Can you openly use printed copies or the wizards video poker strategies in the casinos?

Here's something interesting I submitted to M, who rejected it, and Aliante Station last summer. They at first loved it and were going to give it a go, but because of their financial problems the lawyers made it a no-go close to kick-off.

Aliante has a lot of the latest generation HD widescreen 5-level 25c/50c/$1/$2/$5 multi-game machines in their casino. They either were or are in process of setting up their off-the-floor control via fibre optics. We were going to announce a start date & time where there would be 6 such machines somewhere on the floor that would have FPDW, FPJW, 10/7DBP, 10/6DDBP, 9/7TDBP, 10/6JoB, 8/6BP, & 9/5SDBP IN ALL FIVE DENOMINATIONS for exactly 4 hours, after which they would go down immediately after the final hand is played and restart with their normal <100% pay tables. At that time, 6 other machines unknown to any of the floor people would come on-line with this set of games for four hours, etc. etc. etc. Theoretically there would be no end to this cycle.

This would defeat the team play concept, it would really make the place a livey hopping joint, and it would allow Joe local to find one of the machines and give it a go. It would have made the casino probably the most popular in the city and get visitors in from all over town to their out-of-the-way location. You could literally be sitting at a machine at 10pm and BAM! it changes paytables right before your eyes to ones not seen in years.

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It's not just the average Joe I'd say. It would attract many of the local AP's who'd probably drag their families and ex-wives there with them to grab a seat and wait until bewitching hour to see if they get one of the lucky machines. It would have been interesting, at least for a while. But I think it would have been a big success for them also.

I think this is true. MotorCity in Detroit recently put in a whole room of video poker machines, like $0.01 hundred-play 9/6 Jacks, heavily publicized it, and then it was totally gone in about six weeks. It just wasn't profitable enough. People were playing $.05 at a time on a 99% paytable. They were replaced with new-fangled penny slots.

Last I read the average bet on penny slots was 73 cents. No wonder casino's love them

I've kept out my strategy sheet at video poker and nobody seemed to care before. My guess is that nobody is getting a bonus from the casino for giving somebody a hard time about using a piece of paper at a machine. One person cutting the odds is not going to break the bank considering 95% of people to who just sit down and play and give their money away.

Most of the concern about a strategy sheet at a blackjack table is that it is a foreign object which might be shiny or have a fiber optics camera looking at the bottom card or something. If the floor sees that you are using one of those gift shop strategy cards, they don't care.

At a VP machine, what is the risk of a strategy card? Slow play? It won't affect the outcome of play at all so they are not particularly worried about anything.

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Quote: gofaster87

Most of the strip casinos sell the BJ cards in their gift shop.

Very true. However, the wise gamer knows that casinos will put mistakes in their own black jack strategy cards. Then again, the wise gamer has already memorized basic strategy after much practice.

FWIW when I was at Wynn last week they were fine with me using a cheat sheet (actually a table from Wiz of Odds cut down and laminated) as long as I didn't keep it on the felt. I kept it in my pocket and referred to it as needed.

Side note: at one session last week I was sitting between two guys who were trying to impress each other talking about how many years they've played BJ and their skill at the game, war stories, etc. In the middle of this dick-measuring match I surrendered a hand (per basic strategy). They both stopped, looked at me like I came from Mars, and asked "what did you just do?" I told them that I surrendered my hand for half my bet. One said "you can do that?" and the other said "I could never understand how to surrender." I gave them a quick summary of surrender scenarios. They were quieter for the rest of the session (*smirk*).