Thanks. I played them when the machines were in front of Subway, which was probably more than 6 months ago; if they've been downgraded since then, I wouldn't know about it.

almost 200k hands without a royal and now 2 in 60 days and only about 5,000 hands apart. I have a new system. I put in $100 plus my free play. I play .25 when I am under 100, .50 if my balance is 100-200, and $1 if I am at $300-$400. I play for 90 min and quit. Luckily this one was within my first 30 hands or so.

crazy how they drop in there!!

Congrats...I am running horrible, puke puke puke!

Hitting a royal with one card saved, queen of spades. Sick stuff. Nice hit.

I've been sticking lately to $1 dollar single line 9/6 JOB buying in about $500 each
session. Results have been mixed minus the incredible night I had about 2 weeks ago hitting a royal twice.
The reasons I've been sticking to $1 dollar 9/6 JOB is:
1. I get full points and bonus points for the game. Normally $1 dollar in equals 1 point...but with a daily card swipe, I get $1 dollar in for 3 points. Now 9/6 JOB is a 99.54% game, but with $1 dollar=3 points, and $1000 equals 1 dollar cash back, now the game goes up to 99.84%. Thats just with cash back. With mailers, VIP parking, comps, and so forth, it's over a 100% game every day. One day a week, I get $1 dollar coin-in for 5 points, so goes up to a 100.04% game, and that's just cash back. With mailers and comps, it's probably around a 100.29% game that day.( In perspective, can play their optimum over 100% games, and they have fpdw, 10/7 dbp, 10/6 ddb, and loose deuce, but no fpdw on the 50c/$1 level. But only getting 1 point per 4 dollars in...and no bonus points. In other words, forget about moving up VIP levels and forget any meaningful points or comps. Sometimes it's more than just Expected Return.)
2. Low volitility. Meaning, can last longer on a given bankroll. (For example. 19.5% variance for 9/6 JOB, 100.1% for 9/6 TDB. Not putting down TDB, has it's own kind of fun, but fasten your seatbelt). And lasting longer means earning more points and getting more mailers and more tickets and yadda yadda.
3. Get paid off 2 to 1 for two pair, a frequent hand that comes up about 1 out of 7 times on average.
4. I'm sort of a new "flirt" with dollar play, and JOB seems to be a safer move for now without stomache huge swings. Although hard for me saying winning and losing $500 a session is not a huge swing. For dollars, it isn't. Equavelant of $100 dollars buy in for quarters.
Anyway, going to keep playing $1 JOB for a little while until I get bored with it or loss too much, then might go to a 3 ply or 5 ply full pay 8/5 BP or 5 ply 9/7 DBP they have with full and bonus points. Staying away for now from the optimum 100 percent machines, driving me crazy that I'm playing so long on those machines and earning peanuts. My results seem to be the same anyway, might as well earn some points and comps.
Cheers

what station casinos do you primarily play at?

I would not assign a dollar value to things like VIP parking to get your return over 100%. My suggestion would be to only play on the best point days, limit your play to once or twice a month, and try to play 10+ hours at a stretch. In most cases your mailer alone should push you into significantly positive territory. I would also not value a game that returns 100.3% with perfect play that you can wager 5-6k an hour as worth your time, especially when you may need a 20k bankroll to make $15-20 an hour. There are a lot of things that should be giving you at least 30-50/hr in LV which are not hard to find if you can navigate a casino website and VPFREE to determine best games and player's club return as well as promotional days.

This is called scouting. Scouting in Las Vegas will have pretty modest returns as everything has already been picked over by twenty guys with more experience and enough money to cover all opportunities. There are other places far off the beaten track where there is no information at all. Those are the kind of places that you can find something incredible. Feel free to PM me your incredible machine finds

Good advice tongni. I already made top card status for my regular place, and it may be worth my while to scout a bit more.
I know a place near me that offers $1 job 9/6 progressive single line. Problem is, I don't like the place, and I still prefer the .25/.50c play.
If I was a pro and really cared about finding those big edges, totally different story.
But I'm not a pro, and care more about playing good games that are 99% or better and enjoying myself.
I know there are better opportunities out there. Scouting takes time and motivation. I did scout around my area with short drive times (north) which includes but not limited to: Santa Fe, Texas, fiesta rancho, aliante, so forth area. I'd like to check out the dottys near ann and Decatur and see if they have good promos. Just haven't managed to find the time to do it.
I've been off 9/6 job for a bit and playing 9/6 bonus poker deluxe with nice results.
Wonder if anybody else has played bonus poker deluxe and their thoughts on the game.

If you're gambling for excitement, then sure, it's an obvious choice because it offers higher return and variance compared to JOB.

I prefer JOB because I try to avoid variance, and I'm willing to sacrifice a tenth of a percent in expected return.

However I'll usually choose NSU Deuces if available because it offers nearly two-tenths higher return, and the escalation in variance is more moderate. If I'm playing strictly for fun, I tend to prefer wild-card games, so I think NSU Deuces may be a good choice for several reasons.

OK, I'm officially hooked.

Have been playing FPDW at the Station casinos and some NSUD at Gold Coast on bonus points day. Have not hit a "natural" Royal, but have run really hot otherwise (3 2222s, multiple "wild" Royals, way over expectation on 5 oak). Up about $350 over 15k hands on quarter machines.

Getting a little tiltier every time 4 to a Royal bricks off, but I know one will hit eventually.



Any advice on the best place to play NSUD to get a ****load of points/comps/etc?

Or just stick to FPDW and grind out small wins?


When I go home to visit family in TN, may visit Tunica and make a run at Diamond Total Rewards status. Figure all the freebies will be easily worth the small (expected) loss at the Roadhouse's 99.92% TDW. Of course, variance could make me its bitch over such a small sample size ($50k coin in over 2 days likely playing $1 machines, so only 10k hands).

I'm not very current on comp possibilities, but at Stations I would say FPDW is better overall for quarters because you're unlikely to receive any spectacular benefits playing the "up to 99.8%" machines. But if you play dollars, NSUD is your only choice.

The Boyd "Coast" group of 4 casinos offers playable deuces games on multiplier days.

South Point is another obvious possibility, although they seem to have dialed down the promotions just recently.

You missed the APDW that disappeared a few months ago. TDW is the game that pays 3000 coins for 4-deuces, which occurs every 4500 hands and contributes 13.5% to the return.

So if you play 10k hands, there's a significant risk of missing entirely on the 4-deuces. If that happens and you don't hit a royal, you can plan to lose 15%, or $7,500.

I think Stations has the game as low as nickels or dimes, so you can practice there to get an idea of the swongs. In Tunica, I would probably play the Joker Wild 2-pair instead, with a strategy card in hand to guide me through the difficulties.

Cool, thanks for the advice. Losing $7500 to make Diamond would be ****ing brutal.

VPFree shows the LVH having quarter JW2, so I may practice that for a bit to see how I like it.


Update: Doh! Now only up $150 over 20k hands. Still no Royal.

Anyone done the loss rebate at the Palms lately?

Still have a CA license, so I'm eligible.


Can't decide if it would be better to "go big or go home" playing $25 DB until I tripled up or hit the loss limit (which would be over in minutes either way), or if I should play a ****load of $1 NSUD and quitting if I hit a Royal or 2222 (which would likely mean a lot of coin in and earn me comps/offers down the road).


Also doing the loss rebate at the Cosmopolitan and have the same question about it.

Pretty sure I had a card at the Tropicana years ago, so not eligible for that one. But they're offering a 20% slots rebate for locals. Does that include VP? If it does, seems like that would be easy to game.

I don't know the rules at the Palms, but the Cosmo rebate is only $100, and the good games there are all high-denomination ($5 & up), so I don't think you'll be able to grind for comp points (because you'll quickly hit either your win or loss target), therefore I would just try for a big win. But if you do win, you can quit and come back another day to try again for the rebate, assuming the rules haven't changed from when I played it.

I haven't checked personally, but it appears to be reel slots only, which to the best of my knowledge is worthless.

Triple Deuces Wild is a game that depends overwhelmingly on hitting one particular hand: the 4-deuces. Which is ok if you're able to hit that particular hand.

The variance measurement is 97, versus only 26 for FPDW, 42 for Double Double Bonus, and 63 for Super Aces. But on the bright side, it's not quite as severe as Triple Double Bonus, which has a variance of 98.

How is it worthless on reel slots?

It isn't.

At the casino I play at usually, $1,000 coin-in equals $1 cash back, they have NSUD (99.73% 1/2/3/4/4/10/16/25/200/400) but only on the 99.8% machines, meaning no bonus multipliers and $4 coin-in for 1 point, versus normal $1 coin-in for one point.

However, they have ugly deuces wild (98.9%, 1/2/3/4/4/9/15/25/200/400) with bonus multipliers and $1 coin-in equals one point.

For me, I qualify for X3 point multiplier every day and one day a week at x5 multiplier.

So, the million dollar question is, which game is better?

Obviously if we are talking about just expected return of the game, NSUD is the favorite. But playing, say, 1,000 hands an hour at the dollar level is going to give me after say, a 4 hour session, $20,000 coin-in earning only 5,000 points, or $5 dollars cash back.
Playing 1,000 hands an hour on ugly deuces at the dollar level, 4 hour session, is also $20,000 coin-in but earns me 60,000 points on x3 days (60 dollars cash back) and 100,000 points on x5 day (100 dollar cash back).

However, ugly deuces is a 98.91% game, while nsud is a 99.73% game. A theoritical difference of .82% return. So I'm losing an extra 82 cents per 100 dollars bet playing ugly deuces versus nsud. So, with the $20,000 coin in example, playing ugly deuces rather than nsud loses an extra $164 dollars in theoritical return in a 4 hour session, 1,000 hands per hour. Taking into account the $100 dollar cash back for ugly deuce versus $5 dollar cash back for NSUD, I get $95 dollars extra cash back extra for ugly deuce. So taking that into account, seems NSUD is still the better game. A totality of everything, I'm still making $69 dollars more playing $1 NSUD than $1 ugly deuces (on 5x point days), and making $109 dollars more playing NSUD on 3x point days).

I may of just answered my question except I haven't factored in COMPS and MAILERS and SLOT VIP STATUS. Just factored in expected return and cash back.

So, my final answer is....I'm still not sure. But maybe some of you VP junkies can help me out on which is truly the best game.

Cool.

I didn't detect any advantage potential for such a low rebate percentage, but I'm happy to be wrong. Please continue exploiting the opportunity

If I understood, cash back on the crappy game is 0.3% every day, except one day a week it's 0.5%.

The good game is always 0.025% (almost nothing).

There's no definitive answer because information about comps and mailers is always imperfect, but unless the benefits are extraordinary, I don't like either option, lol, although it sounds like maybe you really enjoy that particular casino.

You could try tactfully asking a host about the mailer criteria.

Is most of the EV in video poker now in mailers and one-off promotions (like loss rebates)?

It just seems that either you can play a +EV game (like FPDW) with very very little in cash back or points (and then only for quarters), or you can play a -EV game (like NUSD) on multi-point days and hope the points make up for expected losses.

Correct. In addition, there is sometimes value in earned drawing tickets in regular promotions.

One of the keys is to hit the "break points" for the upper-tier mailers, which requires networking or lots of trial-and-error.

Yeah RIP APDW...the best deuces game Mississippi can even offer. If I knew they were going to yank that and 40/10/6 DDB, I would have played those a lot more in March.

For now, I'd play these 99.9%+ games in this order Joker > Super Aces > Triple Deuces Wild. Hell, I probably play 9/5 Triple Bonus Plus (99.80% max) before Triple Deuces. I have never hit 4 Deuces while playing Deuces Wild for quarters in my life. If the progressive is high enough, I'd also play 100-penny 9/6 JoB over all of these.

All these games are available at the Roadhouse still, what's problematic is there are only 2 9/6 JoB (or 98.91% DW44) 100-penny progressives, and 2 units with the 99.9% games. And these 99.9% units are often hogged by players that want to play Bonus Deuces Wild (99.45%) because it's the ONLY place you can play Bonus Deuces in the ENTIRE casino.

After that though, the next best deuces games in Tunica are 98.91% DW44 w/STP (99.19% w/STP) at Bally's and 15/10 Double Deuces Wild (98.86% before progressive) at Resorts at the bar in the center of the casino. But I have seen the progressive high enough to turn the game +EV (~$1610 or higher).

Still in Beginner Boomstick mode. No Royal, but Quad 2222 twice again today in about 4k hands.

How do you determine a good machine? How do you determine the theoretical payback %? There are so many games with so many different payback schedules is there somewhere to provide a quick reference?

wizardofodds.com
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