One of the very first lessons taught by virtually all video poker teachers, including me, involves the game Jacks or Better. We explain how the game pays 25-for-1 for all 4-of-a-kinds, 2-for-1 for two pair, and the difference between the good version and the bad version depends on how much you get for a full house and a flush.
The best reasonably common version is 9/6, returning 99.54%. The game in second place is 9-5, 98.45% requiring a similar but not identical strategy.
If you don’t know what I mean by 9/6 and 9/5, compare the two pictures at the bottom of this page. The one on the top is 9/6 and the one on the bottom is 9/5. The key numbers used in naming the games are shown in red.
Under normal circumstances, because of the approximately 1.1% difference in the returns, any player who played 9/5 when 9/6 was available is a player without a clue as to the winning process.
And, yet, for a couple of years ending a few years ago, I personally played millions of dollars of coin-in on a 9/5 game when 9/6 was available. As did many other knowledgeable players. What gives?
It had to do with “theoretical.”
Theoretical is the hold the casino expects to make from players as a whole. If a game is rated with a theoretical of 2%, it means that for every $100,000 coin-in the machine gets, on average the casino expects to hold $2,000.
The 9/6 JoB had a theoretical in this casino of approximately a half percent. For that same $100,000 coin-in, the casino expects to make $500. The “perfect” 9/6 JoB player only loses $460 for that play.
This casino had a policy that if you agreed to earn $5,000 in theoretical, they would give you $3,500 in free play as front money. If they figured the theoretical correctly, this would give them an expected profit of $1,500 on this much play to cover their expenses and profit margin. On the 9/6 JoB, this was no bargain for the player. Your expected loss was $4,460, even if you played perfectly, so while getting $3,500 back was certainly better than nothing, you were still in the hole.
For whatever reason, the 9/5 JoB game was assigned a theoretical of 4%. This meant that it took $125,000 coin-in to generate the $5,000 in theoretical. And playing that much on a 98.45% game meant that you expected to lose a little less than $2,000 on average if you played perfectly.
Losing $2,000 is no fun, of course, but the casino was giving $3,500 to ease your pain. That meant that you had a net expected profit of a little more than $1,500 each time you did it, plus your points were worth something, and there were significant other goodies as well, including a couple of free room nights. We could do this at least once a month, and sometimes twice a month. This was an inadvertent mistake by the casino. We hoped it would be several years before the casino fixed it.
Sometimes I’d lose $8,000 or so “earning” this EV, but other months I would win. Looking at individual months, you could sometimes question whether this was a good deal or not, but over time, it became clear that this was a moneymaker for the players who knew about it and exploited it.
I learned about it from someone who swore me to secrecy. I had to promise not to write about it. I honored that while that situation was still in effect. Now that it’s been over for more than a year, I believe it’s okay to shine a little light on it.
Eventually, the casino figured out that a 4% theoretical for this game was inappropriate and changed it to about 1.6%. Now it costs you almost $5,000 to earn $5,000 in theoretical, and if you get “only” $3,500 back, it’s no bargain. So, knowledgeable players don’t play that game anymore.
I used a 4% figure. Actually, it was slightly different than that and it varied slightly from machine to machine. And it could be “fixed” by the casino at any time. So after we played, we went to talk to a host and asked what our theoretical was. If it was under $5,000 we played some more. We wanted to get the theoretical high enough so that we’d keep getting the offers.
The time it came back as a theoretical of $2,000 for the normal amount of play, players knew that this particular party was over. Disappointing, but all good things end eventually. Calls went all over the player grapevine, and within a few days most of the players who played this promotion were notified.
I’m not mentioning the name of the casino where this took place. There will be many readers of this blog who know whereof I speak. Should any of them choose to comment on this article, please leave the casino name unspoken.
| Royal Flush | 250 | 500 | 750 | 1000 | 4000 |
| Straight Flush | 50 | 100 | 150 | 200 | 250 |
| 4-of-a-Kind | 25 | 50 | 75 | 100 | 125 |
| Full House | 9 | 18 | 27 | 36 | 45 |
| Flush | 6 | 12 | 18 | 24 | 30 |
| Straight | 4 | 8 | 12 | 16 | 20 |
| 3-of-a-Kind | 3 | 6 | 9 | 12 | 15 |
| Two Pair | 2 | 4 | 6 | 8 | 10 |
| Jacks or Better | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 |
| Royal Flush | 250 | 500 | 750 | 1000 | 4000 |
| Straight Flush | 50 | 100 | 150 | 200 | 250 |
| 4-of-a-Kind | 25 | 50 | 75 | 100 | 125 |
| Full House | 9 | 18 | 27 | 36 | 45 |
| Flush | 5 | 10 | 15 | 20 | 25 |
| Straight | 4 | 8 | 12 | 16 | 20 |
| 3-of-a-Kind | 3 | 6 | 9 | 12 | 15 |
| Two Pair | 2 | 4 | 6 | 8 | 10 |
| Jacks or Better | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 |
Once again, this is an example of a situation where “inside information” is crucial. In other words, useless to the vast majority of players. As a practical matter, what’s the takeaway here? “Wait around for the casino to make a dumb mistake and hope that somehow, you’re one of a select few who learns about it, yet, it remains a secret and the play persists for long enough for you to exploit it”?
It would probably be more productive for us average mortals to buy a metal detector and spend our days scouring the beaches of Florida for buried gold doubloons.
Kevin, the whole idea of this blog is to present information that players wouldn’t normally have. If you’re an aspiring pro, don’t you want to know that moves of this sort are possible? “Wait around for the casino to make a dumb mistake”? Yes, that’s exactly what pros do.
That, or hunt around for these mistakes. I prefer the hunt.
@Bob, in previous podcast you mention you won several cars that you won and sold them to family members. Question: if you had a choice between a $50K vehicle or $35K cash…what would be the best option taking in the tax, reselling the car, and the hassle factor….would it basically be similar?
Marc, this is not the place for off-topic questions. You can send me questions at [email protected]. I do respond to polite emails.
That said, twice I’ve had the option of taking 80% in cash to the full value of the car — and both times I took the cash. Both times I attempted to get it in free play rather than cash — once i was successful, once not.
Your example was for 70%. I don’t know what I would do. Depends on whether it was time for a new car and whether the one being offered was acceptable — what the resale market was — etc. Possibly, though. Maybe even closer to probably.
Anthony, you kind of missed my point. Plays like the ones that Bob described–that have strong +EV AND PERSIST FOR ANY APPRECIABLE LENGTH OF TIME–are as rare as unicorns. No, they’re as rare a unicorn that happens to be dragging a wagonload of gold coins and is clutching two 50-yard-line tickets to the next Patriots game in its teeth.
See, here’s the problem. NO AP has the resources or the time–even given, which is often the case, the total absence of a life–to turn over every rock and sniff out every good play. If you rely solely on what you personally uncover, you’ll almost certainly fail to find anything worthwhile. So many APs rely on information networks–but any other AP on such a network has a strong disincentive to share any valuable information! The situation that Bob described existed at a single casino and took a singular series of events to become apparent. Yes, Bob was knowledgeable enough to see the situation for what it was when it came up. But he was also damn lucky to be there at the time. In order to be a successful AP, you, yes, have to be skillful, etc., but you ALSO have to be VERY LUCKY. Lucky enough to be in the right places at the right times, lucky enough not to get killed by variance, lucky enough to stay healthy, etc. etc. Bob’s tales are of little use because they are an artifact of what’s called “survivor bias.” It’s sort of like attending a TED talk on how to survive a plane crash from someone who was fortunate enough to do so.
I pretty much agree with everything you say. It does take a lot of luck to make it on the highest levels. I’ve told the story many times about how I started getting pissed off while editing Bob’s Million Dollar Video Poker, because every time he got to a spot where he absolutely had to hit something big, he did. Made me jealous. But that book is still extremely valuable in explaining the process, as are these blog posts even when touching on very inside subjects. Also the information networks are critical. I disagree that there’s no incentive to share, because there’s an important quid pro quo at work. Someone who only takes and has nothing else of value to offer (celebrity has currency with a lot of people) will be tolerated only so long. Where these networks were really valuable was before the Internet, but they’re still very important today.
Re Kevin’s comments. Readers should not over-think the article. I enjoy reading and picking up bits of advice from all of Bob’s articles. I appreciate his knowledge and the information that he passes along to readers. You could say I am entertained while learning.
Regarding networking where a play might be, Frank Kneeland’s book “The Secret World of Video Poker Progressives” has a lot of interesting stories about how this was done back in the “old days.”
If you play video poker progressives for money that’s important to you, Frank’s book should be required reading.
I originally made a comment in a previous blog that spawned this article. The situation in this article is rather unique where there is a defined benefit for a specific theo target. It’s usually never this straight forward but the premise is still sound and the means by which most serious players take advantage of VP. It is rare to find an opportunity where the straight up play plus defined bounce back is sufficiently positive. On the other hand future offers will most likely correlate with theo (as opposed to pure coin in) and taking advantage of box theos that are well in excess of the best game EV on the box is the path often pursued by APs. Networking certainly helps but so does awareness from scouting and asking directly for information that may not be readily apparent. Not every casino or host will cough up theo on demand, but if you never ask you’ll never get it. Also seek out plays where a reasonable pay table game is on a machine that includes god awful pay table options or better yet Keno on the sane machine, as those will typically have a higher hold hold and theo associated with them. For example I play a lot of 98.9% 15/9 deuces that is rated at 5.7% theo most likely due to sharing Keno on same box.
It’s called networking. If you want to get into the circle of APs, make yourself useful to them. They aren’t going to come looking for you, go look for them. Lot of phonies in this town, but there are plenty of APs. find them and be of value to them. Many AP plays take a good bit of grunt work. Progressives need be searched out. Like everything, be willing to pay your dues.