Category: Video Poker

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Low Variance or High Variance Video Poker – Which is Your Style?

This post is syndicated by the Las Vegas Advisor for the 888 casino group. Anthony Curtis comments on the 888 article introduced and linked to on this page.

A.C. says: You’ve probably heard the term “variance” in discussions and analyses of gambling games. This article helps you better understand what it means. Variance is an assessment of risk. In video poker, the risk of suffering a big loss is greater when variance is high. Correspondingly, high-variance schedules enhance the chances of getting a big win. Many players gravitate toward the higher-variance games because of that big-win factor, but those games often have lower overall return percentages. For example, a typical bar selection might include higher-variance 7/5 Double Double Bonus returning 96.71% and lower-variance 6/5 Bonus Poker returning 96.87%. It’s not a big discrepancy, but Bonus Poker is still the better game, yet it tends to get less play.

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This Made Me Uncomfortable

Bonnie and I were at Harrah’s in Cherokee, NC for a Caesars Seven Stars trip. Cherokee is in the Smoky Mountains and a world away from Las Vegas. Plus, they have $5 NSU Deuces Wild.

For a Seven Stars trip, you get up to $1,200 airfare, $500 in resort credit, and transportation to and from the airport. The airport means either Asheville (about 50 miles away, but not a direct flight) or Atlanta, which is 160 miles away (which is much easier to get to). We usually fly into Atlanta.

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Figuring the Return for 8/5 Bonus Poker with Four Progressives

Note to reader: The original version of this contained an arithmetic mistake. It was pointed out to me by a man who posts under the name “New2vp”. The error, which affected one of the tables in the chart, are in the section relating to quad 5s-Ks. The corrected version follows. Thank you New2vp.

I received an email:  Sam’s Town in Las Vegas has three different banks of 8/5 Bonus. Two of those banks have progressives on the royal flush only. The third has that progressive, plus three additional ones for the quads: aces, 2s-4s, and 5s-Ks. Since the game starts out at 99.17%, sometimes these games must be pretty good. How do I figure out how to calculate the return of these games quickly if I don’t bring computer software into the casino?

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It’s Not Like That

In addition to being posted on www.bobdancer.com, these weekly blogs are also posted on www.gamblingwithanedge.com, where there is a forum for reader discussion. Recently, a man who posts as “Boris from Switzerland” wrote (slightly edited): Change of subject: Why has Boyd stopped offering multipliers to everybody, and why did they clean out their casino floors by removing their 99.50% and higher games? This is something I don’t like at all. 

While I’m not a big fan of Boyd and the gambling decisions they have made, Boris has misstated what they are actually doing.

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It’s Not Good News

Not so long ago, I received an email from Anthony Curtis directing my attention to https://acresmanufacturing.com/optimal-poker-analyzer/ . It’s an advertisement for a product that casinos can use to evaluate the accuracy of the video poker players at their casino.

Generally speaking, casinos want to reward players based on their true worth to the casino — that is, pay losing players a lot to keep losing, pay good players a little but not too much, and find and eliminate winning players. Also generally speaking, strong players want to disguise what they’re doing so they can keep their welcome and continue to gather their profits. 

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“You’ve Already Hit the Royal”

When I wrote recently about hitting a $120,000 royal flush at Dotty’s and explained when I planned to return to playing there (after a four-month hiatus, which I explained in the earlier articles), I received the following comment from a reader who calls himself/herself Hop Hoofer:

You have a very small edge. And playing with an edge is mainly for preparing for the worst. Since the best, the $120K royal, already happened to you, why would you still want to risk your money? Your score will be balanced out eventually and most likely your profit will be evened out if you continue to play. If you are already ahead a lot, I don’t see a point of chasing for the tiny edge and losing your profit back.

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A Not-Too-Disturbing Farewell

In Las Vegas blackjack circles, the El Cortez in downtown Las Vegas is well-known for having a decent single-deck game — aside from the fact that they are extremely quick to pull the trigger on kicking players out. Several blackjack teams send their new players to play there, knowing they’ll be kicked out fairly quickly, just to get the first barring out of the way.

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Video Poker versus Live Poker

This post is syndicated by the Las Vegas Advisor for the 888 casino group. Anthony Curtis comments on the 888 article introduced and linked to on this page.

A.C. says: Poker has been the basis for many new games, with video poker being, by far, the most successful of them. This article provides a good comparison of live and video poker, which boils down to the differences between playing against a human or a machine. I’d add as an illustrative example that in live-game draw poker, it can be strategic to hold a kicker to set up a bluff. You don’t hold kickers in video poker … you can’t bluff a machine. As pointed out in the article, becoming a winning player at live poker requires developing multiple skills and infusing judgment, while video poker is black and white — there’s always one best play. Players can calculate video poker returns and proper playing strategies, but they don’t have to. That’s already been done for them in the work of Bob Dancer, Jean Scott, and others. Study with the good video poker learning tools out there and you can achieve a near-computer-perfect return.

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The Old Man

Today’s column is less technical and more about “how I do things” that aren’t specifically related to video poker.

Most of you have heard of Adele, one of the premier singers of our time. She is performing a series of concerts at Caesars Palace in Las Vegas, and I was invited to receive two tickets. Bonnie’s daughter, Joyce, is a huge fan, so we arranged for Bonnie and Joyce to attend the concert on December 3, while I played enough in the casino to “keep those offers coming.”

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A Mailer to Appreciate

I recently wrote that I had hit a $120,000 royal flush at Dotty’s in October. I mused that possibly the plug had been pulled on my welcome as I had hit a number of big jackpots there in the past. Several readers responded that surely my time was up there.

In November, I received no mailer at all. I looked at this as a “possible sign” of the end of my welcome, but not definitive. In October, my mailer was for $1 a week for the first three weeks, and a whopping $2 for the fourth week. I left them uncashed, except for cashing one of them on the one day I went in to play.

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