Playing 9/6 Jacks or Better Multi Strike

Except for the last few weeks, I haven’t recently played any version of Multi Strike. In the past, I played 9/6 Jacks or Better, 8/5 Bonus Poker, and 9-4-4 Deuces Wild Bonus in the Multi Strike variation, but it’s been so long that I felt I needed a tune-up. Now in my seventies, my memory isn’t what it used to be.

I’ll be teaching the 9/6 Jacks or Better Multi Strike class on January 29 at the South Point. Although my notes for the class are prepared, I teach better when I have recent experience. This gives me “depth” and a better ability to deal with some questions that I would have otherwise forgotten. Teaching classes well is one of my goals.

Plus, since the game returns 99.79% and the South Point’s everyday slot club is 0.30%, it’s not as though it’s a financial burden to play. The only version offered at the South Point is the 25¢ Five Play variation, which requires a bet of $25 per play. Even though the player has a slight edge, Multi Strike has a higher variance than many other video poker games. I did lose $1,500 on my first foray back into the game. But that loss was recovered in later sessions.

As most of you know, Multi Strike is a four-line game where you pay for all four lines up front — namely 20 coins. (I’m referring to the game in most of this article as a single-hand game, rather than the Five Play version you find at the South Point. This is done to make the explanations easier.) If you earn nothing on the bottom line, your 20 coins are gone. And this can sometimes happen several hands in a row.

If you at least get your money back on the first line, you get to play the second line (called the Level 2x line) “for free” and at double the payoffs. Earn something there, and you play the third line (called the Level 4x line), again for free, at quadruple the stakes. The same pattern holds for the fourth line (called the Level 8x line). Periodically you get a “Free Ride” after the draw but before you decide on which cards to hold; this moves you up to the next higher line whether you score anything on the current line or not.

What isn’t so obvious to all players is that you use four different strategies for the four different lines. The logic behind this is that in regular video poker the pay schedule falls into the “what you see is what you get” category. When the hand is over, it is completely over.

That’s not the case in Multi Strike. If you score on the bottom line, you now get to play the second line for free, and sometimes the third line, and sometimes the fourth line. Those are very valuable “plusses.”

The second line can give you two extra plusses. The third line can give you one extra plus. The top line, and any Free Ride you get, gives you nothing extra. The strategies depend on how many additional plusses you stand to get when you succeed.

If you know regular 9/6 JoB (which may well be the easiest video poker game to learn), you’re well on your way to learning the Multi Strike version of the same game because the strategies you use for most of the hands are considerably easier than the regular strategy. Why? Because for the bottom two lines you avoid ALL 3-card straight flush draws, which are the most complicated hands to play for most players.

This is not to say you can forget part of the 9/6 JoB strategy when you play Multi Strike. You still need the entire strategy because whenever you either reach the top line or receive a Free Ride, the regular strategy is appropriate.

For me, there were two different times where I found I could be making a mistake. First was remembering where I was in the game. Did I need the Level 1x strategy or the Level 2x strategy? From K♥ Q♠ 9♥ 7♥ 3♥, on Level 1x, I should hold the KQ and on Level 2x I should hold the hearts. For A♥ Q♠ 9♥ 7♥ 3♥, I hold the hearts on both of these levels. It’s easy to get these confused. Each of the strategies by themselves aren’t so difficult, but holding them all in my mind at once and using the right one each time is not trivial.

I made another mistake, which may well be the biggest mistake I’ve ever made in video poker. Perhaps you’ll make it someday too.

This mistake came from the different way Multi Strike deals cards. When Multi Strike finishes a level where the player advances, it deals the next level immediately. That is, let’s say you’re dealt A♣ J♦ T♦ 9♣ 8♥ on Level 1x and correctly hold AJ. (You only hold JT98 on Level 8x or with a Free Ride.) If you are playing the Five Play version, let’s say you end up with a pair of aces on one of the hands and two pair on another. The 15 credits will add up, and immediately the Level 2x hand will be dealt.

The problem came when I had three hands live on Level 4x and held trip 5s. On two of the three hands, the trips converted into quads. This is an unusually good result. Each of the quads paid 500 coins ($125), which is four times the normal $31.25 you regularly get for these hands in quarter 9/6 JoB, and the trips registered $15 instead of the usual $3.75.

Certainly, I’ve had many thousands of jackpots higher than $265 in my life, but I took a few seconds to admire my good fortune. When I was finished “admiring,” I hit the button to play the next hand — which is my normal practice in every other video poker game I play.

Except in Multi Strike, the next hand was already dealt. When I hit the button intending to play the next hand, what I actually did was throw away all the cards on the hand that had already been dealt! With three live hands on Level 8x, this was equivalent to throwing all the cards away sight unseen on $2 Triple Play!

What were the cards I threw away? I have no idea! By the time I realized what I had done, the original cards were long gone. I know I wasn’t dealt a royal flush or that would have locked up, but other than that, I just don’t know. Very likely throwing all the cards away was the wrong play — potentially a very big error.

Oh well. Spilt milk. The reason I bring it up is that it strikes me as a relatively common mistake others might make as well, at least on occasion. So, I tell you in the spirit of “forewarned is forearmed.”