2014 Changes in Play

[FloridaPhil]

Followers of the Recreational section of this forum know that I like to change denominations while I play. I can't stomach the losses of playing $1s all the time, but winning a couple hundred dollars doesn't have enough thrill to keep me going all day.  Until now, my favorite game has been one coin $1 Deuces switching to max coins when I win 4 coins or more.  In 2013, I hit a number of $1,000 quad deuces doing this and it's been great, but I always worry that I'm going to hit a single coin Royal for $250.  It's happened a few times so I changed my strategy this year.  In the past two weeks, I've been playing max coin quarter deuces and changing to max coin dollar deuces when I win 20 quarter coins or more. I've always avoided this because I thought it was too much work to hit the More Games button, change denominations and go back in the game.  It's really not that bad and you get used to it.  It also has the additional benefit of slowing your play.  This week I hit a $250 quad deuce, one $75 5-of-a-kind and two $125 Wild Royals and came home a small winner.  I haven't hit a $1,000 quad deuce in a couple of months, but did get one $1,000 Royal.  It seems to be working for me and I'm having fun.

[case]

Phil I am staying in Winter Haven (snowbird) and made a trip to your Hard Rock casino in Tampa. I know you have mentioned the video poker as not good and you are right. 8-5 DDB is bad but have seen that around the country at a few casinos. However the 8-5 DB is as bad as it gets.

I realize it is the only game in town and if you want to play then you take what you get. I actually played 5 cent keno and the pay tables were good for the most part.

Ate in the food court and had a good hamburger. The place sure was busy though and people were banging away on the slots.

If I played here regular I would play short coin and try and limit my losses and still have some fun. Good luck to you.

[FloridaPhil]

The wife and I play video poker all over the country on road trips and 8/5 DDB is about the norm these days. The worst DDB I have seen is 7/5 and the best is 9/6.  I have never seen 10/6 DDB, but we hardly ever go to Vegas.  Personally, I have never seen a 100+ video poker schedule not counting progressives or comps coming from large denomination play.  Quarter players like us know we are going to lose money in the long run, so we need to factor a lot of luck into the equation.  Switching to $1 play about 10% of the time is one way to make this happen.  It takes 4 sets of quarter quad deuces to equal one $1,000 quad deuce hand.  The play strategy doesn't change unless the pay schedule does.  I used to play $1s all the time.  I won $14,000 in 24 hours in Biloxi back in 2008, but the negative odds always catch up with you.  My losses are now much less than when I played $1s all the time and I still have the fun of hitting a good one once in a while. Last year was a banner year for me.  I came very close to breaking even and I threw away two Royals playing short coin. I say play whatever works for you and have as much fun as possible.  I think the idea that you can make money today playing video poker is a dream that some people want to believe.  If that's your dream go for it, but don't quit your day job.
 
Tampa's not a bad place to play.  It's all we have locally, so I try to make the best of it. They have installed some new video poker machines in the past year, so we now have less trouble with the hardware.  We'll be in Biloxi two weeks from today and are counting down the days...

[Vman96]

fwiw, 9/6 with one coin is better than 8/5 with 5 coins.

[FloridaPhil]

One thing I've learned about Video Poker is that the odds don't tell the whole story.  You can play 100% machines for months at a time and still lose.  The good hands will come, you have to put yourself in a position to win big when they happen.  I'm not suggesting this strategy will make you a long term winner.  I do think it's better than hammering away at a quarter 95% game.  One $4,000 Royal will wipe out a whole lot of quarter losses.

[Vman96]

The problem is you aren't supposed to know when the big hands will happen, so you have to just put yourself in the best position possible. For once, that happened to me tonight (or last night at this point I guess...lol). Games with the best odds and highest denominations paid off for me. The low denominations didn't. But I'll take the higher denominations paying off anyday regardless of paytable!

[FloridaPhil]

The question is knowing when to play at the higher denomination?  I've tried all sorts of schemes and Deuces seems to offer the best chance at any kind of strategy that I can have confidence in.  Where I play, Deuces pays 4 coins for 4-of-kind.  This hand or higher seems to happened at least 10% of the time.  This means I switch to max coin dollars al least one a minute. Deuces often runs in streaks.  When the game is bad, I'm playing $1.25 a hand, when it's good I'm playing $5 a hand.  I can play for an hour and lose $100, then I'll hit a good hand at quad dollars and come back.  In deuces, all I am waiting for is to hit a quad deuce or a royal.  The luck comes in when you hit one at max coin dollars.  Works for me.

[olds442jetaway]

One thing I've learned about Video Poker is that the odds don't tell the whole story.  You can play 100% machines for months at a time and still lose.  The good hands will come, you have to put yourself in a position to win big when they happen.  I'm not suggesting this strategy will make you a long term winner.  I do think it's better than hammering away at a quarter 95% game.  One $4,000 Royal will wipe out a whole lot of quarter losses.

     Along those lines, a couple of years ago I played next to an elderly lady who kept 3s on job every time they came out on the deal because that was her favorite number. She just played one coin at a time, but an hour later, she was still ahead. She hit quad 3s twice and several full houses where the 3s dominated.

[FloridaPhil]

How cool is that?  I would like to clarify a statement I made before, "When the game is bad, I'm playing $1.25 a hand, when it's good I'm playing $5 a hand."  No one can actually tell when the game is bad or good,  My switching to max dollars on a 4 coin win is just my way of randomly picking the time to switch to the higher denomination.  Odds are, you are going to eventually hit a good hand while playing dollars which will hopefully keep you in the game.  I think you could do the same thing by switching everytime you have to get up to pee or something stupid like that.

[olds442jetaway]

Hi Phil. I must be pretty stupid then...getting up 2 or 3 times a night to pee...lol...and a few at the casino as well. I know too much information...lol..,but at my age or anyone for that matter the best thing is to stay hydrated. Getting back to vp for a minute, our methods of switching back and forth are opposite, yet similar. I have pretty much given up on Royals. Now nearly 300k hands without one. I am finding though, that deuces quads are still coming in about on schedule in the long run. That said, they bailed me out yesterday, though I came close to busting the budget for the day or hitting the ATM. I think the regular readers here know that I usually play a Martingale close system of my own design. On regular deuces quarters, I wait for 6 consecutive dud hands then up my bet a unit. I stay there until I hit something good then either cash out or start over with one unit. If I get 6 straight duds again, I up my bet another unit and so forth. I was all the way up to 23 units. Hit 6 more straight dud hands, went up to 24, and was dealt one deuce. Held that alone and bang....the deuces quads came out. The only downside was it was 1200 bucks on the nose so it was a hand pay and W2-G. My first and hopefully not the last for the year.