Calder Race Course & Casino [VP in SoFla]

[VPMiami]

As mentioned in my post "Video Poker in South Florida", here is a basic rundown of video poker offered at Calder Race Course & Casino, Miami Gardens, FL.  It is located about 25 minutes north of Miami and 20 minutes south of Ft. Lauderdale, a couple of blocks north of SunLife Stadium (where the Dolphins play). The casino is fairly new, having opened in January 2010.  It is co-located with the horse track and a 29-table poker room (Studz Poker Club).  The poker room and track grandstand are located in one building and the casino is in a separate building that is joined to the track by a covered outdoor walkway. By Florida standards, the casino area is nice.  Large, clean, smoke-free, uncramped with about 1200 machines total. The noise level is a bit quieter than at other places.  You can actually hear yourself think.  No live-dealt table games.  Just slots and video poker.  They have $5 and $10 blackjack tables which are video Shufflemaster that seat 5 players at a time. Video poker can be found in three areas.  About 25 machines are located at the main bar.  Another dozen or so are located in a small room that also houses the video blackjack machines.  There are also 2 or 3 machines in the "High Limit" area.  Most are the typical Game King single game machines, but multi-play can also be found starting at $0.02. My impressions: 1.  Pay tables on machines less than $1 are bad.  For example, nickel Deuces Wild with 5 coins in has the following pay table (from 3 of a kind to RF):     1 - 2 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 13 - 16 - 25 - 200 - 1500 Notice that there is no 4000 coin bonus for a natural royal, making the expected return of this game only 95.67%, a full percentage point lower than an equivalent pay table that pays the normal 4000 coins for a natural royal. They do have a 25-coin bet on nickels that will pay 20,000 coins for the natural royal, so that is somewhat better if you want to play $1.25 in nickels per hand.  Also, a warning to those who are used to hitting the "Max Bet" button for a 5-coin bet.  At the nickel limits, max bet is 25 coins, not 5.  If you only want to bet 5 coins, the use the "Bet 5" button when you place your first bet, or you'll wonder why your money is disappearing so fast. A quick glance at the pay tables for higher limits shows that the 4000 payout for a natural royal is present.  Therefore, a serious player needs to check each pay table carefully. You probably need to be playing $1 or higher to get a pay table that pays better than 97%.  Don't expect to find full pay machines here at any denomination. 2.  Stingy players club for video poker.  For regular slots, you earn 1 reward point per $5 coin-in.  100 reward points earn $1 which can be used for comps or converted to free play.  For video poker, you need coin-in of $20 to earn the same 1 reward point.  You've got to put 4 times the money in compared to playing slots. Calder often has decent promotions that make up for what's lacking in the players club.  For example, for all of May through July, I got a post card in the mail each month that gave me Free Play added to my card every 15 days.  Came out to something like $15 per month automatically added to the card.  Also, all of August they ran points multipliers every Sunday.  It varied each hour from 2X to 8X points, and I was able to rack up a few dollars that way.  Check the promos on Calder's web site since it may make a trip worthwhile. 3.  If you enjoy a drink or two while playing, they have great beer, wine and drink specials, especially during Friday evening happy hour.  Also, they have self-serve soda stations set up at a couple places in the casino.  You can drink all the soft drinks you want on-the-house. As a purely recreational player, I like this casino.  It's not Vegas by any means, but since I also like to play in their hold-em tournaments occasionally, I will often burn $20 in video poker to relax.  I've actually managed to win enough there in VP to make a couple poker tournaments virtual "free rolls".  Even with the bad pay tables, I must have decent luck picking a machine.  My records show I've left more times a winner than a loser from this place. - D -

[VPMiami]

Today at Calder reinforced that one needs to "shop the machines" to find the best pay tables.  It's amazing sometimes how the pay tables can differ across the same denomination machines at a single location. At Calder, I normally play VP at the far right end of the bar.  Today, those machines were all being used when I arrived, so I sat at the far left end of the bar.  I look at the nickel pay table for Deuces Wild, and notice the 4000 coin bonus for the natural royal that was always missing during my prior visits (paid 1500 instead) was now there.  Yay!  Instead of an expected return of 95.67%, the machine is now 96.77%.  The dime machine was slightly better at 97.06%.  I figure Calder must have changed all it's nickel machines so that they now have the normal 4000 coin bonus. Played break-even for about an hour.  During that time, my regular machines opened up so I decided to move.  However, the nickel pay table on these machines was the usual poor version with the 1500 coin royal flush pay.  That's right, two entirely different pay tables for the same denomination.  I moved back to where I was originally. So then I decide, I'll just have a look at all the pay tables for DW on the new machine.  Nickel fine. Dime fine. Quarter... when I change the denomination to quarter, then the choice for DW disappeared from the game selection screen.  Can't play DW for quarters on the good pay machine, just nickels and dimes.  To play quarter, $0.50 or $1, had to go back to the other machine. Good news for the $1 player is that the pay table is not too horrible.    1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 4 - 9 - 15 - 25 - 200 - 4000 (98.91%) So at Calder, like anywhere else, check a few different machines before sitting deciding to sit.  I assumed each table would be the same for a given denomination and today I found out I was very wrong. - D -

[VPMiami]

Here's a quick summary of the best pay tables I've found at Calder for Deuces Wild and Jacks or Better as of September 2011. DW: $0.05: 1 - 2 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 13 - 16 - 25 - 200 - 4000 (96.77%)$0.10: 1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 4 - 9 - 12 - 20 - 200 - 4000 (97.06%)$0.25: 1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 4 - 9 - 12 - 20 - 200 - 4000 (97.06%)$0.50: 1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 4 - 10 - 12 - 20 - 200 - 4000 (97.58%)$1.00: 1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 4 - 9 - 15 - 25 - 200 - 4000 (98.91%) JOB: $0.05: 1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 5 - 6 - 25 - 50 - 4000 (94.99%)$0.25: 1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 5 - 7 - 25 - 50 - 4000 (96.14%)$0.50: 1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 5 - 8 - 25 - 50 - 4000 (97.30%)$1.00: 1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 6 - 8 - 25 - 50 - 4000 (98.34%) - D -