the situation is worse than ever

Discussion about gambling in Atlantic City
DaBurglar
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the situation is worse than ever

Post by DaBurglar »



I returned from my week long trip in AC.  I was there from December 3 thru today, the 10th.  I had some tourney success in real poker at Showboat and Borgata.   But whenever I had free time and was in the mood, I tried some more VP and it was even more pathetic than I have experienced so far......just more certification about what I already extablished about AC Video Poker, that it is just like playing slots only without the benefits! The worst and most obvious example(s) are the Taj and Resorts.   I already posted about the TAJ in the Quick Quad thread that jetermacaw wrote so go there to read about the taj  Resorts is a really depressing example.....I love the hotel/casinos old AC vibe and decor and I love its food.   But its VP is really awful.....almost ALL Resorts VP machine menus have as a selection the game of 8/5 Bonus Poker at 25 and 50 cents, a healthy 99.3 %  return game.....and like I said there are literally dozens and dozens of this spread throughout the casino, so a player is inclined to think "great, I can make my money last here at least!"     Wrong.....for the last several years and especially the last 10 months, these 8/5 BP games have repeatedly and unwaveringly gobbled up both my own money, and my cousins' and friends who play there as well.    My return currently clocks in around 72% over the last 10 months and no one I know is above 80%.    The games return nothing and you get hand after hand of crap.    My dud rate is nearly 69% at resorts....you almost have to see it to understand it, how hand after hand after hand returns nothing, not even jacks or better!   AGain, this is a 99.3% game, and even accounting for variance and randomness, no way should it be this terrible this consistent for this long......UNLESS the machines are set the way I have been saying and establishing all this time, to return percentages in the 85-90% range, of course I havent even hit that!    Christ, 90% would be a HUGE step up! And before anyone asks "why?" I would play there, I was staying at Resorts for 4 of my nights and would commute to my poker tourneys and games, and as terrible as the play was, I "only" lost about 600 bucks and played just long enough to earn my comps for rooms and steak at gallghers and few other things.

Tedlark
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Post by Tedlark »

  DaBurglar, thank you very much for the informative and inspiring post.
 
Signed Gov. Christie
 
P.S. I'm looking for someone to head up our new "Get Sparked by AC" campaign and I am hoping you'll put in for the job.

olds442jetaway
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Post by olds442jetaway »

DaBurglar, In the long run on that 99.2% Bonus Poker game, you should hit 2 pair or better every 4.2 hands. I think I figured this correctly from the Wizard's analyzer for this game. It is probably too much work to keep track of your total hands played and the total number of 2 pair or better hits. However, in the long run, if you did this one simple division calculation, you should get 4.2 as the answer.
   I used to keep track of it at Mohegan Sun. Very cumbersome so eventually I stopped. When I was hitting 2 pair or better as the average in less than 5 hands, I would drop my bet a unit. If the total average was more than every 5 hands of hitting 2 pair or better, I would up my bet a unit hoping for more hits and the average returning closer to the 4.2 number. In all my hundreds of thousands of hands of play on this game there, I never even came close to that 4.2 number. It was always higher by the end of the day. They have since yanked the 8/5 machines and replaced them with 6/5 which I and most people won't play at all.
    I get similar results there with 9/6 job. Therefore I have resorted to playing the tougher game lower denomination machines hoping for the big hands and am roughly holding my own for now. I can understand your frustration with most of the A/C games based on my experiences in Ct. as well.

edog743
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Post by edog743 »

I guess some people will never learn.

ko king
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Post by ko king »

I guess some people will never learn.

Learn what?

edog743
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Post by edog743 »

DA says he is being cheated everytime he goes to a casino in AC. Yet he keeps on going back. I GUESS SOME PEOPLE WILL NEVER LEARN.

ko king
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Post by ko king »

DA says he is being cheated everytime he goes to a casino in AC. Yet he keeps on going back. I GUESS SOME PEOPLE WILL NEVER LEARN.

I get what you're saying and the smart thing may be to just not play there anymore but how would anyone learn anything if they just threw their hands up and walked away. I kinda see where he's coming from because I've been there done that and he may still be in transition phase torn between the possibility of a run of bad luck and the fact that the games not the same anymore. I've played the game for almost 20 years non-stop and there's no way anyone can convince me it's just like it always was, the numbers don't lie. I travel a lot and get to play vp all over the place, it's not all the same and I've learned to avoid locations where the numbers and statistics failed to reach reasonable or just plain acceptable expectations. For many years I had no real preference as to where I played other than paytables but things got a little cloudy for me a few years back when the economy took a dive and the casinos starting seeing their revenues drop. I play a dollar denomination that exposes the shortcomings of some vp in some places in a real and easily idetifiable way, W-2G's. The denomination and vp game I play requires a W-2G be issued on 6 different hands hit and when you see the amount of W-2G's go from over 50 a year down to between 25-30 for consecutive years you start to pay close attention. It took a while but I finally realized for some reason what I knew and understood about odds and statistics doesn't apply anymore, that's what I learned and maybe that's what you meant when you said "some people never learn", but you need to understand it takes time to learn.

edog743
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Post by edog743 »

What I meant was if you knowingly think a casino is ripping you off according to all the copious post on this forum from him or her they whole heartedly believe this. Why in the world would you ever go back to these places?

onemoretry
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Post by onemoretry »



.....for the last several years and especially the last 10 months, these 8/5 BP games have repeatedly and unwaveringly gobbled up both my own money, and my cousins' and friends who play there as well.    My return currently clocks in around 72% over the last 10 months and no one I know is above 80%.

To me, a return that low is unfathomable. It suggests an average loss rate exceeding $200/hour for single line 25c video poker. Are you truly losing at that rate? Or, am I misinterpreting your numbers?

ko king
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Post by ko king »

What I meant was if you knowingly think a casino is ripping you off according to all the copious post on this forum from him or her they whole heartedly believe this. Why in the world would you ever go back to these places?

I'm with you, sometimes it's best to just walk away, find somewhere else to play. Lots of people have done just that, I still go with friends to a couple of casinos I don't play VP or slots at and just play Three Card Poker or Let it Ride and it amazes me to see the vp games with almost noone playing, it's almost like a ghost town most of the time. Most of the time I just make the longer trip to play VP where the pastures are greener.

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