Today's Monthly Contest

[BillyJoe]

Webman, tried the non-contest version of GTP. No diff in speed with sound on or off for me. Playing on IE 8 browser, Windows XP.
On the contest version, seems to run faster with sound off. Also, in current contest version, with sound off, if you are dealt a paying hand (like two pair), it displays that BEFORE all the multipliers drop down. With sound on, it waits for all the multipliers to come down before it displays your deal as a winning hand.    

[Bear s Mom]

Non version is pretty much the same as the contest.    The game works faster with the sound off.   With the sound ON you do have to wait until all 3 multipliers are up and then it allows you to deal.Bear's Mom

[faygo]

Webman  Thanks for the fix. The game performs great whether the sound is on or off.

[jim18]

For some reason I started keeping records on my performance of the monthly contest.  Rather than looking at the results for the top 10 players in this contest, and wonder if this is randomness or not, I will instead proceed in a more factual way.So far I have played just over 100 sessions.  Each session consists of 100 dealt hands times 3 hands per deal.  So, I am thinking that I have played a total of 30,000 hands, at least.  A royal flush session consists of over 40,000 hands, so my sample size is small.To play 30,000 hands, I must have spent 300,000 credits.  During this time, I had 69 losing sessions, at roughly a 500 credit loss per session..  This translates into 35,000 credits lost during the losing sessions.  On the other hand I had winning sessions about 1/3 of the time.  My winnings amounted to roughly 26,000 credits.  A net loss of about 9,000 credits.During my sessions, I did hit a royal flush with a factor of 3.  I played all of the video poker variations except joker poker.9,000 / 300,000 indicates that my loss is about 3%.  So, I might say that my losses are reasonable, and within the realm of randomness.  If you take away my royal flush hit for 12,000 credits, then my loss is about 7 %.  In order to get close to break even I would have to hit a second royal flush with a multiplier of 4 or 5.  While this could happen, it is not likely to occur!  Then I must pay taxes (if this was the real world) on my 12,000 credit win.So, what is really going on here?  Maybe the payback on this game is low.  Maybe my playing skill is low?  Maybe I have not played enough sessions, and things will get better in time.In theory, I am down 9,000 credits, and one hand away from being down 21,000 credits.  At twenty-five cents per credit, that would be $5,000+.  Imagine how big my bankroll has to be to withstand the losing cycle that I am in.  How much money should I be willing and/or required to put into this game to be able to win?  It looks to me like this is nothing but a form of entertainment.  And that the longer I play this game - or any game available to me, the more money that I will lose.At what point would it be more gentle on my finances for me to switch to slot machines where I am playing twenty cents or fifty cents per spin, vs seven dollars- fifty cents per deal?Doing some quick math, it looks like it would take about 20 hours of playing time to accomplish the above results.  During this time I would have lost $2,250 in credits, plus incurred about $400 in tax loss.  If I were playing Cleopatra at 50 cents per spin, playing 600 spins per hour with a payback of only 88% I would be spending 42 dollars per hour.  To lose as much money as I have lost on this video poker game it would take me 63 hours.  Which game is going to be the best entertainment value?  Which game is going to give me a positive return?Has anyone else kept records or made analysis of any games that they would like to share with those of us who are hear to learn?

[boobert]

I enjoyed the monthly contest. It was fun trying to get the lowest score every so often to try and get a high bonus score. My lowest was 5, tried for a zero , but couldn't do it. It did get me 3 months of gold, thanks!