| The space crunch due to Illinois' limit of 1,200 gaming positions per license means we're unlikely to see its return to this state anytime soon. JACKPOT TIME: For the second time in five months, Horseshoe Casino in Hammond has paid out a big jackpot at Caribbean Stud Poker. On April 18, 29-year-old Richard Daluga of Chicago was dealt a royal flush. Daluga had made the $1 side bet to be eligible for the progressive jackpot, so his big hand was worth $192,441.50. The last Caribbean Stud royal at Horseshoe came on Nov. 13 and was worth $250,040. After a royal jackpot is paid out, the casino resets the progressive meter at $10,000, and a percentage of each $1 side bet is added to the jackpot. My information from manufacturers and casino slot directors over the years has always been that video poker games in Illinois casinos are programmed in the same way as those in Nevada. Cards are dealt from a randomly shuffled electronic deck in which each card has an equal chance of being dealt. That doesn't contradict the gaming board's reply. The random number generator determines payback in that it determines which cards are dealt. However, it deals cards in such a way that frequency of hands can be calculated just as if a human dealer was shuffling a real deck of cards. Just to confirm, I put the question to Mike Fields, in charge of video poker at IGT, which makes most of the video poker games on casino floors. Fields' return e-mail said, "[The letter writer] is completely wrong. The games operate the same everywhere in this regard." Nevada has the toughest video poker randomness standard in the country, requiring that every card have an equal chance of being dealt. IGT says all its machines live up to that standard. And when we take the frequency of winning hands and combine it with the payoffs per hand, we can calculate long-term payback percentages with expert strategy-regardless of whether you're playing in casinos in Illinois, Nevada or anywhere else. That's not necessarily the case with tavern games. There's nothing to prevent such variable secondary decisions because they're not supposed to be there as gaming devices in the first place. Q. Is video poker a game of chance or a game of skill? Mr. Royal, via e-mail A. It's a game of chance, with strong elements of skill. Missouri, at a time when casinos were permitted to offer only games of skill, had video poker but not slots. And when Frank Scoblete was writing Victory at Video Poker, Rex Carlson of the Nevada Gaming Control Board told him, "If a player understands how to read the [pay table] chart, the player can determine exactly what he faces, unlike a regular slot machine where the percentages are unknown. |
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