Until 8 months ago, I never spent a dime on anything other than blackjack. Then I decided to play some video poker with the following objectives. 1.) cover. 2.) earn more comps as non table games earn comps at higher rate. 3.) quickly accumulate 10,000 points and chairman staus (higher tier) at my local casino. Since full pay JorB returns 99.54% with perfect strategy making it nearly even with cashback earned, I figured these objectives wouldn't cost me much.
I soon realized that in order to come out close to even you must hit royal flush, which should happen every 40,000 hands. 6 months later and an estimated 1000 hours or close to it, I was down $1600 in VP results having never hit a royal flush. (it could be coming on my next spin...lol) Anyway I'm now back to playing exclusively BJ.
The results: on the plus side, I'm sure I acheived a certain level of cover. I did earn more comps, and the benifits of chairman status. On the negative side, of course minus $1600. In addition when I was exclusively playing tables I received $200 per month in match play coupon (4-$50 coupons). I now receive less desirable slot cash each month, which must be played thru a slot or video poker machine once before cashout.