Craig,
Congratulations on your good fortune on the VP machines at the
airport. It sounds like you had a great time in Vegas.
I personally do not play any machines at the airport because they are
widely known to be among the tightest in town (probably because
everyone has to go through there, and people waiting on a plane can't
just hop over to another casino). You may be thinking, "How can you
say those machines are tight? They were overflowing with quads and
even gave us a royal!"
To understand this better, I recommend reading Bob Dancer's most
recent column at
http://www.casinogaming.com/columnists/dancer/032503.html. 9/6 DB is
not good VP by Vegas standards. It returns just 97.8% (assuming you
play each hand optimally), while machines paying back over 100% are
widely available. Even so, it is certainly possible to hit several
quads in a short period of time, even on a 9/6 DB machine. It's even
possible to sit down and hit 2 royals in 10 minutes -- things like
this can and do happen! However, be assured this is not the norm.
By law, the cards must be dealt randomly, meaning that you'll get a
quad roughly once every 420 hands (and a royal once every 40,000
hands). Sometimes you'll get lucky and see several quads and a royal
in 100 hands. Other times you'll go 1500 hands and never see
anything above a full house. But there's no way to predict ahead of
time when or where the "good luck" will happen. In the long run, the
numbers will average out.
On the other hand, I can't dogmatically say that no one should ever
play the airport machines. Quarter 9/6 DB costs about 3 cents per
hand to play (on average). To some people waiting on a plane, the
entertainment they get is worth that cost, and you may be one of
them. I also see gambling as entertainment. It's just that I
stubbornly refuse to pay for it, always insisting on having a coupon
or playing 100%+ machines, preferably both. 
I'm glad you had a great time, and I hope future trips go as well.
Hang around this group long enough and visit the links, and you'll
learn enough about VP to gamble for free in Vegas.
We just returned from a very enjoyable week in Las
Vegas. The roar of the crowds watching the multiple NCAA games could
be deafening at times, but very exciting.
We flew home last night and there were no lines at the
airport. The security checkpoint was very quick and we didn't
even
have to show a photo ID until we were boarding the plane.
I wanted to comment on the video poker machines at the
airport. I think they are the best machines we play while in Vegas.
We always allot ourselves a little time to play before heading home.
They have some 25¢ 9/6DB poker machines and we usually hit several
quads in a very short time. We saw 3 people hit quad Aces in about 5
minutes last night. I hit quad 9s, my wife hit quad 4s and to both
our surprise, a royal flush. That was a great way to finish a trip
to Vegas.
We played double pay poker in several places and we
both like that game a lot. The pay tables seem to be favorable and
if you get dealt something you can really win a lot. A dealt royal
pays 60,000 coins. I was talking to a woman who had been dealt a
royal twice. We played at the nickel level but I was dealt a
straight flush (2500 coins) twice in one session, plus we hit quad
Aces with a kicker (4000 coins) in Triple Double Poker mode. I would
like to know if anyone else has any comments on this game.
I have only posted a few times but would like to
comment that it is very enjoyable to me to read some of the trip
reports and comments made by many of the people who post to this
site.
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--- In vpFREE@yahoogroups.com, Craig Kleinberg <ck6266@y...> wrote: