Author’s Note: About 30 years ago, Bradley Davis published Mastering Joker Wild Video Poker. It was one of the standards when I started to study the game in 1993, so I bought it and read it. A few years later, I met Davis in Atlantic City at a symposium where several gambling authors gave presentations — probably sponsored by Casino Player magazine. Although I’m older than he is, at the time I was a new gambling writer and Davis was already established. We chatted for a while, discovered we liked each other, have stayed in touch, and occasionally hook up. He emailed me recently that he was coming to Vegas and suggested we get together for a drink, which I accepted.
In his honor, I’m dusting off an article about Kings or Better Joker Wild that I first published more than 20 years ago. Although these games aren’t as plentiful as they once were, the principles in this article still apply when you find such a game.
I’ve written about this subject a few times in the past, but not recently. If you’ve seen it before, check to see if you remember the correct answer. If you haven’t seen it before, now is the time to test yourself. All of us need to review from time to time to keep our skills sharp.
Assume you’re playing any version of Deuces Wild, where W represents a deuce, and we’re comparing the following two hands: W6♦ 7♦ 9♦ T♣ and W6♦ 7♦ 9♦ 8♣.
Today I’m going to describe a casino that doesn’t, to my knowledge, exist. But there are a number of casinos with more-or-less similar situations. The math to calculate these things is fairly easy, once explained.
By “best game,” I usually mean the one that pays the most. Later on, we’ll consider some other factors that can come in.
Recently, at the Red Rock Resort in Las Vegas, a lucky quarter video poker player, with a $1.25 bet, collected more than $150,000 for a sequential royal flush.
I’ve received a number of inquiries asking things such as: Was I said lucky player? (no) Was it a play with a positive expectation? (yes) and, If I had known about how large the jackpot had grown, would I have been playing it? (absolutely not!)
At www.gamblingwithanedge.com , in the comments section for a recent blog post of mine, a poker player said he had two stop limits–one for being ahead and on for being behind. (It’s possible he uses the same amount for each. He didn’t say.) He wanted to know if winning video poker players use this system as well.
In all gambling, money management is important. One of the key elements is being able to stay in the game. If you go broke, you’re out of the action.
Author’s note: I ran this originally in December 2009, while I was teaching classes at the Eastside Cannery.
After this was published, Andy and Sharon became good friends with Shirley and me, and later Bonnie and me. Recently Sharon, real name Phillis, died after dealing with a brain tumor for years. Reprinting this article is one way to say, “Rest in Peace, Phillis.”
Listeners to our podcast know I typically end with the line, “Go out and hit a royal flush!” Colin Jones, the owner of blackjackapprenticeship.com, one of the sponsors of our podcast, has numerous podcasts of his own in which he typically ends with, “Keep generating EV!”
Not that I’m planning on changing, but I like Colin’s ending better than mine! It’s far closer to what I believe intelligent gamblers should do.
Author’s note:Sometimes I get criticized for “bragging about my success.” The unusual feature at Dotty’s I’m discussing today is only relevant when you do have success. Like all players, I have good and bad weeks — and this one was a good one. So, if you get annoyed at me talking about one week when I was successful playing the game, better skip this week’s article.
As I write this, my last trip to Dotty’s was less than a week ago. It was a much, much better trip than average. And I still don’t know exactly how well I did! I will know before you read this, so I will note my actual results at the bottom, but this is intended to describe my thought processes before I know. That’s typically when you have to make your decisions.
I have played for more than ten years at Dotty’s, a chain of 15-machine (mostly) establishments located throughout Nevada.
While the promotions at Dotty’s vary periodically, one constant has been their Jackpot Bonus promotion where 10% of all W2gs receive a 10% bonus. That is, if you hit a $4,000 jackpot, 10% of the time you’ll receive an extra $400 in cash.
I hit a $2 NSU Deuces Wild royal recently — from left to right Q♣ K♣ A♣ T♣ J♣. It’s not an unusual royal in any respect. It was a one card draw with the queen coming in as desired.
The next day, 22 clock hours later but only four hours of video poker play, I hit a $1 9/6 Jacks or Better royal in the exact same Q♣ K♣ A♣ T♣ J♣ order. This time I needed to draw both the queen and the ace to collect.
So, I asked myself the same question that I’ve received from others so many times: How rare is this? I suggest you come up with a number before we continue.
I’m omitting the fact that the two royals required a different number of cards to be drawn — although, frankly, if they had matched there too, I’d have included that into the mix. The tradition in these exercises is to add in any and everything you can to make your event more unique than a similar situation. If you can make your event be 1-in-2,000,000, that’s twice as good as being only a mere 1-in-1,000,000.
I’m omitting the fact that it was two royals in only four hours of play. Calling it two royals in four hours starts the clock when I hit the first royal. It was also two royals in 76 hours of play. But it was about a tenth of a royal cycle before I hit the second one and you have about a 1-in-11 chance of connecting on something in a tenth of a cycle.
And I’m limiting the discussion to single line games. For all who have been dealt four-to-the-royal on Triple Play through Hundred Play and connected on more than one royal, all those royals on the same deal were alike. It can happen drawing to three-of-fewer-to-the-royal as well, but that’s not so common.
The number I get is that there is a 1-in-480 chance that your next royal be in the same suit-and-rank order as the last one you got. One way to figure this out is you have a 1-in-4 chance to be the same suit. Once the suit is determined, you have a 1-in-5 chance (queen in this case) for the first card to be in the correct position. Then 1-in-4, 1-in-3, and 1-in-2 for the next three cards. Once those have been determined, the last card is predetermined. Multiplying all of those out, you get 1-in-480.
Which isn’t that rare. Even if I multiply it by 11 because the second one happened in one-tenth of a cycle. Frequently in video poker we can come up with shots that are more than 1-in-1,000,000. This doesn’t come close to that.
Over a lifetime, it figures that a lot of us will do this. I don’t know exactly how many single-line royal flushes I’ve had, but it’s probably 400-500 or so (and probably three times that many on multi-line machines) and there are only 480 different ways for a royal to be. It’s very possible I’ve done this previously and not realized it.
I don’t have photographs of most of my royals and even if I remember that I hit two diamond royals four days apart, I wouldn’t be sure of the order of the cards. It’s just not something that makes a big impression on me.
But this time, since I happened to take pictures (Bonnie still gets a kick out of them and asked me why I sent the same picture twice), I saw them side-by-side and noticed they were the same order.
I created this article immediately after I hit the second royal described above. Nine days later I hit another single-line royal, also in clubs, with the cards in the same order — sort of. If you shift all of the cards two positions to the right (or three to the left), using some sort of wrap-around feature, the cards are in the same order.
I’m not going to attempt to figure out how likely this was for a next royal. It’s not an exact match, and there are a variety of different ways that an inexact match could be similar.
