Page 14 - July 2007 • Southern California Gaming Guide

Bob Dancer: Video Poker
ARccidental Quadruple Deuces
egular Deuces Wild, played for quarters, returns $250 for four deuces. Double Deuces returns $500 for the same hand, but takes away elsewhere in the pay schedule. Loose Deuces returns $625 for that hand and Triple Deuces gives you $750. Each of these
games may be found in jurisdictions all over the country.
take any civil or criminal action against him. Unless the casino could show that he was in cahoots with the slot tech who made the improper settings, then the casino was stuck.
What the casino could do, however, was to restrict him from the property, if it so chose. Assuming these four players used their slot club card while playing this game, it wouldn’t be di cult for the casino to check their records and determine who was playing these machines heavily over the past few months. e casino could well decide that they didn’t want these players around any more, and that would be perfectly legal. Casinos in Nevada and in several other jurisdictions can restrict the play of anyone, so long as it is not based on race, gender, or national origin.
Of course while this was going on, the players couldn’t be sure how it would all turn out. ey were regularly winning $2,000 a week or more apiece, week after week, and that’s big money for quarter video poker. Winning like that is exciting, especially since you don’t know how long it’s going to last.
I wasn’t there, but there had to be discussions about how to share time on the machines, how to keep it quiet from others, and how much they could play without the casino employees noticing that these same guys were playing the same machines every day all day long. ere are no unique best answers to how to do this, and opinions vary widely. And however they did decide to do it, it’s impossible to predict when a casino employee will put two and two together, when other players nd out and demand a piece of the action, or
How about Quadruple Deuces, returning $1,000 for four deuces? Or even more? Until recently, this game existed accidentally for a few months at a large local casino in Las Vegas, but it could have happened anywhere. And while the base Deuces Wild game it was found on wasn’t all that great, when you add 3,000 coins to an every-4,400 hands event, it adds about
12% to the return. Apparently four players were able to exploit this and keep the information quiet for a couple of months. ey certainly didn’t post it on one of the Internet bulletin boards as that would have killed the play in a day or less.
What happened was this. (I might have the facts a little o as I am getting
When the progressive did rise that high, which it did a few times, these players wouldn’t play. ey hoped that one of the other machines hit the royal so everything would look normal. And their luck held. No over- $1,200 set of deuces was hit on either machine.
e way the bubble burst was that someone “not in the know” was playing one of the two juicy machines and happened to hit the royal ush. e nerve of them!
When they were only paid $1,000 instead of whatever the meter read, they understandably felt cheated and called it to the attention of the oor people. When it escalated to supervisors, it didn’t take long for the casino to realize what the error was. e two machines
this secondhand.) ere were eight quarter games tied to a progressive. Six of these games had the
“Of course while this was going on, the players couldn’t be sure how it would all turn out. They
were shut down for a while and adjusted. Christmas was over!
progressive set normally, were regularly winning $2,000 a which means that it would
I was told about this play after the fact. One of the four players who hit this hard was attending one of my free Tuesday-morning classes at Silverton and told me about it. He had just nished reading my
week or more apiece, week after week, and that’s big money for quarter video poker. Winning
be collected when the royal
was hit. But two of the
games had the progressive
accidentally attached to
the four deuces hand. like that is exciting, especially Million Dollar Video when someone accidentally hits the wrong kind of
Apparently a slot tech got
a little bit sloppy one day
and nobody who worked
for the casino caught it.
So the four deuces hand
started at $1,000 and moved up from there.
Since these were ticket-in ticket-out machines, winning the jackpot merely spit out a ticket and the players could keep playing, so long as the jackpot was below $1,200. And it usually remained at that level because four deuces is a fairly frequent hand with respect to having the progressive rise $200 or more.
Poker book, where I talk about taking advantage of a similar-yet-di erent casino mistake, and he wanted to tell me that
these errors were still happening out there—if you can nd them.
He asked me if the casino could demand its money back because of the machine overpaying. While rst making sure he realized that I wasn’t a lawyer and couldn’t speak authoritatively on the subject, I told him that I didn’t believe that the casino could e ectively
jackpot at the wrong time. ere would have been all kinds of things to worry about.
Mistakes continue to happen in casinos. To exploit them, you rst of all have to find them. Players who do a lot of scouting have the best chances to nd these kinds of mistakes. Players who don’t scout are left with complaining that other people nd these things.
Bob Dancer is America’s best-known video poker writer and teacher. He has a variety of “how to play better video poker” products, including Winner’s Guides, strategy cards, his autobiography Million Dollar Video Poker, and his two novels, including Sex, Lies, and Video Poker. Dancer’s products may be ordered at www.bobdancer.com.
since you don’t know how long it’s going to last.”
Page 14
SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA GAMING GUIDE
July 2007
Video Poker with Bob Dancer