March 2008

New Games Mean More Fun At The Tables
by John Grochowski
 

Some things never change. At the 2007 Global Gaming Expo at the Las Vegas Convention Center, nearly all the new video poker games we’ll be seeing in the coming year were concentrated at the International Game Technology booth.

Some things change dramatically, and one of the more dramatic changes at the latest G2E was the pullback from the table games market of Progressive Gaming, Inc. Long a market leader with Caribbean Stud Poker and other table games with progressive jackpots, PGI sold its table games division to Shufflemaster earlier in 2007.

When casino suppliers showed their best and brightest new wares at the latest expo in November, Gaming Entertainment, Inc., along with Shufflemaster were the companies to watch on the tables, while no G2E is ever complete without a look at IGT’s new video poker products.

To take the biggest reshuffling first, Shufflemaster was to offer progressive jackpots on its table games for the first time. In the past, side bets on games such as Let It Ride Bonus had offered flat jackpots, with no progressive meters. That was because PGI held patents on progressive table game systems and Shufflemaster was forced to steer clear. Now Shufflemaster is able to expand the progressive concept to its own games. Among the new games available is Let It Ride Progressive, with two optional side bets. One is a Three Card Bonus bet, which pays off any time your first three cards include a pair or better. The big jackpot comes with the bet on the progressive jackpot.

As on any other progressive, a percentage of the wagers is added to the jackpot until someone wins it all. The big bonanza comes on a royal flush. That wins everything on the progressive meter. A straight flush wins 10 percent of the jackpot, while the rest of the paytable brings 300-1 on four of a kind, 50-1 on a full house, 40-1 for a flush, 30-1 for a straight and 9-1 on three of a kind.

That’s the basic version. Casinos can choose to offer a “High Jackpot” version of Let It Ride Progressive. The full-jackpot payoff then is made for an “ordered” royal, meaning the player’s first three cards include an ace, king and queen of the same suit, with the jack and 10 coming in the community cards that finish a hand of Let It Ride. Other royals win 10 percent of the pot. Ordered royals will be rare enough that the jackpots should climb sky high.

Three Card Poker players can also look for a little something to spice up their game. In Ultimate Three Card Poker, Shufflemaster adds “blind” bet with payoffs of up to 100-1 for a mini-royal of ace, king and queen of the same suit. To start play, you have to make both ante and blind bets, and have the option of also betting on pair plus. Just as in regular Three Card Poker, pair plus pays off whenever you have a pair or better, though the paytable goes a step beyond the 40-1 return on a three-card straight flush that is the topper in the original game. In Ultimate Three Card Poker, the pair plus player also gets a 50-1 payoff on a mini-royal.

The bigger differences are on the ante-play portion of the game. After you ante and make the blind bet, you get to look at your three cards. You can fold, or you can stay in the hand by making a play bet. In original Three Card Poker, that play bet must be equal to your ante. In the Ultimate version, if your hand includes a pair or better, you may bet up to three times your ante. Beat the dealer, and ante and play bets are paid at even money. The blind bet is paid according to a paytable: 100-1 on a mini-royal, 20-1 on a straight flush, 10-1 on three of a kind, 2-1 on a straight and even money on flush.

As always, Gaming Entertainment, Inc. showed some of the most creative, fun new table games. GEI’s founder is Ya “Joe” Awada, a former World Series of Poker no-limit seven-card stud champion, and he has a way with the tables. GEI games are easy to play and deal, have house edges low enough to give the player a shot to win, yet have enough going on that the casino is going to make enough money to keep the game on the floor.

Take Double Down Baccarat, one of the new games at the biggest booth GEI has ever had at the annual gaming conference and trade show. Elliott Frome’s analysis of the game calculates the house edge at 0.86 percent if you bet on player, and 1.22 percent if you bet on banker. A house edge of less than 1 percent is a rarity in a casino game. Even regular baccarat, a favorite of high rollers because of its low house edge, has house edges of 1.17 percent on banker and 1.36 percent of player.

How can Double Down Baccarat offer such a low house edge? By giving the players betting options that increase the total amount wagered.

It amounts to adding some blackjack-like touches to baccarat. One card is turned face up on player and banker hands, and bettors have the option of standing, doubling down or surrendering. One bonus: If a double down wager wins with a hand of 9, the original wager is paid at even money while the double down bet is paid at 2-1.

To make up for the doubling and surrendering, the house wins all ties except on 9. If both hands are 9, player and banker bets all win.

Those who follow the best strategy for the game and actually lower the house edge to the optimal 0.86 percent, will double down on 63.31 percent of hands, according to Frome’s analysis. All those double downs bring enough increased action to make the game profitable for the house, while giving the player a shot to win.

Another GEI game, Lo-Bo Reverse Blackjack, is a blackjack about-face. The object is to get a LOWER-ranking hand than the dealer. Stanley Ko’s analysis of the game calculated the house edge at about 1.8 percent with a basic strategy, which Ko also calculated.

All the 10-value cards are removed from the deck, and instead of busting by going over 21, you bust anytime you go over 13. Instead of getting paid 3-2 on two-card 21s, you’re paid 2-1 on a pair of aces, the perfect hand in Lo-Bo. You may split and double down, as in regular blackjack.

After you see your initial two cards and the dealer’s face-up card, you may either stand or discard one card and call for a hit. You’re always going to want to get rid of a 6 or higher, and in many situations will want to dump a 5, if that’s your high card. The dealer will always take a third card, and make his or her best two-card hand out of the three. It’s an interesting twist, one that players who think dealers get all the high cards will want to test.

British company TCS John Huxley was on hand with Blackjack Plus, three insurance-like options. The first is insurance, with a twist. As in regular blackjack, when the dealer has an Ace up and a 10-value face down for a blackjack, the insurance bet pays 2-1. However, if the face down is a Jack of spades or a Jack of clubs, the payoff is 3-1, reducing the house edge against average players to 3.54 percent and opening the profitable insurance window a little wider for advantage players.

The second Blackjack Plus option is Dealer Draws Ace, extending the insurance concept to hands in which the dealer has a 10 face up. On such hands, if the dealer then completes a blackjack with a 10 down, Dealer Draws Ace bets are paid at 11-1 odds, a high house edge of 7.4 percent.

Finally, there’s Dealer Busts on Ace, a side bet that the dealer who starts with an Ace will bust. If the dealer hits soft 17, Dealer Busts on Ace pays 6-1 and has a house edge of 2.6 percent. If the dealer stands on all 17s, the bet pays 7-1 and has a house edge of 7.62 percent.

Reel Games, which distributed both table games and video slot machines, showed a side bet called Jackpot Blackjack. It’s a progressive, available in paytables designed for either $1 or $2 wagers. You’re betting that there are going to be blackjacks, either in your hand or the dealer’s. In the basic $1 paytable, if either you or the dealer have a two-card 21, you’re paid $3. If the blackjack is suited, you get $6, on up to $25 if both have blackjacks, $250 if both have suited blackjacks, $1,000 if both have ace-jack suited and a progressive jackpot if both have ace-jack of spades. With a rollover jackpot value of $10,000, Ko’s analysis calculates the house edge at 24 percent on a two-deck game, and 23.6 percent on a six-decker.

With house edges like that, only the unwary and the serious jackpot chasers will stick with the bet. As always seems to be the case, with new wrinkles in blackjack, the best option seems to be solid play at the basic game.

On the video poker front, IGT showed it’s been listening to players with the new Quick Quads game.

Have you ever played video poker, drawn a hand like three 8s, a 5 and a 3, and thought, “Hey, that’s four 8s — 5 plus 3, right?” I know I have, and IGT is thinking right along with players who harbor such wishful thinking. Three of a kind plus two cards that add up to the winning number bring the same quads payoff you’d get with a natural four of a kind. Three 8s plus a 5 and a 3 that add up to the fourth 8? You’ve got your payoff.

The result will be a dramatic increase in quads, one funded by an extra wager. It takes a six-coin bet per hand to activate the Quick Quads feature, instead of the standard five-coin wager that’s the maximum in most video poker games. The result is an increase in volatility. When you lose, you lose six coins per hand instead of only five. When you win, you’re paid as if you had wagered only five coins. But you make up for all that with three-of-a-kind hands that are turned into four-of-a-kind bonanzas.

IGT pioneered the sixth-coin wager in its popular Super Times Pay multihand video poker games. At G2E, it showed several games with sixth-coin features, including Ultimate X Poker. When the Ultimate X feature is activated on the multihand game, any winning hand brings a multiplier into place for the next hand, the size of the multiplier depends on the value of your winner. If you’re playing a Five Play version and have winners on hands Nos. 2 and 4, you might see a 2x symbol next to one and a 4x symbol next to the other, with exact multipliers. On the next play, a winner next to the 2x symbol will be doubled and a winner next to the 4x symbol will be quadrupled.

When it’s time to leave, use up the last of your multipliers by making one last wager of five coins per hand. You get to use the multipliers you’ve already paid for with your previous six-coin wager, but you won’t be paying for an additional multiplier that you won’t use.

Another sixth-coin game, Ultimate 4 of a Kind Bonus Poker, adds a pick-’em bonus round not unlike those that capture the attention of video slot players. Whenever you get four of a kind, you also get a bonus round with 53 cards, the standard 52 plus a joker — appearing face down on the screen. If your quads are 5s through kings, you get to pick two cards; four 2s, 3s or 4s are worth three picks and four aces bring four picks. Pick a 5 through king, and you get 200 bonus credits, with 2s through 4s worth 300 and aces 400. Find the joker and win a whopping 3,996 credits.

New Vision Gaming took a different approach to its first entry in the video poker market. Head Start Hold’em is inspired by Texas Hold’em, with two-card starting hands followed by three card flops. After those five cards, players have the opportunity to raise their bets before the turn and river cards are revealed.

You’re wagering on five hands, each with its own fixed starting point and a character representing the hand. There’s “Big Slick,” in cowboy hat, dark glasses and mustache, starting with ace of spades and queen of hearts. The Royal Couple start with queen-jack of spades; Diamond Girl has 8-9 of diamonds; Speed Limit, with a checkered flag behind, is a pair of 5s; and Lucky, a green-hatted leprechaun, starts with 2 of clubs and 7 of hearts. You’ll need a lot of luck to win with that start.

There’s a different paytable for each character, representing the likelihood of winning with their hand. A royal flush from Diamond Girl, Speed Limit or Lucky would have to come entirely on the flop, turn and river, and that’s reflected in the 5,000-credit payoffs. Big Slick, with possible royal starters in two suits, pays only 1,250 coins on the royal, and the Royal Couple, with two royal cards in the same suit, pays 1,000. On any hand, there’s a Flop Bonus, based on the first three community cards.

New Vision has applied the same concept to keno, with Headstart Hold’em Keno. When you mark your keno ticket, instead of marking numbers and combinations, you’re choosing whether to bet on Big Slick, Royal Couple, Diamond Girl, Speed Limit or Mrs. Lucky. And instead of drawing numbers, the random number generator draws playing cards. It’s a fast, fun alternative for casinos wishing to liven keno-type games.

Livening the games and drawing extra attention from players is the object, after all. And whether it’s from new wrinkles on old games like Ultimate Three Card Poker, turning an old standard inside out as in Lo-Bo Reverse Blackjack or fulfilling video poker players’ fantasies with a novel twist as in Quick Quads Video Poker, players can look forward to a livelier 2008.

— John Grochowski is the author of The Casino Answer Book, The Slot Machine Answer Book, The Video Poker Answer Book and the Craps Answer Book, available through Bonus Books, Inc. at (800) 225-3775.