{"id":124415,"date":"2022-10-11T09:46:10","date_gmt":"2022-10-11T16:46:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/gambling-with-an-edge\/?p=124415"},"modified":"2022-10-11T09:46:18","modified_gmt":"2022-10-11T16:46:18","slug":"help-me-make-sense-of-this","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/gambling-with-an-edge\/help-me-make-sense-of-this\/","title":{"rendered":"Help Me Make Sense of This"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

I received the following email. It was originally intended for the Gambling with an Edge<\/em> mailbag, but I felt it was too technical to be discussed over a podcast:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I know video poker has a ton of variance, but I recently endured a hellish series of events on $5 NSU Deuces Wild at a tribal casino. <\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I played 67,800 hands ($1,695,000) and lost $102,375. I hit zero royals and two sets of four deuces.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The variance of this game is supposed to be 28.78. How does this translate to dollars and cents?<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Losing five royals worth of money in 67,800 seems impossible. <\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I think I\u2019m playing perfectly. I\u2019ve been a successful AP pro for 13 years, so we can assume I\u2019m not making beginner mistakes.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Please help me make sense of this.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Wow, you\u2019ve run very badly. Let\u2019s look at how badly.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Most of the variance in NSU Deuces comes from royals and quad deuces. Let\u2019s look at them individually. The royal cycle is 43,456 hands. You\u2019ve played approximately 1.5 royal cycles. Having zero success in 1.5 cycles happens about 22% of the time. No big deal, especially if you\u2019re hand-picking a session after it\u2019s over. All players go through many 1.5 cycle dry spells over their playing career.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Now let\u2019s look at quad deuces. The cycle here is 5,356 hands, and 67,800 hands is 12.65 cycles. Having two or fewer successes in 12.65 cycles happens about one time in 3,900. This is pretty unusual. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Having this level of bad luck at royals at the same time as this level of bad luck at quad deuces is about 1-in-17,700 event. Pretty unlikely. Keep in mind, though, that whenever you\u2019ve held two royal cards and drawn the three perfect cards to complete the royal is a 1-in-16,215 event. These two events are of similar size. Over my career I\u2019ve connected on several hundreds of these royals. I don\u2019t know how much video poker you\u2019ve played, but I\u2019m willing to bet you\u2019ve had lots of these too. Play enough and these rare events come about a number of times.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

You mentioned this game has a variance of 28.78. That\u2019s true, except that\u2019s the one-coin variance, which is the typical way video poker variances are displayed. To compute the variance for five coins at a time, you need to multiply by five, giving you about 144.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Being down 1.5 royals is worth $30,000 on this game. Being down 10.6 sets of deuces is worth another $53,000. The total of $83,000 in the dumpster is about 80% of what you\u2019re down. That\u2019s also a lot of wild royals (at $625 per), quints (at $400 per), and smaller hands that you didn\u2019t show up on your machine. Unusual to be down that much, but obviously not impossible<\/p>\n\n\n\n

All told, it\u2019s a lot to be down. (You already knew that.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The next question that probably comes to your mind is: Is the machine fair? Does the fact that it\u2019s at a tribal casino suggest more chances for casino hanky-panky?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

First of all, these are IGT machines. I trust them. A casino can change the pay schedule on them, but it can\u2019t open up the machine and turn a \u201ctighten up this sucker\u201d switch.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Although you\u2019ve run bad, this was \u201conly\u201d one and a half royal cycles. We\u2019ve all had longer dry spells than that, although perhaps not accompanied by such a long deuce-less result as well. I\u2019ve played at that same casino, about 45,000 hands on those machines, and am slightly ahead on this game. I\u2019ve hit one royal (pretty much spot on expectation), and ten sets of deuces (which is slightly more than expected.) I know other players who regularly play there, and their results seem to be \u201cwithin reason.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So, I would conclude that you hit a \u201conce in a very blue moon\u201d dry spell. It happens. It will happen again. If you\u2019re not broke (losing $100,000 can do that to somebody), there\u2019s no reason to cease playing that same game at that same casino.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As it happens, my latest trip to that casino playing that game generated a negative score. (Offset by a positive score the earlier time I played this game there.) On our next trips, yours and mine and others, if the negative scores continue to happen more than usual, I\u2019ll begin to believe that something had changed, and it may no longer be a good play. But I\u2019m nowhere near that conclusion yet. I\u2019m planning considerable play on these machines in 2023. This is definitely a case of me putting my money where my mouth is.<\/p>\n\"Facebook\"<\/a>\"twitter\"<\/a>\"youtube\"<\/a>\"instagram\"<\/a>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I received the following email. It was originally intended for the Gambling with an Edge mailbag, but I felt it was too technical to be discussed over a podcast: I know video poker has a ton of variance, but I recently endured a hellish series of events on $5 NSU Deuces Wild at a tribal […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":6498,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"spay_email":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"Help Me Make Sense of This by Bob Dancer","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false},"categories":[29,2,3],"tags":[428,507,220,196],"yoast_head":"\nHelp Me Make Sense of This - Gambling With An Edge<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/gambling-with-an-edge\/help-me-make-sense-of-this\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Help Me Make Sense of This - Gambling With An Edge\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"I received the following email. 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