Category: Advanced Strategy

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Be Careful What You Wish For  

Say you’re playing 9/6 Jacks or Better and are dealt a hand like A♦ K♣ J♦ T♦ 3♦. The best play, of course, is AJT3. Many players hold the inferior AJT. As I see it, players make the lesser play for one of two reasons:

  1. They simply do not know that AJT3 is worth 3.7¢ more than AJT for the 5-coin dollar player — given that the fifth card dealt was an off-suit king. Holding the flush kicker is a rather advanced play and many players aren’t students of the game. Or maybe they go back and forth between games without understanding the differences between them and make more-or-less the same plays for all games.

 

  1. They know AJT3 is better and they just don’t care. They really love to get royals and 3.7¢ isn’t that big of a cost for a chance to get such an exciting hand.

 

Today I want to address that second group of players, namely the ones who are willing to pay an extra premium in order to get the royal flush. My position is that for most players, this is a costlier move than they realize.

When I spoke of that 3.7¢ difference in value between the two plays, the math included a 1-in-1,081 chance of getting a $4,000 royal flush. The trouble is that the $4,000 royal flush for most people isn’t worth $4,000.

First of all, there’s tipping. When they bring you your money, they usually provide you with 39 $100 bills and five twenties. You’re not required to tip, but many players give away one or more of their twenties to the casino staff. If you’re generous enough to give away all five twenties, you have increased the difference between holding AJT and AJT3 from 3.7¢ to 12.9¢. If you got the best hand available holding AJT3, namely a $30 flush, no casino employee would be there holding his/her hand out expecting a share of it.

Second, and far more importantly, there’s a W2G that comes along with that $4,000. If you’re playing in Mississippi, the state takes away $120 — with no chance of getting it back. Louisiana takes $240, and you can get some or all of that back by filing a Louisiana state income tax form. If you fill out the form yourself, it takes an hour or more and you may not do it correctly. If you hire a tax professional to do it, it can cost more than the $240 you’re hoping to get back. There are a few other states with similar policies. If you shrug off that extra $240 every 1-in-1081 times it occurs when you draw two cards to AJT, that increases the difference in EV between the two plays by an extra 22.2¢.

Possibly different from the state where you’re playing, the state where you reside has tax rules too. Some states let you deduct your gambling losses from your gambling winnings. Some don’t. Some states have a state income tax on gambling winnings. Some don’t. Professional gamblers have different rules than non-professionals. If you itemize your W2Gs, it reduces other benefits you can claim.

I’m not a tax expert by any means, but I can safely say that there are significant costs to getting a $4,000 royal flush for many players.

The third reason royal flushes can be “bad news” is that casinos get excited if you get too many of them. Not so much for $4,000 royals perhaps, but if you play for larger stakes, $20,000 or higher royal flushes end up with you being discussed by casino management. Although exactly how many royals you hit is largely luck, being lucky can get you kicked out. Nobody has everbbeen kicked out for hitting too many flushes.

If players correctly understood the factors discussed today, even on a hand like A♣ 6♥ J♣ T♣ 3♣, where AJT is superior to AJT3 by 5.1¢, these players would intentionally and intelligently go for the flush — simply because ending up with the royal has so many additional costs.

(I understand that the two hands presented today look virtually the same to many players and they cannot see why the correct play is different. That’s a discussion for another day.)

Playing for quarters or less makes you immune from these considerations at most casinos. Some casinos, however, do make a $1,000 jackpot a hand-pay situation. If that’s the case where you play, some of your immunity disappears.

Taking slightly the worst of it to go for a jackpot that creates a financial burden strikes me as similar to paying money to buy heroin. Heroin ends up destroying an individual and to pay money to do this boggles the mind. Most healthy people are disciplined enough to stay away from heroin. Few gamblers are disciplined enough to be willing to pay a small premium in order to stay away from royal flushes.

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Is This Correct?

I get lots of emails from players asking about this or that. If the questions aren’t too frequent from the same player, I usually answer them. I recently got a question which I very much disliked from a player named Gary.

“Bob, I’ve been trying to figure something out that Linda Boyd said on YouTube. She said that when you were dealt the 4♠ 9♣ J♥ Q♥ K♠ that you would hold the J♥ Q♥. Is that true, because to me the 9♣ is a penalty card, not really sure what to think of all this, would you help me out?”

Here are my problems with this question:

  1. It is so easy to look up how to play a hand using software. Any player trying to learn should have one or more video poker software products. This level of information is also available for free online. Emailing me to ask how to play a hand is equivalent to asking me to add 432 to 743. Yes, I know how to do it, but I’m not interested in being a calculator for you. If you are unable or unwilling to look up how to play a hand, playing video poker well is beyond your capabilities.

 

  1. Gary didn’t tell me what game he was talking about. For some games, 9/6 Jacks or Better among them (which is the game most authors write about), J♥ Q♥ is the correct play. For other games, such as the versions of Double Bonus where you receive 5-for-1 for a straight, you play 9♣ J♥ Q♥ K♠. Somehow, I’m supposed to figure out the game that Gary is interested in.

 

  1. Gary mentioned a penalty card, although not in a way that indicates he knows what he’s talking about. Penalty cards are a consideration for advanced players — and many such players think they are more trouble than they’re worth. At the minimum, however, you need to know basic strategy cold before you start messing with penalty cards. And if Gary is asking about this particular hand, he clearly doesn’t have basic strategy mastered.

The fact that Gary is at the intermediate level is neither here nor there. Everybody starts at the beginning and each one of us is at a different point along the learning curve. I’ve had raw beginners in my classes as well as students who are professional video poker players. If Gary were to attend class or discuss private lessons, that would be fine.

But asking me questions that he could answer easily himself is abusing my generosity. I do answer questions via email for free, but not questions like this.

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How Often Do Things Happen?

Today’s paper is on simple video poker mathematics. Let’s assume you are playing a game where, on average, you hit a quad (i.e., a 4-of-a-kind) every 400 hands. Further, let’s assume you play for a total of 1,200 hands. I’ll arbitrarily say that it takes you two hours to complete the 1,200 hands. How many quads can you expect to end up with over that number of hands?

It appears obvious that the answer should be three, but this is the wrong answer. To get the correct answer, we need to look at the binomial distribution, the results of which appear here:

 

0 5%
1 15%
2 22%
3 22%
4 17%
5 10%
6 5%
7 2%
8 or more 1%

 

What this says is that 5% of the time you won’t hit any quad; 17% of the time you’ll hit four; 2% of the time you’ll hit seven; etc. These numbers don’t tell you WHICH quad you’ll hit. Just how many.

These numbers are accurate, but not really precise. For example, the chance to get exactly three quads could more precisely be written as 22.4322%, but that is far more precision than we need for today’s discussion. It looks like they only add up to 99%, but that’s rounding error and also not important for today.

One of the interesting features of this distribution is that the number of quads that we think we “should” get, namely three, actually occurs less than one time in four. Another typical feature of the distribution is that the probability of getting one fewer quad than typical is virtually the same — actually 22.4135%, which is slightly less.

We could, I suppose, refer to getting either zero or one quad as “bad luck”, getting two, three, or four as “typical luck”, and getting five or more as “good luck”. It doesn’t change anything by assigning terms dealing with luck to the results. When somebody asks me, “How much skill and how much luck was involved?” in describing whatever happened yesterday, my answer is often, “I have no idea.”

Let’s assume that on this particular day in question, we don’t hit any 4-of-a-kind. Definitely worse-than-average luck, but it happens about one day in twenty. Slightly rare, but not extraordinarily so. Now the question is, since you’ve just gone through worse-than-average luck, what will be the distribution of quads for your two-hour session tomorrow? For this, the following distribution will hold:

0 5%
1 15%
2 22%
3 22%
4 17%
5 10%
6 5%
7 2%
8 or more 1%

 

The distribution, of course, is the same as first given. Just because we had a bad day says absolutely nothing about what our score will be the next day. There is no tendency to either, “Once you start running bad you keep running bad because you’re an unlucky player,” or “You’ll get more quads the next day to make up for the shortfall.”

Let’s assume we change machines halfway through. Now the distribution of the quads expected over the 1,200 hands is:

0 5%
1 15%
2 22%
3 22%
4 17%
5 10%
6 5%
7 2%
8 or more 1%

 

Is this distribution beginning to look familiar? It should. Changing machines has nothing to do with changing the distribution.

In this discussion so far, we’ve said nothing about skill. We are assuming players are playing perfectly. If players play imperfectly, the distribution will change. For example, on a hand like K♥ K♠ 4♦ 4♣ 5♦, it is correct in almost every game to hold KK44, although many seat-of-the-pants players playing games where two pair only return even money incorrectly hold just the pair of kings. Making this kind of mistake systematically will IMPROVE your chances for hitting quads, but COST you overall. The increased number of quads you get by holding only one pair rarely compensates for the reduced number of full houses.

The numbers are for three “cycles.” If full houses normally come around every 90 hands on average, the numbers above apply to how many full houses you hit in 270 hands. If royals come about every 40,000 hands, the numbers above apply to how many royals you hit in 120,000 hands. In games where the royal cycle is 45,000 hands, the numbers apply to how many royals you hit in 135,000 hands.

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A Matter of Perspective

If you’re a computer programmer working on a video poker game, the hand A♠ Q♥ T♥ 8♠ 3♥ is equivalent to A♦ Q♣ T♣ 8♦ 3♣, but both of those are different from A♣ Q♥ T♥ 8♠ 3♥. Can you see why?

The ranks of the cards are the same and in all three hands QT3 is suited. In the first two hands, the ace and eight are suited with each other. In the third hand, the ace and eight are unsuited.

To 99% of all players, 99% of the time, that distinction is irrelevant. It could possibly be important, for example, in a Double Bonus game where there is a progressive on four aces. At reset, you hold QT on this hand. If the progressive on four aces is high enough, you just hold the ace. How high the progressive has to be will be different if there are 12 cards still in the pack unsuited with the ace than if there are “only” 11.

With that kind of thinking in mind, assuming you are playing 9/6 Jacks or Better, do you see any difference between A♦ Q♣ T♣ 8♦ 3♣ and A♠ Q♥ T♥ 7♠ 3♥?

For anyone who would hold just the ace on either of these hands, you’re a hopeless Jacks or Better player. Holding the ace can be correct in certain other games, but not Jacks or Better.

The Basic Strategy play on both hands is to hold the QT. It’s the second-best play in both cases, but AQ is better. The fact that AQ is better than QT in these two hands is because the 3 is suited with the QT. This is known as a flush penalty and is generally only of concern to advanced players. Many players have enough trouble just learning the basic plays without dwelling on the fine points. What makes the hands different is that in the first hand, the 5-coin dollar player is making a nickel mistake versus a 2-cent mistake in the second.

The difference in the size of the mistakes is due to the 8 interfering with the straight possibilities of QT and the 7 not doing so. Why is this important? Well, it’s not if you’re playing the game with a 4,000-coin royal.  But if you’re playing a progressive, holding QT is correct in the first hand when the royal is at 4,685 and above, while in the second hand, holding QT is correct at 4,365 and above.

So, for whom is this kind of analysis important? Frankly, only to a pretty small self-selected group. Some pros learn these things — many don’t. A few recreational players become competent in these distinctions — although it may never be cost-effective for them.

Some of us just plain like studying things. This has been one of my “secrets to success.” The more I know about how and why things work the way they do, the easier it is for me to learn and memorize strategies.

If you think my secret is worthless to you, that’s your right. But in general, the more people study these things, the better their results turn out to be. Whether it makes sense dollars-and-cents-wise if you put a value on your time is debatable. But if it gives you pleasure to gain insight into these games, why the heck not do it?

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Comparing 9/6 Jacks or Better with 9/6 Bonus Poker Deluxe at the Advanced Level

This next semester of free video poker classes at the South Point casino will be on Wednesdays between August 2 and October 4. Each semester I include one game taught at the advanced level. The advanced level is much more difficult than what I usually teach, and is only for players interested in squeezing every last little bit out of the game.

This semester I’m teaching both 9/6 Jacks or Better (JoB) and 9/6 Bonus Poker Deluxe (BPD) at the advanced level. I’m teaching them back-to-back, on the same day, September 6, beginning at noon.

The games are very similar. All pay schedule categories pay the same amount except for 4-of-a-kind (25-for-1 versus 80-for-1) and two pair (2-for-1 versus 1-for-1). These two changes offset each other almost exactly, making JoB worth 99.54% and BPD worth 99.64%.

The reason I have room to teach two separate advanced classes is that both of these games have fewer fine points than most other games, and the ones they have are pretty easy. In addition, about half of the advanced points for the two games are identical.

But there are differences. Games that pay 1-for-1 for two pair go for straights much more often than games that pay 2-for-1 for the same hand.

Today I’m going to list 20 hands. Approximately half of them (maybe exactly half — maybe not) are played the same in the two games. The others, of course, are played differently.

Your job, should you decide to accept it, is to figure out which are which. At the end of the article, I’ll tell you which are which — but I’m not going to tell you what the correct plays are.  Let me give you an example. One of the hands is K♦ Q♣ J♥ 8♥ 7♥. There are two reasonable plays:  K♦ Q♣ J♥ and J♥ 8♥ 7♥.  (If you prefer a third play, you will get value out of the beginner classes — August 2 for JoB —- August 30 for BPD.)

If you think they are played the same, which is the correct play? If you think they are played differently, which play goes with which game? If you think that advanced plays aren’t that important so you don’t need to know which is correct, this particular hand is an intermediate play and should be in the repertoire of every player who plays for money that is important to him.

With available software, including some freebies available online, finding out the correct play on a hand is easy. If you can’t be bothered to check on the right play, you are never going to be able to play these games at the advanced level anyway. I’ll explain each of them in detail during the class.

  1. A♠ Q♥ J♠ T♥ 5♠
  2. A♦ K♣ J♥ T♥ 7♥
  3. A♣ K♣ T♣ 5♣ 3♥
  4. K♦ T♦ 9♣ 6♦ 5♠
  5. A♠ J♥ T♣ 5♦ 2♠

 

  1. K♥ J♠ T♠ 9♥ 5♣
  2. A♦ Q♣ T♣ 9♥ 8♠
  3. A♦ K♠ J♠ T♦ 5♠
  4. Q♣ J♣ T♥ 9♠ 9♥
  5. A♦ J♠ 7♥ 5♣ 4♥

 

  1. A♠ K♠ Q♥ T♠ 3♠
  2. K♦ T♦ 8♣ 6♦ 5♠
  3. Q♥ J♣ T♥ 8♠ 7♥
  4. A♠ K♥ J♥ T♣ 9♥
  5. K♦ Q♣ J♥ 8♥ 7♥

 

  1. A♦ J♠ T♥ 7♣ 4♥
  2. A♠ K♥ 5♣ 3♣ 2♣
  3. T♦ 8♠ 7♥ 5♣ 4♥
  4. A♠ J♥ T♣ 5♥ 2♠
  5. J♠ T♥ 9♠ 7♦ 5♣

 

The hands that are played identically in the two games are d, g, h, i, k, n, o, p, q, s and t. The others are played differently.

How did you do? If you aced the test, congratulations. You’ve done some work. If you didn’t ace this test, learning these distinctions is very likely within your capabilities. It’s not really that hard. But it takes effort. Whether or not it’s worth the effort is for you to decide.

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Accidental Quadruple Deuces

A version of this article first appeared about 10 years ago.

Regular Deuces Wild, played for quarters, returns $250 for four deuces. Double Deuces returns $500 for the same hand, but takes away elsewhere in the pay schedule. Loose Deuces returns $625 for that hand and Triple Deuces gives you $750. Each of these games can be found in Las Vegas.

How about Quadruple Deuces returning $1,000 for four deuces? Or even more? In 2007, this game existed accidentally for a few months at a large local casino in Las Vegas, but it could have happened anywhere. And while the base Deuces Wild game on which it was found wasn’t all that great, adding 3,000 coins to an every-4,400-hands event adds about 12% to the return. Apparently four players were able to exploit this and keep the information quiet for a couple of months. They certainly didn’t post it on one of the Internet bulletin boards as that would have killed the play in a day or less.

What happened was this (I might have the facts a little off as I am getting this secondhand): There were eight quarter games tied to a progressive. Six of these games had the progressive set normally, which means that it would be collected when the royal was hit. But two of the games had the progressive accidentally attached to the four deuces hand. Apparently, a slot tech got a little bit sloppy one day and nobody who worked for the casino caught it. So, the four deuces hand started at $1,000 and moved up from there.

Since these were ticket-in, ticket-out machines, winning the jackpot merely spit out a ticket and the players could keep playing, so long as the jackpot was below $1,200. And it usually remained at that level because four deuces is a fairly frequent hand with respect to having the progressive rise $200 or more. When the progressive did rise that high, which it did a few times, these players wouldn’t play. They hoped that one of the other machines would hit the royal so everything would look normal. And their luck held. No over-$1,200 set of deuces was hit on either machine.

The way the bubble burst was that someone “not in the know” was playing one of the two juicy machines and happened to hit the royal flush. The nerve of them! When they were only paid $1,000 instead of whatever the meter read, they understandably felt cheated and called it to the attention of the floor people. When it escalated to supervisors, it didn’t take long for the casino to realize what the error was. The two machines were shut down for a while and adjusted. Christmas was over!

I was told about this play after the fact. One of the four players who hit this hard was attending one of my free classes and told me about it. He had just finished reading my Million Dollar Video Poker book in which I write about taking advantage of a similar-yet-different casino mistake.  He wanted to tell me that these errors were still happening out there — if you could find them.  

He asked me if the casino could demand its money back because of the machine overpaying. While first making sure he realized that I wasn’t a lawyer and couldn’t speak authoritatively on the subject, I told him that I didn’t believe the casino could effectively take any civil or criminal action against him. If the casino could not show that he was in cahoots with the slot tech who made the improper settings, then the casino was stuck.

What the casino COULD do, however, was restrict him from the property if it so chose. Assuming these four players used their slot club cards while playing this game, it wouldn’t be difficult for the casino to check their records and determine who was playing these machines heavily over the past few months. Even if the players didn’t use their cards, they were surely caught on surveillance tape.

The casino could well decide that they didn’t want these players around anymore and that would be perfectly legal. Casinos in Nevada can restrict the play of anyone, so long as it’s not based on things such as race, gender, or national origin.

Of course while this was going on, the players couldn’t be sure how it would all turn out. They were regularly winning $2,000 a week or more apiece, week after week, and that’s big money for quarter video poker. Winning like that is EXCITING, especially since you don’t know how long it’s going to last.

I wasn’t there, but there had to be discussions about how to share time on the machines, how to keep it quiet from others, and how much they could play without the casino employees noticing that these same guys were playing the same machines EVERY DAY all day long. There are no unique best answers on how to do this and opinions vary widely.

However they decided to do it, it was impossible to predict when a casino employee would put two and two together, when other players might find out and demand a piece of the action, or when someone accidentally hit the wrong kind of jackpot at the wrong time. There would have been all KINDS of things to worry about.

Mistakes continue to happen in casinos. To exploit them, you first have to FIND them. Players who do a lot of scouting have the best chances to find these kinds of mistakes. Players who don’t scout are left with complaining that other people find these things.

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Comparing Two “Super” Games

Super Double Bonus (SDB) and Super Aces Bonus (SAB) are both variations of Double Bonus. In “regular” Double Bonus, four aces get paid 160 for 1, four 2s-4s get paid 80 for 1, and four 5s-Ks get paid 50 for one.

Each of the variations we’re looking at today keeps that basic structure for the quads, with one exception each. In SDB, four Js-Ks receive 120 for 1 rather than 50 for 1 (and you receive more for the straight flush as well). In SAB, four aces receive a gigantic 400 for 1. In both games, the amount for the full house and flush is adjusted downward until it gets into the “acceptable” range. This means the pay schedule returns enough to attract the players, but not so much that the casinos are afraid of it. The two pay schedules discussed in this article are the highest allowed for these particular games. In many casinos, you’ll find lower pay schedules than these, but that won’t affect the discussion that follows.

 

9/5 Super 8/5 Super
Double Bonus Aces Bonus
Royal Flush 800 800
Straight Flush 80 60
Four Aces 160 400
Four Js-Ks 120 50
Four 2s-4s 80 80
Four 5s-Ts 50 50
Full House 9 8
Flush 5 5
Straight 4 4
Three of a Kind 3 3
Two Pair 1 1
Jacks or Better 1 1
Return 99.69% 99.94%
Variance 38.0 63.4

 

The strategies for the two games are very similar. This is largely because they receive identical amounts for flushes, straights, and two pair — which are the three pay-schedule categories that matter most when it comes to strategy.

In today’s column, I’m going to present four hands that are played differently in the two games. Your job is to figure out both plays. Even if you have never played either game, you have two important clues to help you out:

  1. The plays are different. This is a HUGE clue.
  2. The plays are different because of the pay schedule.

 

  1. 5♣ 6♣ 7♣ 8♣ 9♥
  2. A♥ Q♠ J♦ 9♣ 3♠
  3. A♠ Q♥ 8♦ 4♣ 3♠
  4. K♥ T♥ 8♦ 7♣ 6♠

 

Where dollar and cent amounts are indicated, it assumes you are playing for dollars, five coins at a time.

 

  1. There are only two reasonable plays here. The “chickens” keep the straight and the “gamblers” go for the straight flush. The different returns for quads has no bearing when you hold at least four cards of different ranks, so the determining factor must be that SDB returns more for the straight flush. In SDB, ‘5678’ is better by $2.87, and in SAB, 56789 is better by $1.39. Obviously neither play is close.
  2. With three unsuited high cards including an ace, the “standard” play in both Jacks or Better and Double Bonus is to discard the ace and hold the other two high cards. That’s the correct play in SDB by 10.6¢. In SAB, the much greater return for four aces means that you go for them more. In SAB, holding the single ace is the better play by 20.6¢.
  3. This is very similar to the last hand. In SDB you hold AQ by 2.6¢. In SAB, you hold the solitary ace by 19.6¢. And the reason, again, for the difference is the large amount you receive for four aces in SAB.
  4. This last hand is intentionally tricky, in that there are more than two choices. Holding ‘KT’ is obvious. Holding the inside straight, T876, is also an eligible choice. It takes some experience to know that inside straights with no high cards are worth considerably less than either single high cards or a single high card with a suited ten. Perhaps the hardest option to see is holding the king by itself. Some players can’t bring themselves to break up royal combinations no matter what the pay schedule. Once you realize that the king by itself is a viable option, then since SDB pays more for four kings, holding the single king in that game is the better play by 2.8¢. In SAB, the “normal” play of ‘KT’ is better by 3.0¢.

 

So how did you do? As a test, this wasn’t too difficult. But as a learning experience, there were some important things to remember. First of all, each game has its own strategy and those of you who use more-or-less the same strategy for most games are taking the worst of it. Second, sometimes the reason for the differences in the strategies is obvious once you closely examine the idiosyncrasies of the pay schedule.

Finally, I want to leave you with a hand that’s played the same in both games, assuming you are playing with the best pay schedule. K♥ K♠ 9♥ 9♦ 3♣. Although many seat-of-the-pants players will just hold the kings, in SAB, holding KK99 is better by 79¢. In SDB it’s a closer play because four kings pay so much, but KK99 is still better in that game by 19¢. If you find yourself playing a version of SDB where the full house pays only 40 or less instead of 45, that’s enough to change the correct play to KK.

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Who Cares?

I was out walking for exercise and my iPhone rang. Had I looked at the caller ID, I would have seen “UNKNOWN,” usually a tip to avoid answering, but I was busy doing nothing at all important so I hit the green button and heard a recorded voice saying, “Now is the time to refinance your home because . . . ” I never found out what the specifics of the offer were. I hung up after nine words.

I find such calls mildly irritating. They take up a few minutes of my day, but to me they’re not a big deal. However, I’ve been around other people who slam down the phone in anger and loudly curse the machine making the call, “Why don’t you take your &%#!@& offer and shove it up your dial tone?” Or something like that. As though the machine making the phone calls cares.

The machine is dialing numbers according to a list, or perhaps according to a formula. When the last person hangs up, for whatever reason and with whatever emotion, the next one is called. Whether the current person places an order or not, the next call will be made as soon as the current one hangs up or perhaps is transferred to a real person. The machine will keep on calling as long as it has numbers to call and it’s within the hours prescribed for it, which might be something like 10 a.m. through 8 p.m.

A video poker machine is like that. When a new hand is triggered (which might be by hitting the deal button), the machine looks at its internal clock (in nanoseconds), checks one other “seed” (which is required for a random number generator to work, varies by manufacturer, and isn’t important to this discussion), and deals the cards. Sometimes people will say, “The machine is in a cold streak.” Nonsense. The machine is just dealing cards. The fact that you haven’t won in a half hour is totally irrelevant to it. One lady I knew said things like, “Sixes are running today,” and usually when she played accordingly, it didn’t help.

Others will say, “I hit two royal flushes yesterday so it’s making up for it now.” Nonsense. The machine is just dealing cards. Or, “Because I’m (pick one or two: on a winning streak, on a losing streak, fat, Armenian, over-drawn at the bank, using a slot club card, divorced, voted for Trump), the machine is . . . ” Nonsense. The machine is just dealing cards.

I think that people ascribe human emotion or motives to video poker machines because these people are trying to understand their results. They lost today and they won yesterday so it must be because . . .   They’ve lost six times straight, so the reason must be because . . .  Or perhaps they use the machine’s “behavior” as a good reason to change machines, or denomination, or change games within a machine. Or instead of trying to understand their results, perhaps these people are attempting to assign blame. Such as, “It was not really my fault. The machine was colder than a witch’s elbow. Nothing I could do about it.”

Perhaps surprisingly, the last explanation above is one that I might use. AFTER a session is over, it is possible to assign descriptive terms to that particular session. You can say it was “hot” (meaning that you won), “cold” (meaning that you didn’t), “so so” (meaning it was so so), or whatever. MIDWAY though a session, you can describe what the session has been so far, but there’s no way in the world to predict how the rest of the session is going to go. The “best guess” of what the future will bring is the average of what this type of machine under these particular conditions (i.e., dollars, NSU Deuces Wild, at a casino that pays .25% cash back, on a day when double points are being offered, during a month when you get a jacket if you hit a royal flush) typically offers over a million hours of play, given your particular skill level. You ARE PRETTY SURE the “best guess” will be high or low this time. You just don’t know which (i.e., Will it be higher or lower than normal this time?), and by how much, until after you are finished.

To make your next year of play better than your last year of play, you can choose better games (e.g., if one returns 98.9% on average and another returns 99.6% on average, the second is “better” than the first), stick to the good game once you’ve identified which one is best, practice that game on a computer or by studying a Winner’s Guide for the game, play at casinos with good slot clubs, and do most of your play only during good promotions. Doing these things will help you. Believing in such things as “The reason this machine started to pay off is because it was on a dry spell and the dam finally broke,” won’t.

 

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Learning from Munchkin

My co-host on the Gambling With An Edge podcast is Richard Munchkin, a table games player who’s been successful at gambling for several decades.

We often answer listener questions on the show and if anyone asks about a table game, Richard is the go-to guy. Sometimes I’ll have a bit to add, but mostly what Richard says covers the subject very well.

He has used one particular phrase in his answers over and over again. The questions vary, but part of the answer stays the same.

For example, some blackjack player is using one particular count and is considering learning another count because it’s more powerful. Richard will discuss the features of each count, but say, “You’re stepping over dollars to pick up pennies. A slightly better count is NOT where the money is in blackjack. There are far more important things to spend your time learning.”

I’ve heard him say variations on this numerous times and I started to wonder if the way I tackle video poker makes me guilty of stepping over dollars to pick up pennies?

As many of my readers know, I try to learn most video poker games at the 100% level. In NSU Deuces Wild, for example, letting a W stand for a deuce, I play W 4♠ 5♠ 3♥ J♥ differently than I do W 4♠ 5♠ 3♥ J♦.

For the five-coin dollar player, if he holds W 4♠ 5♠ both times he is making a quarter of a penny error half the time. If he holds just the W both times he is also making a quarter of a penny error half the time.

I avoid this small error. I learned the game this well when I was playing $25 games so the error every other time is 6¢ rather than a quarter cent. I still have that play memorized even though the larger games aren’t available, insofar as I know.

Although this particular distinction is one of many many I have memorized, it is safe to say I’ve spent dozens of hours, probably more, learning these exceptions in the first place and reviewing them often enough to keep them memorized.

Have I gained enough to make the difference between learning these things worth more than even an additional $2 per hour over all the hours I’ve spent studying? Probably not.

Without spending this time learning these exceptions, could I have played games worth substantially more than $2 per hour and been better off financially? Definitely yes, insofar as finding games worth more than that.

So, is this a case of stepping over dollars to pick up pennies? Have I been violating Munchkin’s advice (never mind that I spent most of those dozens of hours studying that game before I ever heard Richard give that advice)? Maybe, but if so, as
they say in Traffic Court, I plead guilty with an explanation.

Although in the Dancer/Daily Winner’s Guides for both NSU Deuces Wild and Full Pay Deuces Wild, we distinguish between penalty cards and “power of the pack” considerations, for the sake of simplicity today I’m going to include both of these into the term “penalty cards.”

The underlying assumption behind the question “Is learning penalty cards worth it?” is that without studying the penalty cards you can play the penalty-free strategy perfectly. For me, at least, that assumption wouldn’t track with reality.

Just the study and practice I undergo to learn the penalty cards causes me to be practicing the basic strategy simultaneously. For example, the difference between W J♦ 9♦ 5♣ 6♣ and W J♦ 9♦ 5♣ 7♣, which is a basic strategy play, is probably ignored by all players who have not also made a serious attempt at learning all the exceptions. Even though this play is clearly shown on the Dancer/Daily Strategy Card and Winner’s Guide for this game, I suspect most players simply ignore it or don’t understand why the two hands are played differently.

So, while learning the penalty cards might only return $2 an hour on my study time, I also gain considerably more than that because I learn the basic strategy better during the process.

For me personally, since I’ve chosen a teaching career and a how-to writing career, there are additional income streams available to me for learning this stuff that wouldn’t be available to most others.

Plus, I like being a student. I was good at school and continue to try and learn new things. So even if learning penalty cards doesn’t make great financial sense, it brings me pleasure. Can you really put a price on that?

I’m going to conclude that Richard’s “stepping over dollars to pick up pennies” warning doesn’t apply to me in this particular case. And I make this conclusion knowing full well that others may disagree with my conclusion. That’s okay. I’ve made my own bed here and I’m perfectly happy sleeping in it.

Yes, I know I mentioned that certain hands were played differently than others, but I didn’t explain what the differences were. If you want to know, you’re going to have to look up the information for yourself. If that annoys you, so be it, but the learning process isn’t easy and you need to go through it to become a strong player.

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When 9/5 Was Better than 9/6

One of the very first lessons taught by virtually all video poker teachers, including me, involves the game Jacks or Better. We explain how the game pays 25-for-1 for all 4-of-a-kinds, 2-for-1 for two pair, and the difference between the good version and the bad version depends on how much you get for a full house and a flush.

The best reasonably common version is 9/6, returning 99.54%. The game in second place is 9-5, 98.45% requiring a similar but not identical strategy.

If you don’t know what I mean by 9/6 and 9/5, compare the two pictures at the bottom of this page. The one on the top is 9/6 and the one on the bottom is 9/5. The key numbers used in naming the games are shown in red.

Under normal circumstances, because of the approximately 1.1% difference in the returns, any player who played 9/5 when 9/6 was available is a player without a clue as to the winning process.

And, yet, for a couple of years ending a few years ago, I personally played millions of dollars of coin-in on a 9/5 game when 9/6 was available. As did many other knowledgeable players. What gives?

It had to do with “theoretical.”

Theoretical is the hold the casino expects to make from players as a whole. If a game is rated with a theoretical of 2%, it means that for every $100,000 coin-in the machine gets, on average the casino expects to hold $2,000.

The 9/6 JoB had a theoretical in this casino of approximately a half percent. For that same $100,000 coin-in, the casino expects to make $500. The “perfect” 9/6 JoB player only loses $460 for that play.

This casino had a policy that if you agreed to earn $5,000 in theoretical, they would give you $3,500 in free play as front money. If they figured the theoretical correctly, this would give them an expected profit of $1,500 on this much play to cover their expenses and profit margin. On the 9/6 JoB, this was no bargain for the player. Your expected loss was $4,460, even if you played perfectly, so while getting $3,500 back was certainly better than nothing, you were still in the hole.

For whatever reason, the 9/5 JoB game was assigned a theoretical of 4%. This meant that it took $125,000 coin-in to generate the $5,000 in theoretical. And playing that much on a 98.45% game meant that you expected to lose a little less than $2,000 on average if you played perfectly.

Losing $2,000 is no fun, of course, but the casino was giving $3,500 to ease your pain. That meant that you had a net expected profit of a little more than $1,500 each time you did it, plus your points were worth something, and there were significant other goodies as well, including a couple of free room nights. We could do this at least once a month, and sometimes twice a month. This was an inadvertent mistake by the casino. We hoped it would be several years before the casino fixed it.

Sometimes I’d lose $8,000 or so “earning” this EV, but other months I would win. Looking at individual months, you could sometimes question whether this was a good deal or not, but over time, it became clear that this was a moneymaker for the players who knew about it and exploited it.

I learned about it from someone who swore me to secrecy. I had to promise not to write about it. I honored that while that situation was still in effect. Now that it’s been over for more than a year, I believe it’s okay to shine a little light on it.

Eventually, the casino figured out that a 4% theoretical for this game was inappropriate and changed it to about 1.6%. Now it costs you almost $5,000 to earn $5,000 in theoretical, and if you get “only” $3,500 back, it’s no bargain. So, knowledgeable players don’t play that game anymore.

I used a 4% figure. Actually, it was slightly different than that and it varied slightly from machine to machine. And it could be “fixed” by the casino at any time. So after we played, we went to talk to a host and asked what our theoretical was. If it was under $5,000 we played some more. We wanted to get the theoretical high enough so that we’d keep getting the offers.

The time it came back as a theoretical of $2,000 for the normal amount of play, players knew that this particular party was over. Disappointing, but all good things end eventually. Calls went all over the player grapevine, and within a few days most of the players who played this promotion were notified.

I’m not mentioning the name of the casino where this took place. There will be many readers of this blog who know whereof I speak. Should any of them choose to comment on this article, please leave the casino name unspoken.

 

 

Royal Flush 250 500 750 1000 4000
Straight Flush 50 100 150 200 250
4-of-a-Kind 25 50 75 100 125
Full House 9 18 27 36 45
Flush 6 12 18 24 30
Straight 4 8 12 16 20
3-of-a-Kind 3 6 9 12 15
Two Pair 2 4 6 8 10
Jacks or Better 1 2 3 4 5
Royal Flush 250 500 750 1000 4000
Straight Flush 50 100 150 200 250
4-of-a-Kind 25 50 75 100 125
Full House 9 18 27 36 45
Flush 5 10 15 20 25
Straight 4 8 12 16 20
3-of-a-Kind 3 6 9 12 15
Two Pair 2 4 6 8 10
Jacks or Better 1 2 3 4 5