VP questions

WinPoker 6 suggests holding suited A/Q/small at Jacks or Better on one coin. Anyone know why? Also, which Strip or near off-Strip casino is best for both VP and BJ? I play $5 on weekdays.

The answer to your question is pretty simple...at one coin, the royal payout is so reduced that it is better to go with 3 to a flush than the royal.

But the big question is...why are you playing single coin?

(If it is because you want to generate comps by playing at the $5 level...I suggest you rethink that idea as even 9/6 JoB pays only 98.37% when you play only one coin.)

to favor flushes, which would make that the way to go. I am sure
that I have seen doctored machines in Shreveport. An entire bank of
JOBs that would not give two small pair. Two pair,yes; but not two
small pair, which is a large chunk of the small wins.

Fair question. I can't get my wife to put 5 coins in at once, but I'm working on it. VP is the best thing she is willing to do while I play blackjack. That is why I was hoping to find a Strip casino with full pay VP and decent $5 blackjack.

...with only 1 coin in.

FWIW, I think good $5 BJ on the strip is more rare than FPVP. I suggest you play downtown.

bardolator should lower his denomination and play max coin in.

...be they small or large, are quads. Hence the lesser hit rate.

Full pay VP is very rare even downtown. Best bet for this are the locals casinos, such as the Station casinos and Coast casinos.

Neko

I think I played one of those old timers once in Vegas. It was full pay, unlike the new machines around it. Even though it occasionally stole my quarters, it gave out so many flushes that I didn't complain.

I showed your notes to my wife and she agreed to try five quarters per play next trip. But she won't go downtown, so I'm still hoping to find the least disadvantageous place on the Strip. Maybe I'll play VP alongside her and do my blackjack playing alone.

Caesars has a lot of Full Pay 9/6 JOB at quarters denomination. The Barbary Coast just across the street has a lot of Full Pay Deuces (100.7% Payback) at quarters denomination. When my wife and I are staying (on comped rooms) at Caesars, we play enough at Caesars to meet our room comp requirements, and then she goes across to BC to play Deuces. Caesars has some not-bad 6-deck.

According to Skip Hughes' site, the following Strip casinos have both $1 and $5 9/6 JOB:

Bellagio
Gold Coast
Harrah's
Paris
San Remo
Treasure Island
Venetian

They might not have many of these machines, but they are reported to have at least one. Caesars has 0.25, 0.50, and 1.00 denominations.

Pick'em has a very slight penalty for not putting in max coins. A few hundreths of a percent. For 5 $1 coins you get $6,000 on the royal. For one coin you get $1,000 instead of $1,200. And you hit that royal about once a year.

Math Boy

Now that sounds like a plan. Thanks.

And you hit that royal about once a year.

It seems I barely hit a quad at Pick'em once a year. I've renamed the game to Kick'em (because that's what I think the casino tells the machine when I sit down).

We had a Green Chipper who kept good records of his 9/6 JOB play and went 120,000 hands without a Royal. That's three cycles!

It's true that a hit on the royal wouldn't be that big of a deal, but the normal pick'em pay table hurts you on several more frequent hands for playing just one coin!

Pick'em is an easy and fun game to play but the swings can be brutal. Those 600 credit quads will decide whether your trip is a winner or loser and many sessions the only 4-kind you'll see is when you have to throw away one of the cards!