This week, Illinois finally opened two mini casinos in bars. Limit is five
gaming machines. One of them (The Bringer Inn) is in Morton Grove IL, about
four miles from me.
I am not a drinker but the Bringer Inn is a long time fixture in this area
(I have been out here 33 years and this place predates that.) and very
popular extremely clean looking place.
They appear to have four gaming machines one of which is single line video
poker. (Eight different game types.) These are all IGT products.
Illinois "bar version" video poker is limited to $2 max bet (8 coin
quarters) and a top payout of $500.
This makes for some weirdness at the top of the paytable. (Example: TDB has
a top payout of 250 for 1 on the RF, SF, Four Aces + low and Four 2s-4s +
low.)
If it were not for a special add-on feature the games would range from
95.49% (Bonus Deuces) to 96.51% (BP Deluxe). These are the effective ERs for
less than eight quarters.
The special feature is called "Wheel of Gold". I was only familiar with this
name as it applied to large progressive slots.
In this case, if you play the eight coin max, quad fives through kings (On
the deuce games it must be naturals.) triggers a wheel spin that can win up
to $500. The eight coin paytable is as good as the other bet sizes so this
feature is actually an add-on!
Videopoker.com, wizardofodds.com and vpgenius.com do not have any info on
the value of this feature. I am sure the positions on the wheel are not
equally weighted and do not know how much this feature adds to the games.
One of the spaces says "game over" so sometimes this feature adds zero.
Sadly, these games may actually be slightly better than the quarter level
offerings at some of the Chicago Area casinos.
Does anybody have info on the average result of a wheel spin for this
version of Wheel of Gold?
Note: This is not either of the "Wheel Poker" variants nor is this "Build A
Wheel".
I suspect we may not want a full listing of these mini-casinos as Illinois
is slated to have several thousand of these!
Howard W. Stern
vpfree2 monitor - Rivers (IL) and Majestic Star (IN)
[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
