bonus poker

[mschaching]

playing 8/5 Bp EXCEPT that it is even for 2 pair, do you play it like the stats card says or more like DB??  It has become very difficult to find Fullpay anything around here (wisconsin Indian Casinos) unless you play 50 or 1.00.  It is also common to see .25/ .50/1.00 machines giving you the option to play up to 30 credits.  Do the payouts increase with the number of credits? Is it better to play a .25 machine at 20 credits  or 1.00 at 5 credits?  This is getting to be like a math word problem-I hate word problems... Help

[New2vp]

Ms Cha-ching, It's difficult to answer a question like this with any specificity because with some dealt hands, it might be better to use a strategy more like regular 8/5 BP while with others a DB strategy might be better.  On still other hands, the better play might be play the hand differently than either strategy suggests.With this poor of a pay schedule (86.31% with perfect play), it may be better to find some other game or maybe forego video poker altogether.Nevertheless if you were forced to play this game and had to choose either 8/5 BP or 10/7 DB strategy, I would choose 8/5 BP.  Generally, if you must play with a strategy card from another game, it is better to use a strategy card that matches the straight and flush payoffs of the game you are playing.  With computer-perfect 8/5 BP strategy your expected value only decreases a bit to 86.24%.  Playing 10/7 DB strategy on this machine would yield only 85.74%.  If we believe that the average person misses EV by 2-3%, either is better than simply winging it.Although a reasonable suggestion is often to use a vp software tutor or visit a site like vpgenius.com to work out a strategy specific to the game in question, it may not be worth it in this case just to pick up an extra 0.07% (since here we are willing to play a game that, at best, has a house edge of 13.69%).

[mschaching]

Has this become a common paytable at other casinos?? I can't believe ALL the people I see playing DDB actually play it with correct strategy.  I use bob dancers vp software and am very comfortable with JOB/BP..  do you think most people just "wing it" with the more complicated games?

[New2vp]

I interpreted your first message to be 8/5 Bonus Poker with a push on 2 pair.  When I see 8/5 as an adjective for Bonus Poker, I usually think this means 8 for a full house and 5 for a flush as in the most common higher paying BP (99.17%).  I would think that 8/5/4 with a push for 2 pair would be relatively uncommon (though Wolf Video Poker software has it on its list of games).  Now, it is dawning on me that you might have meant 8 for a flush and 5 for a straight with a payoff of 10 for a full house.  I would think that this would normally be referred to as something like 10/8/5 BP with a push on 2 pair.  It is still a poorly paying game, but the EV (94.18%) is considerably higher than the 8/5/4 pay schedule.If this is the game that you were asking about, I have to change my recommend to using the 10/7/5 Double Bonus strategy that will come in at 93.96% over the regular 8/5/4 Bonus Poker strategy which will pay only 92.92% if your only choices are between those two.  Again, if you stick with the principle of using a strategy that is close to the payoffs for a flush and a straight for the game in question, you will generally be better off in picking the better of two competing strategy cards. Now, in this latest post, I see that you are using the initials DDB instead of Bp. 8/5/4 Double Double Bonus, being a 96.79% game, is much more common than 8/5/4 Bonus Poker with a push at 2 pair.  But, sadly for the players, 10/8/5 Bonus Poker with a push at 2 pair is becoming more common.You're certainly right in your assessment that most of the people playing DDB (or any other vp game, for that matter) are not playing with correct strategy.  In the forum, you see many people reporting that even though they know computer perfect strategy, they like to make different plays on some dealt hands.I don't know the percentages, but I think it would be safe to say that more people are winging it than playing a correct strategy.  When you hear reports that most games give the casinos an additional edge of 2-3%, this likely is coming from people playing less than correct strategies.Of course even people who try to play the correct strategy make mistakes from time to time.

[b74]

As far as playing multiple credits, you have to do the math as you go up in each increased coin value. I noticed this at Pottawatomee in Milwaukee. That place will never see a dime from me again. They have criminal paytables. You almost have to be a genius to figure them out. Alot of them are nonprogressives and they are correct pay from line 1-4, and then they pay 1500 credits on the RF. These aren't 3,5,10,50, or 100 play mach's. The sad thing is people were playing them.

[shadowman]

Playing 20 credits at .25 and playing 5 credits at $1 are exactly the same. When faced with this problem just look at the total amount bet for each hand and divide by 5. This will normalize your situation to what is usually discussed in VP circles. Note that in both cases above you are betting $5/hand. Divide by 5 and you get $1. So, to be consistent when discussing games, you should refer to the 20 coin .25 machine as a dollar machine.


 
BTW, many of the folks around my area simply refer to both of them as $5 machines and that eliminates their confusion. However, it will confuse people in other parts of the country.