Ask the Slot Expert: Video poker deja vu all over again

Question: Can you explain how continuous card shuffle machines work?

I like playing 3-card poker. One casino has a shuffle machine and the other has a dealer shuffle the cards. I am wondering which has the best odds for the player?

Answer: Continuous shuffle machines (CSM) don't actually shuffle the cards, at least not in the sense of having a little hamster inside who takes half the cards in each paw and does a Bridge Shuffle. The machines randomly put cards into slots in the machine and then spit out the cards from those slots to the dealer. The actual procedure varies by manufacturer.

Most machines have a circular protrusion. If you took off the cover, you'd see the carousel that has the slots for the cards.

You can see a shuffling machine in action with its cover off here.

Someone correct me if I'm wrong, but I think the odds for Three-Card Poker are the same for CSM or hand shuffled.

You'll probably lose more money at the table with the CSM, though, because the game doesn't have to stop for the dealer to shuffle the cards. You'll play more hands per hour and, in the long run, lose more money.

It was deja vu all over again.

Playing multi-hand video poker, I just couldn't hit any premium hands. The trend on my credit meter was a slow descent to $0. I was hitting plenty of low-paying hands, so I wasn't in free fall. Near the end of the session when I had almost played the number of points I had planned to play, I finally hit a string of good hands and I went from nearly a total loss to almost breaking even.

Two days later, it happened again. Another slow descent to bust with a late session rally. This time, I left with a $150 profit.

Or did I?

This time I would have run out of credits if I hadn't put more credits on the machine. Notice that I didn't say that I put more money in the machine. I didn't. I redeemed points to get more credits on the meter and to keep me in the game.

I actually redeemed $200 worth of points. Plus I played $25 in bounceback play that session.

A note on terminology: Because there are no standard terms, I'm using bounceback for the free play that the casino gave me to get me to come back. It can't be converted to cash or cashed out, only played through a machine. Conversely I could have redeemed the points for cash and put that in the machine rather than redeeming them at the machine.

So, did I have a profit of $150 or a loss of $50 or a loss of $75. Should the bounceback cash and redeemed points be included in my profit/loss calculation?

I think it's pretty clear that the bounceback play should not be included in my coin-in figure. There's nothing else I can do with that money. It's not my money in play. Anything I win is pure gravy.

Note that the casino includes these non-cashable credits in the calculation for the machine's long-term payback. That calculation doesn't care about the source of the bet.

What about the play I got from redeeming points? Should that be included in my coin-in figure?

Whether there's even a debate depends on the slot club rules.

If the only thing you can do with the points is convert them to free play, then they're the same as my bounceback cash and should not be included.

What if you can also exchange the points for food or merch? Now there is an opportunity cost for converting them to free play. This situation is still similar to bounceback cash -- you have limited options. It should not be included.

Now, what if you can also convert the points to cash?

Consider this: If you redeemed your points for cash and then put that cash in a machine, there is no question that the cash you received from redeeming points should be included in your coin-in total.

So why shouldn't points you redeem at a machine also be included?

Nevertheless I don't include them and consider myself up $150 and not down $50. (And for the IRS agents sharpening their pencils in anticipation of auditing my tax returns, that's also what I report.)

But here's the paradox: If I had redeemed the points for cash and played with the cash, I would consider myself down $50 for the session.

Yes, but then I'd also have to log $200 in gambling income from redeeming the points. Net-net is +$150. Might as well just redeem points on the machine.

I think it was Bob Dancer who said that he thinks that consistently redeeming points for cash might be a black mark on your file. You can walk with the money. He recommends redeeming points at the machine.

I actually had to do multiple redemptions of points. Station Casinos limits you to converting $50 worth of points at a time. I redeemed only when my credit meter fell below $50, so I redeemed four times that session.

One time, I thought something was wrong with the system. Even though one screen said that I had more than enough points available for a $50 redemption, I got a message saying that it was not available when I went through the steps.

I've had occasional problems with slot club systems in the past. I still had credits so I continued playing and hoped that the problem would clear.

The problem did clear, but the solution had nothing to do with their system. The problem existed between the chair and the machine. I was pressing the wrong icon. Even though I had pressed the right icon to redeem points two times before, this time I had a brain fart and hit the icon to collect bounceback cash. Doh!

In the beginning of my career, I attended many software development conferences. One of my favorite session topics was user interface design. The common theme of all of the speakers was that the interface should be designed to prevent the user from making a mistake.

One way to prevent a user error is to disable options that are not appropriate.

For instance, the Einstein Brothers app on my phone shows all of the different rewards that are offered, but the only ones that are enabled are the ones that I have enough points for.

Rather than letting me choose a high-priced reward and then displaying an error message saying that I don't have enough points for the reward, the programmers have prevented that error from happening.

The Stations Casinos slot club menu screen could have disabled the icon for activating the bounceback cash after I had played it all. Alternatively, it could only show the icon when a player has bounceback cash available.

Either way would have saved me a minute of cursing at their system and two minutes of cursing at myself.

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