Tricky hand on UX Bonus Streak. What to do?

Discuss proper hold strategies and "advantage play" and ask questions about how to improve your play.
kevdude420
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Tricky hand on UX Bonus Streak. What to do?

Post by kevdude420 »

Yesterday I was playing triple double triple play on UX Bonus Streak. I got dealt AAA33 with no multipliers on any of the hands. I wasn’t sure if the right play was to keep the fh for the multipliers, or to break it and keep only one 3 to draw to the quad A’s w/ a kicker. I ended up breaking it to try for the 4000 credit payout, which I didn’t hit. I’m feeling like this was the wrong play though and I should have kept it for the multipliers. What’s the play here?

applepear86
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Post by applepear86 »

That game is so complicated, not even the wizard of odds can give you a strategy lol (you would useful answers posting this on their forum). I wish there was some easy way to figure it out, even if it was a calculator of some sort on our phones. The advantage play opportunities would be enormous as people always leave lots behind on those.

You might just keep the aces, especially if it's a bunch of other multipliers up there. The other multipliers up could outweigh the odds of holding the kicker. You'd need more context as in what else you had on the screen.

kevdude420
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Post by kevdude420 »

Complicated, definitely an understatement lol. I can’t see a proper strategy ever being generated for this game. Just have to weigh all options on every hand and decide what you think is best. Do do think that gunning for the multipliers is top priority and should be played as such. What a mind F’ of a game lol.

Pepperton
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Post by Pepperton »

The AAA with kicker has about a 14% higher expectation as compared with holding the full house.

onemoretry
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Post by onemoretry »

Pepperton wrote:
Mon Jan 03, 2022 4:54 pm
The AAA with kicker has about a 14% higher expectation as compared with holding the full house.
How did you calculate that?

TripleTriple
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Post by TripleTriple »

Not sure, but that sounds like considering only the current hand.

If it were me, I would hold the dealt hand. At least you have a decent payoff even if the next hand is complete trash. If you try for the kicker hand you still only have 1/47 overall of a jackpot and possibly as poor as 3 three of a kinds.

The real enticement is the chance for a dealt hand at what, 12X? Times 3? Or just catching one good deal. Plus the draw opportunity. Too many gainful opportunities to pass up.

Then again, I'm not familiar with bonus streak and what the paytable is. But still, realistically the best you could hope for drawing for the kicker is 4000, versus guaranteed 120? + chance for up to 144,000!

Pepperton
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Post by Pepperton »

onemoretry wrote:
Mon Jan 03, 2022 7:07 pm
Pepperton wrote:
Mon Jan 03, 2022 4:54 pm
The AAA with kicker has about a 14% higher expectation as compared with holding the full house.
How did you calculate that?
I did not initially notice that the original poster was playing the bonus streak version of UX.
Therefore, my calculation was based on the 5-handed regular form of the game, and was made using the ProTraining EV calculator.
My apologies for the confusion.

kevdude420
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Post by kevdude420 »

No joke, I went & played UX bonus streak today and literally got dealt the same hand (AAA33). This time I kept the fh to trigger the multipliers. I’m glad I did as it led to a hot streak and quickly boosted my bankroll back up. Seriously though, stop dealing me this damn hand!! Lol

New2vp
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Post by New2vp »

Congrats, both on getting the lucky dealt hand and making the right play, assuming you still didn't have any multipliers.

It is not a close call IF there were no active multiplier strings. To illustrate this with an example, I'm assuming that you were playing the pay schedule available on this website, the 7-5 version, 7 per coin for a full house and 5 for a flush. It looks like there may also be 8-5, 9-5, and 9-6 versions available elsewhere.

Three of a kind gets you multipliers of at least 2x and 4x on the next two hands, with the 4x multiplier possibly turning into 12x if you get trips or better on the first subsequent hand. Converting to (or remaining at) a full house or quads gets you 2x, 4x, 8x, 10x, and 12x on the next 5 hands with the possibility of the last four hands becoming 12x prior to playing them.

The best play with no multipliers is to hold the dealt full house. It brings you 35 coins per hand on the current pay schedule with about 138.95 extra coins per hand in the future based on the string of multipliers. Trips gets you a current payout of 10 coins plus only 18.31 extra coins expected on the future string of multipliers. Quads also supply you with 138.95 extra expected future coins.

The breakdown looks like this, averaging the numbers in the previous paragraph based on the probabilities associated with each hold:

Hold: Current/ Future/ Total
AAA33: 35.00/ 138.95/ 173.95
AAA3: 95.96/ 26.01/ 121.97
AAA: 74.77/ 30.92/ 105.69

The other schedules pay more for a full house, and even with slightly different expected extra future coins, it looks like you would want to hold the full house with them as well when there are no multipliers. A high multiplier on at least one hand could change the optimal expected-value hold since that multiplier applies to the current value and holding AAA3 has a considerably higher current value.

The expected future coins shown above are approximations, based on a theoretical single-hand Bonus Streak strategy. There would be some differences in the expected future coins to account for multi-hand play, but certainly those differences will not be more than 50 coins per hand.

These calculations may not seem straightforward, so I agree with previous posters that answering the original question doesn't provide much help for deciding optimal expected-value holds on other dealt hands.

Wobbles1
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Post by Wobbles1 »

I love this thread. Being a fan of statistics overall, I love it when really sharp people just throw up their hands and say F it. LOL. Fun problem to have on that hand :-)

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