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The World’s Greatest Casino Directory
We think a casino directory should have information for gamblers, not just addresses and phone numbers, so we provide everything a video poker player wants to know and we rate each category.
The directory can be accessed through a “Browse by Region” listing or by a direct “Casino Search” where you enter part of a casino name and it will put “wild cards” on each side of the search term and retrieve a list of matching casinos. You don’t even need to type in the complete casino name.
The Casino Detail Listings
The listings have all the usual casino directory stuff such as address, telephone, and web site address. It also features:
- A detailed listing of the playable VP inventory
The games are grouped by machine bank, with a count where available. A typical listing looks like this (from GVR):
| 10 |
25¢, 50¢ |
“Single Line” |
Slant Top |
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25¢ |
DEUCES WILD 15/9/5 (FP) |
100.76% |
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25¢, 50¢ |
DOUBLE DOUBLE BONUS 10/6/4 |
100.07% |
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25¢, 50¢ |
DOUBLE BONUS 10/7/5 |
100.17% |
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25¢, 50¢ |
LOOSE DEUCES 15/8 |
100.15% |
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“Location” |
Near Fatburger |
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“Notes” |
“Optimum Play” multigames |
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(This listing is for a bank of ten multi-denomination slant-top machines near Fatburger that have several games.)
- Ratings for the following categories (all are rated on a scale of 1 to 10):
- Video Poker Best play (BP): This is calculated from the highest return game in the casino’s inventory.
- Video Poker Overall Inventory (OI): This rating is calculated based on the number and return of the games in the casino’s inventory.
The following categories are somewhat subjective and are based on dozens or even hundreds of reports and our personal experiences.
- Benefits: Subjectively rated on cashback and comps and, if provided on a regular basis, multi-point promos. Also based subjectively in part on discretionary comp availability and mailings/offers.
- Food: The quality of the restaurants. Price is not usually considered, but good value can bump up a rating a notch or so higher.
- Casino: Overall attractiveness of the casino, service, and air quality.
- Hotel: Rated primarily on the size, comfort, and cleanliness of rooms. Modern in-room amenities such as high-speed Internet, large-screen television, desk, and room service count heavily.
- Promotions: This category is often of most interest to locals, but many promos, including some multi-point days, giveaways, etc. are also attractive to visitors. Other promos, such as free slot/video poker/blackjack tournaments are of special interest to visitors.
NOTE: Sometimes the line between benefits and promotions is fine. For instance, if a casino mails you a free room offer, that’s a benefit. If it mails you a free room offer and a free slot tournament, that’s a benefit and a promotion. If multi-point days are haphazard and unpredictable, they are considered promos, but if they occur on a regular basis every month, they are benefits.
Like the video poker ratings, the next three are calculated using the other ratings and the VP inventory.
- Low-roller visitor: The primary consideration here is good video poker in the low denominations and good benefits.
- Mid-roller visitor: This rating takes into account all of the basic categories and VP inventories in the quarter to dollar range.
- High-roller visitor: A calculation based on high-denomination games, food, casino, and hotel.
- More about ratings When changes are made to the VP database, the BP and OI ratings are recalculated automatically and may or may not change.Ø
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- News (more about this below) and Notes (both overall casino notes and machine notes).Ø
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- An email update link that allows you to inform us directly of any changes to a casino’s listing by automatically opening a message to us via your email client with the Subject: (for instance) of “VPinsider Update for Green Valley Ranch Station Casino, Henderson NV.”Ø
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- Detailed slot club information will be available, but is not yet integrated with the listings. (Until it is, you can refer to the vphomepage top40.)
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- A button that allows you to add the casino to your personal (My VPInsider) listings (see below).
The Top 40
This is where all of the categories come together.
Currently, we have the “Las Vegas Top 40,” but we will have a similar page for each region. The rankings at the top of the page are basically an index to the target listing on the main body of the page. The casino listings on the main body have game ID, denominations, and the overall score of the casino so you can see how close (or far apart), the ratings are.
The overall casino rating is calculated based on all of the rated categories in the Casino Detail, but with added weight for the VP and Benefits categories.
The Casino name in the main body of the Top 40 is also a link, this time pointing to the Casino Detail page.
Game Search
This page allows the user to search for virtually any combination of games, denominations, platforms (Triple Play etc), Form Factor (upright, bartop or slant-top), and type of progressive. It will then filter the results by selecting only casinos that have your selected minimum requirements for any or all of the rated categories and, finally, save the search by storing a link to the search in your browser's Bookmarks or Favorites.
MY VPInsider
If you are only interested (or primarily interested) in a certain set of casinos, you can add those casinos to your “My VPInsider” page and it will contain the current casino inventory data for each of those casinos. Casinos can be added or removed at any time.
Casino News
The “Casino News” page has the collected news listing from each casino. It can be narrowed by region or by date.
Members Home/Blog
This is the page where we will be making rambling, incoherent commentaries on a regular basis.
Pay Tables/Strategies
This area contains detailed information about each video poker game. Information found here includes:
- A brief description of the game with salient facts.
- Basic statistics such as the "cycle" (how often it occurs) for each kind of hand, the contribution each hand makes to the total return, theoretical optimum return with perfect play, and variance (a mathematical measurement of "volatility" or "streakiness"). These statistics are derived from Jim Wolf's "Frugal Video Poker" software.
- Other common paytables for the game and a list of break-even points for nickel, quarter, and dollar games. Other denominations can be easily calculated using this information.
- A complete strategy for playing the game, also created using Frugal Video Poker.
- A search facility that allows you to search for the game using platform (Triple Play, etc), denomination, and region.
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