Thoughts For Beginners

[asteroid]

No Bill. The reason is because the fishing net (10 coin bets)  is being placed (hands 40-60) where there is a high concentration of fish (4oaks). What you are writing would be true if exactly half the hands were 10 coin bets and exactly half the hands were 1-coin bets. But in this betting scenario I have outlined, a smaller proportion than half are 10 coin bets. My hope is that someone will setup a junk tower or laptop with just wolf vp, optimum vp or wvp setup and nothing else installed (nothing a person would find sensitive) except the operating software and software to record a video of my hands played so that I can show that this works by remoting into the junk box and playing using this system. [QUOTE=asteroid]
Yes, that's correct. You will miss out on many premium hands this way. On the other hand, half of your 4 of a kinds come from a narrow range that you are betting 10 coins on, resulting in a slow but steady increase in your bank roll.[QUOTE=billryan]As the Royal Flush can occur on any hand, anytime, betting less than full coin two thirds of your hands means you have a great chance of screwing yourself out of a big payout.

[/QUOTE]

Wouldn't half of the 4OAK also come when you aren't betting 10 coins, resulting in an average 4OAK payout of 5 coins in?
In other words, you get no benefit from spreading 1-10, but have a tremendous downside?[/QUOTE]

[billryan]

I'm not following your math. Your claim is that half of your four of a kinds occur in a very narrow range, where your bet is ten coins. Let's assume that is true.Doesn't it follow that half of them then occur when you have the minimum bet out?
If so, 50% are at ten coins, 50% are at one coin, making the average win for 4oak to be at 5 coins.
Meanwhile,three fourths of your premium wins-flush,or better will be at minimum coin.
This sounds like a horrible idea. Hitting a Royal that pays $62.50 instead of $1,000 usually cures these thoughts.

[FloridaPhil]

Billy, there are many ways to play video poker.  My hope is you will read this entire post before hitting the keyboard.At this time, you are convinced Bob Dancer's video poker strategy is the only way to play and it's working for you.  You are lucky enough to live in Vegas, which is the environment his strategy was designed to work in.  My advice is to keep doing what works.   I'll tell you the same thing Bob Dancer told me years ago "Call me in 10 years and tell me how you are doing".Most of us don't have your options and we want to play the game where we live.  Over the years I have tried numerous strategies in an attempt to beat negative video poker games.  Mr. Dancer's strategy applied to the games I play makes me lose more money than I like to.  Occasionally, I will hit a royal or two, but the negative odds always wipe them out.   This does not mean I think his strategy is wrong or flawed for you.  I think It's the wrong strategy for playing the games I have to play.  I hope I make that clear.As far as the strategy proposed by asteroid.  I developed a similar strategy a number of years ago.  This strategy does not rely solely on royals to win and it works.  It was widely criticized on this forum and Bob Dancer had an attack over it.   Still it kept working and he kept calling me names for even bringing it up.  Asteroid is on the right track if you are playing only negative games and the more negative the better this works.  I don't expect you to accept this as you live in a world of positive games where useful comps are plentiful.  I have always desired to have an objective detailed discussion of this strategy.  There are some great mathematical minds on this forum and my hope is they can tell me why it works.  Unfortunately, every time it is brought up, someone runs off at the the mouth before giving it a fair chance to be examined.  I believe playing single coin with a progressive betting strategy yields better results on a "significantly negative" video poker game than flat betting.  I currently believe the cut off point is somewhere around 98%.  Notice I am not saying my strategy can turn a negative game positive, I am saying you will lose less money long term.   I quit talking about it after Mr. Dancer left the forum, but I still use it on occasion and it still works for me.Mr. Dancer left this forum because he could not control the discussion.  He wanted to use it for self promotion and he took all discussions to the contrary personal.  If he had stayed, I believe he would have won more converts by using logic and facts instead of personal insults.Feel free to pick up where he left off by calling me names or say I'm paying "stupid taxes".  I have been attacked by the best there is and at least for now I'm still here.  

[asteroid]

Scratch hands (or those paying below a 4oaK) are not being considered in your statement Bill - if you have no bank roll, you will not be getting any royal flushes, full pay or short pay since you will not be playing. I would rather have my minimum bets out when there are more scratch hands between the 4oaks than the reverse. The histogram shows the distribution of sessions (computer simulations with perfect discarding) with 4oak cycles  of various lengths. The majority fall between 40-60 as the central limit theorem would predict. So yes, half would fall during minimum bets but you will also be hitting a much larger proportion of scratch hands than you will be in the 40-60 range, thus depleting your bank roll much more quickly when outside this range.In video game terms, if half my energy pellets are in a little corner of a maze, and the rest of them are spread out in the remaining vastness of the maze, and my fuel meter is constantly going down (scratch hands) irrespective of where I am in the maze, while I search for the energy pellets , I would rather be in the little corner of the maze where half the energy pellets are, burning much less energy to collect that half of the energy pellet total than the vast amount of energy I would need to expend to collect the other half and then exiting the maze (cashing out) after I have done so.I will not comment further on this topic, as my intent was not to offend anybody. Phil had asked about alternative strategies that folks on the board use for negative EV VP games, and I had provided one that I use.Cheers, Asteroid. I'm not following your math. Your claim is that half of your four of a kinds occur in a very narrow range, where your bet is ten coins. Let's assume that is true.Doesn't it follow that half of them then occur when you have the minimum bet out?
If so, 50% are at ten coins, 50% are at one coin, making the average win for 4oak to be at 5 coins.
Meanwhile,three fourths of your premium wins-flush,or better will be at minimum coin.
This sounds like a horrible idea. Hitting a Royal that pays $62.50 instead of $1,000 usually cures these thoughts.

[FloridaPhil]

[quote=asteroid]I will not comment further on this topic, as my intent was not to offend
anybody. Phil had asked about alternative strategies that folks on the
board use for negative EV VP games, and I had provided one that I use[/quote]If everyone in history withheld their thoughts because they would offend someone, nothing new would have ever been discovered.  We would still be bleeding people to rid them of disease, Columbus would have been afraid to sail west and Caesar would still be in power.  Questioning the accepted norms is at the heart of innovation. 

[billryan]

You aren't offending anyone, I just don't see how your math adds up. It seems fairly obvious that you are losing out by focusing only on 4OAKs, even if your premise- that they are tightly clustered is correct. I'm highly dubious it is, but even if it is,you still are behind the curve betting minimum the next forty hands after you get one.

[FloridaPhil]

[quote=billryan] It seems fairly obvious that you are losing out by focusing only on
4OAKs, even if your premise- that they are tightly clustered is correct.[/quote]Fair statement.  Thanks for being objective.  Unlike asteroid, I do not believe in "clustered hands" or streaks. They do occur frequently, especially in wild card games.  In my opinion there is no way to predict or capitalize on when they will start or stop.  However, I do believe a systematic strategy of betting small 90% of the time and increasing your bet on 10% can be useful as long as you have the discipline to stay small.  It's similar to a player walking out of the casino after a big win.  If you use this strategy coupled with a tight cash out limit, you can benefit over flat betting and letting the negative odds slowly eat up your bankroll.

[billryan]

Math is math. Dancers strategy is based on math. Your strategy is not. It's that simple. His can be reproduced and shown to work. Yours isn't. Asteroids isn't. You might as well be playing slots. In fact, since comps are much better for slot players, you are basically double screwing yourself. Casinos love slot players,even more than poor video poker players.

According to Phil, Mr Dancer once asked Phil where he would be in ten years.
By Phil's own admission, he is a lifetime loser.
Right where Bob would have predicted he'd be.
Not sure why he is so obsessed with Bob. No once else brings him up as frequently as Phil.

[FloridaPhil]

My strategy is based on math as well, but you refuse to consider anything that does not have Mr. Dancer's stamp of approval.   I only mention Mr. Dancer because as far as I know he is the only one profiting from selling video poker strategy.   His strategy has no influence on my play strategy because I do not have 100% games available to me.  There is a good reason he tells players he never plays negative games, they are losers.  I never said I could make them winners.   I said I could make them cost you less to play and possibly make them more exciting.  You and Mr. Dancer are talking to those players that have positive games available.  I am talking to everyone who has negative games as their only option.  I think these players have been ignored for too long and their numbers are growing.

[billryan]

I guess you really are incapable of having an honest discussion. Why must you put words in other people's mouths?
Your strategies don't save anyone anything. They cost people money. If paying a certain game perfectly will result in a 98 % payout, playing it imperfectly will not raise the payout, it makes it worse. Every time you deviate from the correct play, it cost you long term.
That's not my opinion, it's not any authors opinion, it's a mathematical fact. Taking a science based game and adding hunches to it doesn't improve it.
If you truly want the spread of bad games to stop, don't encourage people to play them, and especially you shouldn't play them.
When someone comes on the Blackjack Forum and asks how do we beat a CSM or 6-5 blackjack, we tell them you cant and don't play them. If a person insists that they have to play bad games, we recommend they consider GA.
Tell me how your strategy adds value to a game.
Let's take the simplest game. 9-6 Jacks or Better. 99.54% payback and easy to learn. What does your strategy do to improve the game?