Video poker and slot paradise found in Peoria

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In his first column of each month, John Grochowski reports on a casino visit.

There’s something exciting, as well as something a little comforting, about making my not-quite-annual drive to East Peoria to visit Par-A-Dice Casino.

It’s comforting in that I know when I get there, I’ll find a playable, single-hand video quarter poker game. Par-A-Dice put a version of Deuces Wild on its boat in 1992 that pays 98.9 percent with expert play.

It’s still there, in a bank of multigame Game King machines on the fourth deck. And as video poker markets have risen and fallen, it is once again far better than the quarter video poker we see closer to Chicago.

But it’s not the best quarter video poker game at Par-A-Dice, and that’s one of the exciting bits. Some of the machines on that same bank of Game Kings have the pay table nicknamed “Not So Ugly” Deuces, raising five of a kind and straight flush paybacks to 16-10 from the standard 15-9. And that ups the return with expert play to 99.7 percent.

Of course, slot players will find their own excitement, and a casino walkthrough with director of slot operations Tammy Couchman found much change since my last visit, using the latest and greatest games to refresh and re-energize the slot floor.

In the atrium at boarding level, a key focal point, older games have been moved out in favor of flashy new ones, including Double Diamond progressives in nickel and 2-cent denominations. They’re on IGT’s MultiPLAY format, with four sets of video reels on a single screen, and have cat themes including “Kitty Glitter.”

For penny players, there are hot new games such as “Sex and the City” and “Star Wars Droid Hunt.”

Go up a level, and once you’ve passed show-stoppers including the “Wizard of Oz” game “The Great and Powerful Oz Big Event,” there’s a tournament area. Most of the time, it’s set up for regular play, but now that Illinois finally has approved tournament chips, Par-A-Dice is ready to run slot tournaments the way they should be.

Games from the Arlington Heights manufacturer Incredible Technologies have just recently been approved in Illinois, and after dinner in Boyd’s Steakhouse, an old favorite of mine, I stopped to play. Choosing between “Birds of Fortune” and “Pinup Girls: Honeys from Heaven,” I chose the Pinup Girls: Honeys from Heaven and was quickly rewarded with a 464-credit bubble-popping bonus.

I made it an overnight stay and went back to the “Not So Ugly” Deuces in the morning. A good video poker game has always been enough to get me in the casino, and that makes Par-A-Dice a treat.

John Grochowski’s “Casino Answer Man” tips air at
5:18 p.m. Tuesday-Friday on WLS-AM (890).