InkyAtari" Provided a link regarding "Guaranteed Play":
First, thanks for the link. Lots of talk about GP--John Grochowski and I discussed it on his radio show Sat. night plus it's a topic on several forums. (Also, it's a long thread on my "Boyd's Eye View" Forum.)
Early reports indicate it's not going over well at Station Casinos, a group that attracts lots of locals. Both John and I think it would have had a better debut if IGT had distributed the option to tourist-type casinos on the Strip. New players are more likely to want to practice with real money than savvy players who have already practiced at home on their software.
There are two meters on GP machines--the bait, located on the upper left of the screen, indicates the number of games and the hook is on the lower right, number of credits, always 0 at the start of the session. You always play 5 credits and the session ends when you either cash out or you've played all session games. You cash out you ticket with positive credits and receive nothing with either negative or zero credits.
One of their choices, 8/5 JOB, combines a poor pay table with a low-risk game, a bad GP combo for players. They'll be a "point of no return" as the number of games diminishes and you'll have to adjust strategy to compensate. An easy example to demonstrate is if you're minus 50 credits with one game remaining, then you have to toss a dealt full house and keep the trips for a shot of cashing credits.There are other strategy adjustments that are not so obvious.
In short, Stations are charging too much and offering poor pay tables on GP. If you want to try anyway, then you'd be better off with a more volatile game, like 9/6DDB--at least several jackpots would get you out of the hole. Linda
Linda Boyd
Author: "The Video Poker Edge"
amazon.com/major bookstores
"Boyd's Eye View": Free Forum
http://www.midwestgamingandtravel.com
Best Software:www.videopokerpractice.com
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