Category: Advanced Strategy

Except for the last few weeks, I haven’t recently played any version of Multi Strike. In the past, I played 9/6 Jacks or Better, 8/5 Bonus Poker, and 9-4-4 Deuces Wild Bonus in the Multi Strike variation, but it’s been so long that I felt I needed a tune-up. Now in my seventies, my memory isn’t what it used to be.

I’ll be teaching the 9/6 Jacks or Better Multi Strike class on January 29 at the South Point. Although my notes for the class are prepared, I teach better when I have recent experience. This gives me “depth” and a better ability to deal with some questions that I would have otherwise forgotten. Teaching classes well is one of my goals.

Plus, since the game returns 99.79% and the South Point’s everyday slot club is 0.30%, it’s not as though it’s a financial burden to play. The only version offered at the South Point is the 25¢ Five Play variation, which requires a bet of $25 per play. Even though the player has a slight edge, Multi Strike has a higher variance than many other video poker games. I did lose $1,500 on my first foray back into the game. But that loss was recovered in later sessions.

As most of you know, Multi Strike is a four-line game where you pay for all four lines up front — namely 20 coins. (I’m referring to the game in most of this article as a single-hand game, rather than the Five Play version you find at the South Point. This is done to make the explanations easier.) If you earn nothing on the bottom line, your 20 coins are gone. And this can sometimes happen several hands in a row.

If you at least get your money back on the first line, you get to play the second line (called the Level 2x line) “for free” and at double the payoffs. Earn something there, and you play the third line (called the Level 4x line), again for free, at quadruple the stakes. The same pattern holds for the fourth line (called the Level 8x line). Periodically you get a “Free Ride” after the draw but before you decide on which cards to hold; this moves you up to the next higher line whether you score anything on the current line or not.

What isn’t so obvious to all players is that you use four different strategies for the four different lines. The logic behind this is that in regular video poker the pay schedule falls into the “what you see is what you get” category. When the hand is over, it is completely over.

That’s not the case in Multi Strike. If you score on the bottom line, you now get to play the second line for free, and sometimes the third line, and sometimes the fourth line. Those are very valuable “plusses.”

The second line can give you two extra plusses. The third line can give you one extra plus. The top line, and any Free Ride you get, gives you nothing extra. The strategies depend on how many additional plusses you stand to get when you succeed.

If you know regular 9/6 JoB (which may well be the easiest video poker game to learn), you’re well on your way to learning the Multi Strike version of the same game because the strategies you use for most of the hands are considerably easier than the regular strategy. Why? Because for the bottom two lines you avoid ALL 3-card straight flush draws, which are the most complicated hands to play for most players.

This is not to say you can forget part of the 9/6 JoB strategy when you play Multi Strike. You still need the entire strategy because whenever you either reach the top line or receive a Free Ride, the regular strategy is appropriate.

For me, there were two different times where I found I could be making a mistake. First was remembering where I was in the game. Did I need the Level 1x strategy or the Level 2x strategy? From K♥ Q♠ 9♥ 7♥ 3♥, on Level 1x, I should hold the KQ and on Level 2x I should hold the hearts. For A♥ Q♠ 9♥ 7♥ 3♥, I hold the hearts on both of these levels. It’s easy to get these confused. Each of the strategies by themselves aren’t so difficult, but holding them all in my mind at once and using the right one each time is not trivial.

I made another mistake, which may well be the biggest mistake I’ve ever made in video poker. Perhaps you’ll make it someday too.

This mistake came from the different way Multi Strike deals cards. When Multi Strike finishes a level where the player advances, it deals the next level immediately. That is, let’s say you’re dealt A♣ J♦ T♦ 9♣ 8♥ on Level 1x and correctly hold AJ. (You only hold JT98 on Level 8x or with a Free Ride.) If you are playing the Five Play version, let’s say you end up with a pair of aces on one of the hands and two pair on another. The 15 credits will add up, and immediately the Level 2x hand will be dealt.

The problem came when I had three hands live on Level 4x and held trip 5s. On two of the three hands, the trips converted into quads. This is an unusually good result. Each of the quads paid 500 coins ($125), which is four times the normal $31.25 you regularly get for these hands in quarter 9/6 JoB, and the trips registered $15 instead of the usual $3.75.

Certainly, I’ve had many thousands of jackpots higher than $265 in my life, but I took a few seconds to admire my good fortune. When I was finished “admiring,” I hit the button to play the next hand — which is my normal practice in every other video poker game I play.

Except in Multi Strike, the next hand was already dealt. When I hit the button intending to play the next hand, what I actually did was throw away all the cards on the hand that had already been dealt! With three live hands on Level 8x, this was equivalent to throwing all the cards away sight unseen on $2 Triple Play!

What were the cards I threw away? I have no idea! By the time I realized what I had done, the original cards were long gone. I know I wasn’t dealt a royal flush or that would have locked up, but other than that, I just don’t know. Very likely throwing all the cards away was the wrong play — potentially a very big error.

Oh well. Spilt milk. The reason I bring it up is that it strikes me as a relatively common mistake others might make as well, at least on occasion. So, I tell you in the spirit of “forewarned is forearmed.”

(Editor’s Note) We’ve just discovered that, due to a technical glitch, last-week’s Bob Dancer blog wasn’t posted. We’re putting it up now and will resume the usual schedule this week.

Last week, I began a two-part article where I described important gambling lessons that I learned years ago while playing backgammon and that are still applicable today playing video poker. I suspect those same lessons would be applicable at most gambling games, as well as with other endeavors.

Continuing those lessons I learned at the Cavendish West:

6. Many players played too fast.
In backgammon, many rolls have one obvious play. Many other rolls offer several “reasonable” plays, each with pluses and minuses. It takes time to correctly evaluate which one is better. Often, you have a choice between two or more ways to play an ace (one). They might be equally safe on this particular play, but they differ in their effectiveness on the next roll or two.

You frequently must make a “pay me now or pay me later” kind of decision about when to take a chance. Sometimes you have to decide whether it is better to make a play that helps your offense or another one that helps your defense.

Sometimes, of course, players just plain don’t understand why one play is superior to another. But often they can figure it out if they spend some time. But spending a lot of time studying moves is hard work, and even harder if you’re tired.

A lot of players, including myself, played faster than was appropriate and paid the consequences.

7. Mind-altering substances didn’t help play. Whether we’re talking about legal or illegal substances, when you played someone a lot you could tell the difference in their moves when they were high compared to when they weren’t.

8. People could and did go broke.

It’s not some theoretical possibility that is pretty rare. If you don’t have a safety net (i.e. parents who will bail you out, a couple of million dollars in the bank, someone who is willing and able to support your gambling losses, etc.), you need to take bankroll considerations into account. Bankroll calculations are easier to make in video poker because the value of a game and the value of slot club are more easily figured out than they are in backgammon.

9. It was easy to forget when gambling that we were dealing with real money. In backgammon, we would deal with “points,” where each point was worth $1, $5, $20, etc. Psychologically being down 60 points wasn’t that much better than being down 90. You tried very hard to “get even,” even though how much you started with that day was a pretty meaningless number.

10. Losing streaks brought out the worst of people’s personality. If someone had any tendency to lie, cheat, steal, or a number of other negative habits, you’d likely see them do it more when they were losing. They might have been 100% trustworthy during normal times, but put them on a losing streak and they were different people.

11. People were crazy (and still are)!

In backgammon, the game is played against live opponents, many of whom have strong personalities that may or may not mesh with mine. I have my own personality quirks that don’t appeal to everybody.

Consequently, I concluded that to be a contented player, I needed a gambling game with less human interaction than backgammon. For that reason, I shunned live poker. I would NOT enjoy being across the table from a Mike Matusow or a Phil Hellmuth. It’s possible I could develop the technical skills to compete with them. (Possible — not certain. They both are VERY good.) But I don’t have the temperament to deal with yelling and screaming they bring to the table.

Compared to backgammon, the human interaction in video poker, although sometimes important, is minor.

This is one observation that fits into the “your mileage may vary” category. Other players do just fine in poker and backgammon and can deal with the personalities involved. This is not my strength, and a key part of success is figuring out what your strengths are and going with them.

12. Finally, a good memory and keeping records was very important. You needed to know whether a particular player was better or worse than you. If you had good records of his or her results when you played together, you had a pretty strong indicator.

There are players whose leaks are exploitable. Some passed doubles more than they should, so you doubled them early compared to the theoretically optimal point. Others took doubles much later than was advised. Against those players, it was never a good idea to double early.

Over time you played a lot of different players and you needed to have notes about all of them. A good memory is good — but written notes last longer and are better.

Keeping records for tax purposes is done in video poker but is largely not done in backgammon. There are no official records or W-2Gs in backgammon — save for the occasional tournament — and the majority of successful players “forget” to declare any gambling income.