Why Play Max Coins?

            Generally speaking, I advise players to play max-coins when playing video poker.  For most versions, this means 5 coins.  The penny Player puts up 5 cents, the nickel player 25 cents, the quarter player puts up $1.25 and the dollar player has to put up $5 per hand.  This is done for one simple purpose.  On most video poker machines, the top payout - the Royal Flush - changes from 250 for 1 to 800 for 1 when that 5th coins is put in.  If you are playing a Progressive, the only way to win that jackpot is to play 5 coins.

            A payout of 800 for 1 on the Royal is worth approximately 2% of the total payback of the machine.  A payout of only 250 reduces this down to about 0.65%.  So, the Player is giving up more than 1.25% of payback if he plays below max-coin.  In similar fashion, if the machine is offering a Progressive, which should push the Royal payout to above 800, then the Player would be surrendering even more payback by playing below the max-coin level.

            The notion of playing max-coin does NOT mean you should wager 5 times the amount you feel comfortable wagering.  Instead it means you should consider lowering your denomination to the next lower level and then play 5 coins.  So, rather than playing 1 quarter, you should play 5 nickels.  This, of course, assumes that all things are otherwise equal.  It is certainly possible that when you go to a nickel machine (or change to the nickel option on a multi-denominational machine) that the paybacks may change as well and you may find that the payback on the nickel machine is well below that of the quarter.   This makes things a bit more complicated.  If the quarter machines pays 99.5% at max-coin, then it will be closer to 98% if you play 1 quarter.  If the nickel machines pays 98.5% at max-coin, then you'll still be better off playing max-coin nickels.

            There are a few times when you may want to play less than max-coin.  The first is when you are first leaning how to play.  As you are more apt to make mistakes at this point, you might be better off simply playing 1 nickel at a time.  Yes, you will be playing at a lower payback, but at this point, your goal is to become a better player while playing on a real machine.  Ideally, you'd spend most of your 'learning' time playing on your computer (or phone or tablet) at home for free ,but I realize that playing for free may be a lot less exciting than even playing for a single nickel.

            Another reason that you may not want to play max-coin is your bankroll.  If your bankroll is not large enough to support playing max-coin then you might be better off playing single-coin.   Once your bankroll is gone, you're done and you need to make sure you have enough money available to ride out the cold streaks.  Of course, one solution to this issue is again to simply drop down in denomination.  So, this advice really only applies if machines of a lower denomination are not available.  Since the advent of the multi-denominational machine, finding machines that play the denomination you want to play has become much easier, however.   So, this second reason may have limited practical applications.  But, if you find yourself in a situation where your bankroll will support 5 nickel play, but you only have quarter machines available, you may want to consider playing a single quarter as opposed to five quarters.

            One critical point to consider.  Just because you switch a machine from quarter play to nickel play, do NOT assume that the paytable is the same even if you are switching to the same variety of video poker.  There are no requirements that state that a machine must use the same paytable when you move from one denomination to another.   In similar fashion, don't assume that a bank of similar (or identical) looking machines all have the same paytable.  Casinos frequently and presumably purposefully mix the machines up, making sure to sprinkle higher paying machines in with lower paying ones.  I dare say that you may find no rhyme or reason to the pattern of machines on the casino floor.

          

Get Up to SPEED - Let It Ride and Mississippi Stud

            

            Comparing Let It Ride to Mississippi Stud gives us a great opportunity to understand how a subtle difference in betting structure can greatly alter the strategy of the game and thus radically change a game that is otherwise rather similar.  The subtle difference in this case is that in Let It Ride the '1' and '2' wagers are completely optional (essentially, they can be 'checked') and in Mississippi Stud the choice is to Play or Fold.  No checking allowed.

            To best compare these games we need to realize that the idea that the you can take your wager down in Let It Ride doesn't change the game.  The rules of the game could have simply made the '1' and '2' wagers simple optional wagers.  You can either 'check' or you can make the wager. 

            Mississippi Stud also differs in that your first decision is after seeing only 2 cards instead of the 3 as in Let It Ride.  Mississippi Stud's paytable also goes down to a Pair of 6's, whereas Let It Ride goes to a Pair of 10's.   After 2 cards, the Mississippi Stud Player must decide whether to make at least an additional 1-unit wager or to Fold.  Mathematically, this is vastly different than the decision to check or Play.  When we have the decision to check or Play the question becomes one of whether or not the Player will win more than he loses on THAT specific wager.  Prior and future wagers play no part in the equation.  When the choice is to Play or Fold, the question becomes one of whether we can win back at least the amount we are about to wager when we consider ALL other wagers - both those already made and those we might make during the hand.  This is because if we choose NOT to Play, we are forfeiting all past wagers and the right to make all future wagers.

            The impact to this becomes most evident when we compare the '1' wager in Let It Ride to the 4th street Wager in Misssissippi Stud.  In this case, both hands consists of 3 cards and we are deciding whether to/how much to wager on the 4th card.  In Let It Ride, we find ourselves making the wager very infrequently.  We are willing to leave the wager in place only on sure winners (Pair 10's or Better or Trips), 3-Card Royals and 3-Card Straight Flushes (Open or Inside, NOT Double Inside).   We make this wager only 7% of the time.

            In Mississippi Stud, by the time we get to 3 cards, we have already wagered our Ante and at least 1 unit on the 3rd Street Wager.  If we Fold, we are forfeiting both of these  wagers.  We will also end our hand right then and there.  So, we also forfeit the right to potentially benefit from our next wager (5th Street).  The decision to Play 3x is similar to our Let It Ride decision.  Once you are going to win more than you are going to lose on a specific wager, you wager as much as the house lets you.  So, we find that we wager 3x on all sure winners, 3-Card Royals and a variety of 3-Card Straight Flushes.  We still go ahead and wager 1x on a whole lot of hands that sound like they're going to need some help to become winners.  This includes all Low Pairs, 3-Card Flushes and hands with the right combination of High and Medium cards.

            The net result is that we very rarely fold at this decision point.  The overall fold rate for Mississippi Stud is 44%.   31% (or nearly 75% of the total folds) occur after you see the first 2 cards.  Of the remaining 69% of hands that go to 3 cards, you will fold only 12% of the time.

            In Let It Ride, you will let the '2' wager stay up 16% of the time.  In Mississippi Stud, you will make a wager at 5th Street more than 90% of the hands that go that far.  This happens for two major reasons.  The weakest hands were folded very early on.  A hand that started as two Low Cards was dropped early, which makes weaker hands that much less frequent later on.  In Let It Ride, even the weakest hands have a chance to make it to the end of the hand.  The second reason is that when you have 3 units already wagered and you are compelled to either Fold or make another 1-unit wager, it does NOT take a high win frequency to make it worthwhile to make that additional 1-unit wager.   With just 1 High card and 2 Medium Cards or 2 High Cards in hand, it still pays to make this wager.

            With 2 High Cards, the Player still has 6 chances to draw a High Pair which will return 8 units the Player (each).  With 48 cards remaining in the deck this amounts to an expected value of exactly 1.0, which is the cutoff for determining whether or not to make the wager.  Throw in a Medium card as well and he gets 3 more chances to pick up 4 units and the expected value is now 1.25.  If this were a check or Play decision as in Let It Ride, the decision would clearly be to pull it back with these types of hands.

            There is a reason why I've coined Mississippi Stud to be Let It Ride on SPEED.  The games are very similar in how they play but vastly different in strategy and size of bankroll needed to sit and play.  I can't quite cover all the differences or all the strategy here, but for a limited time, I'm offering up a buy one get one special on my two booklets for these games.  Buy Expert Strategy for Mississippi Stud for $5.95 and get Expert Strategy for Let It Ride for free.  Just send check or money order to Gambatria, P.O. Box 36474, Las Vegas, NV 89133 and I'll get them both out to you ASAP.

Counting on Strategy

For those of you who follow the financial pages, you know that last month, the Tropicana in Atlantic City reported that it actually LOST money on its blackjack tables.  This is not a common occurrence.  In fact, it may never have happened before for such a sizable casino.  At the time, they reported that a single Player had won about $5 million dollars playing hands of about $100,000 per hand.  The casino tried to chalk this up to 'bad luck' (on their part).  My first reaction when I read the story was either cheating or counting.

This week, the Press of Atlantic City reported that this same Player had taken two other casinos for several million as well.  They also identified (and interviewed) the Player.  His name is Don Johnson (no, not the one from Miami Vice).  He is the CEO of a company that uses computer-assisted wagering programs for horse racing. Hmmm?!

Mr. Johnson states in the article that he does not cheat.  He simply beats the casino using his skill and a sufficiently sized bankroll.  He also freely admits that in between his wins he's had some significant losses, but he declines to talk about the size of those losses.  Having no reason to doubt him and realizing that his story is quite plausible, I believe we may have stumbled upon one of the best Blackjack Players in the world.

I'm sure that Mr. Johnson has no idea who I am and I'm certainly not suggesting that he endorses any of my strategies, but his story still reinforces so much of Expert Strategy that I felt the need to comment.

Mr. Johnson knew which game to play - Blackjack.  Blackjack affords the player the opportunity to earn a payback of 99.5% by playing proper basic strategy - which is really not all that hard to learn.  Many casinos will even allow Players to have strategy cards with them as long as it doesn't slow up the game.  

Mr. Johnson clearly knew the right strategy to play.  I have no doubt that he knows basic strategy and then some.  Even without card counting, there are some subtle strategy points that an expert would utilize that the average Player would not.  However, these will NOT turn the game positive.  The only way a Player might be able to turn the tables on the casino is to count cards and to adjust both the wager size and the hit/stick strategy accordingly.  Of course, let's not kid ourselves.  This will NOT turn Blackjack into a 105% game.  With just the right changes, a Player might be able to flip the advantage to his own direction - i.e. 100.5%.

That brings me to the other key point that Mr. Johnson raises in his interview.  He was properly BANKROLLED.  Playing a 100.5% or even a 102% game does not mean that the Player will always win or that his session will go in only one direction.  Just as easily as a Player can win playing a 99.5% game, he can lose playing a 100.5%.  However, when you are playing a 100.5% game, you know that the longer you play, the more likely you are going to win.  So, the key is making sure your bankroll lasts long enough to sustain you through a rough patch.  If you're planning on playing $100K per hand, you better show up with more than $1 million.

It took a great deal of knowledge and discipline for Mr. Johnson to do what he did.  Many have tried a variety of card counting schemes with some success, but not too many are known to have taken the casinos for as much as $15 million.  Of course, a portion of this may have been an element of surprise.  The casinos did not know who he was or what he was capable of, so they gladly let him throw his 100K down at a time and probably figured they were about to make a lot of money.

The casinos were so unprepared that at least one of them agreed beforehand to forgive 20% of his losses.  So, if he had walked away down $2 million, they would have given him $400K back.  Clearly the casinos did not do their homework on this guy.  Kind of like facing Nolan Ryan in his prime and saying he can start the count at 0-1!

Bankroll Considerations

  

            Recently, I answered a question from a reader about what to do when you win ‘big’ early in your session.  Of course, both ‘big’ and ‘early’ are rather subjective terms.  Ironically, the definition of big probably has less to do with the denomination you are playing and more to do with the size of your bankroll.  If you showed up with $20 and you hit a $100 hand, you’re more likely to stop than if you came to the casino with $1000 and hit a $100 hand.  In the first case, the Player was probably bankrolled too small and in the latter case, it was overkill.  But it is just a normal human reaction to place the size of the winnings next to the amount of money we show up with to determine what ‘big’ is.

            This, of course, leads to an important question - and one that I’m frequently asked.  What is the right size bankroll for video poker?  To answer that, we need to define some things.  First – what is bankroll?  I’m going to drive my English teachers nuts by telling you what it isn’t.  It isn’t the amount of money you put into the machine.  It’s not the amount of money you head off to the casino with.  It (hopefully) is NOT your life savings.  Bankroll is the amount of money that is the maximum you are willing to lose before calling it quits over some period of time.  So, if you go to the casino with $100 in your pocket, but know full well that if you lose it, you’re going to head to the ATM to get more – then $100 is NOT your bankroll.  Conversely, if you’ve got $1000 in your pocket and if you drop $200 you are heading for your hotel room, then the $200 is your real bankroll and not the $1000.

            So, what does this bankroll really do for us?  Well, it sets a maximum that we can lose over some defined period of time.  Maybe it is a single session over a single day/night.  Or, maybe it is the amount we are willing to lose over a week-long vacation.  Why is it important?  Well, besides setting some limits for ourselves, it is also tells us that at the point we’ve lost that much, we are done.  There is no coming back from that loss with a hot streak.  So, if we were to sit at a $5 blackjack table with $5, we have to realize that if we lose that very first hand, we’re done.  If we sit down with $20, then we have to lose 4 more hand than we win (ignoring doubling and splits) to be ‘broke’.  If we sit down with $1000 then we’d have to lose 200 more hands than we won.  With a $5 bankroll, you have a greater than 50% chance of going bust just on the first hand.  With a $1000 bankroll, you might be able to play weeks or months before going bust.

            While we assign a payback to every game, and we can calculate the anticipated loss over a period of time for that game, this is just a theoretical average over time.  Most casino games are fairly volatile which is simple terms means STREAKY.  So, if you play an hour of $5 blackjack, you can realistically expect to lose about $8.  If you start with $100, you’re almost guaranteed to get thru that hour.  If, however you start with $10, your chances of playing the entire hour go down considerably, which ironically means that you would lose MORE than the ‘average’.  By not allowing yourself a reasonable opportunity to come back from a cold streak, you in essence do yourself a grave disservice.  This is why showing up with the right size bankroll is so important.

            One could thus argue that the right size bankroll is one that makes sure that you have ZERO chance of going bust before you are done playing the amount of time you want to play.  There is a certain amount of truth to this notion, but it removes the human element.  It is too easy for us ‘greedy’ human to decide to play longer or up our wager if we have too much cash on hand.  Also, sometimes it is not so practical to do this.  To play an hour at $5 blackjack, we would merely need to show up with $150-$175.  If, however, we wish to play 3 hours of video poker – max-coin quarters – we would need almost $2000 (assuming 500 hands per hour).  This is probably overkill if you’re playing a full-pay jacks or better machine.

            I created a program that simulated video poker.  It started with different bankroll amounts.  If at any point in the 1500-hand session the Player lost more than his bankroll, he was considered to have ‘busted’ and the session ended.  For the moment, I just focused on the percentage of busts and did not bother keeping track of how far into the session the Player was or how he would’ve done had he decided to go beyond his bankroll (i.e. how often does he recover his initial bankroll by using yet more money).

            If the Player starts with 200 wagers ($250 for a max-coin quarter machine), he went bust only 1.39% of the sessions.  If we cut our bankroll down to 120 wagers ($150), our Player went bust just a smidge under 20% of the time.  If the bankroll is reduced to 80 wagers ($100), we find that the bust rate goes up to over 43%.  If the Player tries to get away with a mere $50 bankroll, he’ll find that he’ll lose it all about 73% of the time.  Try and get away with only $25 and you’ll lose the entire bankroll more than 87% of the time.

            So, what’s the right amount of bankroll?  There is no absolute right answer for that.  You have to decide how much you’re willing to risk that your session ends prematurely.  But, if you’re looking for some advice, based on the numbers presented here, I’d go with 120 wagers ($150).   You’ll go bust only 20% of the time, and if you’re night is going that bad, you might just be best off calling it a night.

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.