E32P2: Fontainebleau For Me And You

Handy At The Chandy — A Las Vegas Podcast

In this second hour of episode 32, the hosts address a variety of listener submissions ranging from technical video poker mathematics to tra

Key takeaways

• Jamie McCourt queries the RTP differences between 7-5 and 8-5 Ultimate X Bonus Poker pay tables.
• The hosts discuss 'Video Poker Yahtzee,' a listener-created game for tracking video poker hands using a scorecard.

Main topics

• Ultimate X Video Poker Math
• Downtown Las Vegas Gambling Itineraries

Notable quotes

Everything in life is a gamble, my friend.

Conclusion

The episode offers a blend of strategic gambling discussion and commun

Transcript preview

Speaker 3 (0:08) We are back with Hour 2 of Episode 32 of Handy at the Shandy. As we often do in Hour 2, we like to start with some listener questions and feedback, and we have so much of it that we are going to start right off with Table Games James reading us a question from Speaker 2 (0:30) Jamie McCourt. Well, first of all, thank you for everyone who's sending in emails to handy at the shandy at gmail.com because Jack handles all of that. So when you're not sending it to me and Adam, that's great because then we get Jack to do more work. So thank you, Jamie McCourt, who sent this first one in. Heading of single versus multi-line Ultimate X math. He goes on to say, planning to try out the exciting world of Ultimate X later this month. As I was discussing what games might be available at Park MGM on VegasMessageBoard.com, someone indicated that they thought 10-play 7-5 Ultimate X Bonus Poker has a higher return to player than single-line 8-5 Ultimate X Bonus Poker. Do you know if that is true? If so, is there a sweet spot between one, three, five, and ten play? How many hands do you prefer to play at a time? Is there any reason other than desired bet size? Thanks for the VP education and all the Vegas-related entertainment you provide. Cheers, Jamie McCourt. So first of all, I probably Speaker 3 (1:34) agree that 7-5 bonus poker at 10 lines is probably the highest RTP Ultimate X game that you'll be able to find. I don't know enough about what the multiplier pay table looks like at single line 8-5 bonus poker Ultimate X. Mostly because single line Ultimate X is so hard to come by these days. In fact, as... my buddy QuickQuads Josh is all too aware. It's on those five-star poker machines that you see on the casino floor where it's like you get to play these weird games on only one line, including things like good times pay that you also won't see anywhere else. Anyways, you really don't even have to concern yourself that much with single line Ultimate X because A, I don't think it's a great introduction to Ultimate X. I think it's better played on a multi-line game and B, it's really hard to find. And C, As we talked about with single line, sometimes the multipliers are just different on there, which might make the RTP worse. And it makes it harder to read a pay table. Then you say, is there a sweet spot between 3, 5, and 10 play? In my head, 3, 5, and 10 are all about the same. Yeah, you get like maybe a tenth of a percentage point going up from 3 to 5 and another one going up from 5 to 10 based off that one little quirk I talked about on the last episode. To answer your question, how many hands do you prefer to play at a time? I think two or three is a great amount and they don't really let you play two. So three line is always going to be it for me. Speaker 2 (3:01) Yeah, and I don't know if it's because of a desired bet size for me. I guess that's what it is. I don't want to play more, but it's, I don't know, is it the bet size or is it that when I hit something, I have a level that I want to win, right? Like if I end up hitting four of a kind, I want to win $62.50. Or more. Right. That means I want to be playing a quarter at... double bonus or double double bonus or 50 cents at bonus poker and if i do that and i go to five or ten line then it's just getting ridiculously expensive so that's why i stick to three line yeah Speaker 3 (3:40) unlike adam i generally have come out not in favor of adding more and more lines to a poker game yeah Speaker 2 (3:48) and this me doing this Speaker 3 (3:49) nine line spin poker is kind of actually an interesting middle ground where you only have three lines worth of cards, but you have nine lines worth of pays. But generally when you get up to playing like 10 hand video poker, it's just like, well, if you don't really get something good on the deal, it just feels like kind of like a waste. And so three lines seems to be like a good middle ground for me where you can still hit something big that matters and you don't have to have started with something really big and hit something on a bunch of different lines to get a good pay. Speaker 1 (4:17) Yeah. Yeah. I mean, three lines it for me, but we have to give, the degenerate something that they want, which is thousand line video poker. Thousand hand. Yeah. Vinny Chen's would play. Absolutely. He would. Yes. He would play that. Eat Speaker 3 (4:30) that up. Speaker 1 (4:31) Thank Speaker 3 (4:31) you, Jamie. Yeah. Next up, we've got one from Dave. He says from episode 30, I wanted to share a video poker tournament that my degenerate friends and I use for video poker. We call it video poker Yahtzee. Similar to the game Yahtzee. That's a good start. Where you roll dice and fill in a scorecard. You do the same with video poker hands. It may be a bit confusing if you haven't played Yahtzee before. Hopefully this explanation works. Here's a quick overview. We typically play this on a 10 or 25 play video poker machine. Now we're talking. Similar to Yahtzee, you draw a hand. You then select which cards you wish to discard and then draw. you then fill in one of your slots on your scorecard. And then here's where I stepped in and kind of synthesized things even further because not only because of Dave, but we have a lot of long-winded stuff coming up. And so my synthesis is this. Much like how in Yahtzee, you can either fill in a dice number, one through six, when you're deciding how to score your Yahtzee hand, or fill in a hand like full house or large straight in Yahtzee. In Dave's game, you pick a slot either based on how many cards you held when you were drawing or based on what hand you hit. The scoring is different based on whether you're selecting in each of those categories. And much like in Yahtzee, you can slot your hit into a category that it doesn't belong in at all and score zero points so as not to fill up like valuable real estate elsewhere. And so it does seem to play a lot like Yahtzee, if you're familiar with how that works. And it's up to each player to strategically position their hits into each of those categories. BC says to play this, players alternate for a total of 16 turns each. So that's part of the reason they're playing on a 10 or 25 play machine is you're only getting 16 hands. And so you have to be able to fill in some of these hits. You have to be playing on them. higher play machine to actually make it make sense like if you're just gonna play 16 hands of video poker at three lines you might never even get something higher than a straight right yeah and so he says total score at the end wins and we printed cards that we can carry around in the casino i Speaker 2 (6:31) want to see that card so bad i yeah Speaker 3 (6:33) yeah dave if you want to if you want to send in like a picture of the card or pdf or something i i would like to see it for sure and i'll share it with these guys I don't have too much to say about this other than that it's super cool. This is the exact type of feedback we were hoping for when we shared this is how we do a side bet or this is how we do these types of tracking things. Speaker 1 (6:50) Yeah, I'd like to know what people are winning, what's going on there. Is there a prize pool, all that stuff? Yeah, what are the stakes? Speaker 2 (6:57) I like Speaker 1 (6:59) it. Yeah, please, Dave, follow up with that because that's fun. Speaker 2 (7:03) Next one is from Derek Lyon. Speaker 1 (7:05) He says, hey, gents, love the podcast. I have a non-gambling lifelong German friend who'll be coming. Speaker 3 (7:11) This fucking German. This fucking German guy. Lifelong German Speaker 1 (7:16) friend who'll be coming with me to Vegas for a Scorpions boys trip. Oh, Glückwunsch. That's congratulations in German, I believe, by the way. So trying to keep the joke alive for our German listeners. But since the Scorpions just canceled. Oh, sorry. Not congratulations. Since the Scorpions just canceled the 2026 Planet Hollywood residency, the trip has been morphed into a general foodie sphere absent thing. One night, I'm interested in dragging him along for some sort of forced downtown debauchery. I was thinking we'd do a slot poll slash gambling adventure downtown. Maybe we'd each put in 300 bucks and have a checklist of low rolling experiences to hit. Doubling up or zeroing out each gambling stop, splitting the winnings slash whatever is left at the end of the night. What would be mandatory downtown stops? Thinking Golden Gate Sigma Derby, a slot machine at the D, perhaps a pass line bet with odds at El Cortez, video poker at Circa in front of the Megabar. Any input or suggestions would be appreciated. Speaker 3 (8:14) I think the Golden Gate Sigma Derby is the number one. Like if you were going to put a must-do item on there, that would be it. I do think view bar at the D would be the, if you were going to try to do something like each casino, I feel like the D is the one. that I would do for view bar. I think at El Cortez, I would try to play a coin dropper machine. Yep. One Speaker 2 (8:35) of Speaker 3 (8:35) their old school actual coin in video poker machines. I feel like if you're going to do Plaza, you'd have to do Speaker 1 (8:42) bingo, but that would take way too much time. See, Speaker 3 (8:44) I was going to say Plaza. One thing they have that's outstanding is they have single zero roulette. And so maybe just put a green chip on the outside. If it's a $25 game, maybe just play a green chip on the outside and you get the only single zero roulette wheel downtown. Sure. Speaker 2 (8:57) Yeah, Speaker 1 (8:57) that's a good point. Speaker 2 (8:58) They do have live Keno there too, so you could play like a game or two of actual Keno. I think if there's some way to make a not too – not so it takes too long, a sports bet at Circa just because that's what's there instead of playing at the – doing video poker. Even if that just means like a first quarter bet or – Speaker 3 (9:18) Maybe start the night Speaker 2 (9:19) with Speaker 3 (9:19) that and then you can do a lap from there and end up and see if it cashed. Speaker 1 (9:24) Yeah, I would say maybe the Silver Strike machines at Four Queens. You could be the first one to get one of those. They're not real silver anymore, but still kind of a little memento you can take home. So they have slot machines that disperse when you hit. I actually don't know what you have to hit in order to get one, but they used to be actual. There's these coins with almost brass around it. I don't know what it is, but in the middle was an actual .99 silver in the middle, too. That's why they call them Silver Strikes. Like I said, they're not made of silver anymore. Speaker 3 (9:54) Nowadays, it's just a $10 coin and people like to collect them. But if you do hit it, you can redeem it for $10 at the cage too. Yeah. Speaker 1 (10:01) I mean, they'd be, I think silver's up to like 66 bucks now, something like that. So that'd be a good hit if it was still silver. Speaker 3 (10:08) Yeah. That's a great one. Yeah, I don't know. Where would I do your craps bet? If you wanted to do a craps thing, maybe use Binion's. It's like we're playing Yahtzee here. It's like, okay, I want to put my craps bet in the Binion's category. Speaker 1 (10:21) You Speaker 3 (10:22) might be able to do that. I'm going to Fremont get their food court because they have the best new food court downtown. Take a piss at Main Speaker 1 (10:28) Street Station. Well, that's Speaker 3 (10:30) not even a joke. Yeah, they've got the chunk of the Berlin Wall there. Speaker 1 (10:34) Yeah, yeah, exactly. Speaker 2 (10:35) Maybe the tub. That's at Four Queens, right? Speaker 3 (10:38) The tub Speaker 2 (10:38) is at Four Queens, yeah. For craps. I've played that once. That was pretty fun. Yeah, they've got a miniature craps table there. Speaker 3 (10:45) Yeah, hopefully that helps. We're not big downtown aficionados. And if we are, it's because we like very specific things that I kind of already talked about on hour one. Yeah, yeah. Speaker 1 (10:56) But yeah, that's a fun question. And sorry, the scorpions didn't work out for you. Speaker 2 (11:01) Well, thank you, Derek. Next up from Eamon Taylor, I've got a theoretical scenario for you that tests your willpower, expected value, and everyday vocabulary. Oh, boy. Oh, boy. We Speaker 1 (11:14) want Speaker 2 (11:14) less of these questions. Please, please, please. No, I'm just kidding. Here's the setup. Every day you do not gamble or set foot in a casino, a magical benefactor deposits $500 into a universal free play bank that you can use at any casino in the world. Once you decide to redeem the free play, you can't earn any more. But your free play bank is good until you withdraw it all. Yes, this means if you wait one month, you would have $15,000 waiting for you, and so on. But there's a catch. Here are the rules of the holdout. To actually pocket the cash, you must have a 1x rollover of whatever you have withdrawn that day. You can play anything. If you take the tables, the free play chips stay on the table if they win. Good. During your earning period, you cannot place a single wager of any kind. I know you aren't really sports bettors, but even placing an online bet nullifies all earned free play. You cannot even suggest a casual bet. You can't say to a buddy, I bet I could throw this paper into the trash can. I bet I could go to Gymkhana and not get injured. Speaker 3 (12:21) Exactly. Speaker 2 (12:22) If that happens, your entire bank is nullified and you lose it all immediately. So his questions for us are, one, how many days could you realistically hold out? Two, Would you be aiming for a specific dollar amount before you crack and hit the casino to play it through? Three, how does your strategy and sanity change if the daily deposit is $100? What about $1,000? Remember, a slip of the tongue could cost you everything. And four, do you think having this money would take the fun out of gambling? Well, that's a question right there, Eamon. It's four. It's a lot of questions. Boy, I... How many days could you hold out? I would like to think for a very, very long time. But I don't know when I would start. Speaker 1 (13:08) Who Speaker 2 (13:08) would cash out first? I think it would be me. I would