Hello, everybody, I'm the new manufacturers rep for GIT Gaming Inc, a
gaming technologies company and maker of the most unusual VP games on
the market. GIT Gaming is proud to announce the newest addition to
its line-up, a game officially called "Consolation Poker", but which
we affectionately refer to as "Jello VP."
We call it Jello partly in recognition of one of its original
inspirations, a man named Jello if you can believe that, but also to
denote that this is the soft side of Video Poker. It's not all harsh
and strict and sharp-edged like an ice sculpture, it's soft and
forgiving, like a bowl of jello. This game is willing to bend the
rules a little bit, to make losing all your money a kindler and
gentler experience.
Been slaving away all day to get that elusive royal, and you keep
coming up with 4 of the right cards but scoring nothing? No problem!
Jello VP pays you 35 coins for every 4-royal you get. Getting shut
out drawing to 4-card flushes, and think you finally have one only to
discover the color is right but the suit is wrong? No problem! Jello
pays for that too. Or how about drawing to an open straight time
after time, and it seems like every time you get back the same number
card you threw away? No problem! We pay for that too!
All-in-all, Consolation Poker pays you extra for 10 common situations
which often frustrate the dedicated VP player. And all of this in
addition to a fairly traditional pay schedule for Jacks or Better. To
pay for the extra 10 consolation prizes, we've reduced the payout on
Royal Flushes from 800 to 100 (but what do you care? You'll never get
one of those!) and on two pair from 2:1 to 1:1. And we've had to trim
the FH/Flush hands from 9/6 to 8/5. But in exchange for those minor
give-ups, look at all the extras you get:
1. "Pair Tens" pays 1:1. Just like Jacks, Queens, Kings, and
Aces. Hey, you have to have them all for the royal don't you? So why
struggle over whether to hold the 10 and carry dead weight, or
discard it and lose a possible royal? In Jello Poker, you don't have
to we pay for ALL of the high cards, 10s included.
2. "Trip Aces" pays 8:1 instead of 3:1. Trip aces is a big deal.
One more card would have been 4 aces, which every VP player lusts
for. So why treat it as regular trips? Well, we don't.
3. "No change straight draw" pays 1:1. If you have JT984, and
you throw away the 4, what usually happens? Why, you get another 4
back on the draw, at least according to Murphy's Law. Well, we put
Mr. Murphy in your corner if this happens to you while playing
Jello VP, we'll give your bet back.
4. "Color flush" pays 1:1. You've been drawing all night to
those 4 spades you keep getting, and every time a red blotch ruins
the picture. At last the draw is a beautiful black. But wait, what's
this, it's all squiggly and stuff and no point on the end, oh no it's
clubs another loss again. Well, not playing Jello Poker, it's not.
Draw at least the right color and we'll give you your bet back, and
you still have every chance to make 5 if you finally get the right
suit.
5. "Pat 2 pair w/o FH" pays 3:1. If you regularly play JOB or
other games that pay 2:1 for 2 pair, and you temporarily switch to a
game with better payouts on other lines but which only pays 1:1 for 2
pair, you know that 2 things immediately begin happening. First, you
start getting 2 pairs dealt to you almost every other hand. Second,
virtually none of these hands will convert into a Full House. Am I
lying or am I telling the truth? Now, in Jello VP we unfortunately
had to lower the 2 pair payout to pay for all the other goodies, but
we'll take care of you in this common Murphy predicament. Here's what
we do if you get dealt 2 pair and hold them, drawing the fifth card
to try for a FH, and you don't get it, we'll pay you 3:1 instead of
1:1 for that 2 pair why, that's even better than JOB! And if you do
happen to hit the FH then of course it's an 8:1 payoff.
6. "Quad Aces" pays 80:1. We know you've been pounding away
looking for 4 aces in all those expensive high-variance games, hoping
for the big payoff and never getting it, and when you do finally get
4 aces you're usually playing JOB so it pays 25:1. Well, even though
we're basically a JOB-type game, we'll keep you covered on the 4 aces.
7. "25th Consecutive Failed Trip Draw" pays 5:1. Sometimes you
just can't hit a 4OAK no matter what you do, even if you're being
dealt trips every hand. You know that when you hold trips, you should
draw the 4th matching card about once every 24 attempts. If this
happens in Jello Poker and you go 24 hands without hitting a 4OAK,
we'll take care of you. We pay you 5:1 for the 25th such attempt, and
EVERY ONE THERAFTER until you finally hit one.
8. "Staight Flush By 2s" pays 60:1. Not much looks prettier to a
mathematically inclined mind than consecutive numbers all in the same
suit, but some other things come close like an ordered progression
by 2s like 2468T or by 3s like 258JA. So we pay for all these too.
9. "Staight Flush By 3s" pays 80:1. See above.
10. "4-card royal" pays 7:1. The other jackpot hand, 4OAK,
already offers consolation prizes when you get 3/4 or sometimes 1/2-
way there, so why not the royal too? Jello VP says hell yeah, you get
four-fifths of a royal, and you've got a nice payout coming.
So that's the game in summary. Following is the full, consolidated
payout table. Be sure to ask your favorite casino for the game, and
if they don't have any yet, why just send 'em my way! And happy royal
hunting to all of you!
100 Royal Flush
7 4-to-a-royal
50 Str Flush seq
60 Str Flush by 2s (4,6,8,Q)
80 Str Flush by 3s (2,5,8,J,A)
80 4K A
25 4K
5 25th conseq trip draw
8 FH
3 Pat 2-pair, no FH
5 Fl
1 Color Flush
4 St
1 No change 4-draw
8 3K A
3 3K K-2
1 2 Pair
1 10s +
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Notes on constuction I used the basic JOB game for starters, and
tried to calculate trade-offs where one change was the offset of
another change. Knowing that with such drastic changes there was
probably substantial room for ER improvements through strategy
changes, I tried to leave some extra cushion. The above paytable,
executed using straight JOB strategy, would yield about 96.26%. I'm
guessing that with perfect strategy for this paytable the ER is going
to be around the 100% point. Following is a summary of my
calculations for JOB and the new game. If anybody has a program that
could calculate the actual perfect-strategy ER on a game with non-
traditional pay hands, please run this through and let me know the ER.
JOB Jello
Hand Desc Pay Prob Value Pay Prob Value
Royal Flush 800 0.000025 0.0198 100 0.000025
0.0025
4-to-a-royal 0 0.000000 0.0000 7 0.001238
0.0087
Str Flush 50 0.000109 0.0055 50 0.000109
0.0055
Str Flush 2s 0 0.000000 0.0000 60 0.000066
0.0039
Str Flush 3s 0 0.000000 0.0000 80 0.000022
0.0017
4K A 0 0.000000 0.0000 80 0.000197 0.0158
4K 25 0.002363 0.0591 25 0.002166 0.0541
25th trip draw 0 0.000000 0.0000 5 0.000500
0.0025
FH 9 0.011512 0.1036 8 0.011512 0.0921
Pat 2-pair 0 0.000000 0.0000 3 0.004221
0.0127
Fl 6 0.011015 0.0661 5 0.011015 0.0551
Color Flush 0 0.000000 0.0000 1 0.009913
0.0099
St 4 0.011229 0.0449 4 0.011229 0.0449
4-draw same 0 0.000000 0.0000 1 0.005615
0.0056
3K A 0 0.000000 0.0000 8 0.006204 0.0496
3K K-2 3 0.074449 0.2233 3 0.068245 0.2047
2 Pair 2 0.129279 0.2586 1 0.129279 0.1293
10s + 1 0.214585 0.2146 1 0.268231 0.2682
nothing 0.545435 0.470214
Total 1.000000 0.9954 1.000000 0.9668