I told him that a 4-card royal was much superior to a 3-of-a-kind. I suggested he enter the hand A\u2660 K\u2660 Q\u2660 Q\u2666<\/span> T\u2660 on Video Poker for Winners<\/em><\/a> and see that the 4-card royal is worth 92.34 coins. Then if he entered the hand A\u2660 K\u2660 Q\u2660 Q\u2666<\/span> Q\u2663, he would see the value of the trip queens is 21.51. If the reader hasn\u2019t gone through the exercise of checking the value of combinations using VPW<\/em> or other quality software, it\u2019s an educational process to go through. It\u2019s not difficult and it is eye-opening.<\/p>\n \u201cSo,\u201d I asked, \u201cwhy on earth would you prefer 3-of-a-kind to a 4-card royal flush? It\u2019s not close!\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cWell, my son uses the Dancer-Daily strategy card and that card says 3-of-a-kind is better. If it isn\u2019t better, why did you print the wrong information?\u201d<\/p>\n Hmm, this could be embarrassing. I do have a good explanation for that but I can see where the confusion arose. The first two lines in both the Basic Strategy and the Advanced Strategy for that game are as follows:<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n RF5; SF5; 4-OF-A-KIND; FULL HOUSE; 3-OF-A-KIND; TWO PAIR<\/p>\n RF4 > FL5 and ST5 > any SF4<\/p>\n <\/p>\n The top line of the strategy lists all hands in that game that are always held when dealt — with no exceptions. This list of hands is not the same for all games. There are games where from AAA44 or AA339 you just hold the aces, but Jacks or Better isn\u2019t one of those games.<\/p>\n The second line lists those cases where a 4-card royal flush or a 4-card straight flush is in the same five cards as a dealt flush or a dealt straight. That is, from A\u2666 K\u2666 Q\u2666 J\u2666<\/span> T\u2663 you hold just the diamonds, but from Q\u2666 J\u2666 T\u2666 9\u2666<\/span> 8\u2663 you hold all five cards.<\/p>\n A key underlying assumption for the strategy cards is that the combinations listed on the first line of the card are mutually exclusive<\/em> with the combinations listed on the second line of the card. That is, you can\u2019t have 3-of-a-kind and a 4-card royal in the same five cards. It takes at least seven cards to have both combinations.<\/p>\n I suppose technically you could argue the hand A\u2665 K\u2665 Q\u2665 J\u2665 T\u2665<\/span> is on the first line of the card, and any four cards from that combination are also on the second line of the card — hence the lines are not completely mutually exclusive.\u00a0 But anyone who has trouble figuring how to play a dealt royal has no chance to understand my writings anyway.<\/p>\n If combinations are mutually exclusive, it doesn\u2019t matter which order you list them in. Liam W. Daily and I recognized that using this underlying assumption allowed us to give completely accurate strategies with fewer rules. And we saw that as a good thing.<\/p>\n When you introduce the concept of Dream Card and you\u2019re considering among alternative fifth cards, we can no longer hold with the assumption of mutual exclusivity while playing that version.<\/p>\n Simply put, the Dancer-Daily strategy card<\/a> was designed for the \u201cregular\u201d version of Jacks or Better, not the Dream Card version. Since the machine almost always selects the correct Dream Card, you can continue to use the strategy card for the hands where Dream Card is not in effect.<\/p>\n With all that said, while the T\u2660 would be a much better choice than the Q\u2663 given the first four cards, the J\u2660 would be better still, simply because a jack presents three extra chances to end up with a high pair (namely the other three jacks) and a ten gives you no such chances.<\/p>\n Possibly the machine actually gave the correct card and there was a mix-up in the way the situation was presented to me. I assume IGT and videopoker.com can check on that easily enough. But whether there was or wasn\u2019t an error, a discussion on an underlying assumption of the strategy card made this a conversation worth having.<\/p>\n I received an email from a player who told me that he found an error in Dream Card. I was definitely interested. If I verified that it was an error, I would send the information along to the folks at IGT (who manufacture the game), videopoker.com (who invented the game), and the player community. Whether […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"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":[29,2,6],"tags":[428,1415,1416,220,558,196],"yoast_head":"\n![\"Facebook\"](\"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/gambling-with-an-edge\/wp-content\/plugins\/social-media-feather\/synved-social\/image\/social\/regular\/96x96\/facebook.png\" "\\"Follow")
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