Category: Advanced Strategy

Posted on by — 4 Comments

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.

Posted on by — 10 Comments

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.

Posted on by — 5 Comments

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.

Posted on by — 13 Comments

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.

 

Posted on by — 7 Comments

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.

Posted on by — 12 Comments

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

 

Posted on by — 13 Comments

Paying to Avoid Royal Flushes

Assume you are a 5-coin dollar player playing 9/6 Jacks or Better and are dealt 3♠ A♥ K♥ T♥ 5♥.  The only two plays to consider are holding three hearts to the royal flush and holding all four hearts.

If we check out EV, we find holding three hearts is worth $6.43 and holding four is worth $6.38. That nickel’s worth of EV has always been too much for me to ignore and I go for the royal every time.

BUT, I file as a professional player and get lots of W-2Gs. Let’s say you don’t get a lot of W-2Gs. In that case, each one that you do get has some serious tax consequences. What if you held the four hearts in order to prevent the W-2G?

Once every 1,081 times on average, AKT turns into a royal flush. If you gave up a nickel each of those 1,081 times and ended up getting one fewer royal flush, it would cost you $55 (rounding slightly).

This is probably not too high a price to pay because a $4,000 royal has far more than $55 worth of tax consequences.

AKT (and AQT and AJT) are the weakest 3-card royal flush draws for two separate reasons. First, the presence of the ace eliminates all straight flush possibilities and reduces straight possibilities. Second, the presence of a ten reduces the chances for a high pair.

If we compared the preceding hand to 3♦ A♣ K♣ J♣ 5♣, holding this 3-card royal flush is better than the 4-card flush by a little more than 17¢ and avoiding the $4,000 royal flush over 1,081 opportunities will cost you $185. That’s quite a bit more than the $55 we were talking about earlier.

Going for the flush from 3♥ K♠ Q♠ T♠ 5♠ costs us $683 over the 1,081 draws, and from 3♣ K♦ Q♦ J♦ 5♦, it sets you back $770. Finally, from 3♠ Q♥ J♥ T♥ 5♥ you’ll lose a whopping $1,095 over the 1,081 hands by going for the flush every time.

So where do you draw the line? I’m not sure. I go for the 3-card royal on all of these hands. You’re going to have to decide for yourself what avoiding a W-2G is worth.

Other factors: If it were a multiple point day and/or there was another juicy promotion which gave me a considerable advantage playing this game, I would be more inclined to go for the flush. After all, time is money and it could easily take 5-20 minutes to be paid.

If I were playing in a state where royals were penalized (say Mississippi which has a 3% non-refundable tax on W-2Gs), that would make going for the flush mandatory in our first example and a closer play in the others.

If I were playing near the limit of my bankroll — either actual or psychological — I would tend to go for the flush, which is a play with a much lower variance.

On the first hand, you get skunked about 70% of the time going for the royal and “only” 68% of the time going for the flush.  If I were someone for whom today’s score mattered, I might go for the flush.   I certainly don’t recommend that you worry about today’s score, but some players just can’t help themselves.

This wouldn’t happen to me because I don’t do this, but if you were picking up someone else’s free-play and a royal flush would be awkward and you insisted on playing dollars anyway because you were in a hurry, I would go for the flush every time on these hands.

There are other hands in this game and every other game where it could make sense to avoid the possibility of a royal flush if it could be done at a low cost. But you should look at them one-at-a-time BEFORE YOU PLAY so you know which “inferior” plays are cost-effective. Trying to figure it out at the machine is very difficult. It’s easy to over-compensate when you’re doing this without study beforehand.

Posted on by — 5 Comments

A Good Game Gone for About Five Years

Someone posted a picture of a $50,000 royal flush on wizardofvegas.com and that brought back memories. Although this particular jackpot was hit by someone else, I’ve had more than my share.

The game was called “Deuces Plus” and was a 10/4/4 version of Deuces Bonus with a 1000-for-1 royal flush. They were available at fewer than ten 15-machine bars in the Gambler’s Bonus system on the east side of the Las Vegas valley. Village Pub (more than one store), Rae’s, Doc Holliday’s, Franklin’s (which changed names several times), and maybe a few others. Not only was the game 100.35% by itself, these places had 0.10% or 0.20% slot clubs and pretty juicy bonuses. The bonuses were cash (up to $500 for hitting a royal flush on graveyard at one place), “points” (you’d get 20-coin to 50-coin bonuses for various things like four 3s, or maybe a full house including all royal cards, or whatever), and sometimes other things (like “squares” in an upcoming Monday Night Football game where winners got $100 or $500).

Plus, big players always were eligible to get two meals to go. These were 10-coin machines, up to $5, so a $50 bet could turn into $50,000. I hit more than 20 of these jackpots before eventually being 86’d from everywhere they were dealt. Some months later, the pay schedules were no longer offered anywhere.

One of the irritating things about the system back then was that you could download only $100 worth of points (i.e., accumulated free-play) per midnight-to-midnight 24-hour period. Even showing up at 11:45 p.m. and then downloading for “today” and then a few minutes later for “tomorrow” didn’t solve the problem because you easily could re-generate more than you downloaded if you played for several hours and/or hit some of the bonuses. I played on both my card and my wife’s card so I could get $200 before and $200 after midnight, but still I had several thousands of dollars of free play to download when I finally had no good-game places to play.

I ended up playing off $400 per trip at Gambler’s Bonus locations without the good games. It took a while, but downloading $400 “free money” per trip (even played on 98% games) made it worthwhile. Leaving the house at 11:30 p.m. wasn’t the most convenient, but you do what you have to do. Being “irritated” doesn’t sound like the right word to outsiders because, after all, it was a very juicy game and we were making bunches of money, but it certainly wasn’t as player-friendly as we would have liked.

This was before I had an iPhone, consequently I don’t have any pictures — so I “borrowed” the pictures shown below. Four deuces with an ace ($20,000), which occurred slightly more often than a royal, would have been worth a picture too. Maybe even the $10,000 “regular” four deuces shown below — again hit by somebody else — but I easily had more than 50 of them.

In one case I was dealt a royal flush — and had to hold the buttons because the (then) 30-year-old technology on the machines didn’t have auto-hold on royals. It took 20 or so minutes to be paid as the bars didn’t have that much cash on hand and drivers would come out and deliver the money. I know they paid you for $4,000 “five aces” jackpots from an on-property cash dispenser and had to call out for $10,000 “four deuces” jackpots. Whether the actual cutoff was at $5,000 or $10,000 I don’t know because the game I played never hit in that range.

When they had to bring in money from the outside, they paid you in $5,000 “straps.” One bartender liked to put the money into food take-out boxes as a form of disguise. One night I came home at about 4 a.m. and left the box containing $50,000 in the bathroom sink at home when I went to bed. My wife initially cursed me for leaving food un-refrigerated but screamed in delight when she finally opened the box to see what food I had brought home.

During one 18-month period, I probably was playing 20-30 hours a week on this game, mostly after midnight, spread out over as many locations as I was welcome — averaging about $250/hour profit throughout that period. Although the machines were old, I ran well for the entire time and did better than expectations said I should.

I generally do not tip very well on jackpots. At these places it was different. An 8-hour “shift” would give me an EV of about $2,000 every night — in front of the same bartenders over and over again. Tips in the range of $50 per night if I lost, or $100 if I won, and more than that if I hit for $20,000 or more, felt about right to me. I wanted the bartenders on my side as much as possible when the discussions came as to who should be kicked out.

Another idiosyncrasy of these machines was that if you hit a hand-pay, any points you had accumulated since the last time you pulled your card disappeared. Since this included wild royals ($1,250) and higher, you’d hit one of these taxables every 375 hands on average. The cards were “virtual” — meaning you had to enter your 6-10 digit account number and password on a keypad to go through the log-in process, unless you mis-keyed and then it would take maybe another 30 seconds to log off and log back on again. I used the rule of thumb that if I had earned $20 worth of points since the last time I logged out, it was time to do it again. That way I never lost too much due to this idiosyncrasy nor did I waste too much time logging off and on. It was a “compromise.” These points were valuable, but the rest of the play was more valuable.

If you want to criticize/condemn me for helping to burn out the game — knock yourself out. I plead guilty. I certainly was one of the people who did this. If I found this opportunity again, I very likely would play it the same way.  (And many would criticize/condemn me again.) You only get so many chances at such an opportunity. You know it’s going to end eventually. You know others are out there doing the same thing. You simply have to get while the getting is good.

A year or so after the play ended, I was in one of these places playing another promotion that was pretty good. Not $250/hour good, but pretty good. The manager (who knew exactly who I was) told me someone was talking about bringing back the old Deuces Plus game for high stakes somewhere and wanted a lot of action. Was I interested and could I help spread the word among other big players?

Yes and yes.

Then I thought some more about it. I speculated that this was going to be some kind of money laundering deal for whoever the owner would be. Even giving up 1.5% or so to the players (it would be less than that as there would be a lot of “normal” players as well who lost — but probably 75% of the coin-in on the $50-per-hand games was from knowledgeable players), he could still launder his money fairly cheaply. Assuming people who needed to launder money could very well be related to the mafia or maybe a drug cartel, I wondered if doing too well could be dangerous to my life expectancy. I was second-guessing my “yes and yes.” Well, it never happened so it’s all speculation on my part. It’s possible there was nothing shady about it at all — but in that case I couldn’t figure out how the owner could possibly be making money with this business plan.

I currently don’t have any plays this lucrative on an ongoing basis — although three times in the past two years I found such a game on a short-term basis. Players regularly complain that the games aren’t as good as they used to be. That is true, but this particular game lasted two years or so and ended only about five years ago, not 15 or 20. While some players knew about it, there were a lot of pros in Las Vegas who didn’t. (Even out-of-towners could have played while they were here. A $250 per hour play was likely more lucrative than their other options here. But for whatever reason, the play was kept reasonably quiet.)

It is not unreasonable to expect plays this juicy in the future. You just have to search for them, recognize them for what they are when you find them, learn the requisite strategy, and then play them for as much as you can afford for as long as they last. If “normal” video poker software won’t tell you how to play the game, you need to do your own programming or have a good programmer on call or on retainer.

Preserving your bankroll for special opportunities like this, which you may or may not find during your gambling career, is a form of “keeping your powder dry” for when you need it. Playing less than 100% games just because you can’t find anything better at the moment is the opposite of keeping your powder dry.

Posted on by — 17 Comments

You’re Not Ready Yet

Immediately after one of my classes at the South Point, a man, “Joe,” came up to me and asked if I would mentor him in becoming a professional video poker player. He told me he had plenty of bankroll and wanted to turbocharge his learning process. He had heard that I would do private consulting for $250 an hour with a two-hour minimum and that did not present a problem for him.

I had another engagement after class, so we scheduled a lunch date for the near future. Although I have food comps at casinos, I preferred having the conversation at a local Applebee’s where the chances of being overheard by other players was far less. I don’t pay retail for food in Vegas very often, but this was one of those times.

In the time before I met with Joe, I tried to figure out what kind of person I would be willing to mentor. Assuming he had the bankroll, I figured the main criteria were:

a. His personality was acceptable to me. This isn’t a particularly high bar to cross, but there are a few people I just don’t enjoy hanging out with. I didn’t want a long-term relationship with somebody like that.

b. He was smart enough. Video poker is applied math. Not everybody is capable of learning it at a high level.

c. He had some history of success at the game and could study on his own. When I’m consulting with somebody two hours at a time, I don’t really care how good they are when they come to me. I’ll spend the two hours doing my best to improve their skill and knowledge level. But a mentoring relationship is a longer-term affair and spending dozens of hours while moving somebody from beginner to intermediate isn’t how I want to spend my time.

Okay. After Joe and I ordered lunch, I asked him where he lived and how he got his bankroll. I had spoken to Joe a few times previously and he passed the personality test, such as it is. He had sent me a number of emails over the past few years with questions and/or suggestions for the Gambling with an Edge radio show. These emails led me to believe he was smart enough to succeed at this.

Joe told me he was 49 years old, lived on the East Coast, and had recently inherited more than $2 million. He planned to retire from the Air Force Reserve in a few months and was looking at how he wanted to spend the rest of his life.

Joe had listened to a number of the radio shows and it really sounded like I enjoyed my life more than he enjoyed his. Plus, he had read my Million Dollar Video Poker autobiography and was fascinated with the life of a gambler. He decided he wanted to invest a portion of his inheritance, maybe $200,000, to see if he had the aptitude to maybe be the next Bob Dancer.

I asked him how many of the Winner’s Guides he had closely studied. He told me he had purchased a set but had yet to open them up. I asked him how much time he had spent with a computer program such as Video Poker for Winners. He told me he hadn’t purchased a copy of that yet but it was next on his list.

I told him he wasn’t ready for mentoring yet. In the next six months, I suggested he learn two games at the professional level — perhaps Jacks or Better and NSU Deuces Wild. Using the Winner’s Guides and the software, this wasn’t such a formidable task. But neither was it a trivial one.

Then, I wanted him to spend at least two weeks straight in Las Vegas or another casino city gambling 30 hours a week. At the end of that, if he still wanted me to mentor him, he knew how to get in touch with me. I would give him a test on the two games, and if he knew the games at a high level, we could revisit the mentoring idea.

Joe was in love with the idea of being a gambler, but he hadn’t had any actual experience. It’s hard work to get to the professional level at one game — let alone two. Playing 60 hours will turn out to be a boring experience for many people.

Video poker is a grind-it-out affair. It’s one thing to be fascinated by what appears to be a glamorous life. It’s another thing entirely to go through the process of getting good at some games and then successfully playing those games for 60 hours without going totally bonkers.

Can Joe do this?

I don’t know. If he can’t, he was never going to be a success at gambling anyway. If he can master two games and still be interested in being mentored after some real-life experience, then at least he will be going into this with his eyes wide open rather than looking through the rose-colored glasses he seems to be wearing today.

On one of our radio shows, Richard Munchkin told us that he periodically gets these kinds of requests from people wishing to learn blackjack. Richard tells them to learn basic strategy completely for four different games — i.e. with or without standing on soft 17 and with or without the ability to double after splitting. Once they know all four of these basic strategies, come back and see him again.

Richard tells me he’s never had somebody come back to him with these four strategies memorized.

I guess Richard’s experience influenced how I dealt with Joe. The task I gave Joe is more difficult than learning four basic strategies — each of which is more than 90% identical with the others. Jacks or Better and Deuces Wild are games very different from each other.

Still, if Joe passes this test, he’ll be a worthy student and I won’t mind at all working with him.

Posted on by — 12 Comments

Why Did You Print the Wrong Information?

I received an email from a player who told me that he found an error in Dream Card. I was definitely interested. If I verified that it was an error, I would send the information along to the folks at IGT (who manufacture the game), videopoker.com (who invented the game), and the player community. Whether IGT and videopoker.com chose to “fix” the problem in their next release would be up to them, but even if they did, older versions might still be out there and players should be warned about it.

Please note that this falls into the realm of “hearsay.” I didn’t see the error, and the man who told me about it said it happened to his son. There’s plenty of room in there for some misunderstanding to have taken place. Still, the situation is interesting on a couple of different levels which makes it worth talking about.

Curiously, I came away concluding that yes, there may have been an error with Dream Card in this situation, but it wasn’t the error I got the email about!

Here’s the situation. The player was playing 9/6 Jacks or Better Dream Card. Dream Card moves a 99.54% game to 99.56% — with a much bigger variance.

The dealt hand was A♠ K♠ Q♠ Q♦ DC, where DC indicates a Dream Card which is supposed to be the best possible card given the first four. The machine chose the T♠, giving the player a 4-card royal flush. The player wanted the Dream Card to be another queen, giving him 3-of-a-kind.

I told him that a 4-card royal was much superior to a 3-of-a-kind. I suggested he enter the hand A♠ K♠ Q♠ Q♦ T♠ on Video Poker for Winners and see that the 4-card royal is worth 92.34 coins. Then if he entered the hand A♠ K♠ Q♠ Q♦ Q♣, he would see the value of the trip queens is 21.51. If the reader hasn’t gone through the exercise of checking the value of combinations using VPW or other quality software, it’s an educational process to go through. It’s not difficult and it is eye-opening.

“So,” I asked, “why on earth would you prefer 3-of-a-kind to a 4-card royal flush? It’s not close!”

“Well, my son uses the Dancer-Daily strategy card and that card says 3-of-a-kind is better. If it isn’t better, why did you print the wrong information?”

Hmm, this could be embarrassing. I do have a good explanation for that but I can see where the confusion arose. The first two lines in both the Basic Strategy and the Advanced Strategy for that game are as follows:

 

RF5; SF5; 4-OF-A-KIND; FULL HOUSE; 3-OF-A-KIND; TWO PAIR

RF4 > FL5 and ST5 > any SF4

 

The top line of the strategy lists all hands in that game that are always held when dealt — with no exceptions. This list of hands is not the same for all games. There are games where from AAA44 or AA339 you just hold the aces, but Jacks or Better isn’t one of those games.

The second line lists those cases where a 4-card royal flush or a 4-card straight flush is in the same five cards as a dealt flush or a dealt straight. That is, from A♦ K♦ Q♦ J♦ T♣ you hold just the diamonds, but from Q♦ J♦ T♦ 9♦ 8♣ you hold all five cards.

A key underlying assumption for the strategy cards is that the combinations listed on the first line of the card are mutually exclusive with the combinations listed on the second line of the card. That is, you can’t have 3-of-a-kind and a 4-card royal in the same five cards. It takes at least seven cards to have both combinations.

I suppose technically you could argue the hand A♥ K♥ Q♥ J♥ T♥ is on the first line of the card, and any four cards from that combination are also on the second line of the card — hence the lines are not completely mutually exclusive.  But anyone who has trouble figuring how to play a dealt royal has no chance to understand my writings anyway.

If combinations are mutually exclusive, it doesn’t matter which order you list them in. Liam W. Daily and I recognized that using this underlying assumption allowed us to give completely accurate strategies with fewer rules. And we saw that as a good thing.

When you introduce the concept of Dream Card and you’re considering among alternative fifth cards, we can no longer hold with the assumption of mutual exclusivity while playing that version.

Simply put, the Dancer-Daily strategy card was designed for the “regular” version of Jacks or Better, not the Dream Card version. Since the machine almost always selects the correct Dream Card, you can continue to use the strategy card for the hands where Dream Card is not in effect.

With all that said, while the T♠ would be a much better choice than the Q♣ given the first four cards, the J♠ would be better still, simply because a jack presents three extra chances to end up with a high pair (namely the other three jacks) and a ten gives you no such chances.

Possibly the machine actually gave the correct card and there was a mix-up in the way the situation was presented to me. I assume IGT and videopoker.com can check on that easily enough. But whether there was or wasn’t an error, a discussion on an underlying assumption of the strategy card made this a conversation worth having.