I played Video Poker in Las Vegas on April 24-26, 1999 at a few casinos and came back from there with a greater appreciation of the choices I have for VP here in good ol' St. Louis. The games I found were, for the most part, only marginal in their attractiveness regarding long term return, though I must admit the slot clubs in Las Vegas are pretty good.

Before leaving, I went to Skip Hughes' excellent web site, "Skip Hughes on Video Poker" (www.vid-poker.com) and printed out his "Full Pay Video Poker in the U.S." page. At this site are listed the location of most full pay VP games in Las Vegas as well as other cities in Nevada, Colorado, Illinois, Missouri, Mississippi, etc. If anything is known about the slot clubs for these casinos, that information is also listed. I also checked out the VP information at Lodestone's Las Vegas which is at www.flash.net/~mchino/. This is an outstanding site for information on Video Poker in Las Vegas. While it covers only Las Vegas, it's has a wealth of information on games, slot clubs, promos, comp policies of the casinos and a lot of feedback from players like you and me. Don't go to Vegas without stopping here first.

Anyway, I got to Las Vegas on a Saturday evening and, after checking in at Treasure Island, visited their casino and the casino at the Mirage where I discovered why Steve Wynn is a billionaire. It's at least partly because he doesn't give anything away at his Video Poker games! There are a few 9/6 Jacks games according to "Lodestone", but I didn't find any, though I'm sure they're in there somewhere. Plus, the slot club at Mirage (usable at T.I. also) pays cash back only for dollar and up players and the best dollar game I found was 9/7 Double Bonus (99.1%) at Mirage and a bank of 8/5 Jacks with a progressive Royal at Treasure Island. Mirage is a vast sea of short-pay VP, but here's a little trick for you if you're a quarter player and you want to rack up some play at the Mirage. Over by the entrances to the buffet are a bank of dollar-format 9/7 Double Bonus games which accommodate play of 1 to 100 dollars. Yes, you can bet a hundred bucks on one hand of VP at the Mirage, but you may also bet 1 buck and the pay is proportional. What I mean by that is the Royal for a dollar play is 800 coins, whereas in most games, it would only pay 250 coins. That means that the long term payback on these machines is 99.1%, whether you play a buck or five or a hundred. So, if you're normally a quarter VP player who plays 5 coins at a time, when at Mirage you should play the 9/7 Double Bonus games one dollar at a time. In that way, your slot club points will accumulate and, while the return isn't quite as good as 9/6 Jacks, when it's all totaled up, you'll be just as well off. If you don't know the proper playing strategy for 9/7 Double Bonus, your total return will be cut by about .5% by using the Jacks or Better strategy, but even that's a better deal than all the 8/5 Jacks games I saw there. Perhaps an even better strategy at Mirage is to do what I did: I left.

I then walked down to Caesar's Palace for a go at their 9/6 Jacks or Better dollar machines. I first signed up for their slot club which is called the "Emperor's Club" and found what have to be the oldest 9/6 Jacks machines in existence. I know this by the fact that the card images have burned themselves into the phosphor of the video screen and most of the brass plating has been rubbed off. But the buttons worked just fine and the cocktail server was a major babe, so I settled in for some serious play. Caesar's slot club pays back .4% in cash, so at my usual rate of 700 hands/hour, the cash back was worth about $14 an hour to me. It would have helped if I had won, but the VP gods weren't smiling upon my venture that day, so I donated to Caesar's coffers a considerable amount of GameMaster cash. Part of the game.

The next day I went to Monte Carlo where (from a tip in Lodestone), I found some 50-cent 10/7 Double Bonus (100.15%) games. I signed up for the slot club and went at it. As you may know, Double Bonus pays 800 coins for 4 Aces, and I hit them early on, so it appeared this was going to be a better day. It was and I made back most of what I had lost at Caesar's. That's VP for you; lose at dollar Jacks and make it back at 50-cent Double Bonus. I'll tell you; if you're a quarter player looking to move up, I recommend you consider 50-cent full-pay Double Bonus before you go to dollar Jacks. Double Bonus is a fairly volatile game and you could easily pump $500 into a 50-cent machine, but in the long run it's a money-maker; at least it has been for me. There aren't any full-pay Double Bonus games in anything but dollar format here in St. Louis, but if I had a 50-cent game, it would be the only game I'd play. After 8 or so hours of play I was about even for the trip and headed back to my room. While walking by the casino at T.I., I saw their 8/5 Jacks progressive had the Royal at $6900, so I made a mental note to check it out the next morning.

The next day I checked out, put my baggage in storage and checked that 8/5 progressive, The Royal on those machines must really be funded at a high rate, since it was at $8500 which is not yet at the 100% level ($9500 is the point at which an 8/5 Jacks game has a 100% long term return), so I took a pass on it. Instead, I went back to Caesar's to play some more 9/6 Jacks. It turned out to be one of those "up and down" sessions which cost me a hundred bucks, so I cashed in my slot club $$$ and went back to get my bags and a taxi to the airport.

Arriving two hours before my flight left, I wandered around the airport terminal to see what kind, if any, of VP they had. Now, it goes without saying that the slots at the Las Vegas airport are probably the tightest in the Land of the Free, but the VP isn't horrible. It's bad, but not horrible. I found some 7/5 Bonus Poker games (98.1%), put in a twenty and discovered I was at a dollar machine, not a quarter machine, as I had thought. I figured I'd play it out anyway and then go stand in line for my boarding pass. The first hand dealt two Aces which I held and it gave me the other two on the draw. That pays $400, so it put me in the plus column for the trip. Again, part of the game.

As a summation, I'm sure there's better VP in Vegas than what I saw, but it also was obvious to me that, much like Dorothy, "there's no place like home". I regularly play dollar 9/6 Jacks with $6000 progressives and 9/7 Double Bonus games with $8000-10,000 Royals and, while the slot clubs here pay .33%, tops, I don't incur the expenses (or time) of travel. Oh, I'll go back to Las Vegas, but more to see the shows and the cocktail servers (fabulous at Monte Carlo, by the way) than for the VP.

See you here next time.

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