Bonus streak ultimate X

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yfs/a
Forum Newbie
Posts: 1
Joined: Thu Dec 10, 2020 4:01 pm

Bonus streak ultimate X

Post by yfs/a »

I love ultimate X, but have never had luck with the bonus streak version. What am I missing?

New2vp
Video Poker Master
Posts: 1793
Joined: Mon Sep 11, 2006 4:02 am

Post by New2vp »

You may have already answered your own question. You might be missing luck.

Additionally, it is much harder to know the correct plays in Bonus Streak. With Bonus Streak, there are hundreds of thousands of combinations of multiplier sets affecting appropriate strategy. That makes the complicated sum-of-multipliers method that is used with regular Ultimate X seem super simple.

Single strategy methods, using the same plays regardless of multiplier, are much closer to optimal with regular Ultimate X than with Bonus Streak. So, they will not be as effective.

Another thing that I have never seen mentioned. It takes longer to "prime the pump" when starting to play this game when there is a screen with no multipliers, even if you can find a rare relatively high-EV pay schedule. Even with say a 98% pay schedule, the first hand on Ultimate X with no multipliers pays off only about half of that, at 48% or so.

Let's consider 10-play. To start Ultimate X, you need to bet 100 coins. If there are no residual multipliers from previous plays, you can expect to lose about 52 of those coins. After that the average coins won per hand will approximate the game's EV.

With Bonus Streak, multipliers are built over a series of hands. Again on the first hand, you can expect to lose 52 coins. But with this game, it is going to take another 4 hands of sub-EV results before you finally get to an "equilibrium" expectation around the game's EV. On hand 2 after a screen with no multipliers, you can expect to lose another 45 or 46 coins. Hand 3 will have an average loss of around 28 coins. Hands 4 and 5 will have an average loss of 4 coins each. And finally on Hand 6, we'll get to the equilibrium vs. getting to equilibrium on Hand 2 with regular Ultimate X.

So, in an average setting, you can expect a big loss starting out, not quite triple the loss you have with regular Ultimate X. And if you start with a bad run it will be even worse. But if you get lucky ... well, isn't that why we all play video poker? Especially playing these games designed with ultra high jackpots and associated high variance.

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