In July of this year, Gold Coast Casino in Las Vegas ran a “second royal in five days gets paid double” promotion. While that particular promotion inspired this article, that promotion had a particular set of rules that I’m not going to address.
The promotion I’m going to propose today doesn’t exist — it never has existed and may never exist. Still, when a good promotion is active, few pros want to discuss how to attack it. Consequently, it is sometimes best to discuss the attack strategy for a promotion “before” it gets announced.
The upside to this is that you’ll have an understanding on how to approach similar promotions when they do come along. The downside is that you’re studying some things that may never come to pass. For some players this theoretical study is a waste of time. For those of us who wish to master the game, we do this all the time.
Let’s say you’re playing 9/6 Jacks or Better where you get 4,000 coins for your first, third, fifth, etc. royals and 8,000 coins for your second, fourth, sixth, etc. royals — every other royal gets doubled — and the casino plans to run this promotion for the foreseeable future. Assume you must play on single line games. If you get caught playing on someone else’s card, you get kicked out of the casino forever or are locked in a room and forced to listen to Donald Trump campaign speeches. Also, you must maintain a minimum amount of play in that casino (say $50,000 coin-in a month) in order to be eligible for this promotion. (I don’t really care about the level of coin-in needed in this hypothetical promotion. I just need to consider some players eligible and some not).
Since the 4,000-coin version of the game pays 99.54% and the 8,000-coin version pays 101.86%, this is a more lucrative promotion that modern slot directors are likely to put out there, but I’m choosing this game because most of my readers already know basic 9/6 JoB strategy where the royal pays 4,000 coins, so when I talk about strategy deviations, you’ll be able to follow along easily.
So the first question is, assuming you’re eligible to play and decide to play this promotion, how do you play the game? When you’re playing for bigger royals, everybody knows you should play more aggressively for the royal — but “how much” more aggressively is the question.
Consider these three simple hands — assuming royal values of 4,000, 6,000, and 8,000. (That’s a total of nine “decisions” you need to make.) One hand is played the same at all three royal values. One is played the same for 4,000 and 6,000, but more aggressively for 8,000. And the third is played more aggressively at 6,000 and 8,000 than it is at 4,000. If I put the correct answers in front of you, the correct plays would look obvious. Without the correct plays listed, they are not so evident.
A♥ K♥ 6♣ 7♣ 8♣
A♦ T♦ 7♠ 6♥ 4♣
Q♣ J♣ T♣ 8♣ 6♦
I’m not posting the “correct” answers. If you’re interested, it’s easy enough to obtain the information using video poker software.
The two most common ‘intelligent’ strategies are:
Strategy A: Play the odd royal sequences using a 4,000-coin strategy and play the even royal sequences using an 8,000-coin strategy.
Strategy B: Use a single 6,000-coin strategy all of the time.
Strategy A takes an “each royal is so very hard to get, I’m going to concentrate on playing optimally for each one and worry about tomorrow when tomorrow comes” approach. Strategy B takes an “I’m dealing with two-royal ‘sets'” approach. This requires looking at the best strategy over these ‘sets’ rather than looking at each royal individually.
Other players will use different strategies altogether. I can’t discuss them all. Just looking at these two methodologies is enough for today. And assuming you believe the promotion will continue and you will be around to play it, knowledgeable players will tell you that Strategy B is superior to Strategy A.
Regular strategies assume that when this hand is over, you start from scratch on the next hand. Applied to royal cycles, it assumes that when you hit the first royal, the royal value of the next one remains 4,000. But in a world where hitting the first royal “earns” you the chance to play for the next one at an 8,000-coin value, clearly hitting the first one has more value than it would in a world where you would only get 4,000 coins for the second one.
Looking at it that way, it’s not very difficult to accept that using a more aggressive strategy for the first royal makes sense.
Where it gets tricky is trying to understand that if you’re getting 8,000 coins for the second royal, why on earth should you play a 6,000-coin strategy? And today I want to explain it to you using words rather than trying to prove it to you using mathematics.
Simply put, when you’re playing for the second royal, you’re in the middle somewhere of a two-royal set. Our 6,000-coin strategy attempts to provide an optimal approximation for the entire two-royal set. You’re still playing that set — so stay with the program! If you switch to an 8,000-coin strategy on the second after using a 6,000-coin strategy for the first, you’re leaving money on the table.
We are left with the unpalatable conclusion that with this promotion, how we play now depends on how we played before. But for those of us who have learned to play Ultimate X and/or Multi Strike and/or Flush Attack (way back when), we’re used to this general concept in certain contexts.
So assume I’m playing this promotion and someone asks me how to play a particular hand. I will obviously know the 4,000-coin strategy and the 6,000-coin strategy for that play. (I have the 4,000-coin strategy completely mastered now and would have the 6,000-coin strategy mastered before I sat down to play). I may or may not know the 8,000-coin strategy, because since I’m not using it I would not have attempted to master it.
Also assume I don’t want to go through a long explanation. The “correct” play definitely depends on whether they are eligible for the double pay on every other royal. Depending on the strategy they are using, it might also be a function of whether it’s an “odd” or an “even” royal for them.
I would likely tell them that I would play it “this way” and then give them the 6,000-coin answer. If they asked more than twice, unless they were a really good friend, I’d likely tell them that I’m working and need to concentrate on my own game. Most players accept that politely enough.