This seems to be just what I was looking for. Thanks!

Binked the cash drawing at South Point last night. I didn't get the grand prize but got 1k as the consolation. Emergency bankroll infusion complete!

Thanks for the analysis. I finally had a royal last night at the palms but it was on a penny 50 line. Held 4 to the royal and I would've been steaming if it didn't hit. Not sure if it counts or not but I'm just glad to finally get one!

It counts, but this is why I'm down a decent amt in video poker too, The only royal I've hit in a casino was also on a penny machine.

played on 8/5 JOB tonight. I was daydreaming while playing that I would finally bink a royal and get to come on here and finally say I got one. Sad to say I did not.

My question however is as follows. If you play JOB 8/5 the payout is 97.3 with perfect play. Tonight I was using my phone to make sure I had perfect play but one of the times I went to hit a button on my phone but my brain failed and I hit redraw without holding anything. My original board was K :spades: K:hearts: J:hearts: 10:hearts: 2:hearts: I was not sure if I should hold the 3 to a royal, 4 to a flush, or winning kings. When I held nothing I got Quads. Since I played perfect except for one spin but that one spin was a winner does this now change my expected payout on the machine. This is assuming that every other hand I played was perfect.

I have made missholds before and hit hands...

Ive held just a 9 rather than a pair of 9's and got a straight or a flush (whould have been nothing if I held the pair).

you never know, but your chances of winning in the long run are better if you hold the "correct" hold than always going for the big win...

You could go for the big win... I have broken pairs of aces playing DDB to hit a royal... I have broken 2 pairs and full houses to get quads...

There is no rule book, but mathematical suggestions towards an expected return playing a certain way...

A question for you: Many slot machines (mostly $1 denom and up) have huge signs above them advertising a return of 97.4%. When you can get that return with no chance of misplaying a hand as well as (usually) increased slot club benefits from playing slots rather than vp, why in the world would one choose to play a vp machine with a return of 97.3%?

BTW, using your phone as a strategy aid could easily be interpreted as using an illegal device. Whether that would be upheld or not in court, defending yourself against the accusation could prove expensive and time-consuming.

Generally at JoB just to remind people:

High Pair > 3 to RF > 4 to regular flush >>> tossing everything.

Yes this changes your expected payout for the worse, as any mistake will. This even includes if your mistake leads to a bigger winning hand because typically in analysis, we will consider the average return of the mistake that you make, and adjust the payout accordingly.

Let's consider the hand:

In this example for a 5 credit bet:
Correct play (holding high pair) returns 7.6318 credits on average:
Accidentally throwing everything for this given hand returns 1.5541 credits on average:

Cost of Error on average: 6.0777 credits

Fortunately for you, you gained 120 credits more than a pair of kings would, but in terms of analysis, this lucky hit is already included in the -6.0777 credit result.

To generally calculate return with errors we use this formula:
(Perfect Play return in coins - Value lost by errors in coins) / Total Coin in


Assuming no other mistakes are made, then the expected return of your machine becomes:

Expected return with Error = [N*(5 credits)*(0.972984) - 6.0777]/(5 credits)*N

Here N = number of hands played

So if you played 100 hands: 96.08%
250 hands: 96.81%
500 hands: 97.06%
1000 hands: 97.18%

As far as the phone device is concerned, Tom, I highly doubt the casino would care you used it on a machine that returns 97.3% of your money with perfect play. I could be wrong on this though. Also if you're using the phone hand analyzer enough to get caught, you are too rusty at video poker and need to practice for free at home more.

For some reason I thought it would have a positive return on EV since it was only one hand.

I would LOVE to play a better EV machine but this is the best we are going to get in PA. Our slots only pay back an average on 90%. There may be some higher paying ones in the room but they surely don't point that out to people.

As for my phone app I only used it a handful of times so I don't think they would catch on to what I was doing and I doubt they would care.

Well, it depends on how you consider the error you made. If you are considering the actual result given to you due to your error, then yes the return on your machine went up because of your error since you got lucky and hit quads. This will occasionally happen due to fortunate draws, but from a general error analysis standpoint, we want to consider the average change in return due to errors. Otherwise you could argue that you should just ditch everything every time by this one example! If you actually would do that on most video JoB machines, you would get back 31% of your bet in this example.

I say most machines because in certain jurisdictions (Alabama is an example), true video poker is illegal and the outcome is predetermined already via bingo draw or other method. So if a machine like that determined you were supposed to make two pair after the draw, tossing everything would give you two pair back every time, or compensate you some other way. Most of these machines are listed as 9/6, but since outcomes are not determined by poker cards, the machine could return whatever it is set to return. While gambling in Alabama, I often held all 5 cards because strategy is pointless, and I could have a magical "genie" occasionally change my cards to their expected result.

Seems like they are sharing jackpot,
Where to begin ?

nh wp Huck Seed

Caesars Palace in Las Vegas has a $1 VP bank that shares a Royal Jackpot like that... The returns on all of them are garbage! I think JoB may even be 6/5 on it!

Start by looking at the pay tables...

Bonus Poker may be the game to play, if it is 7/5 it will be tolerable, it may be 6/5 though... Double Double Bonus will probably be 8/5, if its 9/5 then that is the game to play...

You really need to post the pay tables for the games then we can determine which one is best...

Ok will do
Ty sir

and if they are good, you will have to tell me where they are

And speaking of where they are.. Is vpfree2 totally accurate? I thought it said there was 8/5 bonus poker for .05, .10 at a local casino but i didn't see it. It was 6/5- yikes! Would like to go lower stakes when needed.

I think its up to the players to update it, so it could be out of date. I have no idea how they mod it though. If I owned a casino could I just get on there and say I have the best games in town even if I don't?

Location has always been spot on and easy to find in my local casinos. Also remember, its not uncommon to have 1 bank (someones only 1 machine in the entire casino) of the good payouts while having 250 other machines with bad pay outs. Even if they point me to a section of the casino, I've still had to look though 50 different payouts to find the right one.

Congratulations, and thank you for confirming it's not rigged. You only won $1000, but think how you'd feel if you won $20K and forfeited half of it by not being there. BTW how many drawing entries did you have and how did you get them.

VP Free was never accurate for me.. at least the properties I go to ...

Like others have said, it could be out of date, and also the machines listed on vpfree are usually a few select units in any given casino. Most machines will pay garbage to the ones vpfree lists.

$1250 coin in gives you 250 entries ($5 coin in = 1 entry) which is the maximum per night plus 5 entries when you swipe at the kiosk. Entries carry over to the next night you swipe. I was getting the max entries every night and on the 7th night, I had 255*7=1785 entries and won.

As of last night I earned 3315 entries playing every night but haven't won since.

I can confirm the 9/6 JoB machine locations referenced in vpfree at the Palms, South Point, and M resort are accurate.

what denomination is 9/6 JoB though?

thx guys, ya they may have the game available but its not quite exact on denominations i guess. if anyone needs paytable info for Laughlin, let me know and i can find out next trip. i go about 2-3 times a month.

I am curious to know the paytables at Caesars Entertainment Properties in Laughlin. I hope they are something decent... :-/