Yes, it usually is. However I didn't realize how much it affects my bottom line. I'll probably nit it up and give 1% next time. I already decided on my first hand pay that I would give 2%.

I'd imagine that I probably have a few hundred dollars worth of comps and probably some more on the way in the form of mailers. And yes, I'm trying to make money at it. At first I didn't really have a gameplan and just played for the hell of it but I learned about taking advantage of slot clubs and promos, and to seek out +EV opportunities. I won't just sit down at a <100% machine for the hell of it like I used to unless I know I can make money somehow.

Tipping 2% should effect your overall return by about 0.04%, no? Much better than what the IRS may claim if you end up being a winner at the end of the year...

2% IMHO is kinda high...

For $1000 hand pay I give $5 (we have these in California)
For $1200-1999 hand pay I give $10
$2000 - give $20

Basically 1%

My first $8,000 royal I gave $100 (I had only put $200 in the machine)...

$6,000 Triple Bonus Poker Plus 4aces I gave $60.

So yeah... I say 1% is more than enough...


If you start playing $5 DDB, every 4oaK is a hand pay starting at $1250.. Those I give $10...

Props for keeping track of things so well...
I have been wanting to keep track like that but I have not been successful...

May I ask what you did?

My Tier Score at Harrah's so far this year I am just at 60K ($600,000 coin in)... I just got my Harrah's E-Statement a couple of days ago... I put on 0 points last month... WOW... ME, not going to a Casino for a month? WTF!

I'm a VP newbie (just now discovering a lot of the good stuff on vpFree). Do any of you St. Louis regulars (or Horseshoe So. Indiana near Louisville) know if they have any decent multi-line machines to knock out the tier credits faster, like a 50 or 100 play? Thanks!

True, probably a little less than 0.04% if you play mostly multi-line. But it might affect your hourly by quite a bit if you play higher denom single line for a living. Say for example you play 800 hands/hour NSUD, $5 coins, with .3% CB and .3% mailer value. You'll average $66/hour at 100.33%. If your ROI goes down to 100.29% tipping out 2% on royals you'll average $57/hour.

But I can't imagine why anyone would tip $400 on a $20k jackpot unless the money didn't matter to them. It's just way too much. I also don't think I'll be playing $5 or even $1 coins any time soon so I'm not really sure how to account for taxes (or if it really matters to me.)

Spreadsheet on google docs. If you PM me your e-mail I can give you read only access if you're interested.

To my knowledge of STL at least...no. The 50/100 play machines are usually penny to dime machines and only pay ~96%. I would just play the full pay machines at $10 a hand. Do you need more than a few hundred tier credits in an hour?

I was keeping track of my tier score / comp ballance... but have not kept track of my win loss...

I have got some catchin up to do for 7-Stars:

Meh...it's not that I NEED more than a few hundred tier credits in an hour, it's just that I was looking to knock them out as fast as possible, and figured the 50/100 play machines would do that, and lower variance along the way (right?...again, I'm a newb). Thanks for the input.

They would be lower variance at a higher limit if they were full pay...

You are better off playing $10 a hand on a better returning machine than $10 a hand on a multi line lower paying machine IMHO...

I agree with this because the multi-line machine will pay close to 96% vs. 99.54% for full pay JoB for Harrah's STL. Costing $35 per 100 plays in EV, which is obviously very bad.

If they did pay the same return though, you would want to play the multi-line machine for the same amount of coin-in vs. a single line machine. The multi-line machine is way more swingy in terms of "credits" but now the credit value is 40 times less, so in terms of dollar swings, the multi-line machine will swing less. Examples of the math can be found here:

http://wizardofodds.com/videopoker/appendix3.html

Standard Deviation for 40-line JoB at 25c per hand: $155/100 plays
Standard Deviation for single-line JoB at $10 per hand: $442/100 plays

There were times I went to tackle Reward Credit based promotions...

earn X number of points get Y...

I decided to play $2 Full Pay (8/5) Bonus Poker (1 point per hand / $10 bet).

I was looking at other machines that were multi line $0.25 but they were 6/5... So if i played 10 lines, thats $12.50 a hand... just the thought of loosing 10 credits a full house annoyed me enough not to play them.

However, Recently, I did play a 50 play $0.10 machine playing JoB... $25 a push (2.5 points gained per push)... I played on 300 bucks for a while... I dont recall the return but I think it was 7/5... I dont recall the amount of points / hands I got in, but I lost it...

the best game to play for that Cosmopolitan slotloss rebate promotion is 9/6 JoB at $10 denomination so $50 per hand. its located in the highlimit room.

oh id love to find a $10 9/6 JOB game!

(for Total Rewards though...)

May need to look into that one next trip...

Any of the math wonks here (and I DO mean that as a compliment!) care to help me understand the realities of the following two machines:

Jacks or Better @ 99.54%
Variance 19.5
RF Cycle 40390

Super Aces @ 99.94%
Variance 63.0
RF Cycle 39140

I understand that the RF Cycle is just measuring the frequency of Royal Flushes. But, is the reduced variance of the JoB machine worth the .4% hit in EV? What, specifically, does playing the Super Aces machine do to my bankroll requirements (I suspect it goes up considerably, due to the increased variance, but not certain of how to figure it out).

What bankroll would you feel comfortable with on each machine? Is the strategy card listed on http://www.beatingbonuses.com/aa.htm accurate? Can't find a Super Aces specific card on Wizard of Odds. Thanks!

If you can find full pay Super Aces machine than its a cool game. Although, it has a more top heavy pay schedule so unless you are hitting 4aces, your money goes away quick.

Having that extra payout for 2 pair like in JoB or Bonus Poker really helps. I used to strictly play Double Double Bonus, but I have found that playing Bonus Poker you can play a lot longer on the same amount of money plus get a little bit of an extra "win" feeling when you hit 4oaK's...

An even wilder game to check out is Royal Aces Bonus... 99.2% return if you can find one... I played this game once.. Went through $1,000 in no time playing $0.25.... (within an hour)...

Super Aces is played pretty much just like Double Double bonus. Hold pairs... Hold Single Non-Suited Aces (but in SAB, some don't hold AK suited etc...). Dealt a full house AAAXX dump the full house... Two Pair AAXX dump the 2nd pair...


As far as bankroll... Someone told me once you should play video poker with 1.5X the royal... So if you are playing $1 (5 a push) play with a $6K roll... $0.25 play with $1.5K roll etc...


If you are wanting to grind points for comps etc... IMHO, stick with JoB or Bonus poker... The swings are much less...

You can generate strategy at the vpgenius site.

According to vpgenius, when playing Super Aces, "four aces" contributes 9.5% to the return, occurring once per 4200 hands.

By comparison, in NSU Deuces, "four deuces" contributes only 3.7% to the return.

In Jacks or Better, the contribution of all quads combined is less than 6%. (For Super Aces, it's nearly 22%.)

For session bankroll, I think the variance numbers should be a decent indicator. For a session of a few thousand hands, you'll rarely lose more than 5% at Jacks or Better because you're almost certain to catch at least a couple of quads.

But at Super Aces, if you simply fail to catch four aces or better, you'll be down 12%, and bad luck on the other premium quads could easily increase the session loss to near 15%.

So Super Aces, with triple the variance, requires triple the bankroll, for a session anyway. That's my guesstimate. And no, I'm too much of a nit to play Super Aces. If available, I'll choose JOB or NSUD instead, despite the lower return.

just got back from ac. I did not play very much vp umfortunately but on my way out the door I played dbp and put 20 in and hit AAAA7 for 800 quarters. I only held one ace so it was a pleasant surprise.

ok i have a math question. I think I already have the answer but I would like to see what you mathleters have to say.

If I were to make a bad decision and put in 1k in a quarter JOB machine that pays 8/5 what is my risk to ruin and how many hands could I expect to play.

Yea, I couldnt handle the swings of the top heavy games. Those 2 pairs on JoB and BP can let you get away with a smaller bankroll. I cant wait to hit BP in the high limit section one day. Its .25 JoB for the time being.

Not sure the math on that Barbiaux. Theres gotta be some site where you can plug in 8/5 JoB and get an idea. Maybe take the stats from vpfree2 and do an hourly estimate on how many hands per hour you normally play. ???

Ok. I saw it was 98.48% I saw you were asking how many hands. Not per hour.
About -$15.20 per 1k (800 hands) So umm... i came up with approx 52,800 hands to play based on those avgs. -$1003.20
Of course that includes the RF during all those hands.

Big promo coming up?

I plugged these numbers into my excel sheet that calculates EV, standard deviation, hourly rate, etc. The formula can be found at http://wizardofodds.com/videopoker/appendix3.html. For quick reference, the standard deviation of n total hands is the standard deviation of one hand * sqrt(n) * bet per hand.

If you're playing quarters, after 10k hands of full pay JoB, EV is -57.5 with a standard deviation of 552.19. So I'd be comfortable with at least 1k.

For Super Aces, EV after 10k hands is -7.50 with a sigma of 992.16. I think you need at least 2k for this game.

You can run simulations for certain numbers of hands at www.vpgenius.com for each game.

Just found this excellent article on RoR calculations for video poker.


http://blackjackforumonline.com/content/VPRoR.htm