Video Poker Forum

In single hand dream card double double bonus, I got the following hand with the dreamcard activated:

9 clubs 8 spades 8 clubs 10 clubs 8 HEARTS

Instead of accepting the given dreamcard and going for quads, I changed the 8 of hearts dreamcard to jack of clubs and went for straight flush. My erroneous thoughts were I had two cards to get the Straight flush (the 7 clubs & Q clubs) plus the other sevens and queens would at least give me a straight. SO i trashed the minimum guaranteed 3 of a kind to go for the straight flush. I know this was dumb because the quad pays the same as the straightflush, but I was playing very fast and had distractions around me which I allowed to interfere. I'd just like to know if someone can quantify this kind of mistake and how much it would cost a player over the long haul.

Karl_EDT wrote: ↑

Thu Feb 22, 2024 9:23 am

I was playing very fast and had distractions around me which I allowed to interfere. I'd just like to know if someone can quantify this kind of mistake and how much it would cost a player over the long haul.

The straight flush draw is worth 3.45x the base bet.

The 888 hold would have been worth 5.37x. Just the 888 with no improvement is worth 3x.

The numbers are from Wizard of Odds hand analyzer, assuming 9/5 DDB.

Plus, holding the trip 8's opens you up to a multitude of full houses too.

Thanks, as stupid as it seems , and is, I simply did not even conceptualize drawing two cards for a full house, I fixated on the Straight flush draw and getting the single remaining 8. Now you know why I am only a infrequent casual player low stakes.

Karl_EDT wrote: ↑

Fri Feb 23, 2024 6:51 pm

Now you know why I am only a infrequent casual player low stakes.

Video poker is an open-book test because you're allowed to look at the answers, and there's no time limit. You can consult a printed strategy chart, and some daredevils analyze hands on their phone.

Regarding the specific game you were playing, the dream card is supposed to be correct/optimal 100% of the time, so changing it is always wrong -- EXCEPT if they screwed up the programming. The Wizard had some examples of the machine being wrong, but I don't know if that applies to the current edition you were playing.