Best Ways To Learn

[fastingfurious]

Hi I'm new to this and have been working on learning 7/5 bonus poker. My end goal is to play games with multipliers like UX etc. First question is, is this a good game to start on from a "basics" prospective? Additionally, how do you recommend learning the strength of hands? The guide I was using had 34 different hands and I started to learn things by number. IE 15th best hand is paid of 2s thru 10s. The problem with this is when I want to learn 8/5 bonus suddenly it breaks to 44 different hands and those numbers I started associating become useless. Right now I'm just practicing from the hand guide and software on here. Anything you guys did that helped you build a good foundation? Any tips are GREATLY appreciated.

[dinghy]

First question is, is this a good game to start on from a "basics" prospective? Additionally, how do you recommend learning the strength of hands? The guide I was using had 34 different hands and I started to learn things by number.

Yes, good game. For basics, I think you want a non-wildcard game that pays for Jacks or Better as the minimum.

Everyone learns differently, but I like the traditional, ranked chart. Sounds like your guide is the same thing. I ignore or delete the "numbering." Instead for organization, I color-code. All royal draws are one color. Different color for straight flush draws, and so on for regular flush draws, straight draws, etc.

When practicing (or playing), I simply pick out the highest-ranked available hold on the chart. Video poker is not a memory test, as you're allowed to consult your chart during play. But eventually the chart will sear into your head.

I don't know what's available here, but I typically use the Wizard of Odds strategy maker. In most cases, you can follow the basic chart, and discard the "strategy exceptions." For example on 7/5 Bonus, basic strategy yields 98.008% vs 98.015% for perfect. It's not worth the effort to be perfect. This is a potential problem with trainers, because they may flag errors that I would consider insignificant for real-world purposes.

Incidentally, 7/5 and 8/5 Bonus are very similar, with only a couple of strategy differences. Not sure why your guides differed so much. Now if you venture into Ultimate X, that's a big strategy departure from the 5-coin game.