My History in Video Poker

[Tedlark]

royal I have seen people make this same move. My girlfriend sometimes makes "special" plays like this and occasionally she'll hit something. I myself am like you, I'd dump all 5 cards unless it's deuces bonus and then I'm keeping the acer.

[damule]

I'd dump all 5 cards unless it's deuces bonus and then I'm keeping the acer.
 
Ted, you never hold a single card in any deuces wild game except a deuce. The single ace hold opposed to dumping all 5 cards in deuces wild bonus costs you a staggering 15-18% in expected return depending on the pay table, not a good move.

[Tedlark]

I didn't realize the percentages were that high when keeping the lone ace but I have kept it looking for 5 aces or quad deuces with the ace.

[Eduardo]

 
357JA
 
Hold the Ace: ER 1.26
Toss it: ER 1.48
 
A high percentage I guess. But 15-18% of not much isn't all that much. If you plan on playing a lot, it's a hold to be aware of for sure though.

[damule]

     Correct numbers Eduardo on FP DWB. Take 1.26/1.48 and you have 0.851 or in other terms a negative return of 14.9%. On DWB games less than full pay where full houses return 15 and flushes return 10, the difference in return is even lower.
     If you guys don't think this is a deal that doesn't occur too often watch how many times you get dealt an ace high with nothing else. It could be quite a significant error in short term play as well. Even in deuces wild double bonus where 5 aces pays 800, it is still a 10% negative return on a full pay table to hold just the ace.
     If you get dealt an ace high on average only once in 50 deals on a single line quarter game at 15 deals/min or 900/hr it's a negative return of $3.375/hr. Just add that to the negative expected return of 1-2% to begin with on most paytables and we can see how significant this can be.
     I'm only making such a significant point of this because as many of you know I play over a million dollars through vp machines per year and even the slightest error in strategy could result in thousands of dollars in losses at the end of the year. So even if it seems like a small difference, over tens of thousands of hands the difference can be substantial. 

[mickey crimm]

Sometime after I started playing the deuces at Gold River I heard there were two banks of Full Pay Deuces Wild progressives at Si Redd's Oasis in Mesquite.   Sure enough, they were there with .5% meters.  My first trip I hit 3 royals in two weeks.  They paid from $1250 to $1800.  I made regular trips  to Mesquite until late summer of 1997. 
 
There was also linked bank of Flush Attack to pick on.  More on that later And Jackpot Cards.    

[mickey crimm]

Another play I got to add to my repertoire was Bonus Playoff.  This video poker game was found on Silicon Gaming's Odyssey machines.  They were real spacey looking machines.  And I think they were featured in a movie called Pluto Nash, or something like that.  When you played this game you would see a pair of white-gloved hands dealing the cards.  There was lots of animation.  But the game played real slow.  You could barely get out 500 hands per hour. 
 
When these machines came out they were everywhere.  Many casinos had as many as 60 machines.  There were advantageous slots games on these machines like Fort Knox, Buccaneer Gold, Riddle of the Sphinx, Lady of Forture.  But there were also vdeo poker games too. 
 
The Jacks or Better version of Bonus Playoff came in either 8/5 or 9/6 with the bulk being 8/5 so that's ther version I'll write about.   It wasn't full 8/5 it was 8/5-two-pair-even-money.  This is what the payscale looked like
 
RF.............800
SF............. 50
4K............  25
FH.............  8
FL.............  5
ST.............. 4
3K.............  3
2P.............  1
HP............   1
 
This payscale comes in at 84.4%.  But there was a progressive meter to the right of the screen that started at 75 coins.  Every 80 coins in action ($20 on quarters, $80 on dollars) put five coins into the meter.  In effect this is a 6.25% meter.  So now I had the game up to 90.65%. 
 
While playing every so often a "bonus playoff card" would appear in your first five cards dealt.   It would then remove itself to the top of the screen and you were dealt another card to play your hand out.  Once you finished that hand you went into a bonus round. 
 
A character would appear (it would be either the Riverboat Captain, the Riverboat Gambler, or the Dance Hall Girl) and challenge you to one game of Five Card Draw for the money in the meter.  If you won the hand you got the money in the meter, if they won the hand the money stayed in the meter until the next you got into the bonus round.  You had to win that hand to get the money. 
 
You and the Character were each dealt five cards and you could replace up to five cards.  But the Character never drew more than three cards. 
 
The principal to this game, like other progressives, and advantageous slots, is OPM (other people's money).  Let the tourists and unsavvy players jack the number up and walk away from the machine then you come in behind when the machine is in a short term positive situation, play until the positive no longer exists, then cash out. 
 
I figured  I could mimic the strategy that the Characters used in the bonus round and win the Five Card Draw hand 50% of the time.  The real trick was knowing how often that "bonus playoff card" came out.  All I could do was an empirical study. 
 
So I started by playing high numbers only.  When I caught the game with 250 or more coins I would play.  I tracked the results.  I used the slot card to count the number of games I played.  I tracked how often I caught the "bonus playoff card."  I tracked how well I did in the bonus round. 
 
I eventually settled on the number of 140 for catching that card.  Then doubled that number to 280.  Then jacked it up to 300 just to be on the safe side.  I had an 84.4% game plus a 6.25% meter that totaled to 90.65%.  So I was fading 9.35%. 
 
On quarters 300 games X $1.25 = $375.  9.35% x $375 = $35.  That would be 140 coins.  That's how much I needed in the meter to be at breakeven, I figured.  But I need a win factor.  So I decided on 200 as the number of coins I needed to find in the meter if I was going to play. 
 
I played this game for quarters and dollars for 4 or five years.  It was a nice little profit center. 
 
Sometime after I started playing this game Charles Lund, in his book on advantageous slots, "Robbing the One-Armed Bandits" reported that that actual frequency for catching the "bonus playoff card" was 133 games. 
 
 

[faygo]

Mickey, played that one myself . Could never get over a creepy feeling from the white gloved hands without a body.

[EDC1977]

I miss the Odessey machines. I enjoyed playing them at the Frontier when it was still around.

[mickey crimm]

Mickey, played that one myself . Could never get over a creepy feeling from the white gloved hands without a body.
 
When I get a creepy feeling on the back of my neck I'm lookin' out for........ME!!!  I'm  looking out for....... my neck!  It was always a sense with me.    I could always smell the s--- breaking out behind me.   Or maybe it's a freight train's riders sensibilities.   What's going on around me?  It's the reason I survided so long in my world.  I should have been killed in so many spots.  I survived.  My 6th sense got me through it. 
 
 I could always smell something going on besides me.  I could always smell danger.  There but for the grace of God go I, but I helped myself by my ability to smell danger.