Build a Wheel Video Poker

I just saw a new video poker game at the Red Rock called Build a Wheel. Here are the rules.

1. The game can be played based on 3-play or 5-play video poker. The rest of the rules shall refer to the 3-play.
2. If the player bets max coins on all three hands then for the price of one hand the player may enable the "build a wheel" feature. So, a max bet would be 20 coins.
3. The wheel has eight slices. Two are already filled in with 10,000* and 4,000.
4. For a dealt three of a kind, straight, or flush the player is awarded one slice. The average amounts are in the table below.
5. For a dealt full house or higher the rest of the wheel is filled in according to the average amounts in the table below.
6. When the wheel is full the player spins it and is awarded the win where it stops. I do not know how the wheel is weighted (I'm working on getting that information).
7. Before you think about Wonging the game left in high states, if the player has earned at least one slice he may invoke a surrender award, resetting the wheel to the default position with just to two initial wins.

*: The top wheel award at the Red Rock is progressive. At the time I was there on 12/23/11 it was 10,263. At VideoPoker.com it is a flat 10,000. It probably starts at 10,000 and goes up until somebody hits it. For the sake of discussion, let's just assume 10,000.

Here are the average awards for each hand.

Hand	Combinations	Prob	Average win
Royal flush	4	0.000002	4000.00
Straight flush	36	0.000014	4000.00
Four of a kind	624	0.000240	2188.46
Full house	3,744	0.001441	938.46
Flush	5,108	0.001965	1468.13
Straight	10,200	0.003925	952.50
Three of a kind	54,912	0.021128	650.00
Two pair	123,552	0.047539	0.00
Pair	1,098,240	0.422569	0.00
Nothing	1,302,540	0.501177	0.00
Total	2,598,960	1.000000	0.00

I think a good opening math question is how many hands would the player need to play before he gets to spin the wheel. In other words, how many hands before he is dealt six low deal hands (three of a kind to flush) or one high deal hand (full house or higher), whichever comes first. For now I'll hold off on positing my answer.

I think it is 180.4229 hands.

Quote: CrystalMath

I think it is 180.4229 hands.

I agree.

Quote: CrystalMath

I think it is 180.4229 hands.

Lol, I like the fact you waited over 4 hours, but 'we' were never going to figure this out ;-)

So if you surrender, do you get anything? Are you just surrendering to spite other players, or do you get a small payout?

It is odd to me that the weighting details are not on the help screens, but maybe they can omit it because the feature doesn't affect player strategy.

Quote: WizardofEngland

So if you surrender, do you get anything? Are you just surrendering to spite other players, or do you get a small payout?

Yes, you get something. I played the 5¢ game and filled in only one slice for 1200. My cash-out award was $7.

Quote: CrystalMath

It is odd to me that the weighting details are not on the help screens, but maybe they can omit it because the feature doesn't affect player strategy.

I view the glass as half full. I was happy to see the average slice awards. I've never seen game rules with a wheel voluntarily disclose how it was weighted if it was weighted unevenly. In my opinion, it should be required to disclose this information. Alas, I don't write the rules.

So any more info on the return of the game? I can't wait to play it if the return is reasonable.

Quote: bugsyluciano

So any more info on the return of the game? I can't wait to play it if the return is reasonable.

I think IGT will at least give me the final returns, hopefully this week. Maybe I'll get the wheel weightings as well.

What I expect to see is the return is slightly better than the base game by itself, like by 0.1%.

I finally heard from IGT. They would not tell me the wheel weightings. I also should have asked about the average progressive win, but I doubt they would have told me that either. What they would tell me is the average wheel win was just under 900 credits.

Armed with that information, I created the following Build a Wheel page. Please have a look and let me know what you think.

I have a couple questions:

1. in the Deuces Wild version of the game, do the wheel-filling wins need to be natural? 22K63 isn't going to get me a slice, right?
2. When you're saying that the player needs a "dealt" 3OAK or better, I'm taking that to be on the first 5 cards - as opposed to a "drawn" 3OAK or better. That being said, I must be the most unlucky VP player ever. 180 hands? Really? I can't even think of the last time I was dealt better than 2 pair on a JoB machine.