We forwarded your question to Bob Dancer, who responds as follows:
When my wife Shirley hit that $400,000 jackpot more than eleven years ago, she was playing every hand perfectly. I know because I was coaching her and "signing off" on each play before she made it (on that winning hand, she was dealt A-Q-10 hearts, so the hold was a no-brainer). At that time, we considered $500 per hand to be big stakes for us. (Still do.)
Shirley doesn't play at all anymore. But when she did, she liked to play ace-ten, but would only make the hold playfully hoping to irritate me. She'd correct it before she actually hit the draw button.
To my mind, making the computer perfect play is ALWAYS correct. Yes, you will get more royals holding ace-ten than if you don't make that play, but you will also lose more along the way. In Jacks or Better (the main game Shirley played), holding ace-ten costs between about 2¢ and 10¢, depending on the other three cards, assuming you[re playing for dollars, five coins at a time. To my mind, those numbers are MUCH bigger than I want to fade. In Double Double Bonus, the cost is between about 22¢ and 30¢ for the same mistake --- much much more expensive.
Why the difference in cost for the same mistake between the two games? In both games, you’re voluntarily giving up three-fourths of your chances of getting four aces on this hand. In JoB, four aces pay $125. In DDB, aces pay $800 for the only ones you can get -- holding ace-ten totally eliminates your chance of getting $2,000 aces on this hand (you can't get aces with a kicker if you've held the 10). Plus, you’ve given up the small chance to get the $800 hands 2222A, 3333A, and 4444A.
Had Shirley had such an independent streak in card selection before we were married, I would not have married her. Divorcing a woman over this can be more expensive than it's worth, but I would be really pissed that she was cavalierly throwing away community assets by making such a stupid play.
Of course, in most locations, just playing DDB to start with would be totally unacceptable. While there are a few situations with pay schedules and/or slot clubs that make this game playable, those places are very few. In our family, if the game + slot club + promotion don't return significantly more than 100%, then we don't play. Period.
Finally, your wife’s argument that, "since she did it once it’s always a good idea to do it again" is basically hogwash. To see this, assume you had a flat tire and you pulled over to the center divider on a crowded multi-lane freeway. Despite it being very dangerous, you decide to wait for a rare break in the traffic flow and you run across the freeway. Fortunately, you make it this one time --- barely. Do you really think the fact that you made it once makes it a good idea to run across a freeway regularly? That's the same type of logic your wife is using.
You can read the blow-by-blow account of that fateful night of jackpot-hitting at MGM Grand in Bob's memoir, Million Dollar Video Poker, in which he describes how he turned a $6,000 bankroll into $1 million playing video poker.
