A friend of mine, Terry, usually plays 9/6 Jacks or Better (JoB). There is one casino, however, where 8/5 Bonus Poker (BP) is the best game. He wants to know what changes he should make to his JoB strategy in order to play BP.
First of all, Terry doesn’t HAVE to make any changes. JoB strategy works pretty well on BP. Rounding off to three decimal places, perfect BP returns 99.167% and BP using JoB strategy returns 99.158%. Is that difference big enough to make strategic adjustments? You’ll have to answer that for yourself.
To me, the answer is a resounding YES. Others feel that the two numbers are close enough so that the extra benefit from learning correct BP strategy isn’t worth the mental effort required to do so.
Another question is: How involved do you want to make the strategies? Both games have penalty cards. The penalty cards in JoB are fairly rare and uncomplicated. The penalty cards in BP are more numerous and much more complicated. For today’s list, I’m going to avoid most penalty cards — but I won’t avoid them completely.
Notation-wise, I’m going to use bold italics to indicate suited cards — so QT would indicate a queen and ten of the same suit. If I refer to AKQJ (which is not in bold italics), this indicates an ace, king, queen, and jack of at least two suits, but possibly three or four suits.
I’m also going to use an x, as in KTx, to indicate in bold italics a card of the same suit as the other cards, but not close enough to them to be part of a royal flush or straight flush combination. In other words, the x would represent any of the third cards in: KT2, KT3, KT4, KT5, KT6, KT7, and KT8.
I’m also going to be using the words ‘always’ and ‘usually.’ You know what ‘always’ means. I’m going to be using the term ‘usually’ in an unusual way. The way the word is most often used, it refers to frequency. If an event happens more than 50% of the time, we say it usually happens. When I employ ‘usually’ in this article, I’m referring to the strategy that will result in the greater Expected Return for the player.
For example, compare AKQT8 and AJQT8 in JoB. Both hands include a 3-card straight flush which has one high card and two inside gaps with a 4-card inside straight which has three high cards. As it happens, there are 12 different hands where these two combinations both appear in the same five cards. In exactly half of them, including the first one, holding the straight flush draw is correct by 2.8 cents if you’re a 5-coin $1 player. In the other half, including the second example, holding the 4-card inside straight is correct by 4.6 cents. Therefore I will conclude it’s USUALLY correct to go for the 4-card inside straight.
Case 1:
JoB: KQ9, KJ9, QJ8 > AKQJ always
BP: QJ8 > AKQJ > KQ9, KJ9 always
Case 2:
JoB: SF3 2h2i; SF3 1h1i; SF3 0h0i > KQ, KJ, QJ always
BP: KQ, KJ, QJ > SF3 1h1i; SF3 0h0i usually
Case 3:
JoB: SF3 1h2i; SF3 0h1i > JT always
BP: JT > SF3 1h2i; SF3 0h1 usually
Case 4:
JoB: QT > AQ usually
BP: AQ > QT always
Case 5:
JoB: KTx, hold KT usually
BP: KTx, hold K by itself always
There are numerous other subtle differences which are more complicated, although, again, some may find the cost of making the wrong choice insignificant. For example, in both games JT usually > KJ, but the list of exceptions for JoB is not the same as the list of exceptions for BP — although there is considerable overlap.
Employing the term ‘usually’ makes things somewhat more complicated than some players wish. The reason I use it is because some readers will practice these hands on a computer. If I say that usually in JoB, QT > AQ, then when they come across a hand where AQ > QT, the player can say, “Okay, this must be one of the exceptions.” If I don’t include the ‘usually’ caveat, then when players come across one of the exceptions they might well wonder what they are doing wrong.
If you wish to go deeper into this and learn the exceptions, there are two excellent sources for the information. In Video Poker for Winners, if you’re in 8/5 Bonus Poker and click on ANALYZE and then STRATEGY and then SHOW REPORT, you will get a list of every exception to the basic strategy. To be sure, these exceptions are to the basic 8/5 Bonus Poker strategy rather than to the basic 9/6 Jacks or Better strategy. Still, the strategies are similar so the list of exceptions will be useful to you.
Second, the Dancer/Daily Winners Guide: Volume 1 Jacks or Better includes a strategy on 8/5 Bonus Poker. It covers the differences in the two games at the basic level and it also covers the differences in the two games at the advanced level.
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