You Have to Work it Out Yourself

I get dozens of video poker emails a month from people I’ve never met. Often the emails are similar to the following:

“I play Double Double Bonus. From a hand like KK773, I hold the kings and a friend tells me to hold two pair. Which is right?”

I typically answer that it’s correct to hold two pair — and the answer would be easy to obtain using video poker software or by consulting a strategy card or Winner’s Guide. If they wish to get better at video poker, they need to be able to check these things out themselves.

If I get a similar question from the same person, perhaps this time it might be, “I play Double Double Bonus. From a 3-card royal and a high pair, I always hold the 3-card royal. A friend tells me to always hold the high pair. Which is correct?”

This time I answer that if you’re playing a game where the flush pays 5 for 1, it’s always better to hold the high pair. If you’re playing a game where the flush pays 6 for 1, it’s usually better to hold the high pair, but not always. You should check out the hands on a computer or consult a Winner’s Guide.

Further, I inform him that it is not my role in life to answer questions he can easily find out through the use of computers and books. In addition, I’ve noted his name and email address and will no longer respond to emails from him.

Often the person writes back with an “I’m sorry.” Sometimes the person writes back and tells me what an arrogant, selfish, money-grubbing $%#@#!@ jerk I am. So be it. Although I attempt to treat people fairly, I don’t feel that because someone bought a strategy card from me three years ago (and for which my “profit” was probably $1 not including the hundreds of hours spent “perfecting” the card) I am obligated to be at their beck and call forever. Insulting me is not a good method for convincing me to continue as their “Answer Man.” Occasionally these same people will continue to send emails, which I continue to ignore. Sometimes they have even asked the Las Vegas Advisor and/or videopoker.com to forward their emails to me. They do get forwarded and I continue to ignore them.

Video poker takes time to master. To get good at it, you need to study systematically. There are almost 2.6 million unique hands, but “only” about 5% of that many hands when you call the suits 1, 2, 3, and 4 instead of clubs, diamonds, hearts, and spades. Why this makes a difference is because A♣ K♠ Q♠ T♥ 3♠ will be played exactly the same as A♦ K♠ Q♠ T♣ 3♠ or any of the 22 other ways you can have ‘KQ3’ of any suit 1, A of any suit 2, and T of any suit 3. (And yes, I’m neglecting those rare games where a royal in spades pays differently than a royal in hearts, diamonds, or clubs.)

The questions themselves were reasonable. You MUST learn the answers to them in order to play well. But a part of the process is being able to look them up for yourself. It’s not a trivial task, but it isn’t that hard either. And it’s the kind of thing that gets easier the more you do it.

There’s a variety of software products available. I personally use Video Poker for Winners, WinPoker, and Wolf Video Poker — in addition to using the free tools available at wizardofodds.com. While there’s a huge amount of overlap among these tools, each has a bit of functionality the others don’t.

To get good results using any of these tools requires some practice. At a minimum you should wallow around the program enough until you can find out how to play any hand, find the return on the game, practice with the program correcting your mistakes, and enter a new pay schedule into the software. That’s at least 90% of what most players use the software for.

For me, in addition to the above, I want to study the special cases where a simplified strategy doesn’t play all the hands correctly to my standards. You certainly don’t have to study to this degree, but the information is available if you do.

If I always am there to answer these questions, it’s a waste of my time and you never learn how to do it yourself. Call it “tough love” if you like, but you need to learn to look up these things yourself.

I will continue to respond to occasional, polite emails and continue to ignore the ones that aren’t so occasional and/or not very polite. Helping you get started is part of what I do, on a pro bono basis. Becoming your private tutor is an entirely different matter.

Also, if you attend the free classes at the South Point on Wednesdays beginning August 10, we regularly go over there how to look up these things on the computer. If you’re fuzzy on how to do it now, you’ll be quite a bit more proficient after going to class.