Right or wrong move?

[FAA]

If you play with the Cheap Strategy and switch to dollars on a $25 run
up and hit a max coin $1 quad deuce for $1,000 (been there done that),
you just won 4,000 quarters and can keep it if you go back to starting
with single coin instead of staying at max coin $1s and giving it back.---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------We part company there. That's when I cease and desist all gambling activity for the day.  But it's such a rare occurrence, it doesn't affect my operating strategy.

[wildman49]

[quote=FAA]I didn't consider JOB a seriously negative expectation game.The most common quarter JOB game we see outside of Vegas is 8/5 which is a 97% game at max coins and no progressive.  7/5 is a 96% game.  I consider any video poker game to be seriously negative if it's under 98% at max coins.  If I could play 9/6 quarter JOB (99.5%)with comps, I would do so at max coins. Note: Just because JOB has a low variance, doesn't mean you can't lose money playing it. 






[/QUOTE]Phil if you had Not So Ugly Deuces Wild
99.73% would you then play max bet quarters?Or would the cheap coin do even better at this %.

[FloridaPhil]

[quote=windman49]Phil if you had Not So Ugly Deuces Wild
99.73% would you then play max bet quarters? Or would the cheap coin do even better at this %.[/quote]This is an interesting question.  We gamble all over the country and from what we have seen 99%
or greater single line quarter video poker games are rare and getting rarer every day.  If I had single line NSU DW available to me in quarters, I would play max coins.  The game odds don't have anything to do with the frequency of jackpots.  What better odds do is let you play longer with the same money giving you more chances at hitting a jackpot.  When we play in Blackhawk CO this is the case. If you can play a game with better than 99% odds factoring in the comps, the savings of playing the Cheap Strategy are not worth the chance you will hit a royal at short coin.[quote=FAA]We part company there. That's when I cease and desist all gambling
activity for the day.  But it's such a rare occurrence, it doesn't
affect my operating strategy[/quote]My wife agrees with you.  When she's losing, she quits and goes to the mall and buys some more shoes...  I totally get why someone would not want to have any possibility of hitting a short coin royal.  After all, one of the big reasons we play video poker is to experience the thrill of getting 4,000 coins for a royal flush.  Personally, I consider all wins to be positive and I could care less if they are for $62.50 or $10K.   My biggest thrill is walking up to a 95% video poker machine, putting in a $20 bill and walking away with $1,000.  I did not fall for the casino's royal flush bait and I walked away with the same money that everyone around me paid big big bucks to win.  I developed the Cheap Strategy because it was obvious to me that using a professional strategy on a negative expectation game was costing me more money than it was worth.   There are other ways to win long term playing video poker than are being sold by promoters of totally math based strategies, but it means changing the way you look at the game entirely.   Personally,  the money aspect of video poker doesn't mean that much to me as long as my bankroll stays the same over a long period of time.   The fact that the Cheap Strategy has actually made me money over the past two years is nice, but not all that significant. Everyone approaches this game differently.  It's your money, play the way that gives you the most enjoyment.  I know I do. 

[onemoretry]

This is what the math says, but in reality it doesn't always happen that way.  In order for the math to work the values must be constant.
The math, as I understand it (I assume we are referring to published game returns), is based on the probabilities of all possible hand outcomes, combined with the payoffs for those outcomes. Varying the denomination of the game does not change anything.

Granted, the math is based on long term statistical averages, so in a short session, anything can happen. You can greatly exceed the long term average, or you can fall far short of it.

If you can somehow arrange it so that your higher denomination sessions are better than average, while your low denomination ones are the ones where you crash and burn (i.e., win big and lose small), you can do OK. Is this what you mean?   

[Vman96]

If you can somehow arrange it so that your higher denomination sessions are better than average, while your low denomination ones are the ones where you crash and burn (i.e., win big and lose small), you can do OK. Is this what you mean?   



Unfortunately, my actual results go the other way. I run better on the lower denom machines.

Hence bigger loser than expectation! Yay!   

[FAA]

hit a max coin $1 quad deuce for $1,000 (been there done that), you just won 4,000 quarters and can keep it if you go back to starting with single coin instead of staying at max coin $1s and giving it back.
___________________________________________________________
On a much smaller scale, I can keep an $11.25 full house by just doing one coin for a considerable amount of time. Ideally, until my ride. I hit a lot of FH yesterday on my last machine. They came right on or ahead of schedule. Some short coin at the end. I put $50.25 in the machine for two hours twenty minutes of play before the bust. Really not much you can do with $65 bank roll, $40 plus $25 voucher. If you want four or five hours play, odds are a bust somewhere in there. For me it was at the end. On the plus side, I quit the dollar machines cold turkey. They would have slashed my playing time by about 75%. I would have been running around the casino like a chicken with its head cut off. At least I had a respectable demise yesterday. Last machine was $650 coin in,, so over 800 hands with no quads. Unacceptable results. Confirmed that I can cross that one off my list. Very lackluster payout! Not much comps with the full pays of course, a mere thirteen CET credits.

[FloridaPhil]

There are two ways to approach video poker and gambling in general.  One way is to remain optimistic no matter what happens and forge ahead waiting for your luck to turn around.  This is the way the casinos want you to think.  Unfortunately,  negative expectation games are just that and all you do is dig yourself into a bigger and bigger financial hole.   This type of gambler is overly fixated on "wins" and doesn't want to know what their annual losses actually are.  I would equate this to a business owner that doesn't want to look at his company balance sheet because he knows he losing money and doesn't want to change anything to prevent that from happening.The other way is to be overly pessimistic and always expect you are going to lose.  A player with that attitude (me) wants to play as cheaply as possible to keep the cost of playing to a bare minimum.  I played straight single coin quarters for quite a while.  My results were still negative, but I slowed the bleeding and could play longer for less money.  Eventually, I fell into the betting max coins after you win four thing to keep me engaged in the game.  As long as I had even a small chance of a max coin jackpot, I could hang in there.  What I found was deuces wild works well with this strategy because of the relatively frequent quad deuce jackpot and the fact that wild card games tend to run in small streaks.  In addition, I discovered that switching to $1s at $25 made the game more exciting and I could keep my max coin wins because my cost of playing was so low.   Finally, playing small on 90% of your wagers makes it easier to manage your money and keeps you from digging a big hole that you will never crawl out of or from doing crazy things in an attempt to catch back up. There is absolutely no difference between a $1,000 max coin quarter royal flush and a $1,000 max coin royal flush that was hit right after a four coin win.   My belief is the increased hands you can play using the Cheap Strategy due to the lower average hand cost gives you more chances of making this happen.I am not the kind of person who believes every theory I have ever come up with, especially when it comes to video poker.  I tested the heck out of the Cheap Strategy for over two years playing over 500,000 hands a year in the process and I'm still ahead.  Like I stated previously, I don't play with this strategy all the time.  Occasionally, I get to play in a place where the odds are good enough that I don't believe it's an advantage to do so.  With video poker game odds dropping all over the country, your choices are to quit video poker entirely, keep emptying your wallet or try something that just may work for you like it has for me.

[FAA]

Like I stated previously, I don't play with this strategy all the time. 
Occasionally, I get to play in a place where the odds are good enough
that I don't believe it's an advantage to do so.------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Okay, this is my take away from your analysis. The entire Cheap System can be intelligently ignored entirely with just cause if a player is fortunate enough to be in an AC venue, since most of them have 9/6 JOB at the quarter level. Seven of the eight actually, if I'm not mistaken. I banged away on those Saturday as long as bankroll allowed. But I was ultimately vanquished anyway. If such a machine is ice cold and you lose half your funds, you should probably leave. Being hardheaded, I kept on at it. I had a below average run. I lost at a $20 an hour pace for 2.5 hours. Not happy since the standard figure for such play is a $13 per hour loss expectation. I'm putting this particular machine on ice for keeps.  

[FAA]

Unfortunately, my actual results go the other way. I run better on the lower denom machines._________________________________________________________________________Same here, Vman. Lower denom is truly an oasis. The dollar level is when the roof crashes. It's usually a pretty swift and efficient demolition at that. I still shudder at those sessions. No way I can go back. Even if I plan to stay five hands, that turns into fifty. You have to quadruple your bankroll and pray to realistically give that a run.

[FloridaPhil]

If you really want to get a handle on what's happening with your money, you need to keep accurate records over a long period of time and consider your results long term. Quitting when you are ahead or when you are losing tells you nothing about how your strategy is actually working.  This is one thought that Dancer and I have in common.  Anyone can win a big jackpot on one crazy lucky day. it's staying ahead that's hard to do.