Assume you’re playing 9/6 Jacks or Better and you’re still at the stage in your playing career where you need to regularly consult a strategy card. You’re dealt 2♠ 3♥ 4♣ 6♦ 9♠.
Experienced players know you throw all five cards away. But this is not an experienced player we’re talking about. This is a beginner — at least to this game. At least to the ranks of players who play using a computer-generated rule. The unsuited 2346, a 4-card inside straight with no high cards, is held in some games. Such a player might well ask: “Is this particular 4-card inside straight held in this game?”
The way the Dancer/Daily cards (as well as most others) indicate that specific combinations are not held is to totally leave them off the strategy. An alternative way would be to include this line in the strategy: “4-card inside straight with no high cards (NEVER HOLD).”
Why might this be better? Well, on some strategies there are 20 or more strategy rules listed. You might have to look through these rules a number of times to make sure you didn’t miss this particular rule somewhere. Especially if the notation on this card is unfamiliar with you. But, if it’s there and says “NEVER HOLD,” you’ll find it quickly and know how to play the hand.
Which strategy rules have the NEVER HOLD designation will vary by game, of course. In 9/6 Double Double Bonus, you’ll properly hold 4-card inside straights with no high cards, but you’ll NEVER HOLD 4-card inside straights with one high card.
And, depending on the level of the strategy, it would be okay to have a DON’T HOLD AT THIS LEVEL notation of some sort. In Full Pay Deuces Wild, for example, in a strategy geared towards beginners, a suited KQ, KJ, and KT would have this designation. At a higher-level strategy, both more difficult and more powerful, there would be some sort of indication of what times you do hold these combinations and what times you don’t.
A version of this latter notation is in the strategies created by the Video Poker for Winners software. There the phrase used is “NOT RECOMMENDED.” It means that on average you’re better not holding such a combination but it is correct to hold it under the right circumstances. (The VPW strategy is an intermediate strategy, with a list of hands, in a section called “Show Report,” where the strategy will provide incorrect holds. It tells you how often these holds happen and how much the error is worth.)
When we first came out with this notation on VPW, it was upsetting to some players. I was asked more than 100 times some version of, “Why on earth would you write down a strategy rule and say it wasn’t recommended to use it?”
I got my answer down pat — it’s faster to find an instruction that says to not hold a combination than it is to look through a strategy multiple times to be sure that hand isn’t hidden somewhere. Some people accepted that and some said they still thought it was a bad idea.
I’ve learned that you can’t please everybody every time.
Many of you create your own strategies. You start from some source — perhaps the Dancer/Daily strategies, perhaps VPW, perhaps the strategy from the Wizard of Odds — and then you make modifications to it because the way these other strategies are designed isn’t quite to your liking and if you use a different notation, it works better for you. I have no objection to that at all, and in fact think you should create the strategy that is most useful to you personally.
But if you do this, do you include the NEVER HOLD notation on some hands? And if so, which hands?
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I gave away my VP strategy algorithm on Skip Hughes’ mailing list (this was roughly 20 years ago). I’m in my 60’s now, my eye-sight is not good and sometimes I need a cane to get around. So I haven’t played much VP in the past 5 years.
My VP algorithm is based on conflicts and Jazbo’s seminal hierarchical matrix structure (which I replaced with buckets). The following is my basic strategy for (non-progressive) 9/6 JoB:
9/6 JoB VP
5 RF > 5 SF > 4# > FH
3# > 2P
4 RF > 5 FL > 5 ST
4 SF (all) > Big Pair
3 RF > 4 FL
KQJT > Small Pair > 4 ST 0G
3 SF +1 > 3 SF 0
QJs > AKQJ
KHs, AHs > AHHT, KQJ9
3 SF -1 (1 HC 2G, 0 HC 1G)
KQJ > QJ
JTs > KH
QTs > AH
KTs > 1 HC
3 SF -2 (0HC 2G) > Redraw
H = Honor Card
3 SF + X, etc is Liam Daily’s established notation
4# is quads & 3# is trips
G = gaps
“s” = suited
AHs means Ace & Honor Card that are suited
My contribution to VP strategy is to break hand to hold into buckets (3 buckets in this example):
1st bucket is premium hands, e.g. made hands
2nd bucket is 4 card vs 3 card hands
3rd bucket is mostly 2 card hands (3 cards vs 2 cards & 2 cards vs 1 card).
Every hand has at least 1 conflict: keep up to 5 cards or redraw
The first bucket deals with conflicts involving made hands (low pair is not a made hand)
4 card hands are generally better than 3 card hands
Suited hands are generally better than non suited hands, etc
So I teach people hand recognition, hand conflicts, and where the best cards belong in the three buckets.
The “ The unsuited 2346, a 4-card inside straight with no high cards” is not in any bucket so the player is forced to redraw.
In plain vanilla non-wild VP like 9/6 JoB, there are two conflicting branches:
High Pair -> Two Pair vs Three of a Kind -> Full House vs Quads
Straights vs Flushes -> Straight Flushes (including Royal Flush)
The player needs to understand that some hands are in conflicts with other hands due to where there are in the paths.
So the player needs to know which path to pursue, e.g. the unsuited 2346 follows a path for Straights. The strategy says the lowest 4 card unsuited straight (0 Gap) with no High Card is in the 2nd bucket otherwise the unsuited 2346 (1 Gap) is a redraw because the conflict is to redraw.
You are always looking for the BEST REASON not to redraw and that makes the strategy work.
Mr Bob Dancer mentioned in the 2nd half of his weekly column the strategy for Full Pay Deuces play, in which case inside straigth draws are better than nothing. Of course it’s because of the wild cards available in the rest of the deck which basically make an inside straight to a hand similar to an open ended straight-draw in other versions.
My little contribution to this is that we live in different times and unfurtunately, Full Pay Deuces games have disappeared from the gaming floors. If not at 100 per cent, but maybe at 95 per cent. Some smaller casinos may have this game at smaller denomination and at very small pace , thus making the game no longer interesting to play.
I miss the times when there were 20-30 games at most Station Casinos properties in the Vegas valley, making it fun driving from one casino to the other and play the machines. Red Rock had plenty of them, and in the beginning, the point value was not bad at all, either. But those days are gone, and today you can be happy if you find a NSUD game with decent points value. But even that game recommends going for the inside straight, although not in every situation, as far as I remember. Not so sure anymore, but I think A-3-4-5 and any other higher card would not make it an inside straight to hold because all you need is a deuce and if it’s a deuce that comes you want the other 3 deuces to follow , LOL, or at least 2 more of them, giving you a nice 4-of-a-kind or higher. Plus, a straight only pays 2x, while you would get 4x the money in the J-o-B game, mentioned by Mr Bob Dancer in the example above. Is that more or less accurate?
From Switzerland
Boris
343 members of “the fire unions” all brothers and sisters of mine gave their lives that day.
Product member, IAFF
And we thank all fire fighters for doing the job. But, there’s a difference between fire fighters, and fire-fighter unions. There’s a difference between police, and police unions.
[Please educate me here: I’m not familiar with “Product member, IAFF”—what does that mean?] You pretty much prove my point: co-opting the heroism of the NYC fallen for political leverage/argument. But hey, Trump 2024, right? Whoo hoo!!!!
https://www.inquirer.com/opinion/commentary/philadelphia-firefighters-covid-vaccine-mandate-20210827.html
Nope – if it isn’t held, it’s not on there. I do add some mnemonics to charts from the “usual” places like Wizard of Odds and software programs written by decidedly reputable people or sometimes use chart A for B when mismatches don’t cost too much – the latter is easier for me and probably an overall saver since trying to memorize B from scratch would cause me to make mistakes.