| Recently I received two emails from readers, one from Tom Howze and one from William McAnirlin, reacting to my January article about the Rio and the gaming show. Thanks for writing guys; I appreciate the feedback. Not only do letters from readers help me to know your interests but quite often I learn of things that would normally escape me. Such was the case here. One of the emails pointed out that the Mohegan Sun casino in Uncasville, Connecticut had 9/6 Jacks or Better video poker. For those of you who might not be familiar with the 9/6 designation, it refers to the per coin payout on the Full House and Flush, respectively. It is common to rate five-card draw games using these numbers since they are the ones that frequently are altered to adjust the average payout of a machine. For example, in the game Double Bonus it is common to see 10/7, 9/7, or even 9/6 payouts. Jacks or better games can be found in 10/6, 9/7, 9/6, 8/5, 7/5 or 6/5 payouts. The reason that 9/6 is of interest to players is that with perfect play the game returns an average of 99.54% to the player. This combined with a decent player's club can give the player around a 100% return, sometimes a bit more, sometimes a bit less. 10/6 and 9/7 Jacks or Better, which can be found at the Stratosphere in Las Vegas, return over 100% as does 10/7 Double Bonus. Anyway, the news about Mohegan Sun piqued my interest and I decided to take a look for myself. Here is my report. Mohegan Sun is a beautiful property; it is spacious and tastefully decorated. I had lunch at The Cove restaurant and thought it was excellent. That is about the end of the good news. Blackjack is all 6 and 8 decks except for some four-deck games dealt from a continuous shuffler. It was 11:00 AM and the smallest table minimum in regular Blackjack I could find was $25. I say regular Blackjack because there were some $6 and $12 games but the reason for the odd amount is that 1/5 of the bet on the main hand is forced on a side bet. I didn't investigate these games further. The regular Blackjack I saw included double after splitting, late surrender, and dealer standing on the soft 17. Reasonable Blackjack if you can take the high minimums. I have several friends who are regulars in private Poker games in my region. Of these, a few make regular trips to Foxwoods Casino in Ledyard, Connecticut to play in the Poker games there. All of these pals have at one time or another tried to entice me to join one of their games or one of their Poker trips and I have always refused. Why? Because I am well aware of my Poker skills or lack thereof. I usually just tell them that I am "happy playing Video Poker." "Oh yeah," they'll say, "I'll have to give that a try someday." "Well, make sure you talk to me before you do," I tell them. I hope they will take my advice seriously because if they don't, Video Poker is going to be a rude awakening for them. The fact is that the only things Poker and Video Poker have in common are the names of the hands and their ranks. A skillful Poker player who tries to use his knowledge of Poker to play Video Poker will suffer the same fate I would if I joined my friends' private Poker games. Let me show you why. Many of you are familiar with the Midnight Skulker, who writes articles on this site as well as for other gambling publications. Well, a few weekends ago the ole Skulker was playing Blackjack at the Wildhorse Casino, a Native American casino located near Pendleton, Oregon. There he encountered a blackjack side bet that he had not seen before that involved Aces and had a progressive jackpot; the Wildhorse simply calls the bet Progressive Blackjack and I'll describe it in a moment. Anyway, the Skulker correctly observed that the bet did not look very good but wondered what the progressive should be before the bet turned positive for the player. He wrote to our editor John Robison wondering if any of the "RGT gurus" could help out on this question. John forwarded his letter to me. I don't think I qualify as "guru" but I can answer the Skulker's question. |
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