Poker Poker Poker!: [vpFREE] Re: The Montana Play

--- In vpFREE@yahoogroups.com, "tralfamidorgooglycrackers"
<tralfamidorgooglycrackers@...> wrote:
>
> 1. I would put this at over +8% with a hyper-aggressive, high-
> variance "Ace Attack" strategy.
>

You are right. It an Act Attack game.
> 2. The hourly return depends on how many hands you can slam through
in
> an hour, which depends on the condition of the machine, how often
Miss
> America (or at least, Miss Montana, or even Miss Billings) walks
> through the door, etc. At a very modest speed of 800 hands/hr,
which
> would be $400 coin-in, you're making over 30 clams/hr.
>

I averaged $450 an hour in wager. I put the theoretical payback at
over $60 an hour which is about where I came in at.

> 3. Is this a trick question? With Montana's (asinine) $800 jackpot
> limit, do you ever GET a W-2G?
>

Once again, you are on the ball. You can't get a W2G in Montana
because the biggest jackpot is $800.

> What outed the play for you? I ran across something similar in
> Hamilton one fine summer day, and vacuumed all the progressives,
which
> were $800/max for the five aces, $350 for the natural AAAA, and
$170
> for the AAAxx. Don't ask me how they got that high. I checked back
on
> my way back through and the progressives had been removed.
>

I stopped into Billings last year just to visit the Crystal Lounge on
1st and Broadway. Back in 1984 I had played lots of stud poker but
at the Crystal they were dealing this newfangled game called Texas
Holdem. It was the first time I ever played the game.

Anyways, they got about 15 machines in the poker room. I
think "You're not going to find anything if you go over and punch up
payscales. This just ain't the country you would find an overlay."
So I go over punching up payscales and come across this Jackpot Aces
game. It was different from the new version. You had to bet $1.25,
but the flush payed 6 and the straight payed 5. The royal paid only
$800. The rest of the payscale was the same. This is the game you
described in your above post.

So I see these meters and I look at the payscale and I don't know
what to think. I don't have any tools with me to analyze the game.
My laptop was in storage in Las Vegas. I see the big numbers in the
progressives but I'm also looking at a 3K that pays only even money.
I take off walking through downtown and check other casinos. I'm
seeing the Aces Full at $200, $250 and the 4 Aces at $350, $400. I
didn't know it then but this money was built up throught short coin
action.

So I write everything down and figured to analyze it the nest time
I'm in Las Vegas.

I screwed around and didn't analyze the game for almost a year. When
I did I was shcoked. I headed straight for Montana. But they were
changing the game out from the $1.25 version to the 50 cent version.

The game was on 5500 machines in the state and it was virgin
territory--not a video poker pro in sight. I would have loved to
have had that shot at sweeping those machines out.

I know why they changed the game out. The bet was to high for
Montanans. This is the land of the five dollar bill. If you look
around these little casinos at what bills the public is putting in
the machines the great majority is five dollar bills. A 50 cent bet
is called "betting high" here.

So thats how I stumbled onto it. Just blind luck.