Trips or better with outside pair?

[harry117]

I have been playing VP for a while and have noticed some trends.  Most are completely fabricated by my mind and not worth mentioning.  Like - having a "favorite card or number" and seeing it all the time. I am just paying attention to that number more and will obviously see it more often.  However - here is a trend that I think may be real. When drawing to a pair (more specifically a lower pair) on the outside (example 93J79) I rarely fill with any paid hands. When I say rarely - I mean very rarely.  It is so rare that I get trips or better that I have thought of revising the strategy for JoB and discarding the pairs. I'm not a conspiracy theory person and truly think that the machines I play are random.  Has anyone had similar experiences?    

[Quad Deuces]

Stop concentrating on meaningless trivialities and concentrate on holding the right cards every time.

[onemoretry]

How do you define "rarely"? Or, perhaps more to the point, how often do you think you "should' improve to trips or better?

[dbldbl scotty]

when I get three of a kind, if i don't get up out of my chair, do 3 jumping jacks and sing "genie in a bottle", i never get quads...

[Minn. Fatz]

All too often when I get a hand like 93J79 I wind up holding the Jack...

[Quad Deuces]

Yeah.  That happens.  It'd be nice to have google glass looking at the cards for you telling you what to hold... 

[BillyJoe]

when I get three of a kind, if i don't get up out of my chair, do 3 jumping jacks and sing "genie in a bottle", i never get quads...
I think I saw you in a casino once. I thought you had a wedgie...

[harry117]

Actually I was thinking along the lines that the RNG may be off and what I observe may be a sign of that. Surprised to see comments from "Senior" and "Regular" members like the ones above. Funny how people behave when they are online. After all, I am just a "Rookie" member. Comments, like above, reflect poorly on those leaving them and this site.    

[Tedlark]

  Harry please understand that many of these forum posters have known each other for a while and some of their posts may be tongue in cheek, I too am among this crowd, and the forum monitor lets those posters know when they are out of bounds.

[Vman96]

Actually I was thinking along the lines that the RNG may be off and what I observe may be a sign of that.    


My g/f has this complaint of failing to improve a pair while playing video poker, so I'll try to get this thread a little back on track. She likes to forget that either 2 pair pays 2 for 1 (Bonus, JoB), or any quad pays at least 50 for 1 (DB, DDB, etc.) that helps pick up the slack of missing the draw a LOT.

Well, this is what should happen when you hold 99:

Quads: 1*45 = 45 ways
Full House: 2*9*6 + 2*3*3 + 9*4 + 3*1 = 165 ways
Trips: 2*(45*44/2 - 9*6 - 3*3) = 1854 ways
Two Pair: (9*6*41 + 3*3*42) = 2592 ways
Loser: 47*46*45/(3*2*1) - 45 - 165 - 1854 - 2592 = 11,559 ways
Total Combinations: 47*46*45/(3*2*1) = 16,215 ways

So we expect NOT to improve: 11,559/16,215 = 71.29% of the time. That's a lot. Conversely, we expect to improve simply 100% - 71.29% = 28.71% of the time

If you insist to look at only trips or better then we only expect to receive that: (1854 + 165 + 45)/16,215 = 12.73% of the time.

So you should only be getting trips or better barely 1 in 8 times when only holding a low pair! You can't even really question the game being non-random unless you go at least 100 dealt pairs in a row with no improvement and the odds of that are still under 1 in 1,000,000 (actually 1 in 818,431).