Video Poker FAQ 4. Playing Strategies [ Table of Contents ] 4.1 What is Precision Play? Precision Play is my trademarked name for accurate playing strategies given in a few concisely stated rules instead of the more common hand rank table (as used on my cue cards). Most beginners find it easier to start with the Precision Play rules, then graduate to the cue cards after they become comfortable with at least one game. [ Contents | Top ] 4.2 You say that your cue cards give the strategy as a hand rank table. What is that? Many card combinations that are dealt as your first five cards can be played several ways, and that is where an optimum strategy is important. Suppose, for example, that you are dealt Qc-Jc-10h-9c-4c (in any order). This can be played as a 4-card straight (holding Qc-Jc-10h-9c), a 4-card flush (Qc-Jc-9c-4c), a 3-card inside straight flush (Qc-Jc-9c) or a 2-card royal flush (Qc-Jc). If the particular machine pays a big bonus for a sequential royal flush, you would also want to see if the Queen is in the center position and the Jack adjacent to make a sequential royal possible. The hands on the strategy card are ordered according to Expected Value in descending order. You simply look in the hand rank table to see which combination appears first, and you hold the cards for that draw. Within a half hour of play you will memorize most of the decisions without thinking about it. Expected Value is explained on the supplement sheet that comes with the cue cards. [ Contents | Top ] 4.3 Are the cue cards hard to use? Abbreviations are necessary to make the cards pocket sized, but the cards come with a detailed sheet that tells how to read the tables. You will quickly be able to identify any hand in the table. All serious players use hand rank tables, but if that seems too difficult then stick with my Precision Play method. [ Contents | Top ] 4.4 Does playing on a multi-play machine alter the payback odds and/or the bankroll necessary to hit the royal (as compared to the single play version of the same game)? The payback odds and correct strategy for multi-play machine are exactly the same as for a single play game with the same payoff schedule, but the risk of ruin is reduced. For example, with the same payoff schedule, your risk of ruin on a 5-play quarter machine ($6.25 per bet) is significantly lower than on a single play dollar machine ($5.00 per bet). [ Contents | Top ] 4.5 I know the correct strategy for 9/6 Jacks or Better, but we like to sit at the bar and have free drinks while we play, and most of the machines are 8/5. What kind of different play do we use for those machines? Some of the bar areas have a progressive, but it's seldom very high. Use the same strategy for 8/5 Jacks or Better as for 9/6. The progressive would have to be very high to make any strategy changes desirable. Also, don't forget you are playing at only about 97% payback, so those "free" drinks can be very expensive. In most casinos you can get free drinks no matter where you are playing. If you are in Las Vegas, consider the Plaza or Orleans where they have full pay machines at some of the bars. [ Contents | Top ] 4.6 I like to play Deuces Wild but would like some advice. When dealt two matching royal cards and three deuces, is it best to hold all or should I hold only the deuces hoping for the last one to show? In standard Deuces Wild, it is best by a wide margin to hold all five cards. The wild royal yields an immediate payoff of 25 bets, but the expected value for the three deuces alone is a bit under 15. In games that pay double or more for four deuces, such as Loose Deuces or Sam's Town Bonus Deuces, the expected value for the three deuces rises to 30 or more, so there is a significant gain in always drawing to three deuces alone (but be aware that this also increases your bankroll fluctuations). [ Contents | Top ] 4.7 Are there different guidelines for playing multi-game or multi-play machines? First, never play by "guidelines" offered in some books and magazine articles. Most contain serious errors that will cost you a lot of money. Select a good game by the payoff schedule, and use a computer-derived strategy (which includes all of mine). It doesn't matter whether the game is on a single game machine or a machine with several game choices, and it doesn't matter whether you're playing nickels, quarters or dollars. The correct strategy is always determined solely by the payoff table for the specific game. Also, there is no change in strategy for multi-play games with the same payoff table. What does change on multi-play machines is the variance. Bankroll fluctuations will generally be smaller on a multi-play machine than for the same total per-play bet on the same game on a single-play machine. [ Contents | Top ] 4.8 I often play the IGT MultiPoker machines. I will play Deuces Wild to try for the four deuces, but when I run low on credits I switch to Bonus Poker Deluxe to try for the 400 coins for four-of-a-kind to build up credits. Is this a good strategy? It seems like it is rare to hit the royal or four deuces, so the bigger payoffs don't come on the Deuces Wild even though it it supposed to be 100.75% payback. With optimum strategy, you should hit the four deuces mini-jackpot an average of about once per 4900 hands. If you play 500 hands per hour, that's about once per ten hours of play. Since about 5.8% of the game's payback is in the four deuces and royal jackpots, you are playing at only about 95% short term payback, so you can expect some rather wide bankroll fluctuations. Switching to Bonus Poker Deluxe for the "any four-of-a-kind" payoff is a tactic, not a strategy. It will reduce your bankroll fluctuations, but this game offers less than 100% payback, so you are less likely to be a winner in the long run. My recommendation is to stick with Deuces Wild, knowing that you can get 100.75% payback if you stick it out with correct strategy. If you really want to switch games, why not go to 10/7 Double Bonus? The expected payback is much lower than for Deuces Wild, but at least it's still a bit over 100%. [ Contents | Top ] 4.9 You say that you should never double up (on a machine that offers that option after a winning hand). It seems to me, however, that the percentage return is actually increased when I double up. So why shouldn't I double up? I don't recall ever saying that you should never double up. The overall payback percentage is increased if you're playing a game that offers less than 100% payback. Since the double up option is a 50-50 proposition (assuming an honest game), the average of the video poker play and the double up play would be closer to 100%. In that case, the more you double up, the closer your long-term payback approaches 100%, but it will never quite reach or go over 100%. If you're already playing a 100%-plus game, then doubling up reduces your average payback, again closer to 100%. If you are playing because of a promotion, be aware that on most machines your wager on the double up option is not tallied as action on your slot card. In any case, you should double up any time that you would be willing to risk the amount of your current payoff on the toss of a fair coin. Assuming that you ask your question because you are playing at less than 100%, I must conclude that you're in Atlantic City or some such video poker wasteland. Why not save your money for a trip to Las Vegas? [ Contents | Top ] 4.10 When playing a full-pay Deuces Wild with 4700-coin royal, is there any change in the way I should play a hand with a 2-card royal consisting of a king and a suited queen, jack or ten? All K-high RF2 draws become playable when there is nothing else worth holding, provided there is no more than one penalty card. (A penalty card is any discard that is suited with the RF2 or is a 10 or higher.) Thus, with a hand such as Kh-Jh-8h-7c-3d or Kh-10h-Js-6d-5c you would hold the RF2, but with Kh-Jh-8h-Qc-3d there are two penalty cards (the 8h is a flush penalty, and the Qc is a straight penalty), so you should redraw five cards. [ Contents | Top ] 4.11 While practicing full pay Deuces Wild on WinPoker 6, I was dealt 5h-6h-7s-8h-Qc, and I held 5h-6h-7s-8h. The program indicated that this was an error, so I plugged the cards into the hand analysis, and it gave an EV of 1.7021 for both 5h-6h-7s-8h and 5h-6h-8h. Although the values are the same, I feel that the inside straight draw is superior to the double inside straight flush draw because a larger percentage of possible final hands yield a payoff, making it the lower volatility play. Why does WinPoker say that this is wrong? First off, it is apparent that you have the bet set at five coins, so what you're getting is what might be called the expected return, not the EV. (Expected value is the expected payoff per unit bet, which in this case is 1.7021/5 = 0.3404. In other words, dealt this hand, you can expect an average return of 34.04 cents for each dollar bet.) I consider this to be a design fault in the programs. To get the true EV from WinPoker or Video Poker Tutor, you must set the bet to one coin, but with the standard payoff table, the royal flush is only 250-for-1 for short coin play, so you must also set the 1-coin payoff for the royal to the per-coin payoff (usually 800). To answer your question, though, I agree completely that the Straight 4i (4-card inside straight) draw is superior to the SF3di (3-card double inside straight flush), for just the reason you state. The difference in risk of ruin is not insignificant. At the very least, either play should be accepted as correct. I consider this to be a design fault in the program. So why do these faults exist in this otherwise excellent program? Although Dean Zamzow is the genius programmer of WinPoker, it appears that the marketeer pretty much dictates what the program should do. He apparently prefers the SF3di because of other hands such as 4h-7h-8h-9d-Jc. Here you also have the choice between a Straight 4i (7-8-9-J) or a SF3di (4-7-8). The EV of the straight draw is still 0.3404, but the EV of the SF3di goes up to 0.3552 because neither discard is a penalty card for the SF draw. This and many other such things are explained in my book, Video Poker — Optimum Play. [ Contents | Top ] 4.12 I keep encountering the following situation when playing Jacks or Better. I'm dealt 4c-As-3c-Qs-2c. Rule #6 of the Precision Play rules for Jacks or Better in Video Poker - Optimum Play implies that I should keep the three clubs for a SF draw, but the tutoring program gives me a warning that the better play is to hold the two high spades. In Table 2: Pre-draw hands - Jacks or Better, it appears that the EV is better with the "Straight Flush 3 h0" (0.625) than the 'A-Q suited' (0.578). Am I misinterpreting your rules? Yes, you are misinterpreting the rules. Note that "Straight Flush 3 h0" does not contain an "i" which says "inside draw." Note that 2-3-4 is not open-ended on the bottom end; there are only two ways (A-5 or 5-6) to make a straight, so it has an EV of only 0.519 in this case. A combination such as 3-4-5 is fully open-ended because there are three ways to make a straight (A-2, 2-6 or 6-7), for an average EV of 0.625 as given in the table. 2-3-4 is mid way between an open-ended and an inside draw, and the Precision Play rules group such hands with the inside draws. The EV's given in Table 2 are averages. The actual EV of most hand types varies slightly, depending upon the discards. While this can lead to minor strategy errors, such errors occur infrequently. The "cost" in the long run is lower than the cost of errors that most people would make with more complex rules. The Precision Play rules are designed for optimum play, not computer-perfect play. Personally, I don't worry about such things when I play. Jazbo Burns has proprietary software to determine a game's payback when played according to a certain strategy. He has analyzed my Precision Play rules for Jacks or Better and found the yield to be within 0.01% of perfect play. [ Contents | Top ]