Popularity of 9-5 Triple Bonus Plus?

[alpax]

I do not play much high variance games in general, but I was interested in exploring 9-5 Triple Bonus Plus when I happen to take a trip to Vegas down the future.

I did some searching on vpfree to notice that this game is a rare find, it is mostly in Vegas locals casinos, and a few places in the west. Seems like it is most prominent in the Stations operated locations, "Up to 99.8%" machines and this game's return is exactly at the highest advertised. Not sure how this game is different than White Hot Aces.

I have not seen people post much at all about this game on the stories forum, and the members who have visited Red Rock (most superior Station operated casino?) only mention DDB.

I did not practice the game at all on Video Poker for Winners, but looking atthe strategy it seems to play out very similar to 9/6 DDB, except for a few noticeable cases.

1. Like many of the games where Flush pays 5 for 1, the strategy when dealt a King-Ten suited will be to just hold the King if one of the three cards is 2-8 suited penalty card.

2. 3 to a straight flush with no high cards and 1 inside gap beats 2 to a Royal Flush that is Ace high.

3. 3 to a royal with Ace and Ten beats 4 to a flush

I'd imagine the swings will be killer if the player does not hit enough quad aces or low quads. Any thoughts on this game? The calculated variance is at 44 and DDB is around 41. So I'd imagine a rougher experience than DDB.

Do people dislike the game playing for $1 denomination since quad aces can trigger a handpay at 1200 credits on the dot? Or would people rather play 10/6 DDB at the stations because it is there. I also heard about being no-mailed for being a winner on a visit. I am aware that for high variance games, the actual outcome people experience may be far off from the theoretical return value.

Wondering if the game is relevant to people.

[Vman96]

TB+ relevant to me because it's currently the best available game to me at my favorite bar in Vegas (at 7/5 though...:(). Also it the best game at one of my locals at 9/5, but I play 35/8/5 Bonus instead because it's on a multigame unit that yields more generous mail, imo.

Unfortunately, I think I'm one of the few that play this game, even though it can be a nice alternative to DDB. In my actual experience though, it's been rough since I still haven't got quad Aces-4s yet, which roughly lowers your expectation by 11.98% at 9/5 or 12.15% at 7/5. Shockingly I get a dealt SF back in 2012 on it...on one quarter...meh. A similar comparison to DDB, not getting any Aces-4s will only cost you 10.61% at 10/6.

Considering stations gives 12X (0.3% vs. 0.025%) as many points on TB+ than 10/6 DDB though, and with a small possibility of additional mail, I go TB+ here I think. Player points accumulation is also a guaranteed thing. And if you have an itch to play full-pay deuces, I definitely would avoid compounding the no-mail issue by playing 10/6 DDB along with it.

Maybe pjmaui (or others) can weigh on this a bit, he plays a lot at Stations.

[Vman96]

And since you have been thinking about "strategy changes" this is a post I wrote up if someone has JoB strategy down cold for approximate adjustments to other games. I think you have most of TB+ changes from DDB at least.

Rough strategy adjustments from 9/6 JoB for other games

[alpax]

Good insight on the game! I forgot to include that my motive to consider this game was for the reason to try out something that I can find in Vegas but not at the local casino. Usually on the VPFree listings, aside from the 100% games, Double Bonus Deuces Wild appears as an unique game choice, but a change in Deuces Wild family of game can change the strategy dramatically, It is not going to be worth the effort if the game is not going to be available to play most of the time. The initial glance at the Wizard of Odds strategy calculator for this game at its 9/5 paytable resembled closely DDB. Maybe the thread viewers who commonly play DDB can get something out of this too.

Aside from TB+, I was considering Airport Deuces or 9/6 DDB or 8/5 Bonus Poker single STP, since no additional effort to learn new strategies for occasional purposes were needed. I was looking towards playing at Southpoint which has both TB+ and good STP games. But I am aware from the VPFree forums that both Stations and Southpoint are reluctant to give out mailers to non-locals.

I marked that strategy adjustments link as a browser favorite link to go back to for reference. I should have done it in the past.

From the single line Game King on this website, it seems like TB+ pays 100 for 1 for a straight flush and White Hot Aces pays 80 for 1, the full house return seems to be the only interchangeable for both games. If White Hot Aces has a higher full house payout than TB+ at the same casino, it might be worth playing the game that has the higher full house.


With regarding getting points for the Boarding Pass players club, I did look back at a recent Red Rock post from pjmaui who is the common 10/6 DDB player here at Stations. I was curious at the time how to get into Chairman tier from significantly reduced points (you are correct about it being 12x less) for playing 100% games. The last part of the common I once thought it was the negative expecation 9/5 DDB (97.87%) to gain the points, but now I could picture the 9/5 to refer to TB+.

Hi alpax - When I play 10/6 machines which requires $12 of play for either 3 or 4 points I do not even use my card. I find it more annoying after playing an hour and only earning 100 points (if that). My host at Fiesta asked me the other night "where's your card?" My reply was "In my back pocket." His response was "you wont earn any points like that" My reply was "not much difference." I quite often play 9/5 machines using my card.