Not too long ago, here I wrote an article about when to hold a kicker to three aces while playing a Double Double Bonus progressive. The thumbnail conclusion was that if four aces pay 800 coins, and the aces-with-a-kicker (AWAK) progressive is at least 2285 coins, from a hand like AAA53, you should hold AAA3.
Whether you understood the article or not, assume for today that the previous sentence is true and that you and Al (whom you’ll meet shortly) both believe that and play that way.
Okay. You sit down at a dollar DDB game with progressives on both the royal and AWAK. Another player, Al, whom you know to be both worthy of your trust and a skilled player, suggests a 10% “save” on both progressives. You agree and suggest rounding to the nearest $10.
What this means is that if either of you hit the royal for, say, $6,047, then that person owes the other one $600. Similarly, with an AWAK score of $2184, $220 would exchange hands. Assuming both players are competent, trustworthy, and play at approximately the same speed, this doesn’t affect your EV and it tends to reduce the variance a bit. DDB progressives can be a heaven-or-hell financial experience and lowering the variance will keep you in the game longer, especially should either of you be playing with a modest bankroll.
Further, assume that you and Al are sitting several seats apart and cannot speak easily with each other.
As you probably guessed by now from my preamble, at some point the progressive is $2,300 and you’re dealt AAAK2. If you didn’t have the arrangement with Al, holding AAA2 would be correct. But if you hit the hand, you owe $230 to Al, which makes the hand only worth $2,070 to you, which is a number not high enough to hold the kicker. At that progressive level, it’s basically a $3 mistake to hold the kicker.
If you talk about the money going to the (you plus Al) unit, it’s clearly better to hold the kicker. If you’re looking strictly at it from your own point of view, it’s better not to do this. So, what should you do?
If you and Al regularly played progressives together with the same arrangement, this is the kind of thing — among others — that you should discuss beforehand. There are many numbers dealing with royal flushes that are affected by a 10% save. For example, with a royal at $5,400 on a 9/6 DDB game, from A♥ K♥ T♥ 3♥ Kâ™ it’s correct to hold A♥ K♥ T♥, but at a $4,860 royal (i.e. 10% less), it’s better to hold K♥ Kâ™ . You can make your own arrangement, of course, but I would only want to play with somebody who took the entire progressive into consideration and was looking out for the collective team.
But, again, you haven’t had that discussion and agreement, so what should you do?
Personally, I would make the play corresponding to the progressive level “before the save.” If I take a $3 hit on EV, so be it. It will likely only happen a time or two, at most, all evening. If the AWAK isn’t hit, pretty soon it will be high enough so that it’s correct to hold the kicker whether you have the save agreement or not. If it is hit, that ends the problem. And sometimes the royal itself will be hit, which is usually the main reason I’d be playing anyway. Once the royal goes down, the play is usually over.Â
If I didn’t trust Al beforehand, I wouldn’t have entered into the deal with him. Likewise, if he didn’t trust me, there would be no deal. So, I will act trustworthy! And I will make sure next time this happens to mention that part of the deal is both parties play according to the total progressive levels.
Overall, that will maximize the return for both of us. If I discover he’s taking shortcuts when we have a deal, there will be no more deals together in the future.