The short answer to your question is no.
Jackbot tournament mode cheating is probably the most misunderstood rule ever. (Followed closely by Funhouse 11:30 reset, LOL. How many times have I seen unsuspecting souls caught by that one?)
First, a clarification: The rule for the cheat button is that it works every 4th time THAT IT WOULD NORMALLY BE POSSIBLE to cheat. So here are some examples of events where it is possible or not:
Dice Roll < 12: Yes!
Any Keno Card: Yes!
Bonus at 1x: No!
Bonus at 2x+: Yes!
Slot Machine in tourney mode: No! (In normal play the cheat could advance it to light extra.)
Play Poker: Yes!
Casino Run is its own completely separate thing in every way. Purely random, and the cheat rules do not apply. You have to play it exactly as you would in normal play. That being said, I can offer you some pieces of advice:
- If you have a no-bomb, you are a fool to try and cheat (it actually makes it slightly more likely a bomb would show up).
- Do not cheat the first spin (you’ll never bomb out).
- If you just cheated a bomb and have spun 4+ times, you are a fool to go more than that.
Finally, when SHOULD you use your cheat? Here are some ideas.
- Play poker with a full house (all cards off and 1 blinking): Cheat goes from 50M to 149M (+99M!!)
- Keno depending on card fullness: Cheat goes from 5-35M to 99M (+64-94M)
- Play poker with 3 aces: I believe this will get you to 99M, and I think 3/kind is 25M? Little sketchy on this one. Gonna call it +75M for now.
- Dice Roll. This is a hard one, and one where paying attention to your opponents is VERY IMPORTANT. If someone else plays dice roll before you, you will know exactly how advantageous it will be to cheat. Also, it is obviously very dependent on your dice value. Your roll will become 12, so if you know an 11 is coming and your value is 3.5M, well, then, you would cheat for +3.5M. Congrats! But, if the roll was a 3 and your value was 8M, then you’re cheating for +72M. Nice. BTW, pretty sure dice value caps at 20M if you didn’t know.
- Bonus: Obviously highly dependent on value, but could be pretty good, especially if you got a max vortex award that ball from slot or white arrows (50M base bonus). If you have 1x, it’s moot, you won’t get anything. But at 2x+ with 50M vortex, definitely worth it.
In summary, Keno is the safest thing to save the cheat for, but poker could be better if you had any cards. I think we all know in practice this pretty much never happens, which usually means poker will be your worst option to cheat, most likely giving you +5M-+10M or so. Dice Roll is OK if you have roll knowledge, but everyone short plunges these days, so dice values are generally always in the crapper. There is a case to be made for going for skill shots/bumpers (dice value also adds to bonus) especially if you’re on mb 3+ or you blew your easy visor open for mb 2.
Anyway, hope that clears things up a bit for everyone. It’s pure geekery analysis, but I think we all know that’s pretty much me at this point. 