I recently played at the Fiesta Henderson and have put together an an assessment of the place.
Video Poker:
Near the rear entrance to the hotel there are plenty of 10/7 DB machines. Also there are still quite a few Full Pay Deuces Wild machines as well. There are a few machine banks that are advertising 100% or higher payback. Most of these were FPDW and so perfect strategy is tough to master, so they are no doubt still making money on these.
Craps:
They have 3 craps tables there. A $1, $3, $5 table. The $5 table is a mini-tub and at the time only the $1 table was open. Despite it being a long-run loser, I think a small amount of craps play each session is good for cover play, just make sure not to offset your BJ EV too much. I think most PBs feel that counters don't play losing games, so craps can be goood for cover. Fiesta also offers a different dice game called Ricochet, didn't check it out. No doubt all new games have a high house edge.
Pai Gow:
Plenty of Fortune Pai Gow tables. Not my kind of game. Those who enjoy it will like this play as there are plenty of table to play.
Blackjack. Right next to the $1 dice table, is a $25 min. DD BJ game. This is great because if the heat is on, a quick run over to the craps table can make for quick cover. I don't know the rules for the $25 table but I imagine that since the $5 tables have decent rules, this one should as well. The rules I found for 2 deck was no less than 65% pen., H17, DOA, DAS, RSA, splits to 4 hands, No surrender. I also got no heat spreading 1-5 on the 2 deck with wonging. They have shoe games, including a $3 shoe. I know the rules are the same as the ones above for pitch games, but I don't play shoe games and so I can't say whether they have LS or not. Thankfully, no 6/5 SD games, but they do have 1 SF21 game, although this is fewer than they had in the past, so thats a welcome sign. Fortunately for me, I doubled my session bank at the 2 deck and did so quite rapidly. Gotta love double down in high counts:)
If you are bringing the Mrs. there are plenty of slot games. Hopefully, by now you have turned her into a positive EV VP player. If not send her up to bingo if your hourly EV is high enough. I'm sure I'll get laughed at for this, but I do occasionally go up to bingo with the Mrs. Fiesta Henderson is an all-paper hall, so if granny wants to play 500 faces, she better be one helluva dauberer. I think all-paper is better than machines because if a ton of people have machines, you have that many more cards being played in competition to you. Don't play the Grande Bingo that is played at the start of the session, the cards are not a random distribution and so all players have lowered chances of winning the Grande as opposed to randomly distributed cards. I imagine this is to reduce their variance and increase their take.
Overall, heat was at a minimum here and so I think Fiesta is very playable. The boxmen and PBs are very nice to you when you are playing craps and this seems to be the focus of the PBs etc. I think they want craps players feeling good since it is potentially more profitable than BJ. I think they smile at you while thinking "sucker". As bad a bet as it was, I threw in a $1 big red because the PB who usually watches BJ, was there at the time. And nothing like a sucker bet to take the heat off. Just don't do that too much, but it can be worth being seen as a sucker if the PBs get to know you.
Fiesta is a definite play in my book. Good luck and hope to see you on the right side of the distribution curve.
