I had a conversation with a strong player, and he posed a series of ethical questions. He estimated that if I asked this question in a crowd of people, at least 75% of players would claim they would do the right thing in each situation. But if nobody else were around, less than 50% would actually do the right thing.
I’m not sure about his percentages, but they sound approximately right, more or less. So, let’s look at the questions.
Continue reading What Would You Do?I was walking through Sam’s Town here in Las Vegas on a Tuesday in June. The casino offers 10x points (worth 0.5%) for seniors on Tuesdays and I was scouting the place looking to see if anything might be of interest. Even after all these years, scouting is part of my routine.
I’ve been restricted from receiving mailers for more than a decade at all Boyd properties (including Sam’s Town), so anything I find has to be good enough by itself to be worthwhile, because there won’t be additional benefits coming down the road.
Continue reading It Might Not Scratch My ItchNSU is the 16-10-4-4-3 pay schedule of Deuces Wild that returns 99.728% when played well. “pNSU” (for pseudo NSU) is the name Liam W. Daily and I used to describe the 15-9-4-4-3 Deuces Wild pay schedule that returns 98.913%. Our name is still seen out there sometimes, but the name Airport Deuces, among others, is a far more common nickname for this game. Some people prefer to call these games “NSU (or pNSU) Deuces” or “NSU (or pNSU) Deuces Wild” but I’ve always preferred just NSU and pNSU.
I know NSU really well. I’ve played it probably 5,000 hours over the years. Taught it several dozen times, including the Advanced Strategy with all the penalty cards perhaps ten times. I co-wrote the Winner’s Guide for the game. And I still review the fine points periodically.
Continue reading Using NSU Deuces Wild Strategy for pNSU DeucesWhat I’m going to talk about today is a personal preference. It definitely works for me. I have no idea if it is something that would work for most people or not, but you take a gander and see if it’s a possibility for you.
One of the games I play at South Point is Multi Strike. Although I play the 25¢ 9/6 Jacks or Better Five Play version of Multi Strike, the technique I’m espousing works on any version of the game. It also works on Super Times Pay and Double Super Times Pay, along with a few others.
Continue reading How I Do ItOn February 23, my blog addressed the subject of quitting while you’re ahead and other similar strategies that do absolutely nothing to the expected return of a game. I received a number of comments to that blog, including the one I’m going to share with you today:
“I stop when I’ve won a decent jackpot, usually a four-of-a-kind that kicks out $200 or more. I’m good with winning a $200 hand. $200 will buy a nice evening out with my wife, so really, we both win.”
Continue reading A Very Different ApproachThe mathematical analysis in this blog was done by Rick Percy. I do not have the tools to do that analysis myself. Thank you, Rick!
My personal goal is to learn the best strategy for every game I play. Not everybody shares that goal. Some people want to minimize their work, or don’t have the time, or have trouble keeping the differences between strategies straight.
Continue reading Using One Strategy for Two GamesIn Las Vegas, there was a 70-day break for the pandemic, assuming you played in the casinos on March 17 and returned on June 4. If you socially distanced before March 17, or didn’t rush back as soon as the casinos reopened, the break was longer.
Certain casino venues elsewhere in the country opened earlier or later than June 4, but for now, let’s assume we all had a 2¼ -month break, minimum. It’s close enough for today’s purposes.
Continue reading Are You Still Up to Snuff?In the 1970s, I was a backgammon player in Los Angeles. Decent enough player, but not great.
One of the semi-regular players at the Cavendish West was a guy named Steve. Steve was a so-so intermediate player — but he cheated. After a while, word got out and he couldn’t get into a game because his reputation preceded him.
I didn’t mind him as a person, although I would never gamble with him nor ever enter into a deal with him where he had a chance to screw me. Our respective girl friends liked each other and sometimes we went out as a foursome. I always insisted on him giving me $100 before we went out to cover his half of the meal. I would return any amount left over. No $100 beforehand meant no double date.
In January 1977, we visited a restaurant that I liked and Steve had never visited. It was a week before the Oakland Raiders versus Minnesota Vikings Superbowl XI. Since the game was being held in nearby Pasadena, there was a lot of local interest and the owner/cook, Jack, had the restaurant decorated in silver and black — signifying he liked the Oakland Raiders in that game.
Steve saw an opportunity. He was quite a charming guy — until it became time to pay up. He chatted up Jack and before too long they made a bet for “double or nothing for the next meal Steve ate” based on the results of the upcoming game.
Although the bet sounded fair, knowing Steve, it clearly wasn’t. If the Vikings won, Steve would bring three guests and order up lobster tails all around with several bottles of expensive wine. If the Raiders won (which actually turned out to be the case), Steve would disappear. He would never be around to pay off the bet.
By accepting the bet, Jack put himself into a position where he couldn’t win, but he could lose big-time.
My personal philosophy on bets between two other people is to stay out of it unless a family member was taking the worst of it. Whatever the two of them arranged was fine. Even if I thought one of them was taking the worst of it, I kept my mouth shut.
And that’s what I did here — with great misgivings.
While I didn’t know Jack well, I had been there for dinner three or four times and we greeted each other by first names. He didn’t know Steve was a sleazeball, but I did. Did he have a reasonable expectation that I wouldn’t bring someone dishonorable into his restaurant? I wasn’t sure, but it didn’t feel right to me.
Since the Raiders ended up winning, that was clearly the “least bad” result for Jack. He wasn’t going to get paid off by Steve, but his team won, and he wasn’t going to be out anything.
Even so, I didn’t feel comfortable going back to that restaurant again. I didn’t want to answer questions about “my friend Steve and when was he coming by to pay up.” So, I guess Jack did lose one occasional customer and one occasional friend.
What would you have done? Would you have spoken up at the time? And if so, would it have been in front of both of them or just privately with Jack? Keep in mind that the fact that the Raiders ended up winning is irrelevant to whether I should have spoken up at the time of the bet. When it was time to “do something or not,” the game had not yet been played.
Author’s Note: I recently broke my rule about not getting involved if a family member of mine was taking the worst of it. There was a Caesars Seven Stars party and I got tickets for Bonnie, her sister, and her daughter. I was off at an Improv workshop. The three ladies would have a good time together. Bonnie had met several of my gambling friends that she liked and many of them would probably be there.
During the evening, Bonnie ran into two of these friends, “Tim” and “Alice.” Tim talked Bonnie into a $3 bet on an upcoming football game. Bonnie came back and told me about her bet with Tim, but she had no idea what team she bet on. She couldn’t tell me which teams were playing, let alone who was favored. Tim sent an amusing email contract using over-the-top legalese documenting the bet. I accepted on Bonnie’s behalf and promised to hold her feet to the fire should she lose.
Turns out that Bonnie’s team was a 1½-point underdog and she was making the bet straight up. While she’s definitely a family member taking the worst of it, I kept quiet. For $3 at a time, getting the wrong side isn’t so terrible.
This is a continuation of last week’s column. You may wish to read that one before you start here. I actually suggested you do some homework between then and now. I understand that many of you did not do the homework (it’s not too late!) but those of you who did will get more out of this.
The Wizard of Odds strategy calculator provides a basic strategy and a list of exceptions to that basic strategy. These exceptions are generally caused by what are called “penalty cards.” This is going to be the area where we’re going to find our strategy deviations. A 1% change in hard-to-get hands is not going to cause major differences.
In the group of hands where it says you should hold the J instead of the normal unsuited AJ, the top nine hands are as follows:
These hands may look the same to some of you, but they are all different. The difference between the first two, for example, is whether the ace and four are suited with each other or not. Sometimes the two and three are suited with each other; sometimes not. Once you focus in on these types of differences, you can see they are all different.
What’s more, each one stands for a variety of hands. The first one stands for all cases where the ace and four are suited, the two and three are suited (in a different suit that the ace and four), and at the same time the jack is unsuited with each of the others. There are actually 24 different hands that are represented by that one line. In every line where there are three or four suits (which include all of these), there are 24 different hands represented.
What I did is copy all of the hands for the regular SDB strategy and pasted them into an Excel spread sheet. There turned out to be 334 of them. I then copied and pasted the hands from the Dotty’s version of SDB and pasted them side-by-side with the regular SDB hands. There were also 334 of them. I spot checked the two lists side by side and determined they were identical. Therefore, I concluded that I had to look elsewhere for the strategic differences.
The next type of hand I looked at was being dealt an unsuited ace king and only holding the ace. In the regular SDB version, there are 276 cases where only the ace is held. ALL of these 276 cases include a ten unsuited with the ace. In the Dotty’s version, there were 48 hands which did not include a ten, and also 354 that did include a ten. That means there are at least two types of strategic changes to identify.
I’m going to print, in black and white, the 48 cases where there is no ten and we hold the ace by itself rather than AK. How would you describe these hands in a way that accurately describes these hands and no other ones?
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The three features you need to notice are:
On my strategy sheet, I omit the third element above simply because a 3-card straight flushes with no high card and either one or no insides are quite a bit higher than either an unsuited ace king or an ace by itself.
I write the other two rules as AK . . . . (< A with no fp and no lsp)
The “fp” stands for “flush penalty” and refers to a card suited with the ace. The “lsp” stands for “low straight penalty” and means a 2, 3, 4, or 5.
Now let’s look at the 78 cases, including a ten, where you hold the ace rather than AK when you’re playing the Dotty’s version rather than standard SDB.
| 2♣3♣10♣K♦A♥ | 2♣4♦10♣K♥A♠ | 3♣4♦10♥K♥A♠ | 3♣5♦10♣K♥A♠ | |||
| 2♣3♣10♦K♣A♥ | 2♣4♦10♦K♣A♥ | 2♣5♣10♣K♦A♥ | 3♣5♦10♦K♣A♥ | |||
| 2♣3♣10♦K♦A♥ | 2♣4♦10♦K♦A♥ | 2♣5♣10♦K♣A♥ | 3♣5♦10♦K♦A♥ | |||
| 2♣3♣10♦K♥A♠ | 2♣4♦10♦K♥A♠ | 2♣5♣10♦K♦A♥ | 3♣5♦10♦K♥A♠ | |||
| 2♣3♦10♣K♣A♥ | 2♣4♦10♥K♣A♠ | 2♣5♣10♦K♥A♠ | 3♣5♦10♥K♣A♠ | |||
| 2♣3♦10♣K♦A♥ | 2♣4♦10♥K♦A♠ | 2♣5♦10♣K♣A♥ | 3♣5♦10♥K♦A♠ | |||
| 2♣3♦10♣K♥A♠ | 2♣4♦10♥K♥A♠ | 2♣5♦10♣K♦A♥ | 3♣5♦10♥K♥A♠ | |||
| 2♣3♦10♦K♣A♥ | 3♣4♣10♣K♦A♥ | 2♣5♦10♣K♥A♠ | 4♣5♣10♣K♦A♥ | |||
| 2♣3♦10♦K♦A♥ | 3♣4♣10♦K♣A♥ | 2♣5♦10♦K♣A♥ | 4♣5♣10♦K♣A♥ | |||
| 2♣3♦10♦K♥A♠ | 3♣4♣10♦K♦A♥ | 2♣5♦10♦K♦A♥ | 4♣5♣10♦K♦A♥ | |||
| 2♣3♦10♥K♣A♠ | 3♣4♣10♦K♥A♠ | 2♣5♦10♦K♥A♠ | 4♣5♣10♦K♥A♠ | |||
| 2♣3♦10♥K♦A♠ | 3♣4♦10♣K♣A♥ | 2♣5♦10♥K♣A♠ | 4♣5♦10♣K♣A♥ | |||
| 2♣3♦10♥K♥A♠ | 3♣4♦10♣K♦A♥ | 2♣5♦10♥K♦A♠ | 4♣5♦10♣K♦A♥ | |||
| 2♣4♣10♣K♦A♥ | 3♣4♦10♣K♥A♠ | 2♣5♦10♥K♥A♠ | 4♣5♦10♣K♥A♠ | |||
| 2♣4♣10♦K♣A♥ | 3♣4♦10♦K♣A♥ | 3♣5♣10♣K♦A♥ | 4♣5♦10♦K♣A♥ | |||
| 2♣4♣10♦K♦A♥ | 3♣4♦10♦K♦A♥ | 3♣5♣10♦K♣A♥ | 4♣5♦10♦K♦A♥ | |||
| 2♣4♣10♦K♥A♠ | 3♣4♦10♦K♥A♠ | 3♣5♣10♦K♦A♥ | 4♣5♦10♦K♥A♠ | |||
| 2♣4♦10♣K♣A♥ | 3♣4♦10♥K♣A♠ | 3♣5♣10♦K♥A♠ | 4♣5♦10♥K♣A♠ | |||
| 2♣4♦10♣K♦A♥ | 3♣4♦10♥K♦A♠ | 3♣5♦10♣K♣A♥ | 4♣5♦10♥K♦A♠ | |||
| 3♣5♦10♣K♦A♥ | 4♣5♦10♥K♥A♠ |
The two features here are:
The second rule can lead you astray if you’re unfamiliar with regular SDB advanced strategy. In the regular strategy, AK (<A with no fp, a T, and at most one lsp). In the Dotty’s version, we have simplified to AK (<A with no fp and no T).
Something to keep in mind is that ace king is exactly equivalent to ace queen and ace jack. So, using an H as a “high card lower than the first card listed” our rule becomes
AH …. (< A with T and no fp) (<A with no fp and no lsp)
A few weeks ago, I wrote a column about having an ace with a suited jack ten. Those rules take precedence over the ones I’m discussing today.
Next, I looked at a suited jack ten versus an unsuited king jack. Since a suited jack ten could become either a straight flush or a royal flush, and both of those pay schedule categories had a 1% increase, it’s possible there’s a change here. But copying and pasting the lists of exceptions to an Excel spread sheet side by side told me the two cases were identical — hence no strategic changes here.
For the suited queen ten with a flush penalty, sometimes you just hold the queen. It turns out there is a difference between the two games. I can print out the differences and let you see if you can figure out the rule, but you can do that yourself if you like. I’ve shown you enough examples so that you get the idea. In regular SDB, you hold the Queen by itself in these cases where one or more of the following conditions apply.
In the Dotty’s version, the first condition disappears and to hold the queen by itself there must be an 8 and/or a 9 in the hand. That is, on a hand like Q♣T♣3♣ 5♦7♥, in regular SDB you hold the queen while in the Dotty’s version you hold queen ten. In both games, on a hand like Q♣T♣3♣ 4♦ 7♥, you hold the queen ten. You might remember from last week’s column that you get fewer quad Js-Ks in the Dotty’s version of the game. This one type of hand is the primary reason why.
I checked the rest of the hands and couldn’t find any more differences. If you can identify some other case where the strategy varies, I’d appreciate you letting me know.
Finally, the question sometimes arises as to whether I really attempt to play these games taking into consideration all of these things. The answer is: “Yes I do.” It’s part of playing the game correctly and that’s my aspiration. I don’t always succeed and I sometimes make mistakes for a variety of reasons (mainly being tired, sticky buttons, or simply mis-fingering), but my goal is to play perfectly.
One of the casinos I play at is Dotty’s, which is a chain of more than 100 15-machine outlets all across Nevada, plus a few larger ones. There are perhaps 10 of them within 10 miles of my home.
One of the promotions that attracts me relates to W2Gs. Every week, 10% of the W2Gs earned company-wide earn a 10% bonus. That is, if you receive a $4,000 royal flush, 10% of the time you receive an additional $400 in cash. I estimate the value of that by assuming I’ll get an extra $40 for every such jackpot. (in other words, $40 every time adds up to the same number as $400 10% of the time.) I’ll end up with the same EV, although I’ll be underestimating the variance a little.
My game of choice currently is 9/5 Super Double Bonus. If I play that game for at least $25 per hand, I’ll get W2Gs for all quads as well as for each straight flush and royal flush.
I’ve known the strategy for that game for some time and I’ve written about it periodically. The question I’m looking at today and next week is: Does the strategy change with the Dotty’s promotion? And if so, what are those changes? Further, assume that I’m not a computer programmer and I don’t have access to computer software that you don’t. So how do I go about this?
I wish to learn to play the game perfectly. I understand that this may not be your goal. Still, learning how to do it is what this week’s and next week’s columns are all about. Someday there may well be a promotion that you wish to figure out.
The software I’m going to use for this analysis is the Wizard of Odds (WOO) Video Poker Strategy Calculator. It will give you a perfect strategy and it’s available for free online. Although I’m not a huge fan of the notation used on that product, it’s hard to complain too loudly when it’s free and completely accurate.
For the base game, the pay schedule is 800, 80, 160, 120, 80, 50, 9, 5, 4, 3, 1, 1 Adding 1% to each of the top six figures will make the return on one of them 50.5. Although the WOO software does accept decimal points, I prefer to multiply all of the amounts by 10. That is 8000, 800, 1600, etc. Since the strategy is calculated using relative values, multiplying all pay schedule categories by a fixed amount has no effect whatsoever on the strategy.
For the Dotty’s version, I enter the payout amounts as 8080, 808, 1616, 1212, 808, 505, 90, 50, 40, 30, 10, 10. The lowest six pay schedule categories don’t receive the 1% increase because they don’t result in W2Gs. If I wanted to bet $134 or more per single-line hand, I could get W2Gs on full houses as well. For today we can ignore that refinement.
In the chart below, the numbers in red indicate numbers for the base 9/5 SDB game. The numbers in green represent the numbers for the Dotty’s version.
The actual chart created by the WOO software has several more columns to it that I’ve omitted here. If you duplicate either the red or green Payoff numbers in the WOO Video Poker Strategy Calculator, you’ll see the omitted columns. Those columns include useful information, but not information we’re using today. If you don’t duplicate this information yourself, how do you know if you can do it? It’s not difficult, but “practice makes perfect.” If you don’t know how to use a tool, it’s the same as not having the tool at all.
In the red section of the chart, find the number 490,732,320. That’s the number of occurrences for royal flushes out of 19,933,230,517,200. (In a recent Gambling with an Edge episode, Michael Shackleford explained where this number comes from.) In the green section, the corresponding number is 491,575,464.
That means that when you change strategies to take advantage of these W2G bonuses, you get more royals. You should be able to see you also get more straight flushes, more aces, more 2s-4s, and more 5s-Ts. For some reason I’ll explain next week, you get fewer Js-Ks.
Okay. Now I know there are strategy changes. This is the first part of what I wanted to know. I now need to find out what these changes are.
I’m going to tell you what those changes are — next week. I’m going to use the WOO Video Poker Strategy Calculator to do this. What I strongly recommend is that you work this out yourself. All the information you need is in the software which is online and free. As I said before, if you don’t know how to use a tool, it’s the same as not having the tool at all.
