A few weeks ago, I wrote about full-pay deuces wild video
poker and it's 100.6% payback. It has
gotten harder to find 100+% payback machines, but this one can still be found
in many of the casinos that cater to the locals (i.e. OFF the strip!) People are still amazed to find that such
machines exist at all. As I've written
many times, the casinos don't mind leaving a few of these around in lower
denominations. This way they can say
that they have positive payback machines, but they don't really have to worry
about the professionals swarming on them.
Even if you are an Expert Player who can play at 800
hands per hour, you're dropping $1000 in the machine every hour. At 0.6% advantage, you can expect to win $6
per hour. It certainly beats losing, but
no one is getting rich at $6 per hour.
If you're willing to sit in a casino for 40 hours per week just as you
would any other job, you might be able to clear $12,000 per year. Of course, you won't be collecting a regular
paycheck. Some weeks you're going to
lose and others you're going to hit the big payout. But, at the end of the year, should be fairly
close to that $12,000. This will be your
reward for playing roughly 1.6 million hands of video poker and putting into
the machine a mere $2 million!
I'm not going to recommend you quit your day job and try
this. In fact, I won't even recommend
you give up looking for work, if you currently are, and become an professional
video poker Player. For almost everyone
reading this column, you are a recreational player and video poker is a form of
entertainment. Some nights you win, some
nights you lose. Depending how long you
play for per session, you'll lose roughly 2 out of every 3 times you play. But, if you pick the right machines and learn
the right strategy, your night out might cost you $20 and you can get some
entertainment and a few drinks.
With a 100.6% payback, you would definitely be picking
the right machine with Deuces Wild. So,
the only other thing for you to do is to learn the right strategy. At
first glance, the strategy table for Deuces Wild might look daunting due to its
size, but when you look closely, you'll see it is broken down by the number of
Deuces. If you make sure to learn it
this way, you'll find it much easier to learn AND you'll be doing yourself a
huge favor in terms of learning to play properly. Deuces is not a hard game to learn. It is just so vastly different from any other
game, that people make lots of mistakes.
One of the most important things to learn is when to hold
just the Deuces when drawing. it is so
tempting to want to hold the best possible portion of a hand, but sometimes you
simply box yourself into a corner by doing so.
For example, if you are dealt the following:
2 2 6D 7C QD
You may be very tempted to hold the 4-Card Straight
figuring that there are so many possible cards to complete the Straight (a 3,
4, 5, 8, 9 or 10). If you pick up a 6 or
a 7, you'll have Quads. This is clearly
superior to going for the 4-card Flush, which would require one of the remaining
11 (or 10 if the 2 was a Diamond) diamonds to make a Flush or a 6 or Q to
complete the Quads.
The problem with either of these is that they completely
eliminate the possibility of any of the bigger payouts while in essence
targeting some of the lower paying hands.
Further, we the two Deuces, we can do no worse than wind up with Trips,
so it is not like we are giving up a sure winner. Proper strategy says that unless you have a
Royal, Five of a Kind, Straight Flush, Four of a Kind or a 4-Card Royal, you
hold ONLY the two Deuces.
When we take a closer look at the strategy, we find that
we ONLY go for a 4-Card Straight or 4-Card Flush IF we have NO Deuces. Be
very prepared when dealt Deuces in Deuces Wild to frequently play them 'bare'
(hold only the Deuces). Of the 2,598,960
possible 5-card initial deals, 48 will consist of 4 Deuces (obviously, you're
done when this happens). Three Deuces
will occur 4,512. About 90% of these
will be played as just the three Deuces.
Two Deuces will happen 103,776 and nearly 75% of these will be played as
just the two Deuces. A single Deuce will
be dealt 778,310 times. About 45% of
these will be played as the single Deuce.
This is the 3rd most common hand in Deuces, following a Pair and a
Razgu.
If you want to learn to play Deuces Wild, we have three
different products that can help you.
You can find the strategy tables for full-pay Deuces Wild in our book Expert Video Poker for Las Vegas
($5). We have the strategy table for
full-pay Deuces Wild plus a variety of variations of full-pay Deuces Wild in Winning Strategies for Video Poker
($5). Lastly, we have our Deuces Wild
Tipsheet ($2.95) which contains the strategy tables for 3 different Deuces
paytables and has the most detailed information on the full-pay variety of any
of our 3 sources. You can order any or
all of these directly from us. Send a
check or money order to Gambatria, P.O. Box 36474, Las Vegas, NV 89133
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