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Poker Slot and Players
Slot Players
In sporting events, “invitational” are staged for athletes of a certain level of accomplishment. They are the opposite of “open” events, where all comers are allowed to compete. In video poker and slots, an invitational has about the same meaning. Proven players, however defined, get invited to a casino for a weekend or so where something good happens. For example, $50,000 may be given away after some sort of competition. In the late ‘90s, several Las Vegas Strip casinos held monthly invitational. The best part was that these casinos had machines with schedules that gave skilled players an advantage even before the value of the giveaway was added on. Shirley and I could be counted on to accept every invitational at Treasure Island, the Mirage, the Golden Nugget, and occasionally others. They weren’t the only invitational in town by any means, but they were the ones we enjoyed the most.
One of the nice things about these events, especially for Shirley, was that you tended to see the same people over and over again. Shirley is much more social than I am, and after she moved to Las Vegas from California, it took a few years for her to develop a circle of friends. In the beginning, her social life was these parties.
Advantage to Slot Players
Some of the giveaways were drawings. You might earn one drawing ticket for every $3,000 or so in coin-in over the weekend. Then on Saturday night, the casino would draw tickets out of a barrel to give away the prize money. Video poker players had a huge advantage over slot players, in that they could earn tickets while playing a game where they had the advantage. A .67% slot club on top of 99.54% Jacks or Better was common at the time. That adds up to 100.2 1% if you played perfectly. A .21% advantage meant that for every ticket (requiring $3,000 of play) you received; you also earned $6 from play. Plus the tickets might have an average value of $8. A slot player, on the other hand, typically faced a 4% or so disadvantage. So every ticket the slot player earned cost $120 and it still had the same $8 value. Consequently, video poker players had incentive to play a lot of hours. Slot players, on the other hand, might have a budget of $3,000, or $10,000, or whatever. When they lost it, they quit or make money by poker bluff. Or even if they were ahead, they played a relatively modest amount. They knew who had the advantage and it was spelled M-I-R-A-G-E. Thus video poker players would earn dozens of tickets, while slot players earned only a few.
Drawing Tickets
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| Jacks Back and Flush
Sometimes called Jacks and Reverse, or Jackson, this game proceeds exactly like ordinary Jacks. If no one opens for high on the first round, the game reverts to Lowball Draw. If no one opens for low, a new deal must be made, usually after sweetening the ante. In any event, act promptly when you hold a small straight or flush in this game; if you have to stop to figure out whether an eighty-seven flush works better for high or low, the opposition will quickly peg you for a pat hand. Jacks Back is one of the better "Dealer's Choice" games, and is lust the ticket to liven up a slow session of Jacks
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For giveaway drawings, I worked out the “equity” (the value of being in the drawing) as follows. If everyone got one drawing ticket, I divided the amount of money being given away by the number of online poker players. For example, if 200 players were splitting $50,000, the equity would be $250 apiece ($50,000/200 = $250). Of course, I rarely won precisely $250. I usually won nothing. And sometimes I scored $1,000, $2,000, $5,000, or more. However, the average equity provided a good approximation of what I would make per event if I went to enough of them. If the equity was based on the number of tickets earned, our chances increased greatly, because Shirley and I earned far more tickets than most of the other players.
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