Where's the Beef?

[billryan]

Trying to say a 97% game is better than a 99.5% game is
not only not true, it's stupid. For a rookie to make such a mistake is understandable. For a supposedly expert player to do so leads one to question their veracity.
Now go quote Bob Dancer out of context for the zillionth time to "prove" your inane point.

[FloridaPhil]

[quote=BobDancer]Now go quote Bob Dancer out of context for the zillionth time to "prove" your inane point.[/quote]No need.  The best DW game at our casino is 98.913% with max coins.   With single coin the same game is 97.686%.  That's a 1.227% difference, not 2.5% as in your example.   These numbers came directly from Dancer's VPW software.  If you want to argue with his numbers, speak with him at dinner next time you see him.Playing quarters at 600 hands an hour you are wagering $750 an hour playing this game with max coins.   My spreadsheet shows your theoretical loss to be about $8.15 an hour with perfect play.  This assumes no playing errors and all hands show up on time.Playing the same game at the same speed with single coin quarters you are wagering $150 an hour.   The single coin house edge is 2.314%.  My spreadsheet shows this loss to be about $3.47 an hour.  There may be some rounding differences in my calculations, but you are paying a little less than $5 an hour for "Royal Insurance".   This doesn't seem like much, but dollar after dollar hour after hour, it adds up.  If you miss a royal or two, the cost could easily exceed a max coin royal jackpot.In most casinos the dollar odds are considerably better than
quarters making single coin dollar play a better choice than max coin
quarters while cutting your investment by 1/5th, but let's not even go there.In addition, playing more hands an hour adds to your losses.  Playing at a higher denomination adds to your losses. Every error you make adds to your losses.  Every missed quad deuce out of 5,000 hands adds to your losses.  Every royal out of 45,000 hands adds to your losses.If you really want to end this issue once and for all, get those calculators working.  Here's your chance to prove me wrong. 

[billryan]

   I believe I see Phil's problem. It took awhile but I'm beginning to understand his line of thought and where it goes wrong.
So lets start at the beginning.
Phil often refers to the odds on a machine being better or worse than another machine. That is incorrect.
The odds of getting a full house ,for example in JOB, are exactly the same on a 9/6 machine as they are on a 7/5 machine. If you are looking for which machine has better odds, you are looking in the wrong direction.
Video Poker is all about payback.
We'll use Phils machines as the example. Playing full coins, the payback is 98.913. Going single coin ,it drops it to 97.686. A drop of 1.227%.
So what does that mean?
Very simply, it means for every dollar you play on the first game, your return will be 98.13 cents. Every dollar played at the lower level returns you 97.686.
You'll notice, and this very important, that payback is not figured by hands, or hands per hour. Both are meaningless. All that goes into payback is how much of your dollar is returned on average.
If you play $1,000 dollars through, one game will return $981.30,
the other will return $976.86. A difference of $4.64.
At $10,000 it's $9,813.00 vs $9,768.60.A difference of
$46.40
At $100,000 it's a difference of $464.00
It doesn't matter if you are betting quarters, dollars, five dollars or $100.
If those are the paybacks, those are your expected results.
No place in the payout schedule are numbers of hands played, nor hours spent.
Payout is strictly based on coin in vs coin out.
Any attempt to manipulate the payback by varying hands,
or setting a time limit is utterly and completely meaningless.
Once a person understands these very basic tenants of play, attempting to argue that playing a 97.686 strategy on a game that could be played at 98.913, is a superior strategy is ludicrous.
Arguing that it matters if the payout is positive or negative is again incorrect.
It's also true you might miss a Royal Flush now and then, but it is just as likely that you will get two in the same number of hands. On a negative game, it's best not to play but once you choose to play, you want to play the strategy that will pay you the highest return.

[alpax]

BR, if you have not figured it out by now. FP has this obsessed or crazed imagination where most people or the defined "recreational player" takes many trips to the casino and spend mindless hours playing bad VP games. It is also presumed the players have lack of sense and control. Encouraging them to play single coin will help them lose less money, but does not mention it only slow down to their inevitable doom.

All a reasonable person needs to do is to spend just a few hours playing max coins per visit, during a day where there is a slot tournament or a drawing to give a slight chance the player can win. But that is not an option to FP. I sort of have an understanding because it takes more than 1 1/2 hours each way to get there, normally casinos are situated that far from populated areas across the nation (for myself as well).

It would be best that FP does not create an imaginary concern that does not exist to majority of the players, some people do have real problems. But as BR stated in the past, the only thing that can help them is to not play single coin, but to go to GA.

[FloridaPhil]

What we are failing to recognize is the differences in the games we play.  I have played VP in Vegas.  At Red Rock and South Point the default quarter Deuces game is NSU, a 99.7% game.  I see bonus points, cash back and multi-point promotions.  None of these things is available in the Southeast where the standard quarter Deuces game pays back 97.5% with max coins.  VP is not eligible for bonus points and cash back is something you hope to get from a vending machine.Over my 15 years of playing VP, I have played at least 1/3 of my hands at single coin.  I can tell you with certainty that playing single coin on a seriously negative (under 98%) VP game allows you to play more hands longer and cheaper at the same denomination.  Anything can happen in the short run, but over time playing single coin on these games will be cheaper.  If you don't hit a royal, the savings will be significant. This is because when playing max coins you lose 5 coins on every non paying hand vs. 1 coin and the odds aren't good enough to catch you up on the jackpots.  At those odds your loses will be so great even a royal won't make you whole.We are all gamblers here.  The fun of gambling is risking money for the possibility of a reward.   Gamblers don't like single coin VP because it reduces the size of the carrot on the stick.  I get this. However, it doesn't change the facts.I do agree that most players should play max coins.   I got into this debate years ago when I found myself playing 95-97% games in Biloxi for days on end.  The cost of  playing these games with max coins was brutal.  I switched to single coin, cut my losses significantly and survived.   I tested this strategy for two years with the same results.My findings are probably of no value to most players as they won't sacrifice the royal bonus and are willing to pay extra to experience them.   This is old news and we should give up on this issue.  It keeps coming up as it did recently on the Strategy Forum because players can see what I have been saying all along is true and ask questions.  I exiled myself from that forum because I don't wish to be the center of controversy any longer.   You can continue to blow these people off or you can give them information they can use.   Billy's recent description of max coins as Royal Insurance is a great way of explaining this.  Come clean and tell them playing negative games is a loser.  Tell them they are paying to play and if they play seriously negative games they will pay more to experience max coin royals.  VP players come here for help.   We owe it to be straight with them.

[billryan]

The fountain of misinformation claims we owe it to players to be straight with them
What a joke.

[FloridaPhil]

Billy, it's your prerogative to ignore the facts.  I will continue to state the truth.  Sooner or later someone else will bring this up again on this forum and you can choose to ignore them too.   Player's don't need your expert advice.  All they have to do is looking in their shrinking wallets. 

[markinca]

Playing quarters at 600 hands an hour you are wagering $750 an hour playing this game with max coins.   My spreadsheet shows your theoretical loss to be about $8.15 an hour with perfect play.  This assumes no playing errors and all hands show up on time.Playing the same game at the same speed with single coin quarters you are wagering $150 an hour.   The single coin house edge is 2.314%.  My spreadsheet shows this loss to be about $3.47 an hour.


Phil, if your goal is just to lose the least amount of money as possible, why not just play max-coins but slower? At, say, 200 hands per hour at max-coin, you'll only be losing $2.70 per hour. Then you get the best of both worlds.

[FloridaPhil]

[quote=markinca]Phil, if your goal is just to lose the least amount of money as possible, why not just play max-coins but slower?[/quote]Playing slower is an excellent suggestion.   That was actually one of Mr. Dancer's suggestions to me on this forum back when we were on speaking terms.I haven't played short coin for about a year now.  We switched the majority of our play to casinos with better odds.  We have no issue playing max coins if the odds are over 98.5%.  With a smaller house edge the cost of quarter play is reasonable and we earn decent comps.   We also started mixing in some slot play, another Dancer suggestion. They play slower and our comps have doubled.  On rare occasions we still run into lousy VP games.  We have a second home in Northern Georgia.  The new casino in Murphy NC is close to where we live.  We'll be there for the solar eclipse on August 21st.    When we play there, we limit our play to 2 hours maximum.  There are ways to limit the effects of bad games.  One is to play less time. Another is to play slower and the last is to play smaller.I do get tired of being called out as some kind of bad guy because I try to save players money.  Not everyone wants to play a casino game where stomaching big losses is an integral part of the game.  Most players I know want to have fun playing VP, not go on a financial roller coaster.

[FAA]

I dislike constant max coin even at 99.5%. I'd rather slow the loss rate and am too impatient to play slow. The chump change quad is annoying, but the savings is good consolation.