This past week, I received an e-mail from a reader who
told me about some video poker machines at the Soboba Indian Casino in Banning,
California that sort of played themselves.
After being dealt the initial five cards, the machine would mark the
cards that should be held (presumably according to some form of 'perfect'
strategy). If you wanted to hold a
different set of cards, you had to 'uncheck' the hold buttons on those cards
and hold the ones you wanted. My reader
wanted to know if this is the direction that video poker is heading.
A little over a year ago, I received an e-mail from a
company called Incredible Technologies that asked my opinion on a video poker
game that they were offering at Red Rock Station. It allowed the player to 'earn' strategy tips
through winning hands. This is not quite
the same as the first situation as this only provides the Player with tips that
he still has to listen to as opposed to going out of his way to ignore the
strategy. Is this the direction that
video poker is heading?
I tend to doubt it, and quite frankly a significant part
of me certainly hopes not. Just to be clear, my reasons for hoping this
is not the new wave of video poker machines is NOT any fear of being made less
relevant to video poker strategy or fear of losing some revenue. While most of my columns for Gaming Today
deal with video poker, most of my income is derived from table games. In the 10+ years that I've been analyzing
games, I think I've left my mark in that arena and don't have to worry about
being the video poker guru that my father was.
No, my reasons for hoping that this is not a new trend is
that I think it is bad for Players.
Well, bad for good Players. I
supposed it might be good for bad Players.
The problem with this is that it tends to move video poker machines a
few steps closer to slot machines. There
will still be significant differences.
The biggest being that we will still be able to know the payback of a
video poker machine by looking at the paytable.
However, if all Players begin to play very close to the theoretical
payback because the casinos hand the Player the strategy, then there will be NO
way that they will be able to continue to offer 99%+ paybacks. Casinos can offer games with high paybacks
because they know that such a small number of Players utilize these
strategies. They can rely on human error
to drive profits while still (truthfully) claiming paybacks near 100%. It is the best of both worlds for them.
That brings me to the reasons why I doubt this is going
to be a new hot trend that will overwhelm the video poker market. Why would the casinos want to mess with what
already is such a great situation. They
get to advertise machines with paybacks at near or over 100%. Yet, they know that the games are almost never
played anywhere near this amount. Just
like blackjack with a 99.5% payback but holds 9-15%, video poker machines do
about the same. Given the speed that
video poker can be played, the profits that can be gotten from even quarter
machines can easily outpace blackjack.
Most casinos are well aware that people such as me exist. We write articles trying to get people to
play the proper strategy. We sell books
and software to make Players, well, better Players. At the same time, casinos know that despite
this wealth of knowledge that is out there, most Players either don't bother
with it at all or make some half-hearted attempt to use it or use it and then
abandon it when they don't break the bank.
I've often surmised that I could hand out free copies of Expert Strategy
for Three Card Poker at the entrance of a casino and STILL 75% of the Players
who would sit down at a Three Card Poker table would not bother to follow the
strategy in the least. So, on the
whole, casinos are not very afraid of Players bearing strategy because they are
such a minority.
However, handing the Player the strategy and then daring
them to pick a different one may be far more than casinos are willing to do
where strategy is concerned. It is one
thing to question when a Player wants to stand on a soft 16 in blackjack. It is something all together different when a
big flashing light comes on to say STICK when a Player has a 16 vs. a Dealer 2,
and then only way the Dealer can hit is if he is willing to turn off the stick
sign and go out of his way to hit. In
the case of video poker, if a Player really wants to not use the house
strategy, then he is likely to find a different machine altogether. After all, who wants to have to turn off the
machine's decisions before entering his own on every hand? So, there is a good chance that the actual
payback of the video poker machine is going to quickly approach whatever the
theoretical payback is. Since the
casinos will never allow games to be offered at 99% in this case, there only
choice would be to greatly reduce the payback of video poker, which in turn
will scare off all the good Players while at the same time, probably increasing
the payback of many of the bad Players, as their errors will no longer be a
factor.
So, the only way I can see casinos adopting this concept
is if they have some crazy reason to scare off some of their most loyal Players
and want to reduce profits. Nope, I
don't see this as a big trend. At best,
perhaps some casinos will use them as a great marketing ploy, but that is it.
No comments:
Post a Comment