Have you seen this game? DB+

[pokerforme]

Haven’t seen it anywhere else and wondered if it’s called something else?
It’s a unique pay table
5 coins
Royal 4000
Straight Flush 250
4 adjacent Aces. 2000
4 adj 2,3, or 4s. 800
4 Aces. 800
4 2, 3, or 4s. 400
4 5-Ks. 200
Full house. 45
Flush. 30
Straight. 20
3 of a kind. 15
Two pair. 5
Jacks or better. 5

Didn’t know how much “adjacent” would effect return. It would seem to be easier to achieve than the kicker or am I wrong?
Anyone with a idea on expected return? I’m puzzled by the adjacent part.

[New2vp]

I have seen it referred to simply as Double Bonus Plus. If you ignored the order in which cards were dealt, you can expect that, by chance, 40% of your quad aces and quad 2s-4s would be "adjacent" or "touching," thus qualifying for the additional payout.

AAAA6 and 6AAAA represent adjacent quads, just using a "6" as the non-quad 5th card; and A6AAA, AA6AA, and AAA6A are non-adjacent quads. Two of the five orderings (or 40%) have all of the quads touching.

You could get a "lazy" (or "time-efficient") strategy for this game by using 40% x 2000 + 60% x 800 = 1280 for the quad ace payout and 40% x 800 + 60% x 400 = 560 for the quad 2s-4s payout. If you plug this into some standard video poker software, it will yield 98.6743% (or 98.6733% if you want to ignore penalty cards).

You can actually do better than this if you take the time to figure out when you want to pay attention to the order of your dealt cards. For example, if you were dealt J222J, you get higher expected value if you toss the Jacks and just hold the three deuces in the middle positions. If you draw the case deuce, the quads will be guaranteed to be adjacent and pay at the higher amount of 800 coins. The expected value of holding the trip twos is about 50.26 coins, higher than the 45-coin full house payout. Other full houses with a 2-4 at one or both ends would not have high enough expectation to break up the dealt winner.

It would take some time to figure out how much this extra attention would be worth and what other holds would be affected. You are not dealt full houses with three 2s-4s that often, and only 10% of them are going to have the trips in the middle.

I am pretty sure that Bob Dancer wrote a column on this or a similar pay schedule sometime quite a while back and he might have identified other strategy changes. But if you are happy with 98.67%, you don't have to do additional work. Best of luck.

[RsVegas]

Which casino has that game?

[pokerforme]

Thanks New2vp. I appreciate your educational response. It was labeled double bonus+ on the machine and I just typed that in my post not thinking. Not sure I will give it a try next time I’m there as there are at least 3 better games than that on the same machines. But if I do I will use your strategy suggestion for sure! When looking at VPfree at the payback percentages I didn’t see this game listed and it puzzled me even more.
RsVegas it’s at the Eldorado in Reno NV.

[TripleTriple]

Excellent analysis (and good question as well). The 5-K quads really hurt the return- it would be 100.30% game with the normal 250, with the same qualifiers that New2vp states...
I'll be at the Row end of this month so I'll look for it. Probably won't play it but I'll look out of curiosity. Most people will say they don't care how their quads/kicker hands come, just that they come, but I do appreciate aesthetics.

[New2vp]

I have a reference in an old document of mine that Bob Dancer wrote about this game in an article on February 1, 2005; however, I don't know if any links to such articles exist.

[OTABILL]

I have a reference in an old document of mine that Bob Dancer wrote about this game in an article on February 1, 2005; however, I don't know if any links to such articles exist.

Its possible a link exists. However, without any additional information (where the article appeared and its title), finding it would be extremely difficult. Best way is if BD reads this topic and comments.

[dinghy]

I have a reference in an old document of mine that Bob Dancer wrote about this game in an article on February 1, 2005

The wayback machine has old versions of Bob's page, which led to this link which works for me:

https://web.archive.org/web/20090311041 ... /0201.html

[New2vp]

Very cool, dinghy. I couldn't find any articles with a more conventional search before 2011 except for a few from 1999.

[OTABILL]

I have a reference in an old document of mine that Bob Dancer wrote about this game in an article on February 1, 2005

The wayback machine has old versions of Bob's page, which led to this link which works for me:

https://web.archive.org/web/20090311041 ... /0201.html

Thanks Dinghy Even though I have it saved as a favorite and have used it for over 20 years, I sdismissed using the wayback machine as a resource.