Chase the royal or keep the flush?

Discuss proper hold strategies and "advantage play" and ask questions about how to improve your play.
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New2vp
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Re: Chase the royal or keep the flush?

Post by New2vp »

Good point, davidearl. Same thing on an Android phone.

Jstark
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Post by Jstark »

Yep
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FloridaPhil
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Post by FloridaPhil »

Gronbog. Your mastery of math is impressive. I have a few questions for you. Do you believe luck exists? Can a person be lucky enough to win or lose by pure chance?

As I see it, the problem with your math calculations is they don't take the number of hands played into consideration. Not everyone plays the same number of hands. One player may only go to a casino once a year and another may play for a lifetime. Many players will never reach half of your royal cycle number of hands. I am not disputing your math. It is as solid as it comes. Unfortunately, you can not draw a conclusion based on an incomplete sampling of data and apply it to everyone who plays the game.

I believe what I am asking about you would call "variance". To me, variance and luck are the same thing. In a purely random situation like video poker, anything can happen. That is what makes video poker gambling. I do agree the more hands you play the more your results will mirror your math. I do not believe most players will play enough hands to guarantee a long term win or loss.

I hope we can have this discussion without unnecessary drama. I feel strongly that I am right about this. Would you care to comment?

Gronbog
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Post by Gronbog »

FloridaPhil wrote:
Sat Mar 28, 2020 5:03 am
Gronbog. Your mastery of math is impressive. I have a few questions for you. Do you believe luck exists? Can a person be lucky enough to win or lose by pure chance?
Yes, of course luck exists. Anyone who wins a lottery jackpot has definitely been extremely lucky. But we're talking about games of chance in this forum and specifically video poker. In that context the role of luck does depend greatly on exactly what you have written next.
FloridaPhil wrote:
Sat Mar 28, 2020 5:03 am
As I see it, the problem with your math calculations is they don't take the number of hands played into consideration. Not everyone plays the same number of hands. One player may only go to a casino once a year and another may play for a lifetime. Many players will never reach half of your royal cycle number of hands. I am not disputing your math. It is as solid as it comes. Unfortunately, you can not draw a conclusion based on an incomplete sampling of data and apply it to everyone who plays the game.
I dispute that my calculations do not take the number of hands played into consideration. My discussions about N0 (N-zero) are completely about how many hands you have to play. What you should remember is that whenever we talk about the return of a given game with a given pay table or the value of playing a promotion, it is assumed that we are talking about playing enough hands to get to the long run. The discussion of these topics is specifically directed at folks who play regularly and who will easily get to the long run during an average lifetime. You yourself are one such player!

It is true that some players who may only play once a year on vacation will never play enough hands to reach the long run. You are right when you say that these calculations are completely meaningless for them. They can play however they want to and could very easily end up in profit over their lifetime. However, I do not believe that anyone here fits into that category. I believe that anyone who is interested enough to join an online forum to discuss video poker plays enough to reach the long run.
FloridaPhil wrote:
Sat Mar 28, 2020 5:03 am
I believe what I am asking about you would call "variance". To me, variance and luck are the same thing.
In a purely random situation like video poker, anything can happen. That is what makes video poker gambling.
Here is what's actually happening with respect to luck and certainty as you play video poker. It's sometimes useful too look at the extreme (sometimes ridiculous) cases when looking at how things evolve. Let's assume all of the players below are playing negative games.

The most extreme case is someone who plays 1 hand of video poker and then never plays again. You are right. Absolutely anything can happen and his result will be completely unpredictable. He could lose his entire bet, get a royal and everything in between. Of course no one does that (or do they? I actually have a story about that).

Next we have someone who plays one short session and then never plays again. Their overall result is still unpredictable in any realistic way, but anyone who plays knows that you lose more sessions than you win, so we can say that this person is more likely to lose than to win. That is, we can already make a weak mathematical prediction about their result.

Next is someone who goes to Vegas for a week for his buddy's stag, plays every day and then never plays again. Once again, he will not play enough hands to reach the long run, but he is much more likely to go home having lost money. Very few people in this category go home a winner.

Do you see the trend developing here? The trend is that the more you play, the less that luck is a factor and the more that the reality of the math of the game(s) dominates.

Next we have someone who has played regularly, once a week at a minimum, for their entire adult life. How many here know anyone in this category who is in profit for life and can prove it? Detailed records would be sufficient and I strongly recommend that all players, recreational and otherwise, keep detailed records. It will open your eyes! It's mathematically possible, but we're getting into lottery jackpot odds here.
FloridaPhil wrote:
Sat Mar 28, 2020 5:03 am
I do agree the more hands you play the more your results will mirror your math. I do not believe most players will play enough hands to guarantee a long term win or loss.
So it comes down to how many hands and the word "guarantee". As long as there is even a 1 in the number of stars in the universe chance, then I, as a mathematician, can't use the word "guarantee". However, let's be practical. I've already shown how to calculate the number of hands needed to have only a 0.15% chance of being in profit (9 x N0). For anyone contemplating risking actual money playing games of chance, these should be more than enough of a guarantee for them not to play regularly while still seriously believing that they will turn a profit.

My position will continue to be that if you play casino games regularly for entertainment (however it is that you define entertainment) that's fine, but you should not have any illusions that you will profit over time while doing this.
FloridaPhil wrote:
Sat Mar 28, 2020 5:03 am
I hope we can have this discussion without unnecessary drama. I feel strongly that I am right about this. Would you care to comment?
How are we doing so far?

onemoretry
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Post by onemoretry »

Gronbog wrote:
Sat Mar 28, 2020 10:20 am
How are we doing so far?
Great post, Gronbog. But, I have an uneasy feeling that it won't completely cure the "math is unreliable" mentality.

FloridaPhil
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Post by FloridaPhil »

I can see we agree much more than we disagree. If I play the same 97% video poker game the same way once a week for a year, my results will be vary close to what the math predicts they will be. In reality, they will most likely be worse due to errors. I can tell you from personal experience this is correct.

This is how the casino wants me to play video poker. They want me to believe I can beat the odds with accuracy and skill. They want me to practice until I can play 100% perfect forever, so they can beat me up with lousy games. They encourage me to play at higher denominations where I may believe my chances of beating them are better. This increases my value as a casino customer exponentially.

So what are we to do? There are a number of choices. We can take the expert advice and stay home. We can justify the house edge as the cost of playing the game. We can hope to walk out when we are ahead. We can throw math to the wind and believe it doesn't apply to us. Everyone who gambles uses a different justification or they would not return.

I will spare the forum by not repeating my personal strategy over and over. All I will say is it allows me to enjoy the casino experience longer for less and walk out a winner more often than playing like I have an advantage when I don't.

onemoretry
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Post by onemoretry »

FloridaPhil wrote:
Sat Mar 28, 2020 11:41 am
I will spare the forum by not repeating my personal strategy over and over.
Oooh! My fingers are just itching to type something here, but I'll try to resist.

FloridaPhil
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Post by FloridaPhil »

onemoretry wrote:
Sat Mar 28, 2020 12:00 pm
Oooh! My fingers are just itching to type something here, but I'll try to resist.
Go for it. While we are all sitting around with nothing to do.

Members of this forum have been reading my posts for close to ten years now and none have been financially harmed that I know of. In my opinion the current video poker strategy as espoused by the experts needs some serious updating. The major determining factor in today's negative video poker world is not odds or skill, it's coin-in. Anything that reduces coin-in benefits players. Anything that increases coin-in benefits casinos. Gronbog's math shows that.

Even if a positive opportunity is found, few players have the skill and discipline to take advantage of it. Blaming players for their results is not winning over converts.

Gronbog
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Post by Gronbog »

Now there's only one more step.

All of the above applies to playing negative games. If, on the other hand, you can identify enough positive opportunities to play at an advantage "regularly", are sufficiently bankrolled, are skilled and disciplined enough to maintain your advantage (you do not have to play computer perfectly to do this), and you play enough hands to reach the long run, then the only change to the math is that the minus sign becomes a plus sign. You now have only a 0.15% chance of still losing after playing 9x N0 hands. That percentage gets even smaller as you continue to play. Professional advantage players easily reach the point where that percentage becomes effectively zero.

I am not saying that all those who attempt advantage play will succeed. On the contrary, I believe that the vast majority will still fail. But it will be because they play while in violation of one or more of the conditions above, which by definition means that they are not advantage players at all.

Sea Lion
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Post by Sea Lion »

Video poker 20 years ago, you could survive the swings with 3x whatever the royal pays.With todays machines here in Vegas, over 90% of the hands dealt will be a crappy hand and 85% -90% of those will result in losing hands after you hit the draw button, doesn't matter if it is a "full pay" machine or a 96% machine. You will need at a minimum 10x whatever the royal pays in order to survive the swings and that is for the "full pay" machines. If you're playing a 96% machine, then you get whatever you have coming to you...

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