Dear Mark, On the weekends, do casinos make adjustments on their video poker machines to make more money? Sam K.

Do you mean do casinos take a screwdriver to their slots on the weekends to tighten them up? No way. It is not cost effective for the casino to continually alter the payouts on their machines. To alter the percentage return in their favor on a video game, the casino must, by law, make a hardware change. You do this by swapping out an internal component, the ROM portion of the microprocessor chip. ROM, or read only memory, is a chip the slot manufacturer provides the casino. This is the chip that tells the video poker machine to pay 9 coins for a full house, 6 coins for a flush. Additionally, they would have to physically change the glass payout schedule on their machines. What you could see is a seasonal wholesale change to improve their theoretical hold by making all 9/6 machines to 8/5 bandits. By changing to all 8/5 machines, the house holds an additional 3% edge on each and every machine.

Dear Mark, Is there a way that the casino can program a video poker machine so that a royal flush never appears? Shanon B.

Can, yes. Would? Never! What you have described is called secondary decision programming. A good programmer could write code that allows the computer within to stop a hand that is about to be dealt in favor of a different hand. This would prevent big winning hands like royal flushes from appearing their theoretical number of times. In a highly regulated industry like casinos, it is safe to assume honesty in programming.

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Dear Mark, When I am dealt the first five cards on a video poker machine, are the draw cards already sitting behind the cards I want to discard, or are they dealt from the top of the deck? Ed. P.

It depends, Ed, on the company who produced the slot or how old the machine is. In the past, the majority of video poker machines operated using parallel dealing. This is where all 10 cards are dealt simultaneously, meaning, you are dealt both the display cards and their draw replacements. Discard that dreadful four of clubs and the seven of diamonds, which you didn't need, was sitting behind it all along. Today, the new machines employ serial dealing. Here replacement cards are dealt right from the top of the deck-similar to a live poker game. Because the cards are shuffled and displayed randomly, neither way has any effect on the outcome.

Dear Mark, I was wondering, isn't it better to play on a loose jacks or better 6/5 video poker machine than on a very tight full-pay jacks or better 9/6 video poker machine? Stanton T.

No such animal exists in the green felt jungle. Because every hand is dealt randomly, tightness and looseness of a video poker machine are strictly based on the machine's paytable. A 6/5 paytable (6 coins returned for a full house, 5 for a flush with one coin inserted) would be considered tight, no, very tight; whereas a 9/6 machine (9 for a full house, 6 for a flush) would be loose.