Horseshoe In Tunica for video poker??

Who has your favorite video poker games? Who should have more?
chucknorris5
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Horseshoe In Tunica for video poker??

Post by chucknorris5 »

My wife and I will be visiting the Horseshoe casino in Tunica next month. Does anybody know about the quality of their video poker? I usually play $5 dollar machines. Are there better video poker casinos in Tunica?

Many thanks!!

Vman96
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Post by Vman96 »

Ugh, I missed this. At $1/$5 level, Horseshoe and Roadhouse have 9/7 DB (99.11%) and 9/6 DDB (98.98%).

For $5 machines I don't think many casinos in Tunica can do any better. For $5, Fitz has 8/5 Bonus (99.17%). But for dollars, they have an 8/5 Super Aces coindropper (99.94%). Sam's Town has $1 JoB as well.

ko king
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Post by ko king »

My wife and I will be visiting the Horseshoe casino in Tunica next month. Does anybody know about the quality of their video poker? I usually play $5 dollar machines. Are there better video poker casinos in Tunica?

Many thanks!!                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                               
 
Been playing video poker in Tunica since they opened up the very first casino (Splash Casino) and I quit playing $5 denomination 4-5 years ago. To be honest with you I don't know a single person who plays $5 denomination in Tunica anymore, I'll make sure to check it out for you. I'm down to playing $1 denomination nowdays and may end up dropping down to .50 cent denomination, the price of playing has gone up in my case, the hits just don't come like they used to. I guess if I was going to play $5 denomination Horseshoe would be my choice, they still draw a decent crowd and I believe they have 9/6 DDB.

notes1
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Post by notes1 »



kk, you have written many posts documenting your long history of playing in tunica. you have also mentioned the reduced results you have had over the past few years. this is the first you have written about reducing your bet. i also read from other posters about these 98-99% machines. are your results anything close to 98-99%? i think you have put a lot of money through the machines and have kept good records.

BobDancer
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Post by BobDancer »

$5 games are tough in Mississippi given the 3% non-refundable tax on W2Gs. Plus games where quads pay 250 or more get these taxes every time.So a game like 9/5 Jacks, which normally returns about a half percent less than 9/6 DDB becomes a higher-EV play because the quads in that game only pay $625, which is less than the W2G-tax threshhold.Horseshoe Tunica mailed out nice offers (airfare, free play, food credit, tours of Graceland, Sun Studios, Gibson Guitar Factory) to a large number of Caesars Entertainment players. (Different players received different amounts --- probably based on average daily theoretical.) I go this coming weekend for four days, and it's possible the original poster received one of these offers. They expire August 31. Most of the knowledgeable video poker players i know played the minimum possible to qualify for the airfare reimbursement (I don't know what that is yet --- Harrah's New Orleans insists you play 2 hours --- I'll check before I play off my free play --- I will very possibly play V-E-R-Y slowly --- even dollar 9/7 DB slips to an unplayable 99.06% with the Mississippi tax) and then I'll quit simply because there is no intelligent play there.After I play off my free play --- which will take some time and I just may be able to stretch to two hours by playing slowly --- I may well resort to a one-coin strategy if there is something like a two-hour minimum of play required to collect airfare. It keeps the clock running at less cost per hour. If no such time minimum is required, I'll bet no coins at all. That's even less cost.This is NOT FP's cheap strategy. His strategy is based on voluntarily playing bad games --- which makes sense to recreational players but not to pros. My strategy here is based on qualifying for travel reimbursement at the least cost. It leads to similar conclusions in some circumstances, but it is different in terms of when do you stop playing and how fast do you play.  Being "stuck" for a couple of days in a casino with unplayable games is no problem for me. Bonnie and I will explore Tunica and Memphis, which is only 50 miles away. We will have books to read, and we'll see if we can find some dancing and listening opportunities in the evening. There is a lot of really good blues music in that area.Some players "have to" play if they are in a casino. If enough of these players come on this offer, maybe the casino won't lose too much. But there will certainly be a lot of us who play very little. It wouldn't surprise me at all if Horseshoe Tunica decides that these offers were a mistake.


notes1
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Post by notes1 »



not sure about some recent offers to tunica, but CET has been offering comp tunica charters, hotel, food for a long time, from many locations. no re-imbursement/minimum requred. of course, if you did not play enough, i am sure the offers would no longer come. tunica has been a dying destination, thus the need to offer these packages to draw players in.   while the sample size i hear from is small, most have stated they did nothing but lose. with all the costs involved with offering these 'free' packages, that is why i asked KK if his results over the past few years equated to the advertised paytables.    not looking for an arguement/lecture about how honest all casinos are, but from a purely business point of view, it is hard to see how a casino that needs to pay so much for marketing (planes/rooms/food/free play, all comp) and still offer 98-99% machines. i went once and heard from others, will not go again. good luck to those who do go.

ko king
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Post by ko king »

kk, you have written many posts documenting your long history of playing in tunica. you have also mentioned the reduced results you have had over the past few years. this is the first you have written about reducing your bet. i also read from other posters about these 98-99% machines. are your results anything close to 98-99%? i think you have put a lot of money through the machines and have kept good records.


                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                       
Last 4-5 years have gotten really bad, a few casinos dropped pay tables but I avoid those place pretty well. Most of my play was dedicated toward playing $2 9/6 DDB which shows a payback percentage of  98.98%, for around 15 years I was able to play close or even above that percentage even with the 4% non-refundable tax on handpays. Back then my records were pretty simple, the only thing I kept records of were how much money I went into the casino with and how much I left with, had a little book I kept in my truck and would write down the date and the amount of win or loss for that day. The 2 years I finished ahead included a year that I won $6,200 for the year and the other was just slightly above $1K, all the other years I finished right at the payback percentage or slightly below, nothing I considered to be an extreem loss. There was also a freak year in which I hit a progressive slot machine for a pretty decent amount (I rarely played slots and it was usually only about $20), that same year I had bought a $5 scratch lottery ticket and had won $10K, so as far as gambling went I was an overall winner for that year even though I had a small but respectable loss playing video poker. I always estimated my hands played per hour to be around 800 per hour. I ended up having 2 consecutive years of play that were horrible, the hits just quit coming like they used to, that's when I started paying closer attention to the real details of the game, years ago I couldn't have told anyone how often they should hit Aces w/kicker, a Royal Flush or any other premium hand. Those two years were so bad I had a buddy sit and time me so I could get a more accurate idea of the amount of hands I played per hour, I move around a lot from machine to machine, take an occasional bathroom break and as much as I hate to admit it I smoke, turns out my 800 hands per hour estimate was pretty accurate, sometimes a little more others a little less. I wanted to get to the bottom of why my play had turned so bad almost overnight, I had never lost that much money playing in my entire life and it happened for two consecutive years. Turns out my problem wasn't hitting the Royal Flush, they were coming like clock work, in fact we even noticed that I was hitting far more straight flushes that I used to hit, ask other players and they were hitting a lot of straight flushes also. The very first year after my two big losses I kept very detailed records, amount of hours played, amount of hands played and each and every premium hand along with small quads (5-K's). I lost again that year in a big way but this time I could see why I lost so much money. Like I said my Royals were there for hands played, my staright flushes were there also, my small quads were (5-k's) were close, slightly below but nothing to be concerned about. The problem was the other premium hands, quad Aces w/kicker, quad Aces, quad 2-4's w/kicker and quad 2-4's, they just quit showing up like they were supposed to and the numbers were ugly. Kept the same exact type of records the next year and my play was a almost complete repeat of the previous year, it was looking at the same identicle year, where were those smaller premium hands. My pay back percentage for the one year best I can remember was right at 95.6% and the other was slightly below, to this day I guarentee you if I attempted to play like I used to the same exact thing would happen, the hits just aren't there and the price of playing for me went up. Now I use the word "me" when saying the price of playing went up but other players had to be experiencing the same thing because people had just quit going. I can stand losing close to the advertised payback percentage, I'll accept and welcome those results. What I cannot understand and accept is the repeated results in which the smaller premium hands are somehow able to avoid being hit in the statistics range. As a recent example my last 6 trips to the casino playing $1 TDB with a pay table of 9/7 and $1 DDB with a pay table of 9/6 I haven't had a single hand pay, I haven't hit quad Aces a single time and only had quad 4's once, got plenty of small quads but only one decent quad. I have no idea what's going on with the machines, I could provide what I consider to be an educated guess but it would mean nothing because it is what it is and it's probably not going to change. In my personal opinion the machines have got much smarter/selective in the way the hands are delivered, don't know how or why it could happen given the regulations but just walking into the area casinos and looking around it's not hard to see there muct be other players who have the same feeling because they're not there.

notes1
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Post by notes1 »



kk, thanks for the info. there may be others, but as you began playing when tunica first opened a casino, you certainly have the ability to give a long historical account of what you have witnessed. it may only be one players account, but the fact that you kept records and play a lot, adds to that credibility, in my opinion.     as a recap, in the first 15 years or so, you had only about 2 winning years from VP only and the other years, your losses fell within acceptible/expected ranges. the last 5 years or so, is when the losses mounted beyond what was to be expected or acceptible. as a result, you have had to change your play, reduce your bet. like you, pre the last 5 years, i was never interested in any of the math. my results were acceptible for the entertainment i received.    this brings me back to my original observation. i/m/o, tunica has above average marketing costs because they need to draw players, yet they seem able to advertise paytables that are better than other casinos, where drawing players is not nearly as expensive. gambling revenue is down, marketing costs are higher and yet advertised pay tables are competitive. i wonder how they do it.

Vman96
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Post by Vman96 »



kk, thanks for the info. there may be others, but as you began playing when tunica first opened a casino, you certainly have the ability to give a long historical account of what you have witnessed. it may only be one players account, but the fact that you kept records and play a lot, adds to that credibility, in my opinion.    Â as a recap, in the first 15 years or so, you had only about 2 winning years from VP only and the other years, your losses fell within acceptible/expected ranges. the last 5 years or so, is when the losses mounted beyond what was to be expected or acceptible. as a result, you have had to change your play, reduce your bet. like you, pre the last 5 years, i was never interested in any of the math. my results were acceptible for the entertainment i received.   Â this brings me back to my original observation. i/m/o, tunica has above average marketing costs because they need to draw players, yet they seem able to advertise paytables that are better than other casinos, where drawing players is not nearly as expensive. gambling revenue is down, marketing costs are higher and yet advertised pay tables are competitive. i wonder how they do it.

As for koking's data, he shared his 2013 results with the forum while primarily playing 9/6 DDB at the $2 level. He said his return for ~125,000 hands was a little over 95%.

I ran a sim to see how likely a 95% or less return should happen given optimal play. The likelihood was still over 1% unfortunately. So it's possible it was just a run of horrible luck.

$2 9/6 DDB 125,000 hand simulation results

And how can Tunica offer the paytables they do? Well, if you ever go to Tunica, you'll see how few people actually play VP. Horseshoe and Roadhouse have a terribly large VP area compared to the amount who actually play. Of all the placed I've visited with casinos, I think less people play VP in Tunica than anywhere else. So downgrading VP a percentage point is not going to do a ton for them.

Getting people to zone out on the 85% slot machines and still be willing to come back is what the marketing dollars really want to focus on.

notes1
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Post by notes1 »



i can accept that tunica uses the free trip draw to pull in mostly slot players and sock it to them. actually, a very good reply and wish i had thought of it. not sure where you picked up KK's data was for 2013, may have been on another post. his most recent post mentions that his results have been bad for 4-5 years. that is right around the same time frame that some of us felt the machines played differently and our losses were greater. i guess the explanation that he is just on a continous bad luck run would be the only reasonable conclusion that some might come to. others may have a different explanation. as to your observation that tunica has few players at the VP machines, KK's results may be the reason why. if other dedicated, knowledgeable VP players kept getting hosed, they might just have quit playing there. i do rate VP players higher than slot players. i will await KK letting us know if there was more VP play, before the results changed. 

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