This is BullSheeet

[olds442jetaway]

     Even an Easterner DB can get into the farm stuff. When my brother and I were youngsters and teens, we spent much of the summers at our Uncle's farm in Southwestern Virginia near the Ky and Tenn border. Delivered a breech birth calf once and learned to run very fast and hop the rail and wire fences if the bull got after you. I could go on about more stuff like Tobacco worms and the like, but I am too far off the vp track already. One thing was very tough to do. You would play with one calf in the summer and next year when you went down to the farm, he would be in the freezer as veal chops. It was a lot easier to eat the fried bull frog leggs from the frogs we shot that jumped out of the skillet than the veal. But such is life. The important thing is nothing was ever "kilt" for sport. Only for food and in Appalachia that was in short supply sometimes for many families. Some of the neighbor kids never had shoes until 6th grade or so and that is no bull. Speaking of vp though, I think my record playing in Ct. is very similar to yours percentage wise in A/C. If you would have asked me some years ago if one could play many hundreds of thousands of hands at 2 bucks a pop or more and never get a W-2G for anything, I would have told you no way. Unfortunately, it is way for 2015.

[DaBurglar]

     , I think my record playing in Ct. is very similar to yours percentage wise in A/C. If you would have asked me some years ago if one could play many hundreds of thousands of hands at 2 bucks a pop or more and never get a W-2G for anything, I would have told you no way. Unfortunately, it is way for 2015.Yep Olds, in Connecticut, it might be the same dynamic as in AC< where the casinos actually get away with having video poker spew out results that are statistically way out of bounds for "normal" random games, where hardly any large jackpots (or even modest wins) are paid out consistently.....Look people, many casinos NOT in Vegas or Nevada are DESPERATE.... D E S P E R A T E....and most states and gaming locales outside Nevada do not have the type of oversight (in terms either of competence, scope, resources or commitment)...they Just simply DO NOT......hence, it goes without saying, given the fact many other industries of far greater importance and scope than gaming (i.e. Auto, Financial, Banking, Medical/Pharmaceutical just to name a few....and not to mention the DEFENSE Industry)  have had major lapses and incidents of fraud, abuse, neglect, incompetence or all of the above, that it should not be inconceivable that some gambling markets have within them certain casinos or segments within certain casinos that are not playing by the established rules or conventions.      Certain results and trends noticeable by players serve as evidence that something MIGHT indeed be up.....Aside from the fact I am only playing about 13 to 1/4 the amount of Video Poker in AC this calendar year,  the fact remains my previous 5 years saw ever decreasing number and amount of hand pay w-2gs in AC......many MANY other vp players report this trend in a variety of markets, just as olds reports in Foxwoods and Mohegan Sun here in Connecticut......Since I live only 75 minutes from these two casinos, I also KNOW quite well NUMEROUS people (friends, associates And especially FAMILY)  ALL who report the exact same thing as OLDS......likewise the people I know personally from here who frequent AC (or used to), while not as numerous as the ones who go to the local Connecticut casinos, also report similarly abysmal results in AC as I have seen the last few years.       Now, granted I am aware and ACCEPT that peoples' Perceptions of gambling and reporting results tend to over emphasize the negative ,the compelling factor which lends credibility here is the SIMILARITY amongst so many different people in their accounts of results and experiences in casinos, namely that incidents of hand pays have dropped off precipitously, and monetary losses have increased in frequency and in SPEED of incurrence (i.e. more and more people I talk to mention how FAST their money just evaporates in today's video poker in places like AC and local casinos when compared to years past, particular prior to 2005!)    this cannot be easily dismissed.........even though ultimately we all probably will.

[FAA]

if you asked me years ago if one could play many hundreds
of thousands of hands at 2 bucks a pop or more and never get a W-2G for
anything, I would have told you no way. Unfortunately, it is way for
2015.--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Truly dismal! This $2.50 a spin madness will spin most players out the door in record time. Time to embrace the Southern Savant. Conserve, conserve, conserve. Pot shot it occasionally. It's a weekly war with the casino, and we are all woefully under armed.

[FAA]

Aside from the fact I am only playing about 1/3 to 1/4 the amount of
Video Poker in AC this calendar year,  the fact remains my previous 5
years saw ever decreasing number and amount of hand pay w-2gs in AC.--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Which is why most AC casinos do not merit our patronage. Fortunately, one good guy remains who in my experience will give you fair play at a fair price. Enjoy. Take a break from VP with live. And craps only has a 1.4% house edge if you play it safe. FAA needs a new pair of shoes!

[vpnutnj]

Db, where were you? Although I didn't reply to your invite to meet, I was at the Taj that weekend and hoping to run into you. Maybe next time.

Where do I start, DB, you are on to what I believe is the biggest hoax in AC. As I said before, my wife and I have been playing vp in AC for a long time. Our best year was 44 royals, next year 34 royals and then hovered in the high 20's and low 30's for 12 + years. I have had more days with consistent action on vp machines than I can recount. Many, many days of 2k to 4k + days without scoring a royal then I can remember. We have reaped the benefits of every comp and cashback dollar you could hope to expect. We never paid for anything except room taxes and tips for years. Oh by the way, we were playing just about every weekend every year. I think we have a very good perspective of how variance and payback percentage work hand in hand with the EV's.
So to say this simply DB, FAA & whomever else has spent the same amount of time playing vp in AC, they have witnessed just what I have, diminished streaks, fewer royals and as DB puts it more "Dud" hands than ever before. Not weeks but month after month of nothing on top of nothing. To discount this assessment speaks to me that you may be a sometime player or one that is comfortable with your loses.
I don't want to come off too strong here but we should all be trying to pull together our forces to try and discover just what may have happened rather than trying to debunk each others assumptions. I agree with DB that eliminating oversight in the casinos has more than likely contributed to this condition we all face. We all need to write to our political representatives and ask them to investigate what might amount to fleecing the paying public who attend these establishments in good faith.

In closing I can say that, in the day, I was exposed to all of the good vp players in multiple casinos who stopped playing as a result of whatever algorithm the casinos were able to employ to the programming of these machines to cause them to react in such a manner.

[olds442jetaway]

If I play the worst game in the casino and the smallest amount, I can do fine. The game is two cent spin poker Joker Kings with a 20/5 paytable. Probably in the 95% range. If I were more tech savy, I would run a small camera on the game while I played about 5 lines at 2 cents a line and you would see the ten dollar bill go to twelve or fifteen bucks almost every time. I don't know about anybody else, but that tells me something right there. The 99.5% games return me 94-95% long term and the above game gives me over a hundred percent almost every time. The only time it beats me is when I play all of the lines at max bet. It then goes into a mode similar to the 99 percent games. I use this little spin poker machine to make snack or gas money for the trip home, after going bust most trips on the supposed good games. Unfortunately, the temptation when ahead a little is to up your bet to more lines and higher bets and that is of course when it fails.

[Tedlark]

vpnutnj may I ask you a question? It is a quite simple question and it evolves from your above post: when you were enjoying years of 44, 34, high 20's of hitting royals and many days of 2k-4k, did you think something was wrong then with the machines?

[olds442jetaway]

   vpnutnj may I ask you a question? It is a quite simple question and it evolves from your above post: when you were enjoying years of 44, 34, high 20's of hitting royals and many days of 2k-4k, did you think something was wrong then with the machines?

     I was wondering the same thing. Of course who would say anything and end all of that good stuff in a hurry.

[vpnutnj]

Db, where were you? Although I didn't reply to your invite to meet, I was at the Taj that weekend and hoping to run into you. Maybe next time.

Where do I start, DB, you are on to what I believe is the biggest hoax in AC. As I said before, my wife and I have been playing vp in AC for a long time. Our best year was 44 royals, next year 34 royals and then hovered in the high 20's and low 30's for 12 + years. I have had more days with consistent action on vp machines than I can recount. Many, many days of 2k to 4k + days without scoring a royal then I can remember. We have reaped the benefits of every comp and cashback dollar you could hope to expect. We never paid for anything except room taxes and tips for years. Oh by the way, we were playing just about every weekend every year. I think we have a very good perspective of how variance and payback percentage work hand in hand with the EV's.
So to say this simply DB, FAA & whomever else has spent the same amount of time playing vp in AC, they have witnessed just what I have, diminished streaks, fewer royals and as DB puts it more "Dud" hands than ever before. Not weeks but month after month of nothing on top of nothing. To discount this assessment speaks to me that you may be a sometime player or one that is comfortable with your loses.
I don't want to come off too strong here but we should all be trying to pull together our forces to try and discover just what may have happened rather than trying to debunk each others assumptions. I agree with DB that eliminating oversight in the casinos has more than likely contributed to this condition we all face. We all need to write to our political representatives and ask them to investigate what might amount to fleecing the paying public who attend these establishments in good faith.

In closing I can say that, in the day, I was exposed to all of the good vp players in multiple casinos who stopped playing as a result of whatever algorithm the casinos were able to employ to the programming of these machines to cause them to react in such a manner.

[vpnutnj]

Ted,
Who would complain about a 30 average for royals. The better question would be is what is our current average. Look, if you want to get into a discussion regarding play statistics today vs. in the day the differences would be dramatic. I can't see how anyone can defend just what now seems to be the new normal.