How Hot Do You Like It?

Let’s compare two different games that return almost the same amount — namely 9/7 Triple Double Bonus (TDB) and 9/6 Jacks or Better (JoB).

The percentage return is often considered to be the “bottom line” figure. I intentionally picked two games where the percentage returns were very close. If everything else were equal, I’d recommend picking 9/7 TDB, as the extra 0.034% adds up to about a buck an hour in EV for the 600-hand-per-hour 5-coin dollar player.

But everything else is not equal here. There are numerous important differences to consider. Further, this is not a “one size fits all” comparison. Some people will rationally pick one game and others will rationally pick the other.

EXCITEMENT

Do you like excitement? 9/7 TDB is a VERY exciting game. If you get four aces with a kicker, you’ll be paid 4,000 coins! That’s the same as a royal flush. Even four 2s, 3s, and 4s with a kicker will make you feel good. Between these jackpots, however, you’ll be losing money at a fairly fast clip. Only getting 10 coins back for a 3-of-a-kind and five for Two Pair hurts a lot. “Heaven or Hell” might be a good descriptor for this game.

On the other hand, JoB is considered one the most boring games around. You get a “lousy” 125 coins for all 4-of-a-kinds, with or without a kicker. But because you get 15 for every 3-of-a-kind and 10 for Two Pair, you lose money at a much slower rate than most other games.

The mathematical figure most often used to measure “excitement” is variance. The 19.51 figure for JoB is about as low as it gets for video poker. The 98.29 figure for TDB is sky-high. As a comparison, Double Double Bonus, the most popular video poker game in the country, has a variance less than half as much (42.0) as TDB.

There is a 100% machine in your favorite casino with a variance of zero. It’s called a change machine. You put in your $20 bill and out come four $5 bills. Although definitely useful, this can be pretty boring over time.

DIFFICULTY

There are several ways to measure how difficult a strategy is. One way is to count how many lines it takes to list the strategy. In “Video Poker for Winners” JoB takes 34 lines for the strategy and TDB takes 47. Another way to do this is to look at the exceptions to the strategy. In the same VPW software, it takes 12 lines to list the JoB exceptions and 77 lines to list those for TDB. Both of these measures correctly indicate that TDB is more difficult to learn.

Still another way to look at this is to see whether the proper strategy feels comfortable. None of the following hands are particularly difficult, but they are played differently in the two games. Which group feels more ‘natural’ to you?

BANKROLL REQUIRED

If you’re Bill Gates and “slumming” while playing for dollars, bankroll isn’t a consideration. Most of us have real limits to the amount of money we can afford to lose. As a loose definition of bankroll, I’ll define it as the amount you can afford to lose before you need to give up gambling.

First let’s look at short-term bankroll. Assume you want to play for two hours today (1,200 hands) and you have $500 in your pocket. What are the chances you’ll go broke playing each game? For JoB, you have a 22.4% chance. For TDB, you have a 77.08% chance of going broke. If you started with $1,000 instead, your chances of losing it all are 0.42% at JoB and 45.36% at TDB. These are not close to being the same. 0.42% is one chance in 238 and 45.36% is almost one chance in two. (All numbers courtesy of “Video Poker for Winners.”)

How about long term bankroll? This assumes you’re going to play forever and ever, Amen. Without a slot club, both games return less than 100%, so you will eventually go through whatever bankroll you start with.

However, with a half-percent slot club (i.e. cashback = 0.50%), you need a $3,793 bankroll for JoB and a $16,147 bankroll for TDB. One way to look at it is that if you barely have the bankroll to play JoB for dollars, you don’t even have enough to play TDB for quarters!

TAX CONSIDERATIONS

There are a lot more to taxes than just W2Gs, but assuming you’re playing for more than quarters, these two games generate tax documents at very different rates. Playing for dollars, you only get a W2G at JoB when you hit a royal. For TDB, you also get one for four aces, 2s, 3s, and 4s with a kicker. Still, this isn’t very frequently.

For $5 games, however, there is a big difference. In JoB, you get a W2G for a straight flush ($1,250) and a royal flush ($20,000) but you escape these tax forms for 4-of-a-kinds because they “only” pay $625. In TDB, though, in addition to the royal flush and straight flush, all quads pay at least $1,250, while others pay $2,000, $4,000, $10,000, or $20,000.

All of us have to deal with these forms on a Federal basis. But some of us also need to deal with state taxes on jackpots. That exacerbates these differences.

ADDING IT ALL TOGETHER

The extra excitement and slightly higher return of TDB come at a price in terms of a more difficult strategy, more bankroll required, and a larger number of W2Gs. Is it worth it? Maybe. There are “excitement junkies” out there who are willing to pay for their entertainment. While you or I might not make the same choice, who can say they are wrong?

And however your “vote” on these games came out this time, I hope you gained some perspective on making this kind of decision on other games.