What to Play

            Last week, I wrote about Four Card Poker and mentioned how I would cover it's 'crazy' cousin - Crazy 4 Poker in an upcoming column.  I started to work on this column this past week when I got to the point of discussing why a Player would choose to play one of the games over the other.  The overall paybacks are fairly similar.  The reality is, that I can't really suggest to Players to play one of these games instead of the other.  This is because casino games are (or at least should be) a form of entertainment and we can't overlook this factor in our choices.

            So much of what I write is all about the math.  Years ago, my father, Lenny Frome, described Expert Strategy as a three-legged stool, with each leg equally important.  After all, we know what happens if one leg of a stool is shorter than the other two!   These three legs were:

·         Know which game to play

·         Know how to play that game

·         Know what to expect

            The first of these legs essentially referred to the payback of the game.  Don't play short-pay machines when you can find full-pay machines.  On the surface, it might mean play only the game(s) with the absolute highest payback.  But, if that were the case, everyone should be clamoring for the one type of video poker machine in the casino with the highest payback - probably some Deuces Wild variant. 

            If this were what my father intended, why did he bother to write about all the other games in detail - not just video poker but all of the proprietary table games too?  This is why a few years back, I added a concept to my father's three-legged stool.  I called it the comfy cushion.  It means you have to ENJOY playing whatever game you choose as well.  There are two significant reasons why I added this explicity to Expert Strategy.

            The first reason is because, as I said earlier, gambling should be a form of entertainment.  By this definition, you should enjoy it your time doing it.  Yes, I fully understand that it is a somewhat unique form of entertainment in that you might walk away with more money than you started, but with rare exception, these are not life-altering amounts of money we are talking about.  I'm sure no one minds being miserable while they are winning thousands (or hundreds of thousands of dollars), but more often than not, your win will be far smaller than this and you will lose more often than you will win.  No one likes to lose, but if you're absolutely miserable while you are losing $20 over 3 hours, something is very wrong.   When you go to a movie theater, there is a good chance you'll spend $20 too.  You'll have no chance of getting that money back.  You probably won't mind if the movie was good.  If the movie was a rotten tomato, it might bother you a bit more.  This is the same attitude you should take with you to the casino.

            The second reason is that if you're not having any fun while playing, there's a pretty good chance you are going to forget all about the other two legs of the stool.  You may know how to play a game, but in your frustration you'll start doing things you shouldn't be doing.  You may know what to expect, but while you're not having fun, you'll start imagining the cards are all against you or that the casino must be cheating and again, you'll go away from the strategy that you are supposed to be using.  So, on a theoretical level, you might be playing a game with a higher payback, but if you don't adhere to the strategy you may find that on a reality level, you've lowered the payback to the point where you'd be better off playing a different game.

            Undoubtedly, some of you may take what I'm saying as carte blanche to now go off and play any game in the casino.  In the end, of course, it is your decision.  But, please don't take this as my endorsement of playing slots or sitting down at a Craps table and simply playing the Hardways bets for hours at a time.  The other two legs of Expert Strategy remain full in force, so I suggest you certainly know what to expect in these cases.  Your chances of a winning session is greatly reduced.  It is one thing to pick a 99.2% video poker machine over a 99.6% one.  It is quite another to play a 91% payback proposition bet for hours.  If this is the only thing you enjoy in the casino, it might be time to pick a new form of entertainment

Still Wild About Deuces Wild

            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

Deuces Gone Wild

            I love getting fan mail and/or e-mails from readers.  There are two reasons for this.  The first is that it is always nice to know that someone is actually reading my column.  It is especially gratifying when someone tells me that they ALWAYS read my column.  The second reason is that a question from a reader can frequently become the basis for a particular week's article.  There are times I sit down to write my column and I simply don't know what I want to write.  I think of a topic and realized I covered it at some point.  Of course, being that I have now been writing for Gaming Today for more than 8 years, it is possible that I last wrote about the topic in 2005 and by now there may be some new readers.

            This week, I received an e-mail from someone who was questioning some of the strategy for Full Pay Deuces Wild.   Full Pay Deuces can be found in several casinos in Las Vegas.  As is the case for most 100+% machines, you won't find them on the strip.  You're going to have to head to some of the local casinos (such as Station Casinos) if you want to find them.  My source (www.vpfree2.com) shows that there should be 100+ machines scattered about at a variety of denominations up to a quarter. 

            While I've never been a big fan of Deuces Wild, this is just a personal choice.  Any game that pays 100.6+% is hard to criticize and is a good game for the regular Player to learn and master.  The strategy table is rather long, but when you break it down by the number of wild cards, you realize that it is not really a hard strategy to learn.  With a paytable that begins paying at Three of a Kind, you don't have to worry about counting High Cards.  The one thing, I strongly advise the beginner to learn is how to recognize hands with lots of wild cards in them.  It can become very easy to not realize that 2 6D 9D 10D KH is a 4-Card Inside Straight Flush with 1 Wild Card. 

            The question I received this week was specifically about holding a 4-Card Inside Straight (presumably with no Wild Cards) versus throwing all 5 cards as a Razgu.  The strategy table tells us that we hold the 4-Card Inside Straight.  If you look at the strategy table in Winning Strategies for Video Poker, however, it lists both hands as having an expected value 0.3+ - although it does list the 4-Card Inside Straight higher meaning its "+" is greater than the Razgu "+".

            While I write extensively on Video Poker in Gaming Today, I spend most of my time analyzing table games.  Many years ago I did write my own video poker engine that allows me to analyze most video poker paytables.  One of the limitations is that it does NOT do wild card games.  Fortunately, I have both other resources available to me and the ability to quickly create a program to help determine exactly how much those "+" are worth.

            Calculating the expected value of the 4-card Inside Straight was very easy.  There are 8 ways to draw the Straight (4 Wild Cards plus 4 of the 'natural' way to complete the Straight).  Each pays 2 units so we have a total return of 16 units.  Divide this by 47 ways to draw and we have an expected value of 0.3404.

            The Razgu is a bit more complicated.  As I've written about in the past, the overall expected value as shown in a strategy table for a hand like a Razgu is the actually the AVERAGE of all the possible hands of that type.  Often, no single hand will actually have EXACTLY the expected value shown. 

            About 20% of all hands in Deuces Wild are classified as a Razgu, each with their own subtleties.  The exact make up of suits and ranks will have some impact on the exact expected value.  For each 10 through Aces that is in the hand, there will be less chances to make a Natural Royal.   The exact suit composition of the initial deal will impact the number of possible Flushes that can be made if we discard all five cards. 

            In this particular case, however, the reader was talking about a 4-Card Inside Straight, which does limit the possibilities.  In order to get a more exact expected value, I quickly set up a program that had the initial deal set to 3D 4C 5H 7S 8S.  I figured that by leaving in all of the High Cards I would leave the expected value about as High as it could go and we could see just how close of a decision this really is.

            The expected value of this specific Razgu came back at 0.3267.   So, it would be more accurate to say that a Razgu is about 0.33- and a 4-Card Inside Straight is 0.34+.  It is not exactly a canyon between the two expected value, but there is a clearly superior choice.

            To help me prove my work, I realized that we also sell a Deuces Wild tipsheet that my father created a long time ago.  It has more detailed numbers on it.  It actually lists the expected value to two decimal places.  It lists the 4-Card Inside Straight 0.34 and the Razgu at 0.32.  (When all the possible Razgus are considered, the average must wind up at below 0.325).   It was good to know that my quick and dirty program was able to produce accurate results!

            If you're interested in learning the strategy on Deuces Wild, we have the tipsheet for $2.95.  It includes the strategy tables for Deuces Wild, Double Pay Deuces Wild and Triple Pay Deuces Wild.  Or you can order Winning Strategies for Video Poker which includes these 3 paytables plus dozens more for only $5.  Send a check or money order to Gambatria, P.O. Box 36474, Las Vegas, NV 89128.

Beating the Casino

            

            A couple of weeks ago, I discussed how a blogger lamented how the last good table game invented was blackjack because none of the games invented since gave the Player a chance to beat it.  I would argue that blackjack is hardly 'beatable'.  It requires an incredible amount of discipline and knowledge of card-counting schemes in order to eke out even the slightest edge.  With the continuous shufflers and regrettably 6 to 5 payouts on blackjack, even with the most sophisticated counting scheme, beating the game is almost impossible.

            There is only one game on the casino floor (barring the occasional game that accidentally makes it to the floor) that is readily beatable.  That is video poker.  There are games all are over Las Vegas with paybacks of over 100%.  If you learn the proper strategy you can earn these paybacks.  I will not, however, promise that you will become filthy rich off them.  Unlike card-counting schemes which would allow you to bet $5 when the count is against you and perhaps $5000 or more when it is in your favor, video poker machines essentially have a constant wager and there are no known counts for you to track.  Each hand is completely random and no matter how many hands you have won or lost in a row, the next hand is still random.

            Over the years the casinos have caught on to this idea and this is why many are still willing to put machines on their floor with paybacks over 100%.  They simply don't put them on the floor with high denominations.   If you are willing to play video poker 40 hours per week (like a job), are able to play 700 hands per hour, you would play 1,456,000 hands per year (approximately).  If you played a quarter machine, you would wager the staggering sum of $1.82 Million per year.  If you can play the entire time on a full-pay Deuces Wild machine paying 100.76%, you'll earn about $13,800 per year.  This doesn't account for any taxes and doesn't account for any cash back and/or comps.  

            Of course, some of you will just suggest playing a higher denomination.  Even playing dollars, the annual 'salary' will get to only $55,000 or so.  This is certainly not a bad income.  Of course, this most certainly doesn't mean you can count on any sort of regular 'paycheck'.  There are going to be weeks you lose and there are going to be weeks you win far more than average.  And, as I said earlier - the casinos have caught on to this.  According to my research, there are no $1 machines playing full-pay Deuces Wild in the Las Vegas area.  So, the casinos are willing to let the resourceful Player make some money, but not enough to really entice large numbers of Players to do them harm. 

            This is also further proof that video poker machines are not slot machines.  Casinos would NEVER allow banks of 100+% slot machines to exist.  Slot machines require no strategy.  Thus, as long as the slot machine were to be played for 40 hours per week the casino would be paying out the $13,800.  To the casino it doesn't matter if this is one person, 10 people, 100 people or 1000 people who wind up winning this money.

            Video poker requires that the Player learn the proper strategy to earn this money.  So, if 52 people took turns playing for 1 week and played using Expert Strategy, then the casino would still be paying out the $13,800.  But the casinos know this is highly unlikely.  Despite strategies for virtually every imaginable game being available for 10-20 years, the overwhelming percent of Players simply choose to ignore the proper strategy.  The reality is that 50% of the Players probably know of no real strategy and just muddle along - playing a Deuces Wild game at no better than a 95% payback.  Perhaps another 25% play using some rudimentary strategy that they learned somewhere and play at 97%.  Another 15-20% have made real attempts to learn strategy but haven't really mastered it and can play at 99%.  The final 5-10% have learned the proper strategy and make a significant attempt to play properly.  Perhaps half of this group truly attains a payback of 100.5% or better.

            The result for the casino is that their machine probably pays out at no more than 96.5% in total.  A number that they can definitely live with.  However, just as the casino doesn't care if it is 1 or 1000 Players that win the $13,800, you do not have to be concerned with how any other Players do.  The casino is very happy with that machine that pays back 96.5% and will net them more than $65000 per year - EVEN if it means one of the Players made a few hundred or thousand over the course of the year.

            But, if you want to be this Player, you have to learn how to play video poker using the proper strategy.  To help you along the way, we're offering up our two full-length books for just $5 each (which includes postage and handling).  Winning Strategies for Video Poker includes strategy tables for 61 of the most common games found anywhere.  America's National Game of Chance: Video Poker is 200 pages of Lenny Frome's best articles, stories and quizzes and is an excellent way to learn how to play video poker in an easy to understand way.

            Send a check or money order to Gambatria, P.O. Box 36474, Las Vegas, NV 89133 and you'll be on your way to becoming an Expert Video Poker Player.