The Sam's Town slot director claims to know everything about slots and video poker. Well, he may know everything about the machines, but obviously he doesn't understand video poker players at all. Why does any casino have FPDW machines? The only reason is to attract customers by advertising that they have games with over 100% payback. Of course they prefer novice gamblers who play intuitively and never bother to learn a good strategy. So what do they do? First they move the machines away from a high traffic area so very few tourists ever see them. Then they reduce the number of quarter machines from 10 to two so even if a tourist happens to notice them they can't get on a machine. And of course they remove the sign proclaiming over 100% return and cut the base player's club rebate from a measly 0.1% to 0.025%.
Most tourists don't know how to tell one game from another, so what do they look for? Player's club benefits, of course, and now it's not even worthwhile playing enough to achieve sapphire or emerald status. The casino does everything they can to discourage the very players they would like to have on the good games, but it's all just an annoyance to advantage players, so they are the only ones playing the good games. The result is that instead of getting a modest hold on the machines, they lose money on them because only a few advantage players play them. When the bean counters realize that they're now losing more than ever on the games, they'll probably remove them altogether. It's a sad outcome for what could be a winning situation for both the casino and the players.