The new semester of free video poker classes at the South Point will begin on Wednesday, January 27, at noon, in the Grandview Lounge — which is eight days after this article is originally published. Everyone at least 21 years of age is welcome.
Often I teach one advanced class in the 10-week semester. Last semester it was NSU Deuces Wild. This time it will be 8/5 Bonus Poker on March 9, a game I’ve never taught before. Let’s look at that a little bit.
When played well, 8/5 Bonus Poker returns 99.166%. It has a similar strategy to 9/6 Jacks or Better. In fact, if you use perfect 9/6 JoB strategy on 8/5 BP, you’ll get 99.158%. For many players, this is close enough. The advanced class is for players who want to squeeze that extra 0.008% out of the game.
How much is 0.008%? If you’re a dollar single-line player who can play 800 hands an hour (which is pretty fast, but nowhere near a record), 0.008% is 32¢ per hour. If you play the game a lot, that adds up. For those who play higher stakes than dollars, it adds up more quickly.
Many casinos, including the South Point, offer video poker games looser than 8/5 BP, at least for some stakes. Other casinos don’t. There are casinos where 8/5 BP is the best game offered. To be sure, you have to find lucrative promotions and a good slot club to make a game like this playable (to me, this means returning more than 100%), but when you do find such opportunities, you have to play the game well in order to take advantage of them.
While 9/6 JoB and 8/5 BP have similar strategies to each other, at the advanced level, 9/6 JoB is pretty easy and 8/5 BP is much more difficult. The primary reason for this is how much you get for the flush. Games when flushes pay 6-for-1 tend to be much simpler than games where flushes pay 5-for-1. It isn’t that anybody designed the 5-for-1 games to be more difficult than the 6-for-1 games, it just happens that way because on many hands, alternative holds have very close to the same EV.
One of the peculiarities of teaching 8/5 BP at the advanced level this semester is that I’m not going to teach the game at the beginner or intermediate level first. I’m going to let the 9/6 JoB class suffice for that. So the first thing to do in the advanced class is to go over the differences in the games at the basic strategy level.
According to the Dancer/Daily Winners Guide for Jacks or Better, there are four differences between 9/6 JoB (which I refer to as flush-6) and 8/5 BP (flush-5) at the basic strategy level. The basic strategy level means “on average,” without explicitly considering penalty cards. Some of these rules are modified at the advanced level and some are not. These are:
Difference # 1:
flush-6: KH9, QJ8 > AKQJ
flush-5: QJ8 > AKQJ > KH9
Difference # 2:
flush-6: all SF3 +0 > all HH
flush-5: KH, QJ > SF3 +0 > AH (except KH, QJ always < KH9, QJ8)
Difference # 3:
flush-6: all SF3 -1 > QJ > JT
flush-5: QJ > JT > SF3 -1 (except JT always < JT7)
Difference # 4:
flush-6: QT > AQ
flush-5: AQ > QT
I know there are some notational issues here for some players. If you’ve attended my basic classes or studied the Dancer/Daily strategy cards or Winner’s Guides, you’ll find the notation comprehensible. If you are new to this notational system, you can easily pick it up. Explaining it in detail is not the purpose of today’s article, although notation will be one of the major topics in the class.
After reviewing the differences between the games at the basic level, the class will get into the more advanced things. First, we’ll need to define penalty cards, including flush penalties and straight penalties. There are also compound penalty situations and some hands where penalties affect more than one possible hold.
The class will cover how to describe these penalties so the strategy yields a unique way of playing each hand. The techniques to describe penalties are very similar from game to game. Even in 8/5 BP isn’t “your game,” learning to describe these situations is a good skill to have.
Do you need to follow the Dancer/Daily notation system? Of course not. Many players adjust the Dancer/Daily notation because they think some other way of describing things is better. This is fine. There are a number of ways to describe these things.
Other than “at least 21,” there are no enforced prerequisites for the class. If you think you’re ready for it, that’s fine with me. At the same time, if you’re not AT LEAST playing Jacks or Better, Double Bonus, or Double Double Bonus at the intermediate level, the class will be very difficult for you. In advanced classes in the past, players sometimes attend the first 30 minutes or so and then decide that it isn’t for them. I understand. Just leave, if you’re not getting value.
But the rest of the semester of classes is for everybody. There is no such thing as being too much of a beginner to take the beginner classes that are presented. While each class is separate from the ones that came before, they do build on each other to some extent. The first week’s class, Jacks or Better, which will be held at noon on Wednesday, January 27, at the South Point, is a good foundation for the other ones that will follow.
The complete schedule of classes may be found at Bobdancer.com/seminars