Here's my VP strategy...

[Guests]

The biggest lesson I've learned in my 20 years of VP experience is this... Move!

[BOOPSAHOY]

You dont always play max-bet??

[Guests]

By the way, once I get going and get some bank in the credits I MAX BET to the last hand. Can't count how many royals sitting next me got paid 250 in quarters! DUH!

[Guests]

I'm a MAX bet freak! I've hit big after only 6 hands and after I get the stair step going I always MAX the MF!

[Guests]

Like I said, If you get substantial bank in the credits on the way up the stairstep...Start the maxing.

[Guests]

I wouldn't give this advice if it hadn't worked for me in most cases... No, I don't win everytime... Nobody does!

[shadowman]

The law in Nevada and most other states require that the machines be random and fair. This means you have exactly the same chance on each and every hand of hitting any possible result. It does not matter what you bet or if you move. The payback is determined by the paytable alone.
 
If moving around makes you more comfortable then that is fine. However, claiming there is an advantage to that approach is not supported by the facts. I sometimes move machines and sometimes I don't. Over the years I can definitely say from experience that it doesn't matter. I've won and lost both ways. I used to bet short coin as well (many years ago) and sometimes I lucked out and sometimes I didn't. That's how it works with random events.
 
Also, betting a sequence has no advantage either. Since every hand is independent of the last one there is no way it could ever help. If you've had success then one of two things probably applies.
 
1) You've been lucky.
2) Like many gamblers you have selective memory. I always ask people to show me their records to verify these kind of claims and lo and behold they never have any.
 
Finally, both old and new machines can be streaky. That's because it has nothing to do with the machine or the denomination. It is actually the player who is streaky which is a side effect of the randomness.
 
I'm not trying to pick on you, but so many of these kind of myths abound and I like to deal in facts.
 

[MikeA]

No "myth" propagation here, but I was playing in Oklahoma down in Roland at the Cherokee Nation Casino there.  We were on a trip to Arkansas and my back will not cooperate with my in a car for more than around 4 hours so we booked a room for the night and the casino "happened" to be next door.VP sucked there like it does in most Oklahoma casinos.  9/6 DB and 9/5 DDB and all machines $.25/$.50/$1.00 with 800:1 RF at max pay (4,000) and 250:1 on anything else.  With nothing to do other than watch semi rigs blitz past the hotel on the freeway, I played some DDB at the minimum level at one-credit.  Actually, I stayed pretty even for the night until towards the end.  I went through 80 credits like tossing steel balls into a swimming pool!  Straight to ZERO without anything larger than 3OAK.  Since the casino is about half way between Wichita and Little Rock, it seemed a good place to stop and stretch for a couple of hours on the way home, so we pulled in.  I use the same "strategy" at minimums and went through $40 on the machine without hitting anything.  Then with the third plug of $20 (80 credits) I hit quad 4's with no kicker and bounced back to a little ahead on that last $20 but that didn't last long.  It was down to $10 pretty quick and was time for us to leave.  I changed to max play (where I always play on good machines) and hit quad Kings with $2.50 left in the machine!  That quad hit brought me back to dead even for the two sessions at that casino...a WIN considering the bad pay tables there.  I usually do not change denominations or credits bet.  Very unusual circumstances and just blind luck that it paid of for me. 

[shadowman]

There are paytables where you are better off playing min coin. The hourly loss rate is less than playing max coin. Of course, without other considerations, playing no-coin is the best option on these paytables.
 
We all know that VP is a game of many, many losing hands with only a few winners to hold us in the game. Clearly, if we could "know" when a good hand was coming we'd be better off playing min-coin until that time. Since the casinos are doing quite well these days I don't think too many folks have figured out how to do this on a regular basis.
 
For a couple of years in the mid 90s my wife had an uncanny ability to put a $20 in a quarter machine and play short coin until the last 10 credits where she would switch to max coin and hit something reasonable to keep playing. I could never do that.

[royal flush]

good answer sm