Someone posted a picture of a $50,000 royal flush on wizardofvegas.com and that brought back memories. Although this particular jackpot was hit by someone else, I’ve had more than my share.
The game was called “Deuces Plus” and was a 10/4/4 version of Deuces Bonus with a 1000-for-1 royal flush. They were available at fewer than ten 15-machine bars in the Gambler’s Bonus system on the east side of the Las Vegas valley. Village Pub (more than one store), Rae’s, Doc Holliday’s, Franklin’s (which changed names several times), and maybe a few others. Not only was the game 100.35% by itself, these places had 0.10% or 0.20% slot clubs and pretty juicy bonuses. The bonuses were cash (up to $500 for hitting a royal flush on graveyard at one place), “points” (you’d get 20-coin to 50-coin bonuses for various things like four 3s, or maybe a full house including all royal cards, or whatever), and sometimes other things (like “squares” in an upcoming Monday Night Football game where winners got $100 or $500).
Plus, big players always were eligible to get two meals to go. These were 10-coin machines, up to $5, so a $50 bet could turn into $50,000. I hit more than 20 of these jackpots before eventually being 86’d from everywhere they were dealt. Some months later, the pay schedules were no longer offered anywhere.
One of the irritating things about the system back then was that you could download only $100 worth of points (i.e., accumulated free-play) per midnight-to-midnight 24-hour period. Even showing up at 11:45 p.m. and then downloading for “today” and then a few minutes later for “tomorrow” didn’t solve the problem because you easily could re-generate more than you downloaded if you played for several hours and/or hit some of the bonuses. I played on both my card and my wife’s card so I could get $200 before and $200 after midnight, but still I had several thousands of dollars of free play to download when I finally had no good-game places to play.
I ended up playing off $400 per trip at Gambler’s Bonus locations without the good games. It took a while, but downloading $400 “free money” per trip (even played on 98% games) made it worthwhile. Leaving the house at 11:30 p.m. wasn’t the most convenient, but you do what you have to do. Being “irritated” doesn’t sound like the right word to outsiders because, after all, it was a very juicy game and we were making bunches of money, but it certainly wasn’t as player-friendly as we would have liked.
This was before I had an iPhone, consequently I don’t have any pictures — so I “borrowed” the pictures shown below. Four deuces with an ace ($20,000), which occurred slightly more often than a royal, would have been worth a picture too. Maybe even the $10,000 “regular” four deuces shown below — again hit by somebody else — but I easily had more than 50 of them.
In one case I was dealt a royal flush — and had to hold the buttons because the (then) 30-year-old technology on the machines didn’t have auto-hold on royals. It took 20 or so minutes to be paid as the bars didn’t have that much cash on hand and drivers would come out and deliver the money. I know they paid you for $4,000 “five aces” jackpots from an on-property cash dispenser and had to call out for $10,000 “four deuces” jackpots. Whether the actual cutoff was at $5,000 or $10,000 I don’t know because the game I played never hit in that range.
When they had to bring in money from the outside, they paid you in $5,000 “straps.” One bartender liked to put the money into food take-out boxes as a form of disguise. One night I came home at about 4 a.m. and left the box containing $50,000 in the bathroom sink at home when I went to bed. My wife initially cursed me for leaving food un-refrigerated but screamed in delight when she finally opened the box to see what food I had brought home.
During one 18-month period, I probably was playing 20-30 hours a week on this game, mostly after midnight, spread out over as many locations as I was welcome — averaging about $250/hour profit throughout that period. Although the machines were old, I ran well for the entire time and did better than expectations said I should.
I generally do not tip very well on jackpots. At these places it was different. An 8-hour “shift” would give me an EV of about $2,000 every night — in front of the same bartenders over and over again. Tips in the range of $50 per night if I lost, or $100 if I won, and more than that if I hit for $20,000 or more, felt about right to me. I wanted the bartenders on my side as much as possible when the discussions came as to who should be kicked out.
Another idiosyncrasy of these machines was that if you hit a hand-pay, any points you had accumulated since the last time you pulled your card disappeared. Since this included wild royals ($1,250) and higher, you’d hit one of these taxables every 375 hands on average. The cards were “virtual” — meaning you had to enter your 6-10 digit account number and password on a keypad to go through the log-in process, unless you mis-keyed and then it would take maybe another 30 seconds to log off and log back on again. I used the rule of thumb that if I had earned $20 worth of points since the last time I logged out, it was time to do it again. That way I never lost too much due to this idiosyncrasy nor did I waste too much time logging off and on. It was a “compromise.” These points were valuable, but the rest of the play was more valuable.
If you want to criticize/condemn me for helping to burn out the game — knock yourself out. I plead guilty. I certainly was one of the people who did this. If I found this opportunity again, I very likely would play it the same way. (And many would criticize/condemn me again.) You only get so many chances at such an opportunity. You know it’s going to end eventually. You know others are out there doing the same thing. You simply have to get while the getting is good.
A year or so after the play ended, I was in one of these places playing another promotion that was pretty good. Not $250/hour good, but pretty good. The manager (who knew exactly who I was) told me someone was talking about bringing back the old Deuces Plus game for high stakes somewhere and wanted a lot of action. Was I interested and could I help spread the word among other big players?
Yes and yes.
Then I thought some more about it. I speculated that this was going to be some kind of money laundering deal for whoever the owner would be. Even giving up 1.5% or so to the players (it would be less than that as there would be a lot of “normal” players as well who lost — but probably 75% of the coin-in on the $50-per-hand games was from knowledgeable players), he could still launder his money fairly cheaply. Assuming people who needed to launder money could very well be related to the mafia or maybe a drug cartel, I wondered if doing too well could be dangerous to my life expectancy. I was second-guessing my “yes and yes.” Well, it never happened so it’s all speculation on my part. It’s possible there was nothing shady about it at all — but in that case I couldn’t figure out how the owner could possibly be making money with this business plan.
I currently don’t have any plays this lucrative on an ongoing basis — although three times in the past two years I found such a game on a short-term basis. Players regularly complain that the games aren’t as good as they used to be. That is true, but this particular game lasted two years or so and ended only about five years ago, not 15 or 20. While some players knew about it, there were a lot of pros in Las Vegas who didn’t. (Even out-of-towners could have played while they were here. A $250 per hour play was likely more lucrative than their other options here. But for whatever reason, the play was kept reasonably quiet.)
It is not unreasonable to expect plays this juicy in the future. You just have to search for them, recognize them for what they are when you find them, learn the requisite strategy, and then play them for as much as you can afford for as long as they last. If “normal” video poker software won’t tell you how to play the game, you need to do your own programming or have a good programmer on call or on retainer.
Preserving your bankroll for special opportunities like this, which you may or may not find during your gambling career, is a form of “keeping your powder dry” for when you need it. Playing less than 100% games just because you can’t find anything better at the moment is the opposite of keeping your powder dry.
The cash dispenser was limited to $9999. All pays over $10k were dispatched.
This play was available for about five years at some locations but the promotions weren’t as good in the beginning.
You are leaving out one important consideration—the paramount consideration for most players. The VAST majority of those remaining good plays you refer to require high-denomination play, vast amounts of coin-in, and the ability (as in, bankroll and psychology) to withstand often insane variance. Frankly, the perspective of the $50-per-hand player that you write from is useless to most of us.
And yes indeed, those plays that do exist are more often than not burned to a crisp by APs who don’t have the inclination or ability to get a regular job–so they haunt every single casino, bar, and convenience store, day and night, looking for that 0.35% (or whatever) edge. There is no way that any person with a life can check out a tenth of the machines and plays in Vegas. You have to have a network of people who can share information with you–and why would you, or they, share such information if it accelerates the burnout process?
I enjoy stories from the “old days”. I wish I had been playing then so I could have one to tell. I understand that playing video poker is your job and as such you have to keep your trade secrets and certainly do not consider you to be a lazy layabout that can’t get any other job. If I had the bankroll and lived in Vegas, I too, would play a juicy game until it disappeared. I have learned so much from your columns–so keep them coming! Ignore the sour puss sore losers that can’t see good gaming information if it hit them in the face.
If by “most of us” you mean AP obsessed casino employees who work for near minimum wage and loathe anyone smart enough to get an edge over the house, you are correct. You are a truly bitter human being and your life would certainly be better off if you left the gambling industry — in fact, any form of gambling — behind and tried somehow to find some inner peace.
Hee hee. Fubster, you have absolutely no idea what kind of person I am or anything else whatsoever about me, and if you construe my remarks as criticism of you personally, then that adds paranoia to the stupidity. Your assumption that i work in the gaming industry is, shall we say, alternative facts.
I know quite a few APs and almost all of them are underperforming in life. They are smart and talented, to the extent that they could do very well for themselves in a legitimate field. But because they lack essential discipline, they can’t or won’t develop an actual career with their talents and instead, hang around casinos, inhaling cigarette smoke all day, chasing down scraps of EV. For every Bob Dancer, there are 500 would-have-beens who went broke.
I, in fact, am something like 200K ahead lifetime in a number of gambling endeavors, so I know probably more than you do about advantage gambling. But I don’t do it much, because I don’t want to live the horrible, reclusive life of an AP. Many of Bob’s posts have to do with his relationship problems. It’s hard to be an AP and have a life. Your spouse/significant other has to continually tolerate a subordinate role. He/she wants to see the new movie. You want to play a great promo at the Golden Commode that’s worth $100 an hour and is only good tonight. Whoever wins the tug of war, there’s resentment.
That’s why 99% of APs are bitter loners, and losers in life regardless of how successful they are in gambling. Being smart has very little to do with it. If you have the skills to be an AP, you can make three times as much in a real career, one where you contribute to society, experience personal growth, and leave more behind when you die than a pile of expired slot club cards.