Listeners to our podcast know I typically end with the line, “Go out and hit a royal flush!” Colin Jones, the owner of blackjackapprenticeship.com, one of the sponsors of our podcast, has numerous podcasts of his own in which he typically ends with, “Keep generating EV!”
Not that I’m planning on changing, but I like Colin’s ending better than mine! It’s far closer to what I believe intelligent gamblers should do.
Continue reading What’s in a Phrase?Author’s note: I’ve become very active recently in the storyteller community. I’ve appeared on several national shows — all via Zoom. I’ve won a few competitions, but have lost far more than I’ve won.
This story is about a video poker promotion which happened 24 years ago. Although a story is different than a regular blog, I hope my readers will enjoy it. It describes a variant about something many of you have experienced before.
Continue reading Valentine’s DayAuthor’s note: Sometimes I get criticized for “bragging about my success.” The unusual feature at Dotty’s I’m discussing today is only relevant when you do have success. Like all players, I have good and bad weeks — and this one was a good one. So, if you get annoyed at me talking about one week when I was successful playing the game, better skip this week’s article.
As I write this, my last trip to Dotty’s was less than a week ago. It was a much, much better trip than average. And I still don’t know exactly how well I did! I will know before you read this, so I will note my actual results at the bottom, but this is intended to describe my thought processes before I know. That’s typically when you have to make your decisions.
Continue reading They Make You WaitI have played for more than ten years at Dotty’s, a chain of 15-machine (mostly) establishments located throughout Nevada.
While the promotions at Dotty’s vary periodically, one constant has been their Jackpot Bonus promotion where 10% of all W2gs receive a 10% bonus. That is, if you hit a $4,000 jackpot, 10% of the time you’ll receive an extra $400 in cash.
Continue reading You Can’t Do That!
I hit a $2 NSU Deuces Wild royal recently — from left to right Q♣ K♣ A♣ T♣ J♣. It’s not an unusual royal in any respect. It was a one card draw with the queen coming in as desired.
The next day, 22 clock hours later but only four hours of video poker play, I hit a $1 9/6 Jacks or Better royal in the exact same Q♣ K♣ A♣ T♣ J♣ order. This time I needed to draw both the queen and the ace to collect.
So, I asked myself the same question that I’ve received from others so many times: How rare is this? I suggest you come up with a number before we continue.
I’m omitting the fact that the two royals required a different number of cards to be drawn — although, frankly, if they had matched there too, I’d have included that into the mix. The tradition in these exercises is to add in any and everything you can to make your event more unique than a similar situation. If you can make your event be 1-in-2,000,000, that’s twice as good as being only a mere 1-in-1,000,000.
I’m omitting the fact that it was two royals in only four hours of play. Calling it two royals in four hours starts the clock when I hit the first royal. It was also two royals in 76 hours of play. But it was about a tenth of a royal cycle before I hit the second one and you have about a 1-in-11 chance of connecting on something in a tenth of a cycle.
And I’m limiting the discussion to single line games. For all who have been dealt four-to-the-royal on Triple Play through Hundred Play and connected on more than one royal, all those royals on the same deal were alike. It can happen drawing to three-of-fewer-to-the-royal as well, but that’s not so common.
The number I get is that there is a 1-in-480 chance that your next royal be in the same suit-and-rank order as the last one you got. One way to figure this out is you have a 1-in-4 chance to be the same suit. Once the suit is determined, you have a 1-in-5 chance (queen in this case) for the first card to be in the correct position. Then 1-in-4, 1-in-3, and 1-in-2 for the next three cards. Once those have been determined, the last card is predetermined. Multiplying all of those out, you get 1-in-480.
Which isn’t that rare. Even if I multiply it by 11 because the second one happened in one-tenth of a cycle. Frequently in video poker we can come up with shots that are more than 1-in-1,000,000. This doesn’t come close to that.
Over a lifetime, it figures that a lot of us will do this. I don’t know exactly how many single-line royal flushes I’ve had, but it’s probably 400-500 or so (and probably three times that many on multi-line machines) and there are only 480 different ways for a royal to be. It’s very possible I’ve done this previously and not realized it.
I don’t have photographs of most of my royals and even if I remember that I hit two diamond royals four days apart, I wouldn’t be sure of the order of the cards. It’s just not something that makes a big impression on me.
But this time, since I happened to take pictures (Bonnie still gets a kick out of them and asked me why I sent the same picture twice), I saw them side-by-side and noticed they were the same order.
I created this article immediately after I hit the second royal described above. Nine days later I hit another single-line royal, also in clubs, with the cards in the same order — sort of. If you shift all of the cards two positions to the right (or three to the left), using some sort of wrap-around feature, the cards are in the same order.
I’m not going to attempt to figure out how likely this was for a next royal. It’s not an exact match, and there are a variety of different ways that an inexact match could be similar.
Still, I think it’s curious and interesting.
I was beginning my play at the South Point for their July “Spin 2 Win” promotion, playing, for variety, the 25¢ Good Times Pay version of NSU Deuces Wild. This is a Triple Play game where you get multipliers from 1x to 7x on each of the three lines (averaging exactly 2x). This uses the same strategy and has the same EV as regular NSU. Although it is slower to play than the $2 single line version that I would play were I in more of in a hurry, in my opinion it is more enjoyable to play. At least sometimes.
Two machines over (the one between us was turned off for social distancing reasons) was an Ultimate X machine that goes up to 25¢ Triple Play. The 9/6 Double Double Bonus version of that game has basically the same return as NSU and is much more difficult to play correctly, but is far more exciting.
Continue reading Not My ThingLast week I wrote about a juicy game that lasted for several years in 15-machine pubs in greater Las Vegas. If you read that article first, this one will make more sense.
Near the end of the time when this game was available, the manager of one of these pubs asked if I could meet him for lunch away from the pub. Sure. No problem. He had been to some of my classes and we were friendly.
Continue reading Gambler’s Bonus Reminiscences – Part II of IIFor a five-year period ending about a decade ago, I played a lot at certain 15-machine pubs in the southeastern section of the Las Vegas valley. Places such as Village Pub, Raye’s, Doc Holliday’s, and Franklin’s. Most of these places have changed owners and names since then. All have removed the game I played.
My game of choice was a version of Deuces Bonus in the Gambler’s Bonus system called Deuces Plus. Today, the best IGT version of this game pays 45-20-20 for straight flushes, quads, and full houses with a return of 99.45%. The version at the pubs paid 50-20-20 with the royal returning 1,000-for-1 rather than 800-for-1. This made it a 100.35% game. Plus slot club. Plus bonuses. And all these places had the game for ten-coin $5 — meaning $50 hand.
Continue reading Gambler’s Bonus Reminiscences – Part I of IIA month or so ago I answered the Question of the Day for the Las Vegas Advisor and I answered it in terms of the Binomial Distribution. There were some comments posted after that QOD indicating that people wanted to know more about it. This is a lightly edited version of a 2012 article that I published should be sufficient to respond to those questions.
I receive a lot of mail asking such questions as, “If I am dealt four cards to the royal flush (such as A♥ K♥ Q♥ T♥) and I am playing Fifty Play, how many royals will I usually end up getting?” or, “I played more than 200,000 hands of Jacks or Better and only received three royal flushes. How unlucky was this?”
Continue reading Two Simple Applications of the Binomial DistributionIn Las Vegas, there was a 70-day break for the pandemic, assuming you played in the casinos on March 17 and returned on June 4. If you socially distanced before March 17, or didn’t rush back as soon as the casinos reopened, the break was longer.
Certain casino venues elsewhere in the country opened earlier or later than June 4, but for now, let’s assume we all had a 2¼ -month break, minimum. It’s close enough for today’s purposes.
Continue reading Are You Still Up to Snuff?