removing the machines would emerge. But I'm willing to bet (and remember, I'm not a gambler!) that the decision to remove the AA games was based upon only the return on the games themselves with no thought to the playing habits of those who played them the most.

But complaining about casino management isn't why I'm here; trying to figure out what'll come next is. So, is there a future for Video Poker? Or, more correctly, is there a future for profitable Video Poker, at least from the player's point of view? Undoubtedly, it's never going to be like it once was. Beatable games that are based upon relatively simple strategies (think full-pay Deuces Wild here) will continue to disappear as players become more and more skillful, but I find it hard to believe that the casinos of the world are willing to give up all the betting action they get from VP. Sure, lousy games will always be available and unknowing players will always be willing to sit down at those machines and throw away their $$$ in the hope of getting lucky. But games like Blackjack and VP are popular because they contain an element of skill. It seems to me that whatever is destined to replace VP will also have to be a game of skill. Some of the slot machine companies are working on that right now and the games they're offering, at least from what I've seen, aren't based upon poker although they can have a long-term return of over 100% and they have complicated strategies, which at least to this point, people like me can't easily analyze. But, figuring out the strategies is only difficult, not impossible. So, just like any other game, these will have a period of very high return for the casino in the beginning, mainly because none of us know how to play it and then as more and more people learn the proper strategy, the return to the casino will begin a steady decline and eventually, the game will die. It's really just a battle between the game developers and the game players who won't touch a machine with a big house edge on it. How big is too big? Well, it seems to me that a lot of people will play a game with a 0.50% house edge (Blackjack, full-pay Jacks or Better VP) but they shy away from those with a house edge much over 2% (Caribbean Stud, Let It Ride Poker, etc.)

Now remember, I'm not talking about only "advantage players" here; if the casinos depended upon us for revenue, there wouldn't be any casinos. We need the uninformed, unskilled tourist as much as the casinos do. The saving grace for all of us is that the unknowing player will always lose more than what's implied in the house edge, due to playing errors. For example, if the average Blackjack game has a half a percent house edge, the average player will lose at a rate of 1-1.5% or more. So long as we "advantage players" don't outnumber the tourists, we should always have an opportunity to make a few bucks, while still allowing the casino to make a decent profit.

The problem appears to be that the casinos are no longer happy making 1 or 2% of all the "action". Nothing has made this point more clear than the Internet casinos. They offer the same games as brick-and-mortar casinos, yet they don't have the personnel costs, real estate expense or state tax expense of the "real" casinos. However, it's all but impossible to find a 100+% return game of VP on the 'Net. I fully recognize the difference between "real" and Internet casinos: brick-and-mortar casinos don't have to put up with "robot" players, etc., but the demise of good games was inevitable anyway. Most casino owners just don't like winners, period. Sure, they love to tout some big jackpot winner, but what they don't like are consistent winners, those that extract $$$ on a day-in, day-out basis. Any casino owner sees such a player as a real threat to their very existence and who can blame them? We all have a rice bowl to protect and for some of us, that rice bowl is kept full by beating the casinos at their own game. Maybe it's all a matter of ego, I don't know.

But, I will say this to the casinos: Unless the players feel they have some chance to win, they'll simply stop visiting you. I think most casino owners - deep down inside - know that and that will assure people like me will be able to continue doing what I do; winning at the casinos and telling others how to do it. So, VP is going to go through some changes, but for those of us who can figure out the new games quickly and are willing to play them even though we may not be 100% sure we're playing properly, there will always be an opportunity to make some $$$.

Stay tuned; it's just getting interesting.