noti: It's a problem for video poker which generally has 800 for 1 payoffs for a royal which triggers a W2G for bets of $1.50 or more. The IRS should raise the limit of $1200, but that's not likely to happen. The casinos shouldn't put so much heat on W2G's, but that's not likely to happen, although eventually some enlightened local's casino will probably do it and make tons of money, maybe Dotty's already does it, sort of. What you have is a standoff.
Curious that noti mentioned Dotty's.
What Dotty's does is pay a 10% bonus on (supposedly) 10% of the W2Gs. That is, if you get a $4,000 W2G, about 10% of the time you will be drawn for a $400 cash bonus. So I assume that's worth $40 on average, making the original jackpot worth $4,040 rather than $4,000. The results of the drawing are posted on Tuesday, based on W2Gs received Sunday through Saturday of the previous week.
On the game Bonus Poker Deluxe, I set the pay schedule at the top end to 4040, 252.5, 404 to take these W2G bonuses into account. That changes a 99.642% game into a 99.784% game, assuming you are betting at least $24 a hand to trigger W2Gs on straight flushes. Betting $15 - $23 per hand captures most of that because that will yield W2Gs on the quads but not the "relatively rare" straight flushes. The slot club pays up to 0.2%, depending on time of day, and the mailers yield between 0.0001% and 0.4%, depending on whether you've been winning recently. If you use the double up feature to get frequent W2Gs and can get them on flushes and higher, you get a higher yield on the game but your mailers are completely cut off if you do this.
VPW only allows integer pay schedules, so I double all numbers yielding a 199.568% game and then divide by two. WinPoker allows fractional pay schedule sizes, so you don't have to make an adjustment there.
Super Double Bonus adds 0.05% to the EV and quite a bit to the variance, and you need to play $25 a hand or more to get all the W2Gs.
For professional players, who already have a lot of W2Gs and a few more don't bother them, this can be a good game. For players who do not get a lot of W2Gs, getting some W2Gs causes a lot of "IRS stress."
If I didn't already receive a lot of W2Gs from other places, I probably wouldn't find Dotty's a good place to play. But since I do, i do.
I don't know if this is what noti meant when he mentioned "maybe Dotty's already does it, sort of." How this turns into a any kind of a standoff, I have no idea.
