Progressive Jackpot Alert

As of this morning, the progressive on the $5 Double Double Bonus video poker game at Rincon is north of $47,000. If you go there, please give us updates.

What is the paytable of this game?

Dan the paytable doesn't matter if you hit a royal.

Its 8/5.

I guess I'm looking at it from a math perspective.

If the paytable is bad enough, even a $47k royal (instead of the usual $20k) isn't that exciting.

8/5 DDB Poker is a 96.79% return game, which sucks.

However, the Royal does account for 2% of the return when it is at its normal $20k level.

With the jackpot at $47k, that gives you an extra 2.35% return from the machine, which bumps it up to 99.14% return overall.

So it's still not a positive expectation game, and in fact it's slightly worse than 8/5 bonus poker! There is also more variance, as your expected win rate WITHOUT royals is 94.79%, which is really bad.

I understand that it's also more exciting, as the royal will net you $47k.

It needs to be over $64,200 to be a +EV game, by the way.

In before Rob Singer shows up and tells me that I have no clue how to win, and that paytables don't ever matter.

Paytables don't make you win -- and they don't make you lose. Paytables only give you a guide about what to expect over the long term. A royal flush on 9/6 Jacks or Better and a royal flush on 8/5 Jacks or Better both pay 4,000 coins. And the quads and two pair also pay the same.

If you are playing for a big progressive royal do you really care if the game has a 9/5 paytable or an 8/5 paytable or a 7/5 paytable? If you do -- then you shouldn't be trying to hit the big royal.

It's funny, Alan, because your view on these matters seems to be exactly in between mine and Rob's.

Rob completely disregards pay tables and spews nonsense about having to "know how to win" and playing for the big payouts.

You seem to typically search for the best paytables you can find, but at the same time disregard paytables in situations like these.

I am always about the expected value, where the only other thing I pay attention to is the likelihood of high variance.

You are correct in that paytables are more about long term expectation, but you're incorrect regarding the statement "they don't make you lose". YES THEY DO! Better paytables do two things:

1) Allow you to book winning sessions more easily despite failing to hit really big hands

2) Give you more hands to play in order to hit those big ones.

For example, let's say you took a $1000 gambling budget and are playing a $2 machine. You have committed to quit after $1000 loss no matter what.

A 9-6 machine will basically give you a free hand for each flush or full house over an 8-5 machine. That, in turn, gives you more of a chance to hit those big hands you crave, as well as the medium-big hands (like non-bonus quads) which can either get you out of a hole or give you a ton of extra hands to play.

It all compounds. Fewer opportunities to win = less winning.

Remember the discussion here about the rapidly decreasing paytables over the last several years? Remember the debate about what consitutes "full pay" (I was on your side on that one, btw)?

Casinos are (smartly) realizing that they can make lots of extra profit by lowering paytables, as a higher and higher percentage of video poker players are simply focused on the big payouts, and don't really care much if they're getting paid 9/6, 8/5, 7/5, or even 6/5 on their flush or full house. As long as they hit those big hands every so often, they don't care about paytables. Another sizable segment of the video poker crowd has no idea what paytables SHOULD be, so they believe 6/5 is completely normal.

Dan I stopped playing the DDB progressives at Rincon about a year ago when the paytable was cut from 9/5 to 8/5. However, with the progressive approaching $50K I would play it now.

Normally I play 8/5 Aces, 8/5 Bonus and the Royal Aces game when I have the profit or free play for it.

Regarding the progressive amounts: as you know those are the contributions of players. The amounts over the basic royal are paid for by players and not the casino.

Dan your analysis is good but one thing to add, through strategy changes you can make the royal worth more when it gets really high and increase your expected value .

The Progressive was hit on Thursday night for 56k. That did not stop me from playing my free play on them and did hit a couple 4oaks.

Nice hits and thanks for letting us know about the Progressive being hit. I recall the progressive being hit at about $70,000 and at about $53,000 and $50,000. Now, we can add the $56,000 win to the list of big winners.

By the way the lady that hit it for $56,000 kept playing on the same machine and hit a royal again on it a few hours later for $23,000.