{"id":114510,"date":"2019-04-02T10:05:33","date_gmt":"2019-04-02T18:05:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/gambling-with-an-edge\/?p=114510"},"modified":"2023-08-24T14:50:13","modified_gmt":"2023-08-24T22:50:13","slug":"its-all-about-the-quads","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/blog\/its-all-about-the-quads\/","title":{"rendered":"It\u2019s All About the Quads"},"content":{"rendered":"

In February, I was playing 25\u00a2 Five Play Multi-Strike 9\/6 Jacks or Better at the South Point. This is a 99.79% game, played for 100 coins ($25) at a time. With the normal 0.30% slot club, the knowledgeable player has a small advantage all of the time.<\/span><\/p>\n

In February, however, there were always two casino-wide progressives going on which added some small amount of EV. The bigger progressive must hit between $10,000 and $25,000, and was currently at about $22,000. Assuming there were 1,000 players playing, each of us had a 1\/1,000 chance of hitting the progressive — but if we were in the other 999\/1000 when it went off, we\u2019d each receive $25 in free play.<\/span><\/p>\n

It was not a huge amount of equity, but I needed to get some play done to keep the mailers coming, so this was the time I would be playing.<\/span><\/p>\n

There are four such machines at the casino, and frequently the other three of them are empty. This time, however, there were two guys playing the 9\/6 Double Double Bonus version of the same game. I had never seen them before, but they were discussing hands like they knew what they were talking about.<\/span><\/p>\n

Although I hadn\u2019t checked recently, I was pretty sure that the Jacks or Better game returned quite a bit more than the Double Double Bonus game. Still, here were two obviously knowledgeable players, so I decided to check next time I was at my computer.<\/span><\/p>\n

When I got home that night, I discovered that the 9\/6 DDB Multi-Strike game returned 99.18%. While I didn\u2019t have this number at my fingertips, it was consistent with about what I thought it was. The base game starts out with JoB worth 0.56% more than DDB and I thought the Multi-Strike aspect to the game would add approximately the same amount to each game. It turned out that it added 0.25% to JoB and 0.20% to DDB.<\/span><\/p>\n

Two days later I stopped by and the progressive was more than $20,000 again, so I sat down to play. One of the players from two days before was there and he asked me if I was Bob Dancer. He told me he had purchased the Video Poker for Winners software years before and that taught him how to play the game. He comes to Vegas five times a year for a four-day trip and always played DDB Multi-Strike. He boasts that he was taught by Bob Dancer.<\/span><\/p>\n

I asked him why he played DDB rather than JoB? He said the results were all about the quads and it was a lot more exciting for him.<\/span><\/p>\n

I told him I understood. Four aces return $200 or $500 (depending on whether they have a kicker) and on the 2x, 4x, or 8x line it can turn into a taxable. Four 2s, 3s, and 4s pay $100 or $200 depending on the kicker and the other quads pay $62.50. These numbers are quite a bit larger than the $31.25 that all quads pay in JoB. Excitement is fun!<\/span><\/p>\n

At the same time, I told him the game he played returned 0.6% less than the JoB version. Since he played about $150,000 each time he came to Vegas, on average that\u2019s $900 per trip or $4,500 per year. Was it that much more exciting?<\/span><\/p>\n

Even JoB is plenty volatile in the Multi-Strike version. DDB is quite a bit more so. Yes, there will be trips he goes home a winner, but there will also be trips he loses quite a bit. He agreed, saying he was down $8,000 so far this trip.<\/span><\/p>\n

This guy taught himself how to play, thanks to the software. But there\u2019s a lot more to playing successfully than just knowing how to play the hands.<\/span><\/p>\n

If this guy has the money and this is how he wants to spend it, great. Everybody gets to make their own choices. <\/span><\/p>\n

Still, it bothered me that someone who loses so much regularly tells people that I was his teacher! <\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In February, I was playing 25\u00a2 Five Play Multi-Strike 9\/6 Jacks or Better at the South Point. This is a 99.79% game, played for 100 coins ($25) at a time. With the normal 0.30% slot club, the knowledgeable player has a small advantage all of the time. In February, however, there were always two casino-wide […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":15763,"featured_media":6498,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[601,558,557],"tags":[719,561,585],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/shop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/114510"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/shop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/shop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/shop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/15763"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/shop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=114510"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/shop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/114510\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/shop\/wp-json\/"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/shop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=114510"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/shop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=114510"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/shop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=114510"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}