by Bob Dancer

he “Austin Powers” series of slot machines have been out for a while. This is not the same.

       In addition to using Austin Powers graphics and sound clips on some standard Triple Play and Ten Play games, there are two brand new games on these machines, “Mini Me” and “Ten Play Number Two” that are interesting and exciting.

      And both come in pay tables that I would play when combined with a good slot club.  

Austin Powers Mini Me          
      First, let’s talk about the “Mini Me” game. It is easy to pronounce once you realize that it is short for “miniature myself” and is based on a pint-sized character (a clone of super-villain “Dr. Evil”) played by Verne J. Troyer in one of the Austin Powers movies.

      The basic concept of the game is as follows. You are playing Triple Play with a less-than-optimum pay schedule. But every time you get dealt a maximum-coin, three-of-a kind hand (a relatively frequent once-in-every-47-hands event), you get six bonus hands dealt to you for free.  

Let’s assume you are playing the 7/5 Bonus Poker game—that is, you receive 7 for a one-coin full house and 5 for a one-coin flush. Also assume you are playing 15 coins. (Fifteen coins is the normal maximum for Triple Play games, although casinos can set it to 30 or higher. For purposes of this article, we’ll use the 15-coin figure.)

      When we are dealt trips (i.e., a three of a kind), we hear the voice of Dr. Evil, one of many Mike Myers characters in the films and in the game, say, “I shall call him Mini Me.” And we see the game now look like what is shown in Figure 1. The trips are automatically held by the machine, and we see three couplets of two “mini-hands” each, off to the right. In a normal Bonus Poker game, we receive either 125, 200 or 400 coins for converting a five-coin trip into a quad, and a 35-coin payout for converting a trip into a full house. In the mini-hands, you get the single-coin equivalent for each of these. That is: 25, 40, 80 or 7. If the trip does not improve, as is the usual case, we get 15 coins per hand for the regular game and 0 per mini-hand.

      Converting trips to a full house or a quad happens enough to be interesting. Starting from trips, you convert to a full house about 1 in 16.4 times, a quad about 1 in 23.5 times, and one or the other about 1 in 9.65 times. And you have six “free” pops at it. Not bad.

      About two times out of five you will strike out completely—that is, end up with trips on the three original hands and the six mini hands. It seems like you ought to get something out of at least one of the nine times, but experienced Ten Play players (where you need to strike out 10 times instead of only nine) will tell you that ending up with the trips you started with on all of the hands is not that rare. And you’ll still get 45 credits back (15 credits on each of the Triple Play hands) even on the strikeouts.

      It isn’t as though you are losing on this hand; it is just that you aren’t getting as much as you hoped you would. But the flip side of this is three times out of five you will score more than 45 credits—sometimes a lot more.

      In our example using 7/5 Bonus Poker, notice that we are drawing to trip threes. In Figure 2 we see after-the-draw figures. We ended up with one full house in the base hand, and one full house and one quad on the Mini Me hands. Notice that on the left is the amount we received. We received 65 for the base hand (35 + 15 + 15) and 47 in the Mini Me section (40 + 7).   

If you get both of the four-of-a-kinds on any couplet, you receive the full amount of the five-coin four of a kind. For example, in the Bonus Poker game described above, getting single quads in the mini hands is worth 25, 40 or 80, but getting both quads in the same couplet would be worth 125, 200 or 400.

      If you play Double Double Bonus, there is an added feature. If you get quads on both parts of a single couplet of mini-hands, you are paid on the basis of the “kicker” amounts. Connecting on two-out-of-two quads happens about once in every 552 times you draw to it (and you get three separate chances every time you start with trips).

      Notice in Figure 3, we drew to trip aces and connected on two mini hands. But the mini hands were not in the same couplet, so we didn’t get the extra bonus. In Figure 4, we see drawing to trip aces and connecting on two quads in the same couplet. And we now get the bonus!  

      Notice that the highest pay schedules are very attractive indeed. Be warned, however, that the player needs to master a new strategy. The 9/5 version of Jacks or Better Mini Me returns a third of a percent more than regular 9/6 Jacks or Better, but to capture that extra amount requires some work. Since most players will not do the work to learn the new game, and will use an approximate strategy instead, casinos will make more money on these games than usual. This is good for the house, and good for the player who is willing to do some homework. Learning a new strategy is not that hard (even though it is something that many players will not do), so casinos can afford to put out juicier-than-average games and the players willing to work harder will be rewarded.    

Austin Powers Ten Play Number Two

Notice that the highest pay schedules
are very attractive indeed. Be warned,
however, that the player needs
to master a new strategy. 

is a major character in the movies played by popular actor Robert Wagner, and it is Wagner’s voice that says, “They call me Number Two. I have a business proposition you might find very interesting.” You also see Wagner’s eye-patched face in the lower right corner of the display.

  The game starts out as regular Ten Play, but when you are dealt three to the royal flush when playing max coin, you get the option of trading up to 50 hands, starting from the same three cards to the royal. That is 50 five-coin hands—so you basically get 40 extra hands for free.

So even on hands where you get a dealt flush, such as A K J 5 4, it is a better deal to draw to the A-K-J 50 times than it is to keep the flush 10 times.

      In some games, like Double Bonus or Double Double Bonus, on hands like A A A K Q, it would be better to draw to the three aces 10 times than the three-card royal 50 times, but that is usually not the case. On this hand, the machine will not even allow you to trade up because it is not to your interest to do so. A dealt royal, straight flush, or four cards to the royal also do not trigger the trade-up option. But when the machine allows you to trade up, do so.

      An additional bonus is paid if you are dealt a royal. Instead of receiving 800 coins per coin bet, you receive 4,000 coins per coin bet. A nickel Ten Play Number Two player would invest $2.50 per game and be paid $10,000 if he were dealt a royal. (Although it is theoretically possible to draw to 10 or 50 royals after the initial deal, it is so unlikely that we can safely consider it impossible for practical purposes.)

      So how often does a qualifying three-to-the-royal hand occur? About one in 60 hands. It depends slightly on the game, as trip aces do not trigger the three-to-the-royal bonus in Double Double Bonus, and trip jacks, queens, kings and aces do not trigger the three-to-the-royal bonus in Super Double Bonus. Not so rare. Getting 40 free hands every 60 hands, plus a hefty bonus for a dealt royal, all sounds wonderful. And it is. It actually adds about 8.5% to the value of a game.

      This number varies slightly by the amount you get for a straight or flush, and somewhat more by whether two pair returns one or two. But to pay for all of this wonderfulness, the amount you get for three-of-a-kind is reduced from 3 to 2. The list of approved pay schedules is shown in Table 2. And as always, not all pay schedules are approved in all states.  

Figure 5

Figure 6

Let’s go through an example hand. Assume we are playing 8/5 Jacks or Better. In Figure 5, notice that we are dealt a Q J T 5 3 and we get the trade-up option. We take it, of course, and the game immediately converts to what is shown in Figure 6. We then draw, and since we are wonderful players, this time we get a royal, as shown in Figure 7! Oh what fun!

      A word of warning here. This game is very volatile. You will end up with a royal flush every two hours or so on average. But that means that some hours quarter players will receive three royal flushes and be up $2,500, and sometimes you will go eight hours without a royal and be down $4,000. These are much bigger swings than many players are comfortable with. It is definitely exciting, but short-on-cash-or-nerves players should seek another game.

  Also, the bonus rounds on both games only kick in if you are playing maximum coins. Partial coin players will be penalized on these games, because the regular pay schedule is intentionally designed to be tighter so that when you receive the bonus, the returns are acceptable.

      The same caveats listed in the Mini Me game apply here. There are lucrative pay schedules out there, but the player needs to learn a new game. For example, when trips pay only two instead of three, you hold inside straights with no high cards and some of the three-card straight flush rules change. Not major changes, but enough so that casinos can make more money than their usual formula when they put the game on the floor, and players willing to spend the time to master a few new rules can do very well.