Video Poker Jackpot that Can’t Be Hit

On February 16, 2024, a forum member by the name of Luckylucyano made a forum post about a video poker game that appeared to have an expected return of 134%. The title of the forum post is Video Poker Jackpot that Can’t Be Hit. The game was a $0.25 progressive Triple Triple Bonus game at the new Durango casino in Las Vegas. Two jackpots were linked together between six machines in a bank of eight machines.

The following table shows the pay table at the time of the post. The third and fourth wins from the top were progressive jackpots at $1234.45 and $5,953.01, which I multiply by 4 in the table, to get the number of quarters the jackpot pays. The lower right cell shows an expected return of 134.2751%. In other words, a player advantage of 34%! Note that of the 134% return, 49% of it comes from the jackpot for a four of a kind in 2’s to 4’s with an ace kicker.

Event	Win	Three of a Kind	Probability	Return
Royal Flush	4,000	38,662,511	0.000023	0.018620
Straight Flush	250	172,495,096	0.000104	0.005192
Four Aces with any 2,3,4	4,937	123,732,227	0.000074	0.073549
Four 2s, 3s, 4s with an Ace	23,812	169,520,132	0.000102	0.486016
Four 2s, 3s, 4s with any 2,3,4	2,000	136,759,406	0.000082	0.032932
Four Aces	800	212,687,389	0.000128	0.020486
Four 2s, 3s, 4s	400	613,934,824	0.000370	0.029568
Four 5s thru Ks	250	2,585,702,832	0.001557	0.077831
Full House	30	14,878,770,786	0.008957	0.053743
Flush	25	16,832,203,833	0.010133	0.050666
Straight	15	17,053,680,141	0.010266	0.030799
Three of a Kind	10	124,556,436,362	0.074984	0.149968
Two Pair	5	180,096,974,658	0.108420	0.108420
Jacks or Better	5	340,458,026,808	0.204959	0.204959
All Other	0	963,172,956,095	0.579840	0.000000
Totals		1,661,102,543,100	1.000000	1.342751

 

However, the same poster said that he and other skilled video poker players had already attacked this apparently juicy opportunity with very suspicious results. The progressive for four aces with a 2-4 kicker was known to hit and reset properly. However, nobody ever hit jackpot for four of a kind in 2’s to 4’s with an ace kicker. Many players experienced suspicious malfunctions when being dealt a hand one card away from the large jackpot. After the game was reset, it showed a losing outcome.

At this point, let me do some math on the probability of a jackpot growing this high, based on the jackpot size in the original post. When not progressive, this game pays 4,000 coins for four 2’s-4’s with an ace kicker for a five-coin bet. I assume the progressive started at this point. The progressive increase was 19,812 quarters, or $4,953. The meter rises by 0.75% of money bet. That means that $660,400 was wagered since the progressive started. It should be noted the Durano is a new casino and this looked like a brand new machine. I assume this jackpot had probably never been hit before on this machine.

At $1.25 per five-coin bet, which is required to hit the jackpot, that equates to 528,320 bets. If we conservatively assume players follow conventional strategy for non-progressive Triple Triple Bonus with a 6-5 pay table, the probability of four 2’s to 4’s with an ace kicker is 1 in 12,773. Dividing 528,320 bets by a cycle of 12,773 per jackpot, means the jackpot should have been hit 41.36 times. Assuming the player played aggressively to hit the jackpot, it would be even more, but we’ll stick with the conservative estimate. The probability of going 41.36 cycles without hitting is 8.75 standard deviations south of expectations. The probability of that is 1 in 920,655,462,590,263,000. To put that in perspective, if one purchased one Powerball and one Mega Millions lottery tickets, it would be 10.4 times more likely to win both of them than for the jackpot to rise this high without being hit.

I got wind of this on Feb. 19, three days after the initial post. I was a little late to the discussion because I was on a three-day kayaking trip on the Colorado River. Within hours, I went to the Durango to investigate. There I played almost four hours, bet $2,610 and lost $600. Despite an aggressive strategy to hit the big jackpot, I never did. Every time I was two cards away on the deal, I took a video of the draw, to try to catch the malfunction in the act. Even with my aggressive strategy, there was still about a 1 in 9,800 chance of hitting the jackpot on any bet. With my amount of play, I still only had a 5% chance of hitting it.

During my play, a friend of forum member Luckylucyano recognized me. We had a good discussion about the game. He called Luckylucyano on his phone, who was very helpful with my questions. It was nice to play with a fan for the last hour or so, but I was getting tired of throwing good money away so decided to call it quits. I can at least verify the meter rise is 0.75%, based on records kept while I was the only one playing the six machines that are linked to the progressive. The following picture shows the machines when I left. Note the large jackpot had grown to $6,324.97.

That evening, I wrote about my results on my forum. The following day I wrote an Email of complaint about the game to the Nevada Gaming Control Board. I also voiced my concerns to the senior product manager for video poker and keno content at IGT, the makers of the machine in question, whose business card has been with me for years.

I was impressed to see a response from the Gaming Control Board about three hours later, which read as follows.

“Your complaint to the Nevada Gaming Control Board has been received. I will have an agent conduct an inspection on the machines in question to verify the payback. Per Regulation 14.040, machines must pay back an aggregate amount of no less than 75%. Please also be aware that, per NRS 463.120, we cannot share investigative findings with the public. Please let us know if you have any further questions.”

While I was happy to see the prompt reply and that they were taking it seriously, I was concerned they misunderstood the nature of my complaint. I do not contend the game is not compliant with Regulation 14.040. Even if the large jackpot is impossible to hit, the game would still return about 87%, depending on the strategy employed.

However, later that evening I was very pleased when it was reported on my forum that the bank of eight machines, including two that didn’t offer the game in question were shut down! The following picture shows them with the “out of service” message.

I hope that they were shut down by the authority of the Gaming investigator and they will do a careful examination of what is really going on. I think this will take going over thousands of lines of code and/or a lot of testing, so a proper investigation is asking a lot. I would like to think that IGT takes this seriously too, but I have not heard back from my Email and voicemail to them.

I would like to make clear that I accuse nobody of cheating. I have a lot of respect for IGT, the game maker, and very confident in their commitment to fair and honest gaming. What I do think is going on is some kind of accidental glitch.

I created a YouTube video explaining my investigation as well as 56 draws to hands in which I was too cards away after the deal.

I would like to thank Luckylucyano for the original reporting of this and his help with my investigation.

At this point, close to my newsletter deadline, that is all I have to report. I will report on any developments in my newsletter next week.