Everyone's a Joker!

            I’m continuing last week’s column by continuing the discussion of Joker Wild video poker.  This game is still available in numerous casinos around Las Vegas and offers a 100.65% payback.  As always, of course, it offers this payback ONLY if you find the full-pay paytable.  You should be looking for the following:

Hand	Pays*
Royal Flush (Natural)	800
Five of a Kind	200
Royal Flush (Joker)	100
Straight Flush	50
Four of a Kind	20
Full House	7
Flush	5
Straight	3
Three of a Kind	2
Two Pair	1
High Pair (K’s or A’s)	1

* With Max-Coin play

            There are a total of 50 entries on the strategy table for this version of Joker Wild.  However, they are split up between Joker hands (23) and non-Joker hands (27).  When thought of this way, the process of learning the strategy table becomes much simpler.  First let’s focus on the non-Joker hands which make up almost 90% of the total hands.

            The top half of the non-Joker strategy table has few surprises.  Most of the hands are the pat hands for which there is little to decide.  One key point is that you will discard a Straight to go for any 4-Card Straight Flush.  You do NOT break up a Flush, however, for these cases.  A 3-Card Royal ranks above a High Pair, but below Two Pair and 4-Card Straight Flushes. 

            The bottom half of the non-Joker strategy table contains the hands with an expected value less than 1 so these are the messier partial Straights, Flushes and Straight Flushes.  The key points here are NO 3-Card Straights are playable and NO 3-Card Flushes are playable.  3-Card Straight Flushes, however, are quite playable, but generally below a Low Pair (except for a non-inside 3-Card Straight Flush), but ABOVE the equivalent 4-Card Straight.  So, if you have a 3-Card Straight Flush that is also a 4-Card Straight, you stick with the 3-Card Straight Flush most of the time.  The payout of only 3 on the Straight makes a significant difference for these hands.  If you have a 2-Card Royal that is A-K, K-Q, K-J or K-10, it will outrank holding only the single High Card.  However, it is preferable to hold a single A or K over a 2-Card Royal of 10-J-Q (2 of the three).  A 2-card Royal consisting of an Ace but not a King is not playable.

            It probably is no surprise that on the non-Joker half of things, 3 hand types make up about 70% of all our hands dealt – Low Pair, 1 High Card and Razgu.  This last hand – where we throw all 5 occurs about 12.5% of the time for hands without a Joker, which is 4 times more frequent than in jacks or better.

            On the Joker side of things, we find that the lowest playable hands are 4-Card Straights and 4-Card Flushes.  If after accounting for the Joker you still have an Inside 4-Card Straight, you do NOT play this (i.e. 4-5-JKR-8-Q).  As in non-Joker hands, a 3-card Straight Flush is played over a 4-Card Straight.  Since every hand with a Joker is by its very definition at least a Pair, which one of the 4 remaining cards to you decide to keep if dealt nothing much but the Joker?  You don’t!  Over 10% of our Joker hands will result in a Joker Razgu where we throw the other four cards.  There is no Joker Low Pair hand in Joker Wild.

            There are three secrets to winning at Joker Wild video poker.  The first is to find the right game to play.  There are a lot of different paytables out there and even a variation of Joker Wild that pays beginning at Two Pair, albeit harder to find and not nearly as lucrative.  The second secret is learning the strategy.  It’s really not that hard of a strategy to learn, but if you go in trying to adapt your jacks or better of your Bonus Poker strategy to Joker Wild, you’re going to get killed.  Last, but not least, you need to get your fair share of Jokers.  The payback is all in the Joker hands and if you don’t get your fair share of them, you’re not likely to have a winning session.  The good news is that the payback is above 100%, so you only need your fair share.  If you happen to get even more – all the better for you.

A Wild Ride on the Positive Side

            Frequently, people come up to me asking what is the best game to play in the casino and then answer it themselves by saying, “blackjack, right?”  By saying ‘best’, I usually assume they mean the best paying.  As table games go, they are essentially correct, although it may depend on the exact rules being used.  As for the best paying games (not just table games), the answer to that one is without a doubt video poker.  A decade ago, finding a video poker machine paying 99.6% or better in Las Vegas was easier than finding those little sheets of paper with semi-naked girls on them strewn on the strip.  Today, you have to search a little harder, but they are still there.

            While my father, Lenny Frome, added greatly to the popularity of video poker through his hundreds of articles and numerous books, he is also probably partly responsible for the disappearance of these ‘positive’ games.  Let’s be real.  The casinos don’t exactly purposefully put out games over 100% very often.  No one knows exactly why ANY were allowed to hit the casino floor.  We can only assume that because so many players played so poorly in the early days that the casinos never bothered to notice the few who might take advantage of the situation.

            Also, unlike a table game, which focuses more on a table minimum, video pokers focus on a machine maximum.  A $5 blackjack table allows the player to frequently play up to at least $500.  If that table were somehow created to allow a Player advantage, the Player could win a lot of money at $500 per hand.  With a mere 0.65% Player advantage and playing 30 hands per hour, a $500 blackjack Player could win $110 per hour.  Not a bad salary.  A 25-cent video poker machine allows for the Player to play $1.25 per hand.  At 800 hands per hour, this is still only $1000.  A machine paying 100.65% will afford the player a $6.50 per hour profit.  It beats losing, but tough to make a living off of it. 

            Why did I pick 0.65% as the Player advantage?  This happens to be the advantage for a relatively common form of video poker – Joker’s Wild (A-K).  When I say ‘common’, I don’t mean that you’ll find it at every casino.  I’m not sure you can find any 100+% payback machines along the mid-strip area of Las Vegas.  So long as the Players there are in awe of the marble statues while they play short-pay machines, there is no reason for the casino to offer anything but.  According to my friends at VPFREE, you can find these machines in about a half-dozen casinos in Las Vegas. 

            Now, before you go giving up your day job to go play these Player-friendly machines, I have to tell you that the highest denomination you’re going to find is a quarter machine – which will generate the $6+ per hour I mentioned earlier.  The casinos have figured out that a quarter machine will not attract the professional video poker Players and thus they don’t care much if a couple of people walk away a winner every now and then.  But as I said earlier, it beats losing.

            Learning Joker games can appear to be a bit challenging at first.  The strategy table has 50 entries on it which makes it rather long.  However, when you realize that the hands are broken down to Joker vs. Non-Joker, you realize that you actually have 2 relatively short tables to learn.  The fact that game pays for a Pair of Kings or Better (and not Jacks) means that the need to keep track of the number of High Cards is greatly diminished. 

            One of the toughest parts about playing a Joker’s Wild game is the volatility.  If you don’t get your Jokers frequently enough, you don’t stand much of a chance.  Joker hands account for just under 10% of the total number of hands.  The payback when you have a Joker is a whopping 286%!  For the other 90+% of the hands it is a mere 81.3%.  Expect to see wild swings in your bankroll with this one.