Right Card, Wrong Game

Playing Double Double Bonus (DDB) at the Palace Station, my usual play. But I like to change it up, so I went to NSUD, a decent form of Deuces Wild for about 45 minutes. Then back to DDB. Less than 10 hands, voila: Four Deuces. Would have been $1,000 on my previous machine. At least I got a kicker, so $800. But I should have had more.

Playing it again yesterday at Caesars Atlantic City, $2. Guy nearby scored 5 G's on a quarter machine called Triple Play Match Card Poker. It seemed intriguing, and I figured I could use a break. Picked 50-cent denom, $15 a hand, with all the bells and whistles. Less than 10 hands, voila: Four Aces. Would have been $1,600 on my previous machine. I won $400. I should have had more.

I know I shouldn't worry about "luck." But jeez! Why is this happening to me? Why do I not get what I need on the right machine? What should I do? These are rhetorical questions, but I would love to hear what other people feel, and do, about this awful situation.

"For all sad words of tongue or pen, the saddest are these: What could have been?" -John Greenleaf Whittier

I take solace when playing video poker by reasoning that since the RNG's are constantly running that the time it took you to switch games completely changed your results. There's no telling what hands you would have gotten if you kept playing the original game because the second it takes to press or not press a button changes what cards you're dealt or draw.

Well, the way I understand it, there is no relationship from one GAME to another even on the same machine (multi-game machine). It is not a given that you get the same hand if you switch to a different game. So your Four 2s on DDB would not have been Four Deuces on DW. In fact, on DDB Four 2s are not even called Four Deuces. They are only called Four Deuces on a Deuces game.

Another example, if you are on Bonus and you get Four Aces which pays $400, it does not mean that you would have gotten the same hand, Four Aces ($800) had you switched to Double Bonus.

So, you were really very lucky to get what you did on the games!

VP can definitely be very cruel. On my last trip to Vegas, I stayed at 4Queens for 3 nights, where the best game is DB. I didn't get 4 aces once in the entire 3 days. I then stayed 3 nights at LVC, where the best game is loose deuces.
I didn't play 5 minutes until there it was! Four natural aces. I collected a fantastic $6.25, which would have been 200 bucks playing DB. But this is the rut I'm in. I'm estimating that I am at approximately 150,000 hands since my last royal. Seems like I am practically defying the law of averages.

"So, you were really very lucky to get what you did on the games!" That certainly is a good attitude. And I try to adopt it, but it is hard. I feel much more like jokermgb, and, in fact have had exactly that same four A's in Deuces situation. I understand that it's all just the luck of the draw, and as long as you play the best pay tables you can find, everything should work out. And that when you switch games, over time, you should get the big ones as frequently as the disappointing wins. It's about feelings. And, unless you are Bob Dancer or some card counter who has to work harder at that than I did at my job, why else do you gamble, except for the feelings, making sure to give yourself the best odds? The machines gave me an excellent lesson last week, when I hit four A's @ $2, and, as I always do, bumped up to $5 for a few hands. I hit 4 J's and 4 6's in about 15 minutes and wound up with $2,500, rather than $1,000. I will hold that win in the back of my head and pull it out every time I get the opposite situation. (Big win pics will be posted in that topic in the next couple of days.)

As guynoire said you would not have gotten the same hands playing a different game unless you hit the button the same nano-second playing deuces wild. This happens to the best of us believe me. I vividly remember a session back in the day when I stayed a lot at Sam's Town. They had one row of 100% plus machines near the back door and the movie entrance (might still be there as I have not been to ST in years). There were two games DDB and Deuces Wild. I almost ALWAYS played DDB but one day I decided to change it up and play deuces. Almost immediately I was dealt AAAA2. Nice five of a kind payoff but no where near the payment I would have received playing DDB. I was POed for a while but finally convinced myself that "stuff happens" so I got over it.

But what is actually being compared is games with entirely different cycles. With the Four Aces in DB, the cycle is (on average) 1 in 5,030.4 hands -- this is not 1 in 425 hands in 9/6 Jacks. The cycle for Four Deuces in Full Pay Deuces Wild is 1 in 4,909.1 hands and then with other hands, like Four Aces in Deuces Wild, the cycle for any other kind of 4-Of-A-Kind that doesn't pay some kind of bonus amount is about 1 in 15 hands.

This also has to do with the Variance (Volatility Rate) of the game which we choose to play (take on). It just is what it is. Although that's just the way it goes, when we choose to play a game that pays a bonus amount for a certain kind of hand, then it's going to be a lot harder to end up getting it.

RecVPPlayer