dave & buster's faq v5.0

The /r/DaveAndBusters FAQ, Version 5.0

December 31st, 2014

A MewtwoStruckBack production

A Foreword:

If you're seeing this guide, you're interested in either making money playing games at Dave & Buster's, or at least not losing as much when having fun with kids/friends. By all means, take the information I give here and use it well. But please, be considerate of others both at your location that may want to play along with you, and the advantage player community as a whole.

If you and others are looking to play the same game, do your best to divide time on the machine with them. Whether this means one player coming in the morning and another at night, or players taking turns after so many games or so many jackpots hit, or a combination of both, don't be "that guy" that doesn't let anyone else play at all to where someone else will be coming in looking to play a game and doesn't get on it once over multiple hours. Additionally, don't kill a game to the point where the numbers get so out of whack that Dave & Buster's HAS to change the settings of a game nationwide thus screwing us all. Remember that D&B's average payout percentage on most of their redemption game is set to between 35-40 percent, and anything paying out more than 50% is going to get a very hard look. Let's not make the same mistake I made, and everyone else made, on Tippin' Bloks in having a game only advantage players played paying out over 230% of its intake. If a game you are playing is popular with non-advantage players, you can afford to play a little more, but if no regular people play the game, be more conservative and consider mixing up your play between more than one good game. If we all do that, then the games we're playing now may be around for decades to come, and be profitable for both us AND Dave & Buster's in the long run - allowing us to essentially be paid PR for them.

Anyway, on with the guide.

It's been a good few years since the last revision, but we're back. Welcome to the newest iteration of the Dave & Buster's Advantage Player FAQ. This is going to be a much more TL;DR; version - rather than talk about what games players should and shouldn't play, I'm going to lay out the cost per game, potential ticket payout, and a few basic tips for each game. There's no longer a game as complicated as Tippin' Bloks during its golden age, and Chip Away has been taken out of a number of locations - that being the case there will no longer be separate sub-guides for them.

If you have questions about what games you should play specifically, you know how to get a hold of me if you're reading this guide. I would rather dispense that information 1-on-1 via private message as to help manage your gameplay AND YOUR LONGETIVITY.

*Cost per play

In prior versions of the FAQ, I broke down every possible option for buying chips. Most of them were never used, so I'm only going to cover the four that should be.

*Standard play - The more chips you buy at once, the better the rate - this tops out, when buying directly at D&B's front desk or charging stations, at 750 chips for $100. (Actually, 798 as you get 48 chips for each $100 you spend on your registered Rewards card and there's absolutely zero reason not to register your card.) To make the math easier, round this to 800 - a chip costs 12.5 cents under standard card charges. If you're spending less than $100 without coupons or specials involved, you're doing it wrong - if you're advantage playing you've at least got to get yourself to this price point.

*Corporate discount play - if you spend $500 or more on gift cards and do so directly through D&B's corporate offices, they'll cut you a 10% discount. There's nothing stopping you from using those cards yourself, so this would make 800 chips cost $90 - 11.25 cents a chip. This would be the best normally available option, except for...

*Premium Play - or in other words, finding one of the stores that sells $50 Dave & Buster's gift cards for $40 (or within a couple pennies.) By purchasing gift cards at this discount, you're getting 800 chips for $80 - a flat 10 cents per chip. This is the best commonly available discount for D&B and is the one advantage players should be making the most use of, except during...

*Coupon play - the gift cards now have it written into their terms that coupons can't be used with them. Being able to pick gift cards up at such a discount is much of the reason why. Having said that, coupons DO squeak out a slightly better rate than the premium play listed above. Using five "Buy $20, get $20" coupons would get you 1,000

chips plus the 48 rewards, 1,048 for $100 works out to 9.54 cents per chip. There are a couple problems with this, however: First, the written policy, currently, is one coupon per customer per day. There are places where they'll allow it to operate at 1 per card per day, and one person can have multiple cards, but then you have the issue of acquiring a large number of coupons. The time and effort that would need to go in to getting a massive quantity of coupons, and then applying them all, is not worth the slight additional discount. For those who do not spend a large amount of money, however, coupon play is probably the best available option.

Two other notes here. First, during the holiday season, Dave & Buster's SOMETIMES does the buy a $50 gift card, get a "$20" (100 chip) voucher good during the first two months of the next year deal. (They did a weaker offer this year but may revive their better offer in future years.) This is functionally equivalent to the premium play listed above - 750 chips for $100, plus the 48 rewards, plus two 100 chip vouchers - 998 (round to 1,000) for $100 works out the same, pretty much, as 800 chips for $80. For those that don't have the warehouse club membership necessary to buy those, this is another way to get the same deal. Also, it would help D&B out a bit as they're selling you the play directly rather than having to surrender an activation fee to a store. It's not a huge amount of money on its own but it could be significant over time. The other thing of note - for those of you in the military, D&B does offer a 20% military discount; this means that you can ignore everything above and just buy all your play $100 at a time with the military discount and get the premium play rate.

For the purposes of this FAQ, I'm going to calculate the cost per game at the "Standard Play" rate of 12.5 cents a chip, and the "Premium Play" rate of 10 cents a chip - I'll do this both for standard price and Half-Price Wednesday costs. (In my old FAQ, Half-Price Wednesday was not cemented as a permanent feature of Dave & Buster's; it is now. It's not going to be discontinued, so it can safely be factored into advantage play calculations.)

*The Value of a Ticket

While the value of prizes that Dave & Buster's offers varies wildly, the generally accepted value of an individual ticket is 0.4 cents. D&B admits such in some of their promotional contest giveaways - if you check the page for the old "Everyone's A Winner" promotion, you'll see the retail value they assign the grand prize of 10,000 tickets was $40. Ignoring the prizes that aren't of much value, like stuffed animals and other tiny trinkets, most all of the prizes are priced along this line. As of the writing of this, a PS4 is 105,000 tickets, and $400 + state sales tax usually works out close to the $420 in value assigned there. iPad Airs are 105,000 and 130,000 tickets respectively -

400 + tax and 500 + tax hits pretty close to these values. Video games are 12,500 tickets, and on a new release $50 usually sounds right - if nothing else they'll have a value on the secondary market of $50.

For the purposes of this FAQ, regardless of what prize(s) you may be shooting for, I'm going to calculate the payout values at 0.4 cents per ticket - or to make it a little easier, 1,000 tickets is worth $4.

Here's a list of the games, in alphabetical order, excluding games where physical tokens ("chips") are inserted. Those get their own little footnote at the end.

*2-Minute Drill:

Cost per play - 5.5 chips / 2.8 chips (Wednesday)

Standard play: 68.75 cents / 35 cents

Premium play: 55 cents / 28 cents

Jackpot: 250 tickets ($1)

Loss value: 24 tickets (9.6 cents)

Breakeven on Premium play without Wednesday is a win every other game and you can get close to double your money winning consecutively. Half-price is a pretty good short-term profit.

This is one of the games you have to milk for jackpots - and by that, I mean score barely more than the jackpot each game. When a jackpot is won, the new high score needed to get the jackpot is just above what you last scored. When the game's turned on/reset overnight (or whenever there's a game issue that needs fixed) the jackpot resets to 500 tickets. In a proper game - one that has seven footballs in it - this is trivially easy. If you minimally beat the jackpot each game, you should get a jackpot for a 509 score, then 529, 559, 579, 609, 639, 659, 679, 709, 739, 759?, 789, 809, 829, 859, 879, 909, 929, 959, 979, and finally 999. I may have one too many in there, but in my experience you can usually get 20 jackpots before you top out and the game becomes impossible to hit consistently enough to play.

Always hit the pop-out targets when they're there, throw at the 30 yard hole for the first minute and a half, and if you're still behind by more than a couple balls worth, during the

last 32 seconds on the game clock the Long Bomb hole increments each time you hit it, going from 50, 60, 70, 80, 90, up to 99. This is the only way your end score will be something other than 9 (if you got the one 99-yard pop-out target in the game) or 0 (if you didn't.)

You'll want to throw the ball in a lob, more like you're throwing a basketball with one hand. The arc the ball carries will make it so that if you hit the edges of the hole you're shooting at, the ball will go in rather than bounce back at you.

*Big Bass Wheel

Cost per game: 9.9 chips / 5.0 chips

Standard Play: $1.24 / 62 cents

Premium Play: 99 cents / 50 cents

Jackpot: 500/1,000 - Super Jackpot 2,500 / 3,000

While Big Bass Wheel may not be all that AP-able of a game, it's quite the interesting math problem.

The game's pretty simple on a base level - spin the wheel, whatever the wheel lands on is what you get...but if you land on 500 or 1,000, you get a free spin, and if you land on either a 500 or 1,000 on that spin you get 2,000 additional tickets.

Assuming a random spin, there are 18 possible spaces that the arrow can land on, as follows:

1,000 - 50 - 10 - 40 - 150 - 500 - 40 - 80 - 70 - 500 - 40 - 10 - 40 - 70 - 500 - 150 - 80 - 70.

Of the bonus spaces, the 1,000 space is roughly 1/9th of the width of a standard space, the rest of which being 4 tickets. The 500 space is a bit bigger, 1/7th of the width of the space, the rest being 4. 1/9th of 1,000 = 111.1111, 1/7th of 500 is 71.4285, 8/9th of 4 (the rest of the 1,000 space) is 3.555555, and 6/7th of 4 (the rest of the 500 space) is 3.4285. So you add 3.55555 to 111.111, and 3.485 to 71.4285.

So the true value looks more like...

114.66 - 50 - 10 - 40 - 150 - 75 (rounding slightly) - 40 - 80 - 70 - 75 - 40 - 10 - 40 - 70 - 75 - 150 - 80 - 70.

Add these values up, and divide by 18 (the total number of full spaces) and you get 68.87.

But wait, there's the bonus spin to look at!

Hitting either bonus in the bonus spin pays 2,000. 2,000 * 1/9th (the 1,000 space width) = 222.222, 2,000 * 1/7th (the 500 space width) = 285.71, and the remnants of the bonus spaces are again 3.5555 or 3.485.

Thus, the values of the bonus spin are:

225.77 + 50 + 10 + 40 + 150 + 289.19 + 40 + 80 + 70 + 289.19 + 40 + 10 + 40 + 70 + 289.19 + 150 + 80 + 70

1993.34 / 18 = 110.74 value of the bonus spin.

1/7th * 3 500 spaces = 0.4285 of a space. 1/9th of the 1,000 space is 0.11111 of a space. Adding those up is 0.5396 of one space, divided by 18 = 0.02998 of the wheel; this rounds to 3% of the wheel being bonus spaces. 3% of 110.74 = 3.3222.

68.87 (base spin value) + 3.3222 (value of potential chance of a bonus spin) = 72.1922 tickets. 72.19 tickets * 0.4 cents = ~28.88 cents expected value.

Under the best value, between 1/2 price Wednesday and Premium Play, the expected value of RANDOM spins are 57.76% of money spent. Now if you can possibly try to very lightly skill-spin the game to bonus spaces or only the 150 space, this may go higher.

*Black Out

Cost per play - 6.8 chips / 3.4 chips

Standard play: 85 cents / 42.5 cents



Loss tickets: 80 for 95%, 50 for 90%, 30 for 85%, 20 for 75%.

I don't know much about this game, but I've had people tell me it's possible to play perfectly. But judging from the math, a skilled player that nearly wins each game when they don't jackpot is either getting 80 or 500, and under premium play on Wednesday

needs 85 tickets to break even. So a player getting 80 each game they don't win is losing a mere 1.25 cents per loss and picking up a profit of $1.66 per perfect game.

I also seem to remember something about a 30 ticket bonus for picking a 1/5 chance of the right color correctly, and if that's the case that adds an estimated value of 6 tickets per game - that means the expected value of the game for a near-miss is truly break-even with the jackpots being pure profit.

*Blast Off (Tower of Power clone)

Cost per play: 2.7 chips / 1.4 chips

Standard play: 33.75 cents / 17.5 cents


Jackpot: 250 tickets ($1) + 2 per loss since last jackpot or power-on

Loss tickets: Can vary, but 1 space away from the jackpot is 4.

This game's a direct knock-off of Tower of Power - it may use different sound effects but works exactly the same way...including jumping off the bonus space you need to stop on if it hasn't taken enough money. If you hit it once, leave it alone...but just because it's at 250 doesn't mean it won't hit, as the jackpot resets upon power-off (but not the number of coins in.)

Half-price premium is a loss of 12.4 cents on a miss and a profit of 86 cents on a win. You start losing money once you're seven games in even if you do hit the jackpot. Losing money starts at your 6th game on half-price standard, and at your fourth, and third games on premium full-price and standard full-price, respectively.

*Connect 4


Standard play: 90 cents / 45 cents


Jackpot: 500 tickets ($2) + 60 tickets for winning the game

A won game yields at least 60 tickets, plus either 6, 20, or the jackpot. A losing game always yields 20 tickets.

Connect 4 plays just like the standard board game. When two players play, it's random who goes first; when it's a single player against the computer the player will always go first. Since Connect 4 has been solved, and it's possible for the first player to always force a win with perfect play, AND the computer is set to make a gameplay error every so often, a good player shouldn't have a problem winning the main game each time. The question is...is it worth it?

I've not once seen a single player hit the 500 tickets - it's a back and forth light bonus, like Hummer Off-Roadin', but it's random-speed back and forth as to not allow for perfect timing. That being said, with the jackpot pretty much out of play, the player will win 66 or 80 tickets each game, amounting to 26.4 or 32 cents per play. I believe the jackpot doesn't pop because the game's set to a certain payout percentage, and because the game's forced to pay out 60 tickets on a win and 20 on a loss, the game's percentage never gets low enough to allow a jackpot win. Having said that, unless you suck at Connect 4 this game won't take much money from you at all, especially on Wednesday, and thus is a great time-killer (or something to bet against your friends on.)

*Crazy Curves




Jackpot: 1,000 tickets ($4)

Loss tickets: The space next to the jackpot is always a 10 (4 cents.)

This game's a Spin-N-Win clone, down to most of the sound effects, except the board's closer to the shape of an 8 rather than a perfect circle. Given the jackpot is the same but the cost is lower I have to assume the hit rate is lower to accommodate it. I've never been able to hit it a single time, but I've seen other players hit it. Being that this game's made by Skee-Ball Amusements, and they don't have their manuals online for free like

most of the other companies, I haven't been able to discern whether or not this is an "impossible until ready to pay" game or a true skill game like the original Spin-N-Win (though the operator can still adjust the jackpot difficulty on Spin.)

Assuming the player is always one away, it will be 10 tickets (4 cents) on a loss and 1,000 on a win. Under Half-Price Premium, that's a loss of 30 cents on a failed play and a profit of $3.66 on a win. Thus a player begins breaking even and starts being profitable if they are able to win once out of every thirteen attempts.

*Cyclone




Jackpot: Starts at 250 ($1) and raises by 4 per miss, up to 500 ($2.)

Loss tickets: I believe the spots next to the jackpot are 10 tickets (4 cents).

Cyclone's the gold standard for "stop the light in the center spot to win the jackpot" games. It's in pretty much every arcade ever and for good reason, it's a solid money-maker for the arcades. I've read the manual, and there is a setting that tells the game to be at X difficulty for most games, but loosen up to Y difficulty (usually easy enough for most players to win) for ONE GAME out of every so many. The difference here is that it does not stay in easy mode until it's hit, but only for one game. There's no knowing "okay, it's ready to pay out" - if a young kid goes up and plays and just randomly hits the button far off the mark on the play it was ready to pay out, it goes back to being hard for another so many games.

Having said that, if you're able to hit very quickly - or are good enough to where you hit within the couple of milliseconds the game allows on a standard play - it is possible to squeak out a single, short profitable stint. Under Half-Price Premium and a maxed jackpot, the player will lose 9 cents on a failed attempts and win $1.87 on a win. This means the player will not start to lose money until they've played 21 times - or if not on a Wednesday, the 9th play. It's not a bad game if you're playing for a single jackpot.

*D&B Derby




Payout: 50 tickets (20 cents) to the winner only.

This game's the standard "roll the ball up to get your horse to go along the track, first person to get their horse across the finish line wins" game you may see for stuffed animal prizes at larger traveling carnivals. Given only one player wins tickets, everything about the value of playing this game's already been mentioned above. I'm only mentioning it for completion's sake.

*Deal or No Deal




This version has 16 cases; at my local D&B, these were 2, 4, 6, 8, 10, 12, 14, 16, 20, 26, 30, 40, 50, 60, 100, and 250. You pick your case, then knock out 5 cases, receive an offer, knock out 4 more, another offer, 3 more, another offer, 2 more, and the last offer comes.

Long story short, every offer's only half of the true expected value for your current situation in the game, except the last offer's always exactly fair (e.g. you have 50 and 250 left, the game will offer 150.) I've heard that some players are able to track the case during the "follow the cases" game at the beginning, and if so, then they will just be able to consistently jackpot the game each time. If picking randomly, your expected value is basically adding up all the case amounts available at the beginning and dividing by the total number of cases (16) - this works out to 40.5 tickets (16.2 cents) per game played. You lose out on expected value by taking any offer except the last one.

*Deep Sea Treasure

Cost per play: 5.2 chips / 2.6 chips for 15 shots



This game has you firing chips onto a playfield, while a computer screen that is laid over the playfield has fish worth tickets and a bonus floating around. If one of your chips banks off of a peg that overlaps one of the fish, you'll gain that many tickets - I've seen these values range from 2 up to 40. The bonus chest fish, if hit, releases a bonus chest that bounces around the screen, that must be hit the same way. If you hit it, you get between 15 to 75 bonus chips (that are played for you automatically - no fish or other bonuses are on the screen for these). You get tickets for each chip that's knocked over the edge, though I'm not sure how many.

Breakeven on this game would be 65 tickets per game played under the best possible price, and if it's 2 tickets per coin over the edge, you end up getting an average of 30 tickets per game plus any bonus fish hit.

*Dizzy Chicken




Jackpot: 500 tickets ($2) with Super Jackpot of 1,000 tickets ($4)

Loss tickets: 150, 60, and lower from there. Going over the jackpot space yields 10 tickets. A 150 ticket win also awards a chance at the Super Jackpot.

Dizzy Chicken's an interesting little game - you pull a lever, and the strength you do so will force a ball around a circular, spiraling track. A certain spot on the track lights up each game and is designated as the bonus spot; the 9 spaces before that are 150 ticket red spaces, the 10 spaces before that are 60 ticket orange spaces, and there are lower values the further back you are. Stopping on the green or any red gives you a second free pull, where only one spot is lit green for 1,000 tickets and everything else is a 10 ticket space.

Half-Price Premium only costs 34 cents, and 150 tickets is 60 cents in and of itself. Breakeven begins on Wednesday if you're hitting slightly better than every other pull on the 150 spot or above.

*Doodle Jump




Jackpot: 1,000 tickets ($4), with a loss payout of 1 ticket for every 150 points earned in the main game - this usually works out to between 50-70 tickets on a well-played loss.

Doodle Jump works similarly to the touch game on phones, but the difference here is that there are "easy" jackpot boards and "impossible" ones where traps/enemies are put in places that pretty much prevent any chance at a win. It's much like Cyclone in that if a player fails an easy game it doesn't continue generating easy games automatically. The best things I can suggest are to always jump on monsters worth points where you can and to land on as many of the platforms that award extra points as possible.

50 tickets = 20 cents so even a moderately skilled player should get at least half of their money back each play; breakeven occurs at a win once every 26 games under half-price premium.

*Down the Clown





Loss tickets are 100 (40 cents) for 400+ point games that do not earn a jackpot; barring a game failure no good player should ever finish with less than 400 points so I'm comfortable in labeling this game a 100 ticket pay on a loss.

Jackpot score starts at 500 points upon power-up, goes up 50 points on any jackpot win and down by 1 point on any loss. (The exception is that if the score to win is below 450 from failed plays, and the player wins, the score will reset to 500 rather than just going up 50 points and remaining below 500.)

Rather than type out the entire strategy here, a search of "Down the Clown jackpot" on YouTube shows a proper playing of the game. I will mention that you don't have to hold back and stop playing right as you cross the jackpot threshold, but if you are continuing to play you should hold at least four balls back for your next game, so you can have them in hand and ready to throw right as the clowns activate and your 20 ticks of the timer start.

If you remember all of the phrases the game says at the beginning like "Knock 'em over!" or "I want you to look very carefully at these clowns!", you'll want to throw your first ball at one of the 30-pointers just as the game's saying the last word of its opening phrase, as by the time your ball makes contact, the clowns will have lit up and that hit will register. When playing for 700+ point games, that extra couple tenths of a second may be the difference between a win and a loss.

I've been able to throw 700 point games consistently and sometimes squeak out 750-790 (and one 800) but I wouldn't advise going at this game unless you know you'll be able to get close to the jackpot each game.

While the number of jackpots you will be able to achieve PLAYING LEGITIMATELY (THIS MEANS ONE PLAYER ON THE MACHINE AT A TIME, NOT TWO) will be limited - most likely to 10 on average and an absolute maximum of 14 for both halves of the machine combined, the game is a boon for skilled players even without the jackpot. Half-Price Premium is 34 cents, with the game yielding 40 cents on a loss and $2 on a jackpot. Even under non-Wednesday play, you're spending 68 cents to win $2 for each game you're able to jackpot.

*Flaming Finger




Jackpot: Starts at 100 and goes up 1 to 3 tickets on some losses. I believe the game dispenses 16 tickets on a loss.

This game has its easy mode and hard mode, much as you'd expect - it will give more time for plays the longer it's gone without a jackpot. I'm not sure whether the game's supposed to count out the tickets as 1 or 2, if it counts each ticket as 1 on the game but 2 from the machine that would explain why the game starts at 100 tickets.

I can't give a proper measurement of profitability here because I'm not sure how the game's suppose to be set.

*Flappy Tickets





Loss tickets APPEAR to be 1 ticket per point earned in the base game, and these are actually awarded on JP plays as well so these aren't loss tickets but rather base game tickets.

This is functionally just like Flappy Bird, except that passing through green pipes is worth 1 point, passing through candy cane colored pipes is 5 points, and the jackpot seems to be based on an average of prior scores. The only pieces of advice I can give here are to immediately die once you've gotten enough points for the jackpot to not raise the necessary score without benefit.

Breakeven under Premium is roughly 1:6 normal and 1:12 1/2 price.

*Frogger

Cost per play: 6.5 chips / 3.2 chips for 3 frogs



Jackpot: 1,000 tickets ($4), with female frogs on some of the turtle backs paying 26 or 50 tickets for reaching them, a mystery bug giving some random ticket amount if caught, and bugs hittable in the first few rows being a few tickets each. A frog that hits no tickets along the way and does not jackpot will score 2 tickets.

This isn't your standard game of Frogger - rather being able to move left and right, you hit your button once, and the frog hops forward at a consistent speed. Logs moving right to left and turtles moving left to right float in the water, and if you're able to time it perfectly so your frog goes from log - turtle - log - turtle - log in the last row, he'll jump from there to the bonus lily pad for 1,000 tickets.

The key to this game is watching the log in the last row, as it doesn't show up very often. You can judge when that log in the last row will be in position for you if everything else goes off without a hitch, and you'll be able to judge the first row without a problem at the same time. So by timing your button press to ensure those will be there, you just have to hope you get lucky on the other three. I know there was a set turtle/log pattern that would guarantee a win, and I've seen this game advantage played in the past - but that's why there's a 30 second timer before your frog starts jumping forward on his own. (This is why you'll never find free frogs on this game despite it being a multiple plays per swipe game.) If you find a version of this game that hasn't been patched and allows the player an unlimited amount of time between plays, there's the chance it can be beaten - but from what I remember watching people do, it was multiple minutes between each press of the button, so even a perfect player might be able to make more elsewhere based on tickets per hour...

Having said that it's a pretty solid game. 32 cents per play on Half-Price Premium with an absolute minimum of 1.5 cents returned on a loss, usually higher, and a profit of $3.68 on a win. Even the unluckiest player that never hits a bug or female frog along the way will only lose 30 cents per loss and thus break even with one jackpot every 13th play (or every 39th frog!) assuming they're going on Wednesday, getting the premium rate, and playing the left side of the machine where you can see the log in the last row and accommodate for it.

*Fruit Ninja 2




No jackpot, but tickets are earned at - I believe - 1 ticket per 10 points earned in the base game. I've heard about it being set up as to 1 ticket for 4 points at other locations.

If it's 1 per 10, then the breakeven under half-price premium is 85 tickets or 850 points per game, if it's 1 for 4 points it's 340 per game.

Standard Fruit Ninja strategies apply (get multiple fruits sliced with one swipe, don't hit bombs, always hit bananas, etc.)

*Gone Fishing




Jackpot: A measly 10 starting value, but I believe 40 tickets earned through base gameplay. It goes up by 2 per play, maxing out at 1,000.

Nothing to say here except hit the button when the fish's nose lines up with the bear's nose. A perfect play on a minimum jackpot (40 tickets + 10) is break-even on Half-Price Premium.

*Hoopla

Game cost: 4.4 chips / 2.2 chips



Jackpot: 150 tickets, with 100 tickets and 50 tickets also available.

Hoopla has the player controlling a circular hoop much like a crane game. The player hits the button to drop the hoop, and hope that it entirely circles one of the 50/100/150 values down below. The hoop will attempt to drop down all the way once, if it makes contact with something, it will make one more attempt to drop down in case it just caught the very edge and then made its way off of that edge. The targets worth 50

tickets have their spikes on the edges of the target curved inward, to make it easier in case you're off slightly. The targets worth 100 have some spikes pointing straight up, and the ones worth 150 have spikes pointing outward so the play must be dead-on to avoid touching them.

I've seen some players at my local place that used to hit this all the time, but that was back when the one right by the crane's starting position was 150 and thus required very little pressing of buttons (less chance for error.) I no longer see anyone play it. Having said that, half-price premium is only 22 cents and a player that can hit the 100 ticket target every time - or the 150 target 2 out of 3 times - is almost doubling their money. I've also heard that other locations have different, possibly higher values for their targets on this game.

*Hummer Off-Roadin'




Jackpot: 580 tickets ($2.32.) Level 1's bonus is 30 tickets, Level 2's is 50, and Level 3's is 500. A near-miss on any level is 10 tickets.

Hummer's a three-stage game - you have to hit the bonus on Level 1 to get to play on to Level 2, and you have to hit the bonus on Level 2 to get a chance at the jackpot on Level 3. You don't lose out on your already earned tickets by progressing, so hitting the first target and missing the second is 40 tickets (30 + 10), and hitting the first two and missing the jackpot is 90 (30 + 50 + 10).

The game is basically a light swinging back and forth like a pendulum that you have to stop dead-center. The difficulty is operator-adjustable, with a difficulty scale from 1 to 10 for each separate level. From my understanding it's currently on 5 on the first level, 6 on the second level, and 7 on the jackpot level. TL;DR; you'll have some trouble with level 2 consistency and jackpot hits are rare.

A 20 cent game only needs 50 tickets to break-even, a losing level 2 play earns 40 tickets so you're only losing out on 4 cents, and a losing jackpot play still gets 90 tickets earning a profit of 16 cents, assuming half-price premium. If you're getting past level 2 every other play you're squeaking out a small profit and any jackpots from there are a nice bonus.

*Ice Age

Cost per play: 5.2 tickets / 2.6 tickets for 5 attempts



Jackpot: 1,000 tickets, with near-misses being 8 tickets and hitting a blocker being 4 tickets.

This game's...odd. The target moves back and forth, and has a tiny crevice that if your strike of the hammer gets in between, you get the jackpot. On a game without auto-lose going on, it's possible to time one or more of your five attempts so that it dodges the blockers in the front rows and gets into the tiny jackpot space - I've done three in one game before. But with current settings, more often than not it seems to shove your projectile away from the jackpot crevice even if it was perfectly timed.

Having said that, a perfect losing play generated 40 tickets (16 cents) for a loss of 10 cents on Half-Price Premium, and a jackpot play will earn 1,032 tickets for a profit of $3.87. If you're able to hit even occasionally, you won't lose much money playing this game.

*Infinity Blade FX




I'm honestly not sure on the values on this. I've never played it. I do know that it pays out tickets, from my understanding it's a small amount. You'd need 95 a game to break even in the best case. Anyone out there play this with any consistency that would be able to help me break down the viability on this?

*Jumpin' Jackpot




Jackpot: 300 / 600 / 900 tickets for 1, 2, and 3 swipes respectively.

This game is pretty simple - a light spins around, and you're standing on a pad with a sensor built in. When the light's on the part that would be by your feet, you need to jump up, and when the light's not on the ground you need to be on the sensor, to simulate jumping rope. It used to be able to be won consistently (when the jackpots were smaller) but like most games, if a jackpot's raised, there's a catch. Auto-lose is on now and the game has to take in a certain number of credits before it will allow a win. However, if the game's ready to win, it's ready to be won on ANY of the jackpots, so you can play until it's ready (or watch someone else play where it's ready, if that can be determined) and then throw three swipes in.

Best-case scenario you need 50 tickets to break even per swipe, and if you get close to the jackpot you do get a decent chunk (I need to find out exactly how many.) But winning the jackpot on any amount of money is a payout of 6:1 for that particular game. When I figure out what the loss ticket value is I'll get a breakeven up for this.

Match 'Em Up

Cost per play: 2.9 chips / 1.4 chips (pretty sure it rounds down on Wed.)



Jackpot: 100 tickets (40 cents) + 2 tickets per swipe.

Match 'Em Up was in most D&B locations from the beginning...and the settings have changed pretty often. I've seen it at an insanely easy difficulty with a 250 payout...then the difficulty ramped up but still at 250...then the difficulty easy and at 100 payout...then jacked difficulty and still 100...and now auto-lose is turned on. At least they left it easy enough to tell if it's forcing a loss - if you hit the third 7, the game makes the noise as if you hit a 7, and then it moves to the next space anyway, you got hit by auto-lose.

It's typically a one-and-done game, hit it once and leave it be.

*Mega Octo-Score




Jackpot: 1,000 ($4) for an individual pointer, the Mega Jackpot can get to 10,000+ but requires a very large investment.

This game's the upgraded version of Monster Hunt - instead of just one pointer, you can play as many as 8 in the same spin. If you buy 7 pointers the game throws in the 8th, though you ARE then spending at least 23.8 chips on a single spin. The breakeven for this would be 595 tickets earned on that spin. While the 150 and 210 ticket spots are as wide as regular spaces, the 500 and 1,000 spaces are very small. I'm not sure if the timing of the wheel can be stopped consistently to try and skill-hit a single space, though I know it can be done on Monster Hunt.

As far as the Mega Jackpot is concerned...it's difficult. You have to get at least one of the diamond spaces in each spin (there are plenty and if you're playing all the pointers this is trivial.) But once you get one, a timer starts counting down, and you have to start, AND COMPLETE six more plays that all each land on at least one diamond to get the Mega Jackpot. If the timer runs out, you lose all of the diamonds you've accumulated. I'm going to assume you'll probably need to play all pointers on each spin to have a fair shot, which means 7 paid swipes per play * 7 plays = 49 swipes = 166.6 chips! So you're going to be in for $16.66 for just those 7 games, which is a breakeven of 4,165 tickets. If you're able to hit the Mega Jackpot consistently in one set of 7 games, and it's 8,000+, there's definitely profit there - but I'd need to know exactly what the process for playing for the Mega Jackpot is to be able to tell for sure.

*Mega Stacker

Cost per game: 9.9 chips / 5.0 chips

Standard Play: $1.24 / 62 cents

Premium Play: 99 cents / 50 cents


Long story short, this game has auto-lose turned on. You can get the light to stack up to the top if it wants you to but just like the smaller version that you can win massive prizes out of, if the game hasn't taken in enough money to support a win then it will jump off to a losing space. So long as you don't play with the lights stacking up on an edge it will be very obvious that it's skipping off.

Best-case scenario, you walk up to it, play it once, hit it, and don't play it anymore.

If you see anyone else play it and take the 200 ticket buyout prize for the lower level, walk away, they just made it so no one will be able to hit for a while. If you see anyone else hit it, walk away. If you see someone else play it a number of times poorly, where they don't get up to the minor prize or they do get to the minor level, play on, and lose and it wasn't auto-lose kicking them off, it might be worth trying a single swipe.

*Milk Jug Toss




Jackpot: 1,000 tickets ($4).

This is a much more difficult version of the milk jug game at carnivals. The balls typically bounce off of the jug unless you have an absolutely perfect throw; they also added Plexiglas to the front of the machine so you can no longer bounce the balls in off the platform below the jug. If you DO get an individual ball in the jug out of your 5 balls, it's 1,000 points - a perfect game of 5 balls in scores 1,000. If you miss the jug, there are holes worth between 50 and 250 points the ball will roll into. You're guaranteed 10 tickets, up to 750 points gets 20, up to 1,500 gets 40, up to 2000 gets 60, up to 2500 gets 80, up to 3000 gets 100, up to 3500 gets 200, up to 4000 gets 300, above that gets 500 if you didn't max out. There's also a multi-jug bonus where 2 in the jug gets 100, 3 in gets 200, 4 in gets 500, and 5 in gets 1,000 - though I'm not sure whether or not the game pays 1,000 for score and a separate 1,000 for the advertised bonus.

85 tickets is breakeven in the best case scenario, so you need to score 2 jugs to accomplish that.

*Monopoly Arcade




Monopoly Arcade is...an odd rendition of Monopoly. For each swipe, you get 5 spins of a dial. (You're allowed to continue twice in the same game, which becomes important later, so you can buy up to 15 total spins.)

Before you spin, you're shown a row of numbers that could be represented by a dice roll (between 2 and 12 inclusive), and how hard you spin the dial makes the cursor go back and forth, whatever you stop on is whatever you "roll". You earn tickets at a rate of $57 Monopoly dollars = 1 ticket. All of the highest-valued properties in each Monopoly set start with a hotel on them, and you get their hotel value if you land on them. If you land on a property without a hotel, you get its base sale value in the actual Monopoly game, then a hotel is put on it.

If you manage to land on a property that has no hotel to where putting one on it will have a hotel on all of them, you'll get a "Monopoly Bonus" which is usually a little higher than the highest hotel value in the set. If you're able to hit this and none of the other better bonuses are available, you'll want to do so.

Income Tax and Luxury Tax become Tax Refund spaces but are very small values and not worth hitting.

If you land on the Free Parking space, you get to spin a bonus wheel, which either gives you $1,000, $2,000, $3,000, $5,000, 2x, 3x, 5x, or 10x If you get one of the multipliers, it stays with you for the ENTIRE GAME, multiplying your end total. If you have a multiplier, you should always continue when given the option to buy another set of spins.

If you land on Boardwalk, you get $10,000 - about 175 tickets. IT IS POSSIBLE TO GET THE 10X MULTIPLIER AND THE BOARDWALK BONUS IN THE SAME GAME. I've seen it done. I don't know if there's a set payout percentage the game tries to stick to and shoves you off of the space if it would pay too much, but I do know it's possible as I've seen it done.

If you land on Go, you get one free roll in addition to your set of 5, but since this means you've missed landing on Boardwalk by hitting it you should never try to land on this. Community Chest and Chance may take you to Go though.

Utilities and railroads suck as far as value goes.

Breakeven's 85 tickets per swipe and thus 255 for a full game. You always do better in your 2nd and 3rd games because the properties you landed on previously that didn't have hotels on them will now have them, so if you land on them a second time they pay better, and also the monopoly bonus for completing a set comes into play. But really the best bet is to aim for Free Parking and Boardwalk consistently.

*Monster Drop (Slam-A-Winner clone)

Cost per play - 6.8 chips / 3.4 chips (for ONE ball - OUCH!)



Basically, this plays just like the original Slam-A-Winner, with a 100 ticket starting jackpot and a Mega Jackpot that you can't aim for on its own - it's in the center of the machine, not on the rotating ring of ticket values. If the ball bounces around, up on top of a platform, and into a hole on that platform, the Mega Jackpot's awarded. But it's honestly blind luck.

The game does have a bonus ball feature - a number of the holes are marked "add bonus ball" which also award 4 tickets. If a player gets a ball in the drop bonus balls hole, it will just constantly start putting balls into play until the accumulated bonus balls run out.

Long story short, if you see a crapload of bonus balls and can hit the bonus ball drop, go for it, if the jackpot's high, go for it, that's about it.

*Monster Hunt




Jackpot: 500 tickets ($2) on the base wheel, 2,000 tickets ($8)? for collecting all monsters, 1,000 tickets ($4) on the Monster Dome wheel.

Monster Hunt's one of the first "stop the wheel with the arrow pointing at X" games that requires multiple plays to fully win. There are 11 monsters on the wheel, represented by M O N S T E R H U N T respectively. Among those are some small ticket value spaces of 20 each, a super bonus space of 500 tickets with 10 ticket spaces on each side, an even smaller Monster Dome space that spins the top wheel with 10s on each side...and then a couple bad outcomes: A spot that takes one monster away that you already have, labeled as "-1", and 6 small spots labeled "Cash Out", which forces you to surrender all monsters you have and you're awarded the ticket value for that many monsters.

Many players I saw play this game would either try and get all the monsters or cash them in for Monster Dome spins. (To cash in for a Monster Dome spin, you surrender 4 monsters you already have by pushing a button on the side of the machine.) While there are 250, 500, 750, and 1,000 ticket spaces on the top wheel, they're fairly small and surrounded by much larger 50 and 100 spaces. Typically the Monster Dome is silly compared to trying to finish out the monsters...and trying to finish those out is silly for two reasons. One, as you get closer to maxing out, unless you're a perfect skill player, you have less and less places on the wheel you want to try and hit, plus that -1 monster space becomes much more significant. And two...if you can hit a spot at will on the wheel, you should be aiming for the 500 ticket spot. Hitting that even half the time is better than spending 11 swipes to get the 2,000 for clearing the board.

I do believe there's profit in this game in the hands of the truly skilled but I haven't seen anyone attack this game for a long time. It's a 52.5 ticket breakeven per play under best conditions so hitting 1 out of 5 is more than enough to double your money.

*NASCAR


Standard play: $1.17 / 58.75 cents


Jackpot: 250??? 500???

This is a driving game with essentially little RC cars where you have to do 25 laps around a tiny track. Doing so in X amount of time gets the jackpot, and X goes up slightly for each time someone plays and doesn't win. I've never seen people playing it, I've never played it, and I've never heard of anyone winning it, but since the time resets if someone does hit it, I have to assume this is a one-and-done game even if you are able to hit it, as you need more than 100 tickets to break even and first place without the jackpot is, I think, 24 tickets.

*Nothin' But Net




Jackpot: None

Basically, Super Shot with a much further away hoop. I haven't seen anyone play it to get a ticket breakdown but there's no jackpot and thus no way to achieve breakeven.

*Price is Right - Shell Game:





Loss tickets: 20 or 30

The first round is a very basic Shell Game which is almost always easy, except if it's been hit almost every round lately (it goes back to easy once a player fails once or twice), and getting through that allows the player to spin the Showcase Showdown wheel...which is basically something like Spin-N-Win but the wheel spins for a while after you hit the stop button. There is an auto-lose function; basically you can only tell if you play a couple games, allow enough of a gap for when you hit the stop button to have it stop on the 1,000, and it either stops before or shoots past. (The 1,000 space IS just a little bit smaller...)

Factoring in the loss tickets at an average of 25 per game, breakeven's about 1:8.5 standard play and 1:18 on Wednesday.

*Raptor Captor

Cost per play: 3.7 chips / 1.9 chips (*4 FOR FULL GAME) = 14.8 / 7.6

Standard play: $1.85 / 95 cents

Premium play: $1.48 / 76 cents

Jackpots vary; individual balls can hit as much as 500 tickets though this is rare, and multi-ball jackpots can be as much as 500.

This game is nearly impossible to quantify; you can earn tickets when a ball passes through tubes near the top of the game, through a central hole moving back and forth whose values change constantly, and through holes on the bottom playfield the ball must eventually pass through to fall out of play. 5 of those holes are marked with colored claws; of a set of 5 balls (which costs 4 swipes), if you get 2, 3, or all 5 of them you get varying bonus tickets.

I am not sure which targets are worth aiming at consistently, as I never got the hang of this...but what I can tell you is for 5 balls, and needing 370 tickets / 190 tickets to break even on premium, you need either 74 or 38 tickets per ball just to tread water. If you can manage to get say 80+ tickets a ball consistently and go on Wednesday you'll do all right - I'm just not sure if that's possible.

*Red Cup Challenge




Jackpot: 32 tickets + 1 per unused ball, maximum 52 (20.8 cents)

It's beer pong with ticket payouts for getting the cups, maxed out at 32 for hitting them all, with a token bonus for not using all 30 of your allotted balls. Why is this game getting such a short write-up? The maximum ticket payout is less than the cheapest cost per game available. That's all I need to say here.

*Ring of Fire





Basically...this is a properly rewarding version of Skee-Ball. There are the standard 1,000-2,000-3,000-4,000-5,000 point holes dead ahead, 10,000 point holes in the corners, and 9 balls to get 90,000 points to jackpot the game.

This can be done one of two ways:

*Get 9 balls in the corner holes at 10,000 each.

*Certain holes are worth double points; these change as you hit them. If you hit all 9 of the bonus holes for double points, it will also award 90,000 total.

The muscle memory going for the same hole over and over should be easier than following the lit holes for double points.

The breakeven is very easy to calculate for this game; 68 cents requires 170 tickets and 34 requires 85. You get 200 tickets for 80,000-89,000 (one miss), 150 tickets for 70,000-79,000, 100 for 60-69k, 70 for 50-59k, and if you're scoring less than that you're probably better off on another game. You can break even hitting 8/9 on non-

Wednesday on an individual game or one jackpot out of every 6 games; Wednesday is much more forgiving in needing 60k or better on individual games to break even or a jackpot 1:12 not counting loss tickets.

*Sea Wolf




Jackpot: 100 tickets (40 cents) + 2 per played game

Sea Wolf's a basic game, submarine shoots torpedoes at passing ships; hitting a ship dead center sinks it in one hit, an off-center hit slows it down and allows for it to be sunk on a subsequent hit. Once per game a bonus ship will go by very fast in the back row, that awards the jackpot if hit.

I'm not sure how many tickets you get per ship sunk/points earned, but the breakeven under the best possible scenario is 62.5 tickets per game played.

*The Simpsons Soccer




Jackpot: 200 tickets (80 cents)

This game involves the player getting 30 seconds to kick the ball past a moving Homer that rotates on a circle into a goal in the back; the more goals scored the more tickets earned, obviously. You get 4 tickets for 1 goal, 6 for 2, 10 for 3, 14 for 4 or 5, 24 for 6 or 7, 50 for 8-9, 100 for 10-11, and the jackpot for 12+. In order to get a high number of tickets on this game, you have to kick the ball in such a way that it not only misses home going to the goal, but also doesn't get caught behind him on the ball's trek back

down to you. Best possible scenario, Wednesday play you need to get 10 goals per game to break even as that's 40 cents worth on a 34 cent play.

*Skee-Ball




Jackpot: 100 + 2 per game played, up to a maximum of 1,000 ($4)

This is set up much like Ring of Fire, except with no doubled points and a jackpot for scoring 550 points (much easier than throwing a perfect game but much less rewarding.) 26 cents is about 65 tickets, so you'd need to throw 65% perfect games to break even on non-Wednesday; 13 cents being 33 tickets so you'd need a jackpot every third game to break even if it's at the minimum...but if you catch it on a high jackpot, it'd be worth going at once.

*Slam-A-Winner

Cost per play - 4.2 chips / 2.1 chips (Cost is for THREE balls)



Jackpot: 100 tickets (40 cents) + 2 per game played, maximum may vary by location?

This and its larger brother, the extreme version, are both games where you hit a button to dispense a ball through a tube into a cylindrical playfield; that field has many holes the ball can drop through, the smaller of which are worth more tickets. Two high-value holes have plastic guards on them; one worth 50 tickets, and one with an even higher plastic guard that awards the jackpot. (The guards make it so that barring a very lucky bounce, you need to time the ball drop to fall straight through the hole without touching anything else; the game says as such on the instructions on the back of the playfield.) It IS possible to do this on a somewhat consistent basis if the tube is properly aligned to

fall straight down and the ball drop mechanism works the same each game. Each ball costs 14 or 7 cents; if playing on Wednesday you need 17.5 tickets per ball to break even. Barring the bonus holes and a couple very small ones aside from those none of them are more than 12, so you'll need to hit the jackpot 1:6 balls to break even.

*Slam-A-Winner Extreme

Cost per play - 9.9 chips / 5.0 chips (Cost is for THREE balls)



Jackpot: 250 tickets ($1) going up by 10 per swipe to a maximum of 1,000; a sub-jackpot is available for 150 tickets consistently.

This is much like the original Slam-A-Winner, but with a slightly larger margin for error. The jackpot pays more tickets but has a plastic guard on it, much like both bonus holes on original Slam. The 150 ticket hole SHOULD NOT HAVE A GUARD ON IT - if it does this needs to be brought to the attention of management that this is not considered part of global settings and the guard needs to be removed.

Each ball costs either 33 cents or 16.66 cents; 82.5 tickets per ball on non-Wednesday or 41.65 per ball on Wednesday under Premium to break even, SO...

If going for the jackpot, you need to get it once per swipe of 3 balls to break even on non-Wednesday or once every other swipe on Wednesday, not counting the tickets from balls going into other holes. If going for 150, you will ROUGHLY breakeven, counting loss tickets, if you get every other ball in the hole on non-Wednesday, and the same holds true for every 4 balls played on Wednesday.

*Solar Spin




Jackpot: 100 tickets (40 cents) + 2 per play

Loss tickets: Between 2-20...but more often than not, 2.

This game was changed in recent years. It's a Spin-N-Win clone that has an insta-prize (between 50-200 tickets) very far away from the jackpot space...but the problem is that now instead of the value one away from the jackpot being 20 tickets, softening the blow of a near-miss, it is now 2. Having said that the game is only playable for its jackpot. You need to hit it the first game on non-Wednesday to break even, or the third game on Wednesday, if it's at its minimum.

*Snowdown





...I'm not even trying to quantify this game because both the jackpot and non-jackpot values seem to change constantly while the game's being played. Breakeven's the same as any of the other 6.8 games like Down the Clown but for this I'm honestly just throwing my hands in the air and walking away. No one ever plays it and I have to assume this game will be taken out of D&Bs soon.

*Space Ballz




Jackpot: 500 tickets ($2) with a possible 750 ticket jackpot in a bonus round.

Space Ballz is Plinko with an unbalanced board; the 500 is dead center but the pegs near it are not, which make it very unlikely for a ball to drop into it. The other possible

values are 10, 50, or 90, but the board is made so most of the balls go through 10. There's a hole on the board that the ball can go through (if a robotic arm is raised fully to allow the ball to slide inside) that awards the player 3 balls, but for those 3 balls the center slot is changed to 250 and all of the other ones are 10. So you'd have to hit two balls in the center slot in the bonus to make out slightly better than hitting one there normally.

Breakeven's 250 tickets/125 tickets respectively on premium non-Wednesday/premium Wednesday.

*Speed Demon




Jackpot: Starts at 250 tickets ($1) and goes up by 2 per play, to a maximum of 1,000 ($4.)

This game has two parts; the first involves pulling a plunger that shoots a ball into a rotating playfield; there are 9 holes, 3 of which send the player to the bonus round and 6 of them award 2 tickets only. In the bonus round, there are 3 rings of lights much like Spin-N-Win; the first is very slow, the second faster, and the third insanely fast. You must land on an arrow in each ring to get to the jackpot, missing an arrow means you get the tickets you landed on and the bonus ends. The only advice I can really give here is that the longer you let the faster rings go around over and over, the more of a chance you have of losing track of the light. Hitting the arrows quickly is key.

This is a hit-n-run game at its purest, wait for the jackpot to get up there and hit it once as at its minimum you would need to hit the jackpot 1/6 on Wednesday just to break even.

*Speed of Light




https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wWEb6tpPZxg <-- I'm just going to leave this link here as it covers everything you'd need to do to try and make any money playing this game.

*Spin-N-Win





Ahh, the quintessential "stop the light on the bonus" game. I've heard too many different things about how this game is set differently at various locations. You may find it impossible at your local, or the easiest game on the floor. It depends on where the jackpot's set - it could be as tight as 2 milliseconds, or as loose as 20; the factory default is 5, it was 6 at my location for the longest time until being changed to 4. Some places out there are...a lot more than 4.

Anyway, only way to know is to try it and work out your average.

Breakeven's 1/4 or 1/8 not counting the 20 tickets you'll get each game you lose, depending on Wednesday or not.

*Spin Out





This game's like a clock, where you're looking at two pointers; hitting the button stops the longer one immediately, which stops on anything between 10-100 tickets (the 100

ticket spaces are smaller than normal spaces) and then a multiplier pointer goes around and stops on either x1, x2, x3, or x10 (same spots as 100 ticket spaces.) In order to jackpot this, you need to have both the big and little pointers at the right spot so the big pointer stopping almost right away, plus the other one spinning for a while, will hit a jackpot position.

Breakeven's the same 1/4 or 1/8 as Spin-N-Win not counting loss tickets, though if you can hit the 10x pointer consistently but not the jackpot 100, you could aim for a much larger 50 space for the base tickets and try to get 500 each game. I'm not sure if there's an auto-lose for this.

*Super Monkey Ball




Jackpot: 500 tickets ($2) + 1 per play up to a maximum of 1,000.

Loss tickets vary, but can be as many as 32.

This is a standard level of Super Monkey Ball; you can't run out of lives but can run out of time, and you're penalized a few seconds waiting for respawn. There are single bananas (20) and bunches (2, counting as 10 each) on the track, so hitting them all would give you 40 bananas, which I think pays 26 tickets last time I played. You also get a few tickets for any time left on the clock.

The jackpot has you going down a steep ramp with turbo boosts on each side; hitting all of them perfectly and with exactly enough speed will get you through a jackpot ring, but not hitting all the boosts, hitting them and going TOO fast, or not going dead center will make you miss. I'm absolutely sure this game can be and is set up to have auto-lose on in some places but not others.

Breakeven on half-price premium is 85 tickets per game; an average of 25 tickets a game, just an estimate, mean you need to win once every 8 games to break even at minimum or before the 16th game on maximum.

*Super Shot




Jackpot: 100 tickets (40 cents) + 2 per play, maxing out at 500 ($4.)

I don't really need to explain basketball, but I do need to explain the nuances of this version. You have 30 seconds + 5 if you get past 30 points. Jackpot score to win at my location is 61, resetting overnight, and goes up to whatever the most recent jackpot winner scored; I've heard of people having locations where it's a constant 70 though. This will vary by location. The most optimal ways to play are either Classic (easy 2-point shot at the beginning and 3 point shot at the end for the last 8-10 seconds) or Push-Back (each shot made moves the basket, ensuring you get a decent number of 3s.) Only other thing of note here is that deflated balls bounce off the backboard and into the basket much more easily, so if you have one station with a number of those play that one.

Breakeven depends on the jackpot, but on Wednesday is 1:2.5 for a minimum jackpot...but if you're a location with a constant jackpot that does not raise and can win every game, there's money here so long as your arms don't wear out.

*Temple Run





3 coins in-game = 1 ticket.

Temple Run's pretty simple - swipe to jump or slide, roll left or right, and collect powerups and coins. Powerups include invincibility, extra time, a coin magnet, a bonus distance boost, or occasionally the jackpot idol will be on the screen for a blink of an eye.

As with all the 6.8 games the breakeven is 85 tickets per swipe on Wednesday with premium.

Tippin' Bloks





What was once the single greatest game in the Dave & Buster's Advantage Player repertoire is now a simple hit-n-run. The game still has the goal of getting 9 blocks in a stack without missing 3, but the ability to do so has changed with the software update rolled out back in 2011.

The game now has the "easy", "semi-hard", and "fuck you" modes that it was originally designed to have. If the game's in impossible mode, it will put the 8th block where it thinks you can't get to it (though it IS possible with perfect play, and then you might get lucky enough to be where the 9th block drops - but don't count on it!) If the game's in a playable mode you'll be able to get your stack under the last two falling blocks.

The game's tell as to whether or not it's in impossible; if the third blocks drops faster than normal, it's in impossible. If it drops at the same speed as the first two, or slower, it's ready to pay - though that still doesn't tell you whether it's in true easy (where it'll hold the block above the line longer) or semi-hard (where it'll give you a shot but you'll still have to make an educated guess as to where the block's going to drop and move there.)

After it's hit, it will usually take 10 or more plays before it's ready to hit, but if it's a busy weekend night, getting three or four jackpots in one session is not unheard of.

Interesting note here - when you win a game normally, the blocks flash white, one at a time from the bottom of the stack to the top. When you manage to win a game in

impossible mode, the stack just explodes immediately without the bottom-to-top flash-up. It's the game pretty much telling the player "Hey, you weren't supposed to be able to win!' if you look at it hard enough.

The basic strategy of "stay off to one side and move to the other side after a second so the game has to spawn the block over there" still applies, though is obviously much harder to try and force when the game's in impossible.

You get 20 tickets when you lose, which is 8 cents, so breakeven is 1:11.76 games for normal days and a whopping 1:30.76 games on Wednesday.

*Tower of Power




Jackpot: 250 ticket ($1) minimum, going up 2 per play up to 500 tickets ($2.)

Loss tickets: The spot next to the jackpot is 4 tickets.

Tower of Power is basically any of the "stop the light" games but going vertically in a line rather than in a circle. I'm not sure if the game has an auto-lose 100% but I'm convinced that it does, as I've walked up to it when it's seen a lot of play and hit it in one shot and I've felt like it jumped off a number of times playing when it's "not ready".

Breakeven at minimum on Wednesday is about 1:7 or 1:14 at maximum; it's a hit-n-run when it's high game...but I've seen it 400+ and still not ready to pay.

*Treasure Quest





I'm copying the section on this game verbatim from the old version of the guide as nothing has changed whatsoever.

This game is much like Wheel of Fortune, but slightly more skill-based. Ever so slightly. You spin a large wheel, and get whatever you land on. Obviously, the higher ticket value spaces are smaller - the 200, 500, and 1,000 ticket spaces each consist of only one spot, sandwiched between two "10" value spaces on each side. So attempting to skill spin to land on one single spoke of the wheel is extremely difficult if not impossible, considering you have to have the wheel go around a certain number of rotations for it to count as a valid spin.

There are 50 spaces on the Treasure Quest wheel, and they go as follows:

10 (x2), 1,000, 10 (x2), 60 (x3), 100 (x4), 10 (x2), 200, 10 (x2), 90 (x3), 50 (x4), 10 (x2), 500, 10 (x2), 60 (x3), 100 (x4), 10 (x2), 200, 10 (x2), 90 (x4), 50 (x4).

Breaking it down a bit easier to see:

1,000 - 1

500 - 1

200 - 2

100 - 8

90 - 7

60 - 7

50 - 8

10 - 16 (ouch!)

4,310 (total value of all spaces) / 50 (total number of spaces) = 86.2 tickets per play, on average.

Half-price premium is 125 tickets per play to break even, so even random spins will get you back 2/3 of your money, or a bit more. If you could possibly skill spin to the high values there might be something here.

*Tutti-Fruitti

Cost per play - 10 chips / 5.0 chips (Each play gets 5 spins)


Premium play: $1.00 / 50 cents

Jackpot: 500 ticket ($2) minimum, going up to a max of 1,000 ($4)

Tutti-Fruitti is a slot machine with a skill aspect; on each spin, at least one combination of 3 of the same fruit in a row will appear; the player must tap all 3 of that fruit in a line to get paid. Each fruit has a base value - Apples are 200, pears are 100, grapes 60, strawberries 45, plums 40, kiwi 35, limes 30, banana 25, peach 20, watermelon 15, and cherries 10. If you tap a winning combination in less than 1 second you get the full amount; you lose 20% for each second more than 1 it takes. There are wild cards that appear on the screen as well that substitute for anything; three of these in a row, tapped within 1 second, award the jackpot (taking longer goes 400-300-200-100 depending on how long it took.)

It's possible for more than one win to show up in a play; most often it will involve wilds and the same fruit combination, or a whole bunch of the same fruit at one time.

The breakeven per game is 125 tickets with Wednesday premium, and at the absolute worst you would get 50 tickets (5 sets of cherries) so it's impossible to do TOO poorly on this game if you're quick...though you are at the mercy of the slot spins.

*Whack-N-Win





Loss tickets can vary, but are most likely 10 tickets (for landing just short) or 30 tickets (landing barely over.)

Whack-N-Win is one of ICE's Carnival Classics series. It looks like the strongman game at carnivals where you need to hit as hard as you can, but on this one, hitting too hard sends the light all the way up to the top of the display and then bouncing back down. So you need to hit it just right - not too hard, not too soft, to get the light to stop on the jackpot. (The game's pressure sensitive, and both the game's sensitivity settings and jackpot window can be set by location, though the latter is supposed to conform to global settings.)

This is one of those games you learn as you play it; if you're constantly too short, you hit harder, if you're hitting it too hard you ease up. Just play the game the same way every time once you're close.

Breakeven is 1:6 on non-Wednesday and 1:12 on Wednesday.

*Wheel Deal

Cost per play - 7.9 chips / 4.0 chips (Each game gives 7 plays)



Jackpot: On the Red/Black version, 500; on the "win every time" version, 1,000.

Basically, you hit a button, a puck dispenses, slides along to the outer ring where many ticket values are displayed, and you win what you land on. For the red/black version, where you get 50 tickets on black and the jackpot on red, you only win if the puck is ENTIRELY on the red/black space; if it's overlapping the edge it doesn't count. On the "win every time" version, there's a large section that goes 2-4-4-6-6-8-10-*-10-8-6-6...you get the idea. If it's overlapping two sections, you get the smaller of the 2. So if it's half on 10, half on 8, you get the 8. The jackpot is awarded when you're ENTIRELY covering the red jackpot spot in the center.

Breakeven under best case is 100 tickets per game, and since the highest non-bonus value on the win every time version is 10 and the other version's highest is 50 (and as hard to hit as the jackpot itself), you'll need to get proficient at bonusing (or coming close every time on the win every time version when not bonusing) to have a chance. Breakeven's going to vary based on which version you're playing.

*Wheel Deal Extreme

Cost per play - 7.9 chips / 4.0 chips (Each game gives 5 plays)



Jackpot: Starts at 200 (80 cents) and raises by 2, to 500 ($2) with each swipe.

Same game, much bigger pucks. This one plays like the win every time version of Wheel Deal, but instead of a big glob of an area, it's a bunch of circles right next to one another; landing in between two circles gives you the value of the circle you were covering more of. Landing EXACTLY on a circle gives you 5x the value of that circle (so landing dead on the 8 target gives you 40)...landing exactly on the red target in the center is the jackpot, and being just-off of that one gives you 16.

As you get 5 pucks, each puck costs 8 cents under best case conditions, meaning you need to average 20 tickets per puck to break even. Getting very close to the jackpot each game is 16, but the problem is the pucks don't always come down the same way, due to wear and tear on the machine and the pucks themselves.

*Wheel of Fortune Arcade


Standard play: $1.2375 cents / 62.5 cents


While there is no set jackpot, the highest value space on the wheel is 300 tickets, which can be multiplied by finding more than one of the same letter when having landed on it.

Copying the prior guide verbatim because nothing has changed.

This game is hard to quantify the payout on in some ways, but easier in others. So I'll give it my best shot.

The gameplay is simple; you're presented with a puzzle, and the option of picking letters - though the game will only allow you to pick letters that are actually in the puzzle. You get 3 spins of the giant wheel by spinning a large dial, and for each spin it'll stop on a ticket value and you'll call a letter, and the game works just like the show for that - stop on, say, 10 tickets, call a letter that there are 4 of, you get 40 tickets.

After your 3 spins, you'll get a chance to solve the puzzle for a 10 ticket bonus (20 tickets if you did the double play option, which costs two swipes and doubles the value of the spins.)

The game's massive house edge comes from the fact that the "bonus" wedges of 50, 200, and 300 tickets per letter are only one third the size of a normal wedge, much as you only have one space to land on the "Million Dollar" wedge in the real Wheel of Fortune game show. The bonus wedges have similarly small wedges only awarding 2 tickets on each side, so when I refer to "2-300-2" down below, that means a bonus wedge of 300 with a 2 on each side of it.

I've charted out the wedges for you - starting from the highest paying out bonus space:

(2-300-2), 4, 10, 4, 6, 4, (2-50-2), 4, 2, 6, 8, 4, (2-200-2), 4, 10, 4, 6, 4, (2-50-2), 4, 2, 6, 8, 2.

If you take the 2-300-2 wedge and divide it by 3, the net value of that space on the wheel is 101.33 tickets. the 2-200-2 wedge's value to the wheel is 68 tickets, and the 2-50-2 wedges are valued at 18 tickets when you factor in the bonus wedge's small size.

So by adding 101.33, 18, 68, 18, and all the small wedges above, you get (307.33 tickets in total value / 24 total full spaces on the wheel) = 12.8 tickets average per letter called. Now you get 3 spins, and sometimes you'll get larger puzzles and sometimes smaller ones. From my experience watching people play, you generally get 5 or 6 letters total per game, so you're going to get somewhere in the neighborhood of 70 tickets per game on average, and that's WITH you hitting bonus spaces every once in a while.

*Wheel of Forutne (Cyclone variant)





Basically, this is cyclone, but hitting the "bonus" space instead of awarding a flat jackpot wins a spin of a wheel; there are 20 equally sized spaces on it. I've heard the two jackpot spaces can vary; the other 18 spaces are 50, 40, 30, 80, 40, 50, 70, 30, 60, 30, 50, 60, 30, 40, 90, 60, 30, and 90 tickets.

For a 300/500 jackpot space machine adding up the 300, 500, and the losing spaces averages out to 86.5 tickets per spin. If you have a 500/1,000 machine, the average spin is 121.5 tickets.

This would be great if you could hit the bonus space every game, especially as on Wednesday you have 13 cents a play and even 86.5 tickets per spin is more than 13 cents...but the game is set to be either near-impossible or outright have an auto-lose on it. I'm leaning towards the latter.

Missing the bonus space by 1 awards 8 tickets.

*Chip Games

I'm not going to even do an in-depth guide for these in general; the cost on these raised slightly so 1 physical chip is worth less than 1 game chip now, though you can buy them Wednesday and use them other days. The only way to AP chip games is to either find ones where getting chips to roll through certain slots will yield a lot of tickets, or games where bonuses are about to hit (e.g. a price is right coin pusher where 5 of the 6 lights are already lit and the last one's easy to hit.) Just use the same standard cost per chip you have already learned to calculate through reading the rest of the guide and figure out how many tickets per chip you need to break even or profit.

A final note - it has been a blast being part of, and at times leading, the advantage player community for the last decade and a half. I hope that the idea of profiting from arcade games is around long after me; just remember to be good to one another, be good to the games, and above all else be good to the establishments that have these games of skill available for us to play; without them, we have expertise but nothing to apply it to.

To all my APs: May the odds be ever in your favor.

dave & buster's faq v5.0

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