Casino marketing knows you jump right to the FH and FL payouts when looking at paytables. So they've become more "creative".
A Double Pay Spin machine at the Mirage has a 9/7 DB game avaialble as an option. I know, many of you won't play less than 10/7 DB, but some players consider 9/7 DB a decent alternative to 8/5 Bonus if there's a good promotion.
But this 9/7 game has a nasty surprise.
The straight only pays 4.
In some casinos now certain "Bonus Poker" machines offer no bonus at all for A's or 2-4's. Surprise!
And last night I found out the hard way about a different game with yet another hidden "surprise".
I was playing a $5 machine and noticed TDB as an option.
And it paid 9/7! Great, I was ahead for the night, I figured I could tolerate some high variance for awhile.
About 10 minutes later I drew to four kings. I looked up but noticed no light was flashing. Credits were instead accumulating.
Huh, no taxes on my $1250? Lucky me! The machine goofed and didn't lock up. No W-2G! YAHOO!
But the machine made no error. In initially fixating on that 9/7 on the paytable I didn't bother reviewing the four-of-a-kind payout for 5-K.
And it was 200, not 250. Only 40 per coin bet, not 50.
Upon closer inspection, the adjacent machine on 9/7 TDB paid even less - only 175 for five coins, 35 per coin bet.
And that concluded my TDB play for the night.
With me pausing to think, "Sneaky, aren't they?".