The Hazard of Short Pay Machines

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           Last week, I glossed over the cost of playing less than full-pay machines.  This week, I'm going to jump into this topic a bit further.  Full-pay machines are the version of a particular type of video poker that have the commonly found highest paybacks.  The obvious example of this is what is called the 9-6 full pay jacks or better machine.  We call it 9-6 because this is the payout for the Full House and Flush.  What about the other pays?  Well since the bottom 4 pays are usually 4-3-2-1, we don't see much variation in these payouts.  Lowering any one of them would require an identical payout for two hands of different ranks.  Casinos try to avoid this where possible.

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In Search of Full-Pay Machines

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           This past week, I received a letter from a reader who found some 'errors' in my Expert Video Poker for Las Vegas book.  I'm a bit skeptical when someone tells me these things as the numbers have been out there for so many years and looked at by so many people.  As it turns out, they were more like typos, which I guess technically is an error, but I put it into a different category.  Fortunately, neither of the typos would lead a Player to go very far astray.  One of the typos listed the number of Four of a Kinds from the Draw on a Three of a Kind.  Right below the typo is the correct number which was used in the actual calculation of the Expected Value.  So, it might have been a bit confusing, but most readers would probably realize it was just a typo.  Also, I don't think too many people are confused about how to play a Three of a Kind.  It is one of the more self-explanatory hands.

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