America's National Game of Chance
Video Poker
by Lenny Frome
Americana: Baseball, Cherry
Pie, Chevys & Video Poker This article was written in 1992. Perhaps the National Gaming Commission should read it in 1997.
With gambling gaining acceptance from border-to-border and coast-
to-coast, from wigwams to riverboats to cruise ships to volcanic mega-
resorts, isn't it about time America chose a national game of chance? With such legitimatizion, our national game of chance could serve to raise huge sums of money in every state, much the same as toll bridges, pari-mutuel betting and state lotteries.
I'm certain that everyone has a favorite game to nominate, but my vote goes to Video Poker, which is a perfect fit to the stringent requirements which must be imposed on our national game of chance. Here's the case we can make for Video Poker:
POPULARITY: While popularity alone is far from a sufficent qualification for our national game of chance, it is certainly to its credit that vast numbers of Americans enjoy playing Video Poker. Not only is it taking over over in the casinos of America, but is widely played as a video lottery terminal elsewhere. While some believe the attraction is the decision-making aspect of play and others believe it is the fact that everyone is familiar with Poker as a card game, the fact is that nobody can cite any single reason for its increasing popularity, which is in itself a harbinger of a long-lasting love affair by the public.
INTEGRITY: For over 15 years, Video Poker has been the subject of extensive mathematical analysis, supported by computers, which has revealed the statistics of the game with greater accuracy than virtually any other card game. Because it has been so completely analyzed, there is no way that the integrity of Video Poker could be biased to depart from a random-number basis of operation. There are several independent means of verifying that the hands are dealt out randomly and that the draw of the replacement cards is a truly random process. It is critical that the public peceive the national game of chance as being cleaner than driven snow; Video Poker is already at this level of confidence.
PREDICTABILITY: One cannot fail to note that Video Poker was not an instant success, but rather languished until the payback was raised to the 99 percent-plus level. The ideal national game of chance should be a high payback (at least 99%) game and one for which everyone can be assured of the payback simply by inspection of the pay-out table. Video Poker is such a game, for once the composition of the deck is defined and the pay table is displayed, then as night follows day the resulting payback (and the house "hold") is set in concrete. In addition, Video Poker has a unique advantage in that many versions can be devised all of which can offer the exact same payback, which brings us to the skill factor.
SKILL FACTOR: I cannot imagine America selecting a National Game of Chance which does not reward skillful play to some degree. Our whole society is predicated on rewarding the skillful and we would want to perpetuate
that credo in our national game. Video Poker is ideal in that respect. As an example, a full-pay Las Vegas style Jacks or Better game can return 99.6 percent to expert players. By "expert players" we mean those who know , how to play each hand for optimum win-potential and what the statistical expectations are. Players who have a reasonably good knowledge will derive a bit less payback. Those with only a bit of card sense will see an even lower return, but still in the 95 percent range. So everyone has a good chance to win or at least enjoy the game, which is what most players would expect from our national game of chance.
LEARNABILITY: Even before attaining official endorsement, Video Poker has attracted numerous writers whose books are widely available. This author's book is even available in the public libraries. Our own tutoring program, MASQUE Video Poker for home computers attained national distribution within the first month. My own file includes five Video Poker programs of
recent vintage, all widely available. Within weeks of national endorsement literally dozens more instructional books and PC programs will be on the market. This will enable any player who is serious about attaining "expert" status to do so at little or no cost. The public will be quick to rise to the challenge to optimize its skills. And they will learn because Video Poker is easy to learn from the type of tutoring material which is available even now.
*Note: this article was originally printed in 2 parts. What follows is Part 2 of the original article.
PART 2
In our last column we discussed why Video Poker is well qualified to be officially designated America's National Game of Chance. We looked at its Popularity, Integrity, Predictability, Skill Factors and Learnability. We found Video Poker to be leading in popularity and likely to endure in this important, but not totally sufficient characteristic. We found Video Poker to be free of any suspicion and easy to insure its integrity. We found that Video Poker can offer high paybacks which reward skill, but that the unskilled are given a fair deal and can easily learn to improve in skill level.
Now we turn our discussion toward the vision of the future, when there are arcades featuring the National Game of Chance found everywhere. Here again we see Video Poker qualifying well for implementation.
SECURITY: Even today, Video Poker smart-machines accept "club cards" and send messages to the player, like "Greetings Lenny, Welcome to the Ritz Casino. You have 2,323 credits to date. Good Luck." This same technology
can be applied to creating a cashless machine which reads the magnetic
card and draws credits against it and banks credits on all winners. Players would purchase cards at the entrance and cash in on the way out. The machines could be totally cashless. OK, OK! we can artificially create the sound of coins dropping into the tray just to keep the old-timers happy--and maybe a siren for Royals. Lacking the mechanical complications we have all experienced on coin-operated Video Pokers, we can look forward to highly reliable machines which are rarely in need of opening, so maximum utilization efficency is attained. Without cash and with minimal down-time, the security requirements which burden casinos is reduced to mere crowd-control. Even the maintenance of these highly modular solid-state machines can be tightly controlled so that the integrity of the machines is never compromised. What this all adds up to is: we can make money with such arcades even with the theoretical limit return at 99.5 percent (for expert play), a figure guaranteed to draw players.
PROFITABILITY: Consider a Video Poker arcade with 500 machines. With an average playing rate of 300 games per hour, at 50 percent occupancy, some 75,000 games per hour are being played. Assuming an average machine to be a 25-cent denomination (5-coins at $1.25) the hourly "drop" is about over $93,000 and the "hold" (house win) is close to $460 per hour. Aside from this gaming income, additional billboard and refreshment revenues would easily bring the hourly gross profit to over $600. We would expect such an arcade, operating on a six-day week, 12-hour day basis to net a minimum of one-million dollars annually and to thrive in a typical town with a population of 50,000.
SIDE BENEFITS: America unfortunately is an aging society. With Video Poker as our National Game of Chance, we have a game which is known to interest our senior citizens. With a 99.5 percent payback, the loss rate is below that of a movie ticket so the arcade is in fact a relatively cheap form of amusement. And the same arcades can provide jobs which seniors will line up to take.
All in all, we think there is a strong reason for America to identify a National Game of Chance before someone else hangs it on us. We are moving quickly toward cross-country gambling and our experience has always been that unless we identify with something we like, we'll wind up with being identified with something we dislike. I would regret having others think Slots are our National Game or have Video Poker selected as the National Game of South Africa.
We also believe we have made an excellent case for Video Poker being officially recognized as our National Game of Chance. Video Poker is in fact a truly American game--invented in America, developed in America and manufactured in America. Let's claim it and name it, for it stands solidly head and shoulders above any other game for this honor.