vpFREE2 Forums

Tower Poker (long)

#1

In December I visited Agua Caliente near Palm Springs for the first
time. Almost immediately I noticed Tower Poker machines throughout
the casino. And every single one of them had FPDW as a game choice.

I reported this information to our esteemed administrator, vpFae,
with the caveat that the game needs more study.

One "red flag" was that not one of the games was occupied. And I know
enough California players to expect that plenty of experts out here
would not pass up that good of an opportunity.

Then, I looked at the game itself. Again, I don't know it at all, so
corrections to anything I now say are gladly accepted and appreciated.

First, the Tower display is huge, colorful and impressive, much the
way 5 Play MS really grabs your eye. I almost walked past it,
thinking it was a slot machine. The game is certainly "state of the
art" with all the bells and whistles.

Tower is a 5 Play game, but each hand above the original hand is one
card sequentially higher in the same suit. EX: If you are dealt 4-5-6
of Hearts and 7-8 of Spades, you hold the dealt straight. BUT on the
second hand above you would see 5-6-7 of Hearts and 8-9 of Spades.
And so forth up to the fifth hand. 5 straights with different cards.

In Deuces Wild, the 2's are Wild ONLY on the bottom hand. The wild
card then become 3's, 4's, etc as you move up. Yes, at Agua Caliente
it is the FPDW paytable as I said. BUT, only the payoff for four
DEUCES is specified as 1000. And I did not look at the machine long
enough to see if four OTHER wilds in hands above return that. So,
there's caveat #1 to explore.

Also, there are complications if you are dealt, for example, a wild
royal of 10-J-Q-K-2. The next hand above would now also be a wild
royal, seen as J-Q-K-A-3(now wild). But the third hand becomes only a
flush at best of Q-K-A-2(not wild)-3(not wild, since 4's are wild on
the third line). And if the 2 and 3 are not suited to the other cards
it even becomes a non-paying hand! Another caveat, perhaps.

Also consider a dealt hand of 6-8-10 of spades and a pair of 4's
(neither of which is a spade). It is an easy decision in Deuces Wild
to hold just the pair. But in this quirky game of Tower, holding the
3 spades will result in a 3 card Royal in the 5th hand. So, factors
like this (which I would have no idea of how to calculate) would need
to be considered. In some ways, Tower might be a 5-play game that can
have up to five unrelated hands, if that makes sense. You have to
consider that dealt hand on its own, but perhaps also in its impact
on the sequence.

This is the reason in the database I cautioned vpFae to add "Study
The Game" to the listing because I have no idea which factors could
diminish the attractive FPDW payback of over 100%.

So, I did want to report what I saw last month that might be of
interest. But, before you hop in the car to speed to Palm Springs,
STUDY THE GAME!

#2

mikeymic wrote:

In December I visited Agua Caliente near Palm Springs for the first
time. Almost immediately I noticed Tower Poker machines throughout
the casino. And every single one of them had FPDW as a game choice.

If I understand your description of the mechanics, you play hands
sequentially up the tower. The cards held on one level will determine
cards dealt on the higher levels, where the same suited cards will be
dealt, but the rank of each card will increase by one each level.

For example, a held 5c will result in a dealt 6c in the hand above
that, and a 7c in the hand above that.

Further, for a game such as deuces, the wild card advance one in rank
with each level (3's are wild on level 2, etc.) Let's assume that the
bonus payout for 4 wild cards (2's on level 1) also advances in rank
with each level.

The most immediate implication on game return is that the value of a
wild card diminishes as the rank of the card approaches the center of
the deck. For any span of 5 cards (say 5-9), if one of the cards is a
wild card there are fewer possible straight combinations. In other
words, there are fewer possible 5-9 combinations when the wild card is
a 6 than when it's a 2. (The 6 ends up doing "double duty").

The consequence of this is that the higher the wild card rank, the
lower the game ER. Winpoker has a game called 7's Wild programmed in
it with the same paytable as FPDW. The ER is 98.8% ... about 2% below
FPDW. If once were to assume that return degraded steadily with each
advance in rank, one might ballpark Tower at a roughly breakeven game,
when only the shifting wild card is taken into account.

From just this back of the envelope analysis of the game, it's
obviously difficult to say just how the shifted redeal of held cards
will impact ER. My gut feel (notoriously off) is that it would
improve things.

Were it not for the card shift, I'd definitely look for an improvement
-- it's shades of getting a 2nd draw. You hold a pair on the first
line and get one draw at it. You get another dealt on the second line
and get new cards to complete the hand, with a greater chance of
ending with a trip or better on that deal; then you get to draw to that.

The impact of the card shift is neutral on held pairs, etc, as well as
flush cards. It's impact comes into play on S/SF holds. Some
attractive deals that would yield a good S hold will become worthless
on higher levels. Some deals that have card sequences that span the
"A" and therefore aren't viable holds could prove to have decent holds
as those cards shift above -- but, of course, you end up holding
something fairly worthless below if you want to ensure the higher
level hold.

This is where I see the game return being pushed to something
relatively unattractive. The S-based hands (S/SF/WRF/RF) account for
21% of game return. I can easily see a good 1%-2% of return being
chopped off for this factor.

Were I to make a wild-assed guess at game return, I'd ballpark it at
around 99%, factoring in the "2nd draw" effect and the card shift.
(Let's call that with an error tolerance of +/= 2% :wink:

Common sense tells me that where game return isn't readily obvious,
you can look for actual return to be MUCH less attractive.

- H.

#3

--- In vpFREE@yahoogroups.com, "Harry Porter" <harry.porter@...>
wrote:

Common sense tells me that where game return isn't readily obvious,
you can look for actual return to be MUCH less attractive.

- H.

Your thorough analysis included a reference to the diminshing value
of a wild card as it proceeds in rank through the deck. And isn't
there another relatively new game by IGT called "Anything's Wild"
which offers the same opportunity to reduce return by picking a
higher (than deuce) wild card? But, hey, it's all about how the new
games make VP entertaining.

And very costly entertainment at that.

I may be a bit cynical, but I cannot see ANY new VP game as one that
would benefit the player. After Multi-Strike strategy became widely
publicized the casinos countered that by reducing the paytables.
Super Times Pay in many casinos now is short-pay along with that
extra coin per hand. So, even if a game "slips through the cracks" to
our advantage it won't be long before the casinos correct their
oversight. I guess being lured by that FPDW paytable on the Tower
Poker was more an exercise in wishful thinking than a realistic
chance of ever having an advantage.

#4

If anyone wants more info on the game or to verify the pay tables, I live
about 3 miles from Agua Caliente.

···

On Fri, Jan 9, 2009 at 10:24 PM, mikeymic <mikeymic@yahoo.com> wrote:

  --- In vpFREE@yahoogroups.com <vpFREE%40yahoogroups.com>, "Harry Porter"
<harry.porter@...>
wrote:

> Common sense tells me that where game return isn't readily obvious,
> you can look for actual return to be MUCH less attractive.
>
> - H.

Your thorough analysis included a reference to the diminshing value
of a wild card as it proceeds in rank through the deck. And isn't
there another relatively new game by IGT called "Anything's Wild"
which offers the same opportunity to reduce return by picking a
higher (than deuce) wild card? But, hey, it's all about how the new
games make VP entertaining.

And very costly entertainment at that.

I may be a bit cynical, but I cannot see ANY new VP game as one that
would benefit the player. After Multi-Strike strategy became widely
publicized the casinos countered that by reducing the paytables.
Super Times Pay in many casinos now is short-pay along with that
extra coin per hand. So, even if a game "slips through the cracks" to
our advantage it won't be long before the casinos correct their
oversight. I guess being lured by that FPDW paytable on the Tower
Poker was more an exercise in wishful thinking than a realistic
chance of ever having an advantage.

[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

#5

I remember seeing a couple of these over a year ago at Sam's Town. I
never saw anyone playing them, so they were taken out only a few
weeks after I first noticed them. I was going to write a program to
evaluate the return and generate a strategy, but there were a couple
very basic unknowns that kept me from getting started.

If the cards you hold are incremented in rank up the ladder, does
that mean your discards are also being taken out of the other decks
in an incremented-rank fashion? In other words, does discarding a 6
of clubs on the first hand mean you are discarding a 7 clubs on the
next, 8 clubs after that, etc... Also, if you get dealt a royal, is
it programmed as a dealt royal jackpot, or do you get a 2AKQJ flush ,
32AKQ, etc... on your other lines? Plus the pay table on these
machines was set up kind of strangely. They had the regular sequence
of pays for FPDW up to the dirty, but the payoff for a royal said
something vague in which you couldn't tell whether it was referencing
a single royal on one of the lines or a jackpot value for a dealt
getting paid as a royal on all lines. I think I remember the value
listed was large enough to make me think it was talking about a dealt
(I think it said 20000), but if that was the case, why wasn't there
another line that just said plainly "royal flush no wild" with your
normal 4000 (or something around there) for a drawn royal?

Before I had a chance to throw a little money in to answer any of
these questions the machines were gone. To be honest, I really
wasn't looking forward to writing that strategy generator anyway. I
am guessing that when you are creating your bit indicators to
describe the type of hand being held, you would need to keep separate
indicators for how many of the holds will be RF, SF and FL draws. As
an example a 2-gap SF3 that is 10-high gets the extra value of being
a royal draw on the top line, while a 2-gap SF3 that is Q-high gets
the bonus of being a royal draw on one line, but the penalties of
only being a flush draw on two lines. Likewise a JT9s, is 1 SF draw,
3 RF draws, and 1 FL draw. I believe any accurate strategy generator
would probably need to keep 10-high, J-high, Q-high, and K-high SF
draws as separate hand-groupings, which means a more complicated
strategy while playing as well. Even if you find that the EV on the
holds are close enough that you can lump them together, you want to
write that original code to differentiate them with a fine tooth comb
just in case. Whenever I'm writing this stuff I always shoot for
overkill early so I don't miss anything. I figure I can go back
through later and clean it up and simplify it if I find my groupings
are more detailed than necessary.

#6

If anyone wants more info on the game or to verify the pay tables,

I
live

about 3 miles from Agua Caliente.

It would certainly be helpful if you could take a quick look at any
Tower machine and answer a few questions. But, please don't make a
special trip.

1) Is the paytable still FPDW? (If not, no need to explore further).

2) Is the payoff of 1000 (max coins) stated on the machine as FOUR
DEUCES or FOUR WILDS?

3) Is the paytable for the other game, 10s or Better, full-pay?

By the way, the first Tower Poker is very close after you enter from
parking (not from the lobby). Just turn right and it is only a few
feet away. If you have kept walking and are approaching the buffet
you are already well past it.

Thanks again, but no big deal if you don't get over to Agua anytime
soon. After reading Harry's analysis the game is no longer high on my
list of opportunities to explore. Don't want to break my New Year's
resolution of playing "best available" and most razzle-dazzle isn't
what I mean.

···

--- In vpFREE@yahoogroups.com, "Dennis Salguero" <salguero@...> wrote: