Wondering how many coins to load into your video poker machine hopper? Lawton Barnes breaks it down step by step in this Metal Shop episode. Learn why $100 in quarters (400 coins) is the perfect amount, how to adjust your machine’s settings, and tips for hassle-free play.
TRANSCRIPT: How much money should you put into the hopper of your video poker machine? I’m going to tell you. I’m Lawton Barnes, and you are in the Metal Shop. Okay. Let’s rock. Money for the hopper in your machine. The answer is $100. And if you don’t want to watch any more of this video, you’re all done. But let me explain how I got to that number. These machines are… at least all of mine, are set up for quarters. So, $100 worth of quarters is going to be 400 coins in your machine. And when you get a machine like this, most every one of them I’ve ever seen will have on the glass here, the maximum number of coins that it can pay out. And in this case, it’s 1000 coins, which is very common. Another common setting is 400, which would be the $100 figure that I came up with earlier. Now, do you need to put a thousand coins in this, in this hopper? Okay, I say that you don’t. And the reason I say that is, let’s take a look at this pay table on the machine here. If you have a minimum of 400 coins in your hopper, you are covered for basically every hand below a royal flush. And even the first hand, the first coin hand on a royal flush. So up to 400 coins gives you everything. But these multi coin royal flushes. And if you do fill the hopper up, and have a thousand coins in it, you’re really only getting three more payouts. And that jackpot is always going to be a hand pay anyway. So I say that 400 covers you for nearly every hand you could possibly win, except for a few of the multi coin royal flushes. If you want to keep your hopper filled to the level of 400 coins as your starting point, you’ll come into the settings on your machine, and we’re going to just go through the white self-test button and step through the settings several pages until we get to here, Select Hopper Size. At this point and you could call it a thousand, you could call it 400, or whatever you’d like to set it to. But set your maximum number of coins to be paid out. Here, put those coins into your hopper. And then also, if you want to… Let me cycle out of here, before I close it up. If you would like to change this, like let’s say it’s set to a thousand, and you wanted to change it to 400 on the insert right there that is typically just held in place with a piece of Scotch tape. And I am pretty sure you can figure out how to take a razor blade and cut that scotch tape and make an adjustment to it. And so, again, to answer the question of how much money should I put in my machine, I would start with $100 worth of quarters. In the hopper, and then $100 to play with as well. So let’s do it. Let’s fill this hopper with my good friend Ben Franklin And away we go. I hit the jackpot. I won, I won! How much did I win? $100! That’s how much. And next time you’re at a football game, be sure to bring home a stack of plastic cups. Because these are great for going around and playing all of your arcade machines at home.
Add comment