so I'm headed out tomorrow to vegas for a few days for a conference - is Red Rock/GVR the best place for odds and these video poker varieties? I'm hooked on multi-strike, haven't tried dreamcard yet but figured I'd give it a go. Assuming I'm not going to find as good of pays on the strip, but with leon going to wynn and playing, now I'm not so sure..

Good luck! I'm by no means the best resource- you may have surmised from my previous TRs but I fell into playing at the Wynn mostly due to my dad's (and now my) comps. As far as the Wynn goes, it only has a few full pay VP machines from what I have found- all are TDB, some are on spin poker and 1$ credit is the minimum. Everything less than 1$ they rape you on the paytables (and most machines above 1$, honestly).

I've heard good things about Red Rock and the other station casinos. From previous research/other posters, Red Rock appears to be the only place in town for multiline, good paytable dream card. Other than that, stay off the strip and go to places that cater to locals if you're looking for good paytables.

The Orleans has a mountain of VP machines of a greater variety than I've ever seen, but the paytables are not good. It might be a good place to get your weird multiline Dreamcard fix and not lose your shirt because they have nickel and dime denominations, but it's not the place for serious play. fyi

Here's the list of good video poker paytables in Vegas.

http://www.vpfree2.com/casinos/by-region/las-vegas.html

If SD is San Diego and not South Dakota, Coops and Cali Comfort are both solid.

Phil's of course is an abomination.

SD is indeed San Diego. Thanks for the info, never tried either of those places (I stopped actively looking years ago). The fact that you think Phil's is terrible, like I do, makes me think your recommendations have merit. So thanks!

Day 2 AM

I finally get a deal I've been looking for- god knows how long it's been.



The last time I got 4 aces at the Wynn was 1/2016. I know this, in part bc of the result- I drew at the kicker 5 times and missed in all 5 spots. To say I was disappointed was a massive understatement- the hand ended up paying 800 x 5 = 4000, = the same amount as ONE 4 aces w/kicker.

With that unpleasant memory still fresh in my mind, I turn the video on, pray, and hit the "draw" button. My hands started shaking when my conscious brain processed the result in front of me-



Now that is running well- the kicker in 3 of 5 spots, when mathematically it should show up 1-2 times. Biggest single hit of my life, and completely erases the debacle from the day before.

I bask in the glorious feeling for a while, then continue to play. I pump about 1500$ back into the machine when I hit this out of nowhere-



Now I'm up 7K for the trip, when I was down 7K an hour before. Such a sick swing.

I just have this unshakable feeling that today is going to be the day I "break" this machine, fueled by stuff like this-



Note 2$ credits. Same draw, literally 3 hands later...



And then, I switch back to 1$ credits, 5 lines and 10 hands later get the SAME DRAW-



Note I am missing the king of hearts ALL THREE TIMES. Unfortunately, I miss every time. It was an exciting flurry of hands though- the possibilities!

At some point, I decide to switch to "deuces wild bonus" or something just to change it up. 5 of a kind pays >100 credits, up to 400 for 5 aces. 4 deuces pays 1000, 4 deuces w/ace pays 2000. Royal of course pays 4k. The major downside is the straight- only pays 5 credits with a max bet (same as trips).

I get some serious play out of the machine, as well as some great draws and a lot of fun-



Which becomes this-



Darn.

I continue playing; despite not hitting any hand pays (not really expecting it bc short of 4 deuces w/ace or a royal) I'm up for the deuces wild session- consistently putting in 100$ and cashing out a 3-400$ ticket, etc. Then, I play a hand and the machine locks up- that's weird, what did I hit?



Totally not expecting this, and the machine had the courtesy of giving me an ace as well!

That's a good stopping point. It's time to meet my parents for lunch and then check in (we're staying at the Wynn for the rest of the trip, my dad is playing in a slot tournament that Sat/the day I leave). I swing by Mecca to my dad-



We eat at the little cafe near the sportsbook- simple fare, we all get salads, sandwiches, etc. Nothing worth taking a pic of.

I have a standard room, and my parents have a salon suite.





My room- good enough for my purposes.



View from my parents' suite- the waterfall in front of Lakeside is visible, and the single buildings in front are some of the private villas that we don't qualify for



Suite bathroom.



Main room.



Private massage room, in the suite.



Standing in the massage room, looking out. Main door is to the right, main room is to the left, extra bathroom is straight ahead.



Suite master bedroom.

Rest of day 2 to follow!

Coops is the stone cold nuts.

BT's Southern BBQ near the 56 is very good too.

Both cock on Phil's..

Only TR to rival DSB's.

Thank you for sharing the roller coaster leon.

Im heading to vegas on friday and have informed everyone that stopping at red rock to play multi line DC is mandatory. Hopefully it works like your day two.....

Very nice Leon ! You sure do these trip reports right.

After having such a disastrous first day -7k how do you manage the will to go back down and start hammering buttons again ? Good thing you did though, wow.

Hope so too man, good luck. I left a lot of dealt quads and royals in there for someone else, apparently...

Thanks!

I guess part of it is experience- go through enough swings and they become less meaningful. We all can relate to losing that first 100$ pot- it seems like the end of the world. Then, lose enough 1000$ pots and 100$ is meaningless. And so on. So I guess the sad part is I've had enough losing days like that that I am somewhat immune.

The second part is the realization that I'm playing for fun and it's -EV. If I still want to play, and I have the money, well... past results are in the past and tomorrow is another day. Plus it was only the first day- I'm there to play, and if I sat out the rest of the trip that would have been just as unfun as losing. As they say, the next best thing to gambling and winning is gambling and losing

The last part are the upswings- they happen as well (as Day 2 shows). We don't ALWAYS have to run bad. And that's what keeps us all coming back...

Wow, apparently the odds are right to discard a pat straight flush and draw for quads? that's kinda sad to see ordinary quads only paying 20.

Why did you keep cashing out tickets of $300 to $400? You wanted to avoid a hit that took you over $1200? I thought they only did the handpays for a single win over $1200.

BTW, vp2free is often out of date or flat out missing machines. The only way to be sure is go and check in person.

If you're talking about that deuces wild hand, I actually don't know, but I do know one thing- if I get dealt three deuces I'm going for the 4th basically every time, simply from the "I'm playing for fun/want a big score" aspect.

The ticket cashout thing is simply one measure of control I've instituted. I have found from long experience that I lose less if I cash out tickets over a certain amount, EVEN IF I immediately feed another 100$ bill in. There's something about having credits in the machine that makes it too easy to just keep pushing buttons, lose more, etc. Having a ****load of tickets, I can play through a session and count up all the tickets I've cashed out and realize I'm "only" down a certain amount, etc.

If I just feed bills in one at a time, I'd get the same play but at some point I'd (most likely) look at it and say, "I'm down X, and I've got Y left to play with". The ticket way allows me to see that "I've played through all my bills, I've got this much in ticket, so I'm actually only down X, DO I WANT TO KEEP PLAYING?". Sometimes the answer is no.

I also will take stacks of tickets and convert back to cash periodically, so I can slow things down a bit. I try never to feed a ticket into a machine for playing credits- that puts "too much" in at a time and increases the likelihood I'll donk it all off.

Hope that makes sense.

Resident or frequent visitor?
I'd love a video poker trip report from Hollywood Casino

One thing on vpfree - sometimes you can get an update by going to their yahoo forum and asking someone if they have been recently

Apologies if mentioning another forum is illegal but it doesn't have anything to do with what we would normally discuss here

Not really, but that's okay.

Leon, I noticed your 4 Aces bink was NOT on Dreamcard.

AND if you were playing Dreamcard you only would have it for .50, instead of 1.00.

I'm going to stay away from Dreamcard..the variance might cause a heart attack..even at my .25 level.

Going to use the "if it was meant to be, it was meant to be" logic..

I can only speak for full-pay deuces wild, but for that the only hands you keep with 3 deuces in it are wild royals, and 5 of a kind if it's T through A. I think that's the correct strategy for most other pay tables, but if leon was playing bonus deuces, it might be different, but I doubt it.

Resident. I'm mildly curious to see what they have, but the traffic is now supposed to be horrendous to/from there, plus I'm already an established player at another casino (that has decent games available). I'd need hard, on-the-ground evidence from someone that Hollywood has something worth playing before I'd venture over there.

Haha ok- well, just think of it as a measure of control for me to not donk off even more money.

No, not at dreamcard- I'm done with that (for a while, anyways...). I got absolutely nothing at DC.

As to whether you should stay away or not... can't help you. The thought of being able to have more premium draws IS very appealing, but if they never come in you'll just go busto faster. I'd think your likelihood of making a score is higher too, though.

Geez, what are you drawing to? 5 of a kind and Royals? Even if you're just going for premium quads you have to hit 2 cards on the draw (unless your quads kicker is already good).

I'm too easily confused to play deuces.

Sure doesn't seem that way. I had tons of DC trips and almost never hit a boat and quads only once. That was 3-line and 5-line too.

I believe I'll join y'all in the the never-dreamcard crowd.

Yea I'm not really sure what your question is. In regular deuces wild, there's no such thing as 'premium quads' (except for quad deuces, obv), and so there is no such thing as a kicker.

Here you go. Premium quads, WITH A KICKER, at (loose) deuces wild. As you probably figured out, my normal game is TDB. FML.