These two games normally have little in common, but a version of Double Bonus Poker has merged the two and it can mean some serious $$$ for the knowledgeable player. Not the knowledgeable bingo player, but the knowledgeable video poker player.

I first ran across this game at the President Casino on the Admiral in St. Louis a few months ago and, since I'm always checking out new machines for playing possibilities, I quickly noticed that it had a video 'bingo' card as part of the display. The game is linked to other machines of the same type and, as various hands are received by the players, the square for that hand is marked automatically on the bingo card. For example, if a player gets a Full House with 3 Aces, the square on that hand is marked. Since the machines are linked, it's marked on the card of each machine. Whenever a player hits a hand that completes a row, that player's machine pays a 250-coin bonus, the row is cleared and is ready to begin the process over again. Before we go any further, let me show you what the bingo card looks like:

Now, as players play the machines and hit the various designated hands, they remain marked until someone comes along and clears the row. Consequently, the first time I found these machines, the only unmarked spaces were for various 4Ks and, in fact, I just needed to hit four 10s and it would have completed a vertical row, a horizontal row and a diagonal row. Since the basic game here is a short-pay version of Double Bonus Poker, four 10s paid 250 coins and 3 bonuses would have paid an additional 750 coins (250 coins for each of 3 rows) for a total of $1000 on a dollar machine! I naturally sat down to play and it sucked up a grand like it was a vacuum cleaner. That was no fun, but I knew it had to be a worthwhile gamble, even though I hadn't taken any time to figure out exactly what the game was worth to me.

Later, back at home, I calculated the value of this game and it turns out that it can be, under certain circumstances, very lucrative. In a dollar format, the pay schedule of the basic game was like this

Yes, I know - the basic game has a horrible payback, but it's obviously the value of the bingo card which adds the 'kick'. So, how do we figure that? It's actually fairly simple. In this game, we can expect to receive a 4K about once every 425 hands. That's ANY 4K, and we can't pick the one we want, but we can do some calculations based on that figure. If a row on the bingo card needs only one 4K to complete it and will pay a 250-coin bonus for doing so, we can calculate how much that returns to the overall game. If an event happens once every 425 times, it has a probability of 1 divided by 425 or .0023529. If that pays 50 coins (for each coin played), it returns 50 X .0023529 = 0.117645. Since there are 13 possible 4Ks, we divide 0.117645 by 13 to get .0090496. Thus, any row which needs just one 4K for the bonus adds .9% to the overall return on the game. Since there are 12 rows on a bingo card (5 horizontal, 5 vertical and 2 diagonal), you may find a machine which has quite a few rows needing just that one 4K to complete it. (Needless to say, if you ever find a machine which needs one of the 'lesser' hands to complete a row, sit down and go right after it; that's like found money.) Anyway, if a card has 7 rows which can be completed by a 4K, that adds 7 X .9% = 6.3% to the overall return of the game. So, if the basic game returns 96.4%, you'd be playing with an expected long term return of 102.7%! Even without the Royal, the return is over 100%. Throw in a decent slot club and you've got a good game there.

I like this because a lot of the return is tied up in hands which occur fairly frequently. I can play at a rate of almost 800 hands an hour on this machine, so I expect to see a 4K about every half-hour or so. (Yes, I know.... like you, I've gone for thousands of hands without one). So much return in a fairly short time frame is much more desirable than having it in the Royal which happens infrequently. BUT, this is a very volatile game, due to the even-money pay on two-pair, so you'll need a large bankroll; as I said early on, the first time I played I went through a thousand bucks in under an hour.

This game also exists in quarter format, but the ones I saw paid only 40 for 5 on the Full House, so the basic game returns just 95.3%. But the same .9% per row applies, so you may still find some playable situations. And, as a side note, if most of the rows need a 4K of faces or Aces, the return per row is probably closer to 1%, because we will hit those 4Ks more frequently, due to the fact that we'll often hold a single face or Ace, but we never hold a single 2-10 on a draw. (Though it might be worthwhile doing so if you need a 'corner' 4K to hit 3 rows. But that's another article for another time.)

A complete playing strategy for Doubl Bonus Bingo can be found in Dan Paymar's new book, "The Best of Video Poker Times" which costs $24.95 and is available from him, postage paid, at 2540 Maryland Parkway #141, Las Vegas, NV 89109. Make your check payable to Dan Paymar.

See you here next time.

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