I usually only play craps at Sycuan or Barona because they are the only two casinos in the San Diego area with craps games similar to Vegas. However, tonight I went with some friends to Sycuan. I got killed at the craps table in about 20 minutes. Five shooters in a row set the point at 6 or 8 and then 7ed out on the next roll. So that left my friends still wanting to play and me playing quarter at a time 7/5 Jacks or Better. I almost always play $1 VP when I am around good paytables.
I learned two things tonight:
1) After 8 months of a single-line VP Royal Flush drought (I hit a RF once on a five cent 50-play in those 8 months) I broke the drought with my single quarter Royal Flush in Clubs tonight. I will NEVER play short coin again.
2) Sycuan should be _embarassed_ by what it's offering in VP. Some of their 3-play and 5-play machines (I didn't count how many, or check all of them) had "Bonus Poker" which is what I play in quarters on a 3-play machine. I was about to sit down and try a few hands when I noticed the paytable: (starting at full house) 10 - 8 - 5 - 3 - 1 - 1 Yes, that is a 1 for two pair. I ran the analysis of this paytable in BDWP and the payback is 94.18% with var 19.57. This was the paytable for all denominations in the machine, which I believe were 5 cents through $5.
Not something I learned, but there was a man betting $20 at a time on a quarter Jacks or Better machine made by an offshoot company I've never heard of. This man has every right to bet that much, but I don't think he realized that the Royal on these machines is progressive and it resets at $500 I believe. For a bet of $1 through $25 per hand, the Royal Flush payout was the same, at the time I was there tonight, a whopping $530 for a royal with $20 (80 quarters) bet.