What Makes Ultimate X So Volatile?

I’ve been playing $1 Ten Play 9/6 Double Double Bonus Ultimate X (DDB UX) for about two years at the Palms. It’s supposed to be a 99.87% game when played perfectly. The perfect strategy is very complicated. The simplified strategy I use is worth a bit less. With the 0.25% slot club, mailer, drawings, etc., it’s a decent enough play.

In 2013, I lost more than $100,000 on this “decent enough” play. In 2014 I’m ahead. But still, how I can run so bad on such a good play?

I’m not alone. At least three other players I know have had similar or worse results on these machines in the last two years. Some players are doing well, but others are getting creamed. What’s going on?

This article isn’t meant to be mathematically precise. But there’s enough here so that most of my readers can get a real sense of why this popular game is so volatile.

First of all, the way Ultimate X works is that each paying hand earns a multiplier for the following hand. In every version of the game, the multipliers are a bit different. In the game I’m playing, the pay schedule and multipliers are (Chart courtesy of wizardofodds.com):

So if I get a full house on the third line, I’ll get a multiplier of 12 on that exact line on the next hand. Should I be lucky enough to get a royal flush on that particular line, I’ll receive 48,000 coins — in my case $48,000. Should I get that same royal on the fourth line, with a multiplier of, say, 2, I’ll receive $8,000 instead of $48,000. No change in strategy; no difference in skill; but a $40,000 difference in results.

In regular DDB, the royal cycle is about 40,000 hands. In DDB UX, the royal cycle is about 48,000 hands. The cycle for aces is also longer in the UX variation. Why the difference? Because in regular DDB, you’re playing “just for this hand.” That is, once the current hand is finished, you start all over again on the next hand. But in UX, it’s smart to “invest” in getting bigger multipliers on your next hand. The following chart shows typical differences in strategy between DDB and DDB UX, when using a strategy independent of the level of existing multipliers. Each of the examples help demonstrate why there are longer cycles for royals, aces, and (in the last example) fours.

This list is by no means exhaustive. Surprisingly, when you first learn it, using 10/7 Double Bonus strategy to play 9/6 DDB UX works pretty well. It works far better to use the DB strategy than the DDB strategy. The reason for this is that 10/7 DB pays more for full houses, flushes, and straights than 9/6 DDB does, and that approximates how much extra it’s worth to get the higher multipliers associated with these hands.

But it’s far worse than just having longer cycles. In DDB, whether or not you get more royals and aces determines (speaking in very approximate terms) whether you are going to be a winner or a loser in a particular session. In DDB UX, it matters what the multiplier is when you get the royals and aces. Since you get straights and flushes about once every 65 hands each and full houses once every 90 hands, it’s reasonable to consider that it takes 90 royals for an average cycle. That’s 90 * 48,000 = 4.3 million hands. I’m probably not going to play that many hands of DDB UX in my lifetime!

There’s more. Although in general the variance of Ten Play is significantly less than ten times the variance of single line play, dealt hands matter. You get a dealt royal every 650,000 hands. But it matters what the multipliers are when you get them. You get dealt aces with a kicker every 217,000 hands (which is three times more frequently than a dealt royal). And it also matters what the multipliers are when you get them.

I’ve played about 200,000 DDB UX hands so far. I’ve been dealt aces with a kicker once — so I’m about average in that respect. But the sum of multipliers was 14 when I got the aces. That means on 8 of the 10 hands I had a multiplier of 1 (meaning no multiplier at all), and on two of the lines I had a multiplier of 3 (meaning I had two pair or possibly certain quads).

While a jackpot of $28,000 is nothing to sneeze at, the average total of multipliers in any hand of Ten Play is a little more than 20, so my average jackpot “over time” will be $41,000 or so when I’m dealt aces with a kicker. But it takes a lot of those “every 217,000 hands” jackpots for the averages to kick in. (And on the day when I got that $28,000 jackpot, I was a net loser on the day. Swings of that magnitude are not uncommon in this game.)

I’m about one-third of the way through a “dealt royal cycle.” Such a hand will average $82,000 or so, but will actually range between $40,000 and $480,000 depending on how big and how many multipliers I have when the hand comes about.

Video poker players struggle with how long the “long term” is. (I know one guy who claims to have a mathematical definition of long term, but that definition hasn’t caught on.) Simply put, however long the long term is in regular video poker games, it is much longer in Ultimate X.

If you look at a “UX dealt royal cycle” as 90 times 650,000, I will not come close to playing that many hands in my lifetime. Regardless of how many years that would take if I’m a full time player of this game, this pay schedule will likely not last forever, and at age 67, I’m not sure how many “mentally competent” years I have left. Even if you’re substantially younger than I am, you won’t play that many hands on this game either.

But even with the long cycles, the game will still average the correct amount “across all players,” discounted by player mistakes, which are numerous. I will continue to play this game so long as it is available. But I also recognize that my $100,000 annual loss may pop up again in 2015 — even with very skillful play. Or possibly a $250,000 or larger annual win. For most players these are life-changing amounts — and if so they probably can’t afford to play $1 Ten Play Ultimate X. Keep this in mind if you ever decide to tackle this game.

Most players who play Ultimate X do so at lower denomination games (pennies, nickels or dimes) with really crappy pay schedules. Not only do such pay schedules eat you up if you play, the strategies for these variations have not been published. So that means that such players are using a “seat of the pants” strategy — and are likely to be playing at an additional 1% to 2% disadvantage simply because the Ultimate X strategy is so different from “regular” strategy.

While you can’t lose $100,000 a year at nickels, percentage-wise you’ll frequently lose a higher proportion of your coin-in than you will at other video poker games.