How important is proper play?

[stevel96a1]

i ran a sim on a video poker game i do  not play perfect strategy id say i get about 95% right of course never committing a sin such as losing a 4 of a kind or losing a royalmy hands played 316the sim played 831both lost 400 credit both were 5 max coinhow important is 100% correct play? was that 316 hands played vs 831 due to variance or my poor play? i feel like i lost many more winning opportunities with such a poor play

[DAAnMAAn]

Some software will give you a cost of making bad (less mathematically sound) plays. They are based on logorithms of theoretical hands thru X amount of plays. The X amount being many many hands.
In other words, your sample size of results I believe is too small to form any valid conclusions.

[BobDancer]

I largely agree with what DAAnMAAn wrote.It's not the percentage of hands you get correct that matters. It's the percentage EV you get correct.In other words, a major error is much more serious than a minor error --- although they each count as one error if you're counting mistakes. You alluded to this when you mentioned never missing a 4-of-a-kind or a royal flush. Sample size was pretty small (quads happen every 420 hands or so --- royals every 40,000+) to get determinate results. Also, it's possible to get MORE quads using bad strategy and still lose more --- such as by holding KK from KK443. In most games holding just the kings would be a major mistake, but a common one for somebody playing only 95% accurately.If you're interested in winning, 95% accuracy is hopelessly bad. So is 98% accuracy. Even on the best games available, you need far greater than 99% accuracy to stand a chance.Even if you accept that you're never going to be a winning player, most recreational players still want to make their money last longer --- or lose the least possible. Your sim, while statistically insignificant because of sample size and who knows how accurate it was, showed you'd get more than twice as many hands playing accurately for the same amount of loss as you do playing inaccurately. Would you rather play 1 hour for an $xxx loss, or would you rather play 2.5 hours for the same $xxx loss? To me, it's a no-brainer answer.

[stevel96a1]

correction the feedback Wolf video poker says i am  % correct 90.18 ouch and i am playing joker poker probably one of the harder games to learn and play but as well the rewardingi guess i am just learning and realizing a mistake is extremely importantly let be a minor or major because they all add up in the end.  now it becomes play each hand as if it were your lasti also noticed in manual sims that somewhere after losing -1k or -2k credits on full pay machines it becomes harder and harder to lose credits, in other words it stops losing money at a rapid pace and starts losing money much slower very noticeable these are cycles of 4k credits ofcourse max bet

[stevel96a1]

Bob you were also correct when you said it does not take skill to get a royal flush, in my short video poker adventure i 100% agree its more like what your bankroll will look like after you get your royal flush.i also believe anything under 9/6 JoB 99.54 should be deemed illegal and should be fixed or removed i personally can not play anything below that but im sure id be repeating this if i lived in vegas and had access to 100% machines

[BobDancer]

i also believe anything under 9/6 JoB 99.54 should be deemed illegal and should be fixed or removed.

Heaven forbid!Casinos absolutely need to make money. If all games had to return 99.54% or more, you'd basically find no such games in the casino. Or there'd be an admission fee to play the game. Or it would take $1000 coin-in to earn one slot club point.In order for a casino to survive, it MUST be allowed to offer lesser games. Part of the required "self-protection" skill set of smart players is to avoid those games.Also, it's not the return on the game itself that is paramount. In 2017, I played more than $3 million in coin-in on 9/6 DDB --- a game that returns slightly less than 99%. Yes there were point multipliers on the slot club when I played. Yes there were some really good promotions going on at the time. Yes I ended up a winner on the game + slot club + promotions (even before considering any comps). But the game itself was 0.56% tighter than your 9/6 JoB "minimum"