2018 Royal #6

[Eduardo]

I'm not sure I've ever played Jacks in a casino. Certainly not in the past 10 years.

I'm all Deuces, Loose Deuces, or DDB when I want something more volatile. Bonus Deluxe would be my other favorite, but it's been harder to find.

[Carcounter]

In AC, the best game is 99.69% SDB, That is my favorite game. 9/6 JOB is next best available game so I play that as well. Also available in multi strike which I believe raises the game to 99.75% with perfect play. The best deuces game is a bonus deuces game that is just less than 99%, so I typically stay away.

[FloridaPhil]

My wife plays single line max coin quarter deuces wild exclusively. She loves the game and takes a photo of every quad deuce she hits. Her phone is full of them. It is common for her to have a string of bad days then hit more than one quad deuce and recover.

She modifies her strategy slightly to hit more royals and it has paid off for her. Playing quarters, the cost of these errors are about 4 cents each time she does it. She is aware of this and says 4 cents is worth it to her. It's hard to argue when you are staring at a $1,000 royal flush from one of these 4 cent "errors". Here's one of them.

[advantage playe]

hey carcounter,do u happen to know the volatility number of that job multi strike??

[New2vp]

9/6 Jacks or Better MultiStrike is a 99.79% game with a 20.9959 per-coin variance.

[advantage playe]

thank you new2vp,so if I am playing full coin in it would be around 84 variance?? thanks again!

[FloridaPhil]

I don't want anyone to think intentionally making errors is a good thing. Video poker is a marathon, not a 100 yard dash. Making errors will eventually catch up to you. That said, I don't see a problem with a recreational player modifying their strategy to tilt the odds in favor or something they wish to occur more frequently and are willing to pay extra to make happen.

I think all players should understand the math behind VP. If you are going to go against the math and play your own way, at least play as cheap as possible to limit the damage. If you want to do better long term, forget about "engineering" jackpots. The experts have this game figured out. Stop trying to create your own strategy to do something that can't be done. Been there, done that. Play the best games you can find as perfect as you can and let the jackpots take care of themselves.

[New2vp]

AP, If you are comparing this to a single line game, since the bet is 4 times as much for MultiStrike, you would multiply the variance by 16. If you want to compare standard deviations, you would indeed multiply by 4.

A comparison of 9-6 Jacks or Better between single-line and MultiStrike looks like this, with the numbers for single-line first:

EV: 99.54% vs. 99.79%
In coins: 4.9772 vs. 19.9584 (multiplying by 5 and 20)
Variance: 19.5146 vs. 20.9959
In coins squared: around 488 vs. 8398 (multiplying by 25 and 400)
Standard Deviation: 4.4175 vs. 4.5821
In coins: around 22 vs. 92 (multiplying by 5 and 20)

So, if you found a single-line game that allowed you to bet 20 coins at a time, with a max prize of 16,000 coins for a royal, the standard 20-coin MultiStrike game would be only slightly more volatile with a top line max prize of 32,000 coins. Of course, the top MultiStrike prize is nearly 8 times rarer.

[Carcounter]

When Borgata first opened (2002?), they had some games that were better than the 99.79% multi strikes, so I didn't start playing them until the better games were pulled. In the first year and a half that I played the multi strikes, I hit 3 top line royals for 8K each. It was shocking to say the least. Looking back on my records, if not for those hits, I would be down a little, instead of up. They do run very hot or colds usually though. Won $ 700 in a session last week, but lost 1k yesterday in a 4 hour session.

[advantage playe]

thank you so much new 2 vp and carcounter!!I see you r a jedi knight at math new2vp!! you don't sound new to video poker. lol