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Dear John,

You recently posted a question from a guy who wanted to know where you could find information on how to play VP games with poor paybacks. I paraphrase, but that's my recollection. I wanted to reply a little earlier, but I have been on a streak getting selected for trials while on jury duty. Not the streak I need, but understanding the randomness of the process helps a little.

Anyway, there are two things I wanted to let you know...

The last time I was at Foxwoods, I wrote down the payout on three of the games and checked out the payout using WinPoker. This is what I found:

.25 Draw Poker 95%
.25 Bonus Poker 95%
.25 Deuces Wild 97.5%

In the downstairs non-smoking casino, there is only 1 deuces wild machine and the dollar bill taker has been broken for over a month. I guess they feel the 97.5% is just a little too high to offer to too many people. Could break them, I guess. I will check out Mohegan Sun on my next visit.

I put the paytable into WinPoker and developed a chart. What I did was to just play what I thought was the correct strategy and to keep an ordered list of the worth of each combination as it came up. Once you have played a few thousand hands, you have a pretty good list and you're "wrong" infrequently. At that point you look at any hand that is "wrong," even though you played right according to your new chart. Write down the exact cards and look at the Details screen and you can usually see what card(s) have caused you to be "wrong." A side club may lower the odds on getting a club flush enough to change the strategy, for example.

I now have a real good strategy for a game with a lousy payout.

I really miss Las Vegas. I may go to Atlantic City soon. Any suggestions on VP there?

That's it from here, keep up the good work.

Bill

Dear Bill,

It sounds like you have a good system to develop a strategy for a game.

There's no place like Las Vegas for having many opportunities for high-paying video poker. In Atlantic City, Claridge has the best quarter games -- many 9/6 Jacks and Pick 'Em Poker. Bally's Park Place casino has many Pick 'Em games too, and Resorts has the most. For Double Jokers, Showboat and Claridge have 9/5 DJ and Trump Marina has 8/6, which pays about the same.

The other casinos have some decent games (for example, Hilton has a few quarter 8/5 Bonus and Trump Plaza has two or three 9/6 Jacks), but they're few and far between.

Best of luck in and out of the casinos!
John

Send your slot and video poker questions to John Robison, Slot Expert, at slotexpert@home.com.

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