| If you're a professional player (there are VERY few of these), the need to play only the highest payback machines is paramount. If you're like MOST players, you're a casual or vacation player. While we certainly don't suggest you play poor paying machines strictly because they are fun (usually you can find the same machine with better payouts), we do suggest you factor in your enjoyment into the equation. After all is said and done, you're going to be sitting on that three-legged stool for a lot of hours. You might want to make sure you're on a comfortable cushion! How much of a difference is this really? Well, we can look at it a few different ways. If we look at it as the difference in Loss Rate, it means you're going from .4% to 4.7%, an increase of almost 1000%. For those who prefer a more tangible feel to the impact. If you were to play 500 hands an hour (an average rate for a good player) on a quarter machine, playing max-coin (5 coins), you'd put $625 in per hour. If your session is 4 hours, that's $2500. Ignoring cashback for a moment, playing at 99.6% means after 4 hours, you should have lost about 10 bucks. Playing 95.3% means you would have lost, on average, about $117. That's a very nice meal you could have had for that extra $100. Or course, if you sit down at a 9/6 and your buddy sits down at a 6/5 machine, does that mean you're going to come back after 4 hours with $100 more than your friend. Of course not, as these are averages. In any 4 hour session, a lower paying machine MAY outperform its higher paying neighbor. But over the long run, this simply won't be the case. There is one more point to be raised about this. Pay Tables are generally listed assuming max-coin bets. This is usually 5 coins. On a Jacks or Better machine, the Royal Flush pays higher when playing 5 coins vs. playing less than 5 coins (800 vs. 250). All paybacks are based on the 5-coin payout. You're always better playing 5 nickels instead of 1 quarter, assuming the Pay Tables are the same. Next time, we'll start the discussion of playing strategy, the second leg on our stool. Enjoy the game (the comfy cushion!) This time, we're going to discuss the first item, knowing what games to play. Unlike slot machines, everything you need to know about a Video Poker machine is right there on the front of the machine. Given a particular Pay Table, you can immediately know the payback. There are now countless books out there, such as our own Winning Strategies for Video Poker, that will list the overall payback of a machine given its Pay Table. There are even software programs that allow you to enter the Pay Table and will give you the payback, although these can be difficult to bring into the casino with you. All of these paybacks have been determined using computer programs that determine that best way to play each hand. We'll discuss this in further detail in our next column. Realistically, your choices are to bring one of the books, create your own 'cheat sheet', or simply memorize the Pay Tables of the games you are interested in playing. The key is to look for what are called 'Full-Pay' machines. Full-Pay machines are the versions of each game generally regarded as having the highest overall Payback and that can be readily found. Due to a variety of reasons, what is considered a Full-Pay version in Las Vegas may be impossible to find in another locale. One of the reasons that Las Vegas is called Video Poker Heaven is because of the abundance of high-paying, even positive expectation, machines. Although this trend had declined a good deal over the past few years, Las Vegas still remains the best place to find the best games. Since Jacks or Better is the best place to start when you're learning to play Video Poker, let's start with the full-pay version of it: Then there is Video Poker. Relative to most Casino games, Video Poker has complex strategy. Thus, the casinos can 'afford' to give players an opportunity to achieve higher paybacks because there is a sufficient number of people playing without Expert Strategy to keep the overall 'vig' well within the casino's comfort range. So, you may not want to walk up behind one of these 'common sense' players, tap them on the shoulder and say 'thank you', but you may want to make sure you're NOT one of the players that someone ELSE is thanking! |
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