A Matter of Perspective
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My perspective is probably way to simple, but here goes ...
Using Deuces Wild as the example game, the flavor of the day on these
machines is Airport/Illinois Deuces at 98.9131%. If I were going to
play in the guarenteed mode, it seems to me that the best bang for
the buck would be the $1 level at 350 hands for the price of 40
($200). If I played pefectly in regular mode, over the long run, I
would expect to lose a little over $19 while I played those 350
hands. However, in guarenteed mode, I would have payed $180 more
than my expected loss to play those 350 hands. That extra $180 is
the price of insuring that my max loss is never more than $200 in the
short term, which could easily happen. Since most members of this
group believe that short term swings eventually level out to the long
term expectation, I doubt anyone would pay the $180 insurance fee,
unless as Bob indicated, a promotion made it somehow worthwhile.
Now suppose I'm a typical tourist, with a less than perfect idea of
how to play Airport Deuces, that maybe results in playing at a level
that returns 90%. Then playing 350 hands at the $1 level, I would
loose $175 on average, again over the long run. If I played worse
than this, say at the 88.5% level, then I would loose $201.25 on
average and the guarenteed mode becomes a "good" deal.
Station Casinos may have the typical tourist thought process
correct. Maybe the typical tourist knows they have no idea how to
play video poker correctly and just wants to play a certain number of
hands with a guarenteed limited loss while having an unlimited win
potential. Maybe it takes them an hour to play 350 hands. Sometimes
they'll end up with some postive credits and it won't cost them $200
an hour to play. Most times they won't. On a rare occassion,
they'll end up with over 200 credits and actually win money. Maybe
it all averages out to a $100/hour loss. Maybe.
But then again, maybe the typical tourist just wants the bankroll
they brought with them, which they expect to lose, to last as long as
it can before it's gone. If so, they'd probably be better off
playing $1 slots on the strip, which is where the typical tourist
stays anyway.
Bill
--- In vpFREE@yahoogroups.com, "vpFae" <vpFae@...> wrote:
A Matter of Perspective
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Bob's column raises an interesting point, hotly debated:
How long after a novel's release can it still be called "new"?
[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
Bob Dancer wrote:
To keep numbers easy, let's assume that your average return for the
$100 invested each time was $90. Percentagewise, how much is this return?
It seems easy to say that $90 / $100 = 90%. But hold on. There's
another valid way to look at it. The 200 hands you played, costing $5
apiece, were worth a total of $1,000. Losing $10 out of $1,000 means
your return is 99%, not 90%.
It's still a $10 loss, no matter what percentage you come up with, so
does the percentage return really matter?
I disagree with your analysis. The 200 hands you played cost you $100
or 50 cents per hand. You average return is $90/200 = 45 cents per
hand. Per hand return is 45/50=90%. True, if you played 200 hands of
regular 5 coin dollar video poker, your coin in would have been $1000,
however your results would have been different - 'cause it's a
different game. What's different? In a regular game, you start out
even, maybe even the casino gives you a head start with some freeplay.
In so-called "Guaranteed Video Poker" you have to pay the insurance
before you even begin to play, so you start out in the hole and hope
to beat the casino even more than usual so you can cover the cost of
insurance. After all, everyone's goal is to win, not to have a
guaranteed losing experience. True most players do lose and casinos
rarely ever actually lose money, but those who play still think they
can beat the odds.