The Hardest Part of VP

[FloridaPhil]

I don't know about the rest of you, but my biggest problem is losing streaks.   I'll go along for weeks and all seems fine.  Then all of a sudden I hit a bad day or two and it shakes my confidence.  I have no idea how the pros deal with this.   Since I've been playing bigger denominations the pain is bigger and comes more often.  You tell yourself the odds say you will recover, but it doesn't seem to help much.  You drop back in denomination and SOB here comes the small coin royal.   Heaven help you if you dropped back to single coin and .........  .To combat this, I've been increasing my VP bankroll.  This helps some, but you hate to see it go down by thousands.  Of all the things I admire about Bob Dancer, this is the most impressive.  I don't know how he handles it.   Even if you have a garage full of hundreds, it's got to hurt. 

[paco13]

I am stuck in a streak right now that I don't have any bankroll left. Last year was different. Even though it was negative for the year I consistently bounced back and had funds in the pot. Since the turn of the year It has been all downhill. Last weekend depleted it entirely. Very depressing.

[FloridaPhil]

I moved up in denomination earlier this year.   My wins have increased, but so have my loses.  When playing negative games, controlling loses in much more important than engineering wins.   The math told me so, but of course I chose to ignore it.  Lesson learned.   The best two years I ever had in this game was playing single coin quarters.  Makes sense as it cut my loses to a trickle.  Unfortunately, it also cuts most of the fun out of the game.

[Raner]

I don't know about the rest of you, but my biggest problem is losing streaks.   I'll go along for weeks and all seems fine.  Then all of a sudden I hit a bad day or two and it shakes my confidence.  I have no idea how the pros deal with this.   Since I've been playing bigger denominations the pain is bigger and comes more often.  You tell yourself the odds say you will recover, but it doesn't seem to help much.
Well Phil, I know exactly how you feel. I guess all of us that play Video Poker exclusively hit his brick wall "Sooner or later". Since you seem to be the "Guru" around here, There is not much I call tell you that you don't know about video poker already.
The only thing I can tell you is what I did to get me threw my losing streaks on DDB.
As a matter a fact, It was a post on this forum and you were one of the persons that helped me out on that particular trend.
What I did after I got beat up real bad on a few trips to the casino. I sat down to see what I could do
to ease the terrible and confidence shaking feeling I'd get when DDB would take a turn for the worse and
would not ease up. When his happened my back roll took a real beating.
Well I started doing the math and the only thing I saw that could be the real root of the problem was the five credits for two pairs on DDB. So I started playing BP and I was right on my assumption. After the
first day of playing BP I was amazed as to how the up and down streaks over 10 hours or so were so
evenly matched. No big swings just kinda even keeled, at the end of the day I was up 800...
I have not been playing BP that long as my primary game but I will tell you this in my last four visits to
a casino I have not come home in the short end of the stick.(I also hit a 4000 dollar Royal to boot)
I know your primary game is Deuces Wild. Yes you have four wilds available to you on any given dealt hand.
But you also are fighting a hell of a battle when you get nothing for a pair or for two pairs...
All I'm saying is you might have to sit down and figure out if a backup version of video poker that pays 10 credits for two pairs might help you in getting threw the rough streaks on Deuces Wild...   

[FloridaPhil]

My personal problem is I like bigger jackpots, but I don't like the loses it takes to see them.   Until January my strategy was to play quarters, then switch to 50 cents or dollars when I was up a predetermined amount.   This worked well as my long bad spells were held down by quarter play.   Doing this I average about two hand pays a year.  Last year my tax form had 2 for $6K.  To make a long story short, in January I decided to switch  to 50 cent play all the time.  So far this has proven to be costly.   I lost $2K on a very bad three day trip last week and am reevaluating my strategy.  Most likely I will return to quarter play and move up.  It may not be the most efficient math wise, but it fits my personal preference better.  Losing 2K is not going to break me, but it's very depressing. I have been fighting the VP wars for a long time, so it's nothing new.  I've lost before and it will happen again.  Anyone who says they win all the time at this game is a total BSer.   Everyone has to deal with downturns from time to time.

[olds442jetaway]

my biggest problem as well. I am in a hell of a losing streak right now. What I am trying to do and I don't kn ow if it will bust my budget or not is to up my play a bit every session I don't hit quad deuces. Of course you need a big bankroll to do this. We all know they will come and we won't have to wait as long as the ridiculous royal wait, but even so it can get expensive. Right now I'm up to 8 quarters a bet. That means I have has 3 sessions without quad deuces. In the past, I have never gone past 4. Guess will see what happens. If I hit at 8, my next session will be bet 7. If I hit on that session, the next one will be bet 6 etc.

[Raner]

I started play dollar denomination about 15 years ago. So going down on denomination for me was not an option.
The only option I had was to change the version and went with BP.
Now don't get me wrong I like you like the big hand pays.
I still play DDB on progressive machines. If or when I get on a machine in the future that is hitting four of a kinds pretty
often I will switch over to DDB. Because I'm hard headed and I do like to play DDB a lot but I will resist the
temptation until I feel the timing is right.
I'm most likely going to get blasted by the strategy hounds on the forum for what I'm fixing to white next.
I did a slight modification to the DDB strategy on two items.
I will always keep the A instead of the off suit J,Q. Reason the A is more valuable in my eyes...
I will not draw on a 4 card inside straight with cards between 2 and 10. Reason if I don't draw the card I need
I'm sunk, If I pair up I'm still sunk.

[FloridaPhil]

[quote=Raner]The only option I had was to change the version and went with BP.
[/quote]Funny thing happened to me on our last Tahoe trip.  I was playing deuces and couldn't hit a thing.  To keep from losing I switched to Bonus Poker.  You guessed it, I hit two quad deuces in about 15 minutes! Losing is part of this game.  I'll never get used to it, but I don't have to like it. 

[billryan]

my biggest problem as well. I am in a hell of a losing streak right now. What I am trying to do and I don't kn ow if it will bust my budget or not is to up my play a bit every session I don't hit quad deuces. Of course you need a big bankroll to do this. We all know they will come and we won't have to wait as long as the ridiculous royal wait, but even so it can get expensive. Right now I'm up to 8 quarters a bet. That means I have has 3 sessions without quad deuces. In the past, I have never gone past 4. Guess will see what happens. If I hit at 8, my next session will be bet 7. If I hit on that session, the next one will be bet 6 etc.

What is the max coin in the game? I'm not following you.
If you aren't playing max coins, you are doing yourself a disservice. It sounds like you are trying a modified bet progression. They rarely work out well.

[asteroid]

Bill, a lot of vp machines where the player can put in more than 5 coins per deal/draw start the 4000 NRF bonus at 5 coins - thus as long as a player puts in at least 5 coins (in say a 100 coin max bet machine for example), they are eligible for the proportionate NRF jackpot bonus.example 6 coins are bet: the player gets a NRF and is awarded 4800 coins.Anyway olds442 can chime in if he wants to say whether this is the case on the machine(s) he is playing. [QUOTE=olds442jetaway] my biggest problem as well. I am in a hell of a losing streak right now. What I am trying to do and I don't kn ow if it will bust my budget or not is to up my play a bit every session I don't hit quad deuces. Of course you need a big bankroll to do this. We all know they will come and we won't have to wait as long as the ridiculous royal wait, but even so it can get expensive. Right now I'm up to 8 quarters a bet. That means I have has 3 sessions without quad deuces. In the past, I have never gone past 4. Guess will see what happens. If I hit at 8, my next session will be bet 7. If I hit on that session, the next one will be bet 6 etc.

What is the max coin in the game? I'm not following you.
If you aren't playing max coins, you are doing yourself a disservice. It sounds like you are trying a modified bet progression. They rarely work out well.[/QUOTE]