I find it very odd that the 5 play has such a low EV.
I wonder if videopoker.com has the incorrect numbers for the frequency and average multiplier for that game.
I might just go check out my local casino this week to double check the numbers....that is if they even have the game haha
I'm still assuming the error is on my side until strongly indicated otherwise. I hate to go down this road, but I'm not sure I could play this type of game confidently for money. There's a long established principle that an electronic card game must precisely mimic the probabilities of a physical deck.
But in this case we have a wheel which apparently is not required to mimic its physical counterpart. The wheel is rigged, however the game notes purport to disclose the degree of riggage.
I'm not necessarily on board with that.
I would prefer an equally weighted wheel with a disclosure that actual probabilities are equivalent to the visual indication.
According to the FIND lookup, the only Nevada location is Circa.
In this thread, some of my calcs were indicating an EV reduction when betting max for the bonus feature. I visited Circa, and now I know the reason: This site rounded some of the numbers. For example, here's this site's (8/5) Bonus Poker 5-play:
Wheel spin frequency is indicated at 41. But that's rounded up apparently from the actual 40.50. Here's Circa's (6/5) Bonus Poker 5-play:
Notice also Circa is much tighter on the average wheel win. Bonus Poker 6/5 has a base EV of 96.87%. For a max bet at Circa, I calculate 96.90%. They're giving almost zero enhancement to the bonus bet.
Now, same game (8/5 BP this site, 6/5 BP Circa) but 10 play.
This site indicates an average multiplier of 5.52:
Circa indicates 5.51:
EV difference between the two values is about 0.05%. Maybe the actual is something like 5.515 which was rounded in opposite directions.
Look at the average wheel win busted down to only 721.05 at Circa. My spreadsheet says 96.875% at max bet. Base EV to three decimals is 96.869. They're giving a 0.006% enhancement for betting the bonus, if my math is correct.
Please note that an early version of this game that we received had only integer numbers for the wheel spin average as you saw in the version on this site. Because we begin building these games for the web site long before the casino release, sometimes changes will be made or there are planned changes that are simply not reflected in our early version of the game. Of course we try to be sure the games are fully up to date, but it looks like this time a change was made that was not reflected on the site.
As you have shown, the casino version has a more accurate number with 2 decimal places, which is of course very important if calculating the return of the game. We have updated the game on the site to reflect this change that was made prior to release in the casinos. I would guess that some rounding differences may still apply compared to what we have here, but a calculated range of possible returns would be much more accurate with the additional decimals.
For any other number differences such as the average multiplier, these could be differences in rounding, or reflect differences in the pay tables.
We make every effort to make the games on the site as close as possible to the actual casino games, but wherever there are discrepancies you should of course always rely on the casino version of the game. We certainly appreciate any differences being pointed out when found.