I'm in 4 Queens about 9 PM Monday night. The place is jammin'. I
see a sign. 29 progressives at Palace Bar, Kings Bar and Chicago
Brewing Company. Probably sucker progressives, but I'll go take a
look. I grab a seat at the Palace Bar. The machines are Multi-
Denom, 25/50/1 with progressives at all levels. I make a quick scan
and then decide to see what is being played. So I punch up the $1
progs. and stare at the meters. Always fun staring at meters. The
dollars are getting little action. Down to 50 Cents/same thing.
Down to twenty-five cents and here is where the action is. These
meters are zinging pretty good. They appear to be very strong
judging by the number of players at the bar.
Now, does anything here look good. Well there is 9/7 Double Bonus
with meters on the Aces/Small Quads/Generic Quads. Then there is
17/7/5/3 Jokers with a $2000 royal, must be a very strong meter.
Also, 9/6 Double Double Bonus with 5 meters. Hold it!!! The lady
next to me, playing Jokers has just been dealt the Joker with the
AKT of Clubs and the Queen of Hearts. I stop to see if she hits the
Wild Royal. Nope, she didn't get it. BECAUSE SHE HELD THE
STRAIGHT!!!! Jeez! Why can't I own a casino? It's not fair.
Anyways, back to work. There are 4 progs at 25, 3 at 50 and 3 at
dollars on this bar, but I go through and count each and every meter
on every level whether it be quad or royal meter. Exactly 29.
Hmmm, that means all the bars are linked together. No wonder those
meters are zinging. Trust but verify, so I write down some numbers,
then go check the Brew Pub. Yep. Then Kings Bar. Yep. Everything
is linked together, 53 machines if I counted correctly. Boy, it's
gonna be a nighmare timing the meters.
Can't time any meters at this time, so I head off to the Horseshoe
and sit down in a Fabulous, Fabulous 4/8 Full Kill Holdem game. I
know it was fabulous because I got practically every big pair
cracked! Ran into lots of old friends and had a wonderful time.
Back to the Queens at 4 AM. No one in the Pub. Palace is closed
for cleaning, no one is playing. At Kings no one is playing.
Great. The meters on the 9/7 are .25% each. The Joker meter
is .5%. The royal is at $2100. Hmmm, that's a mighty big number for
a .5% meter. The royal would have to miss about 175,000 games to
put it on that number, assuming everyone played max coins.
Okay, now to the most interesting looking game. The 9/6 Double
Double Bonus. I write the numbers down. They travel in pennies so
I've rounded off.
Aces/kicker $518
Small Quads/kicker $262
Four Aces $256
Small Quads $133
Generics $69
With those numbers I'm looking forward to finding some big meters
here. At least .5% meters. But every meter is running .25%. Let's
see, I haven't been drinking. I don't use drugs. Am I having
hallucinations? Maybe I went to bed and this is a dream. I test
them over and over again. Same result.
Take a look at Small Quads/Kicker. With a .25 meter the hand would
have to miss about 20,000 games to put it on that number. Not so
unusual, but 4 Aces would have to miss about l8,000. 56 x 400
divided by 1.25. That's over 3 cycles. Small quads would have to
miss over 10,000 games to put it on that number. And the Generics,
at $69, would have to miss about 2200 games. That is almost 4
cycles. That would be all the Double Double players, all running
bad last night, all at the same time. No, something else is going
on.
Maybe they preset higher. So I start banging away. Those are good
numbers. I snap the generic meter and it presets at $62.50. Then I
get lucky and snap the Ace/no kicker meter. It presets at $200.00.
Nope, they are not preset higher.
So whats going on? Maybe someone else has a different conclusion
than me, but all I can come up with is THERE ARE FAR, FAR MORE SHORT
COINERS IN THE VIDEO POKER WORLD THAN I EVER IMAGINED. It's not so
apparent on a bank of, say, 6 machines. But link 53 machines
together with a multi-meter game and it is glaringly apparent.
So, if you like DDB with meters, strong cashback, good mailers, and
lots of help from your short coining friends, the 4 Queens might be
your spot. Good Luck.