This is your game, Olds!

[davidearl]

Pick-a-Multiplier Poker.

It's this week's Weekly Game. You can pick a 2x multiplier, which gives you a 2x on all plays. then you can move up to the 3x, which gives you a multiplier, every 2nd play. All the way up to the 10x, which gives you a 10x, every 9th play.

I've only played it 3 hundred play sessions, but already, I know I love it! 5

[olds442jetaway]

Sounds like fun!

[FAA]

I tried it. My strategy was to zero in on the 10X at least 8 times. Definitely worth doing free online.

[JWF]

ugh. Terrible game! not only about half the 10x multipliers were 0, about 30% of the other hands were 0 wins (not even even money) as well.

[olds442jetaway]

That’s why I leave games like Ultimate X to my Mrs and I stick with the basics.

[Minn. Fatz]

some back of the envelope thoughts

if the return of the game without multipliers is R then it's pretty clear playing the 2x exclusively will give you a return of 2R, in other words the same return you would get playing the game on a ten play machine with no features

if you play 3x exclusively the multiplier comes every 2 hands giving a return of (3/2)R = 1.5 R. likewise the 4x return every 3 hands would be (4/3)R = 1.3 R and so on to 10x, (10/9)R = 1.1 R. higher multipliers give you greater variance at the cost of lower expected return.

so to get the highest return play 2x all the time; to try for the highest score play 10x and hope for the best.

i played one 100 game session each on each multiplier and was able to make 8000+ on all of them except 5 and 9 with the help of some timely big hands.

with the sound on you can play tunes on the multipliers. try this:

6 5 4 5 6 6 6, 5 5 5, 6 8 8, 6 5 4 5 6 6 6 6 5 5 6 5 4

or

4, 5 6, 4 6 4 6, 5, 6 7 7 6 5 7, 6, 7 8, 6 8 6 8, 7, 8 10 10 8 7 10, 8, 4 5 6 7 8 10

good mathematics

[Minn. Fatz]

after some sleep i see i am totally ignoring the return you get from non-multiplier hands. so choosing for example 3x, in two hands you get

(1R + 3R) / 2 = 2R

choosing 4x:

(1R + 1R + 4R) / 3 = 2R

and generally, choosing (n)x:

( (n-2)R + nR ) / (n-1) = (2n - 2) R / (n - 1) = 2R

so regardless of what multiplier you choose you are always getting an expected return of 2R which (since you pay twice as much to play the feature) is the same as you'd get from playing the game "straight." the variance is all that changes with higher multipliers producing higher variance.

you can still play tunes on the multipliers