{"id":31513,"date":"2018-01-23T10:15:21","date_gmt":"2018-01-23T18:15:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/gambling-with-an-edge\/?p=31513"},"modified":"2018-01-23T10:15:21","modified_gmt":"2018-01-23T18:15:21","slug":"video-pokers-participation-awards","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/gambling-with-an-edge\/video-pokers-participation-awards\/","title":{"rendered":"Video Poker\u2019s Participation Awards \u00a0\u00a0"},"content":{"rendered":"

A \u2018participation award\u2019 is one you get just for being there — whether you win or lose. There are people who believe that when raising children, winning and losing isn\u2019t so important, but participation is. With that in mind, there are some sports leagues for children where every player gets a trophy at the end of the year. <\/span><\/p>\n

I\u2019m not here to argue the merits of such a program and I\u2019m not here to tell you how to raise your kids or grandkids.<\/span><\/p>\n

What I want to talk about today are video poker\u2019s participation awards. It\u2019s possible you didn\u2019t know there are any such things. But there are!<\/span><\/p>\n

They are called jackpots!<\/span><\/p>\n

A royal flush, which is the top award in most video poker games, is really a participation award. Show me a player who has hit 20 royal flushes in the past two months and I\u2019ll show you someone who has played a LOT. Show me someone who hasn\u2019t ever hit a royal flush, and I\u2019ll show you someone who hasn\u2019t played very much at all.<\/span><\/p>\n

If you want to change the discussion to four aces, or maybe four deuces depending on the game, or dealt quads, or some other hand that pays well, be my guest. If you play long enough, you\u2019re going to get these hands. If you don\u2019t, you won\u2019t.<\/span><\/p>\n

But, do I hear you say, in the sports league for children that awards trophies to everybody, your skill level doesn\u2019t matter. Surely, it\u2019s different in video poker where you need to make skillful choices.<\/span><\/p>\n

Well, yeah, sort of. On a hand like <\/span>K\u2666 <\/span><\/span>K\u2660 Q\u2660 J\u2660 <\/span>4\u2666<\/span>, there are games where you should hold the kings and others where you should hold the spades. If you hold the spades, rightly or wrongly, on average you\u2019re going to end up with a royal flush once every 1,081 of these hands. If you hold the kings, you\u2019re never going to get a royal flush on this hand.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

So, if the computer says to hold the kings on this hand but you actually held the spades and the 1,080-to-1 shot came in, would you consider that skillful? If you take a picture of the royal flush and show it to your friends, do they ever ask what cards you threw away? Or what game you were playing? Doubtful. Mostly they congratulate you on your good fortune and wonder what it\u2019s like to be such a winner as you!<\/span><\/p>\n

I participate on several Internet forums related to gambling. On some forums, you\u2019ll see players posting pictures of dealt royals when they\u2019re playing 8\/5 Double Double Bonus, which is a game that returns less than 97%. There are other games shown in the pictures as well, yielding approximately the same thing. <\/span><\/p>\n

Other posters on the forum line up and immediately congratulate the poster on the good fortune. My personal feeling is that anyone who plays a 97% game is clueless about the winning process. Clearly this is a losing player who got a participation award to briefly provide them with some ammunition to play more. To me, posting jackpots on such a bad game announces to the world that you are not a knowledgeable player. Why not keep this secret?<\/span><\/p>\n

If I actually post such a comment, I get my head handed to me. People want to celebrate their participation awards. People want to be praised for how good they are. They tell me (correctly!) that it\u2019s okay to be a recreational player and rejoice in their successes when they come.<\/span><\/p>\n

So, I generally don\u2019t comment on these jackpot pictures anymore. But I take note of who posted them. When that person enters into a later debate on some matter on the forum, I\u2019ll understand going in that their opinion does not carry the same weight with me as the people who are actually knowledgeable players. <\/span><\/p>\n

In my own case, I\u2019ve hit more than 500 jackpots of $20,000 and larger. Are they all participation awards? Absolutely! Every last one of them! The only thing that number of jackpots tell you is that I\u2019ve been playing a long time for higher stakes than many others play. It doesn\u2019t tell you anything about how good a player I am.<\/span><\/p>\n

Until you know why a player was playing a particular machine on a given day, what slot club benefits and promotions were available, and the accuracy of the strategy used, you have no idea how good that player is. You cannot say with confidence that someone who has hit 200 royal flushes is a better player than one who has hit four — although you CAN say the former has participated a lot more than the latter.<\/span><\/p>\n\"Facebook\"<\/a>\"twitter\"<\/a>\"youtube\"<\/a>\"instagram\"<\/a>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A \u2018participation award\u2019 is one you get just for being there — whether you win or lose. There are people who believe that when raising children, winning and losing isn\u2019t so important, but participation is. With that in mind, there are some sports leagues for children where every player gets a trophy at the end […]<\/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":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false},"categories":[29,2],"tags":[428,101,196],"yoast_head":"\nVideo Poker\u2019s Participation Awards \u00a0\u00a0<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"What I want to talk about today are video poker\u2019s participation awards. 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