CS 2.0

[FloridaPhil]

CS 2.0

Let's talk about playing VP for fun. When I walk into a new casino, the first thing I do is walk over to the single line video poker games. I like to play Deuces Wild, so I check the quarter odds first. Normally, I find the common 100/60 game. This game is a 97.579% game playing max coin quarters. Then I check the 50 cent and dollar odds for the same game. It is common to find the dollar game is 98.9% at max coins. This is true in Tampa, Biloxi and Cherokee. Hollywood is different because there are a few 98.9% quarter games if you can find them and Tampa offers 98.9% deuces games starting at 50 cents.

The single coin dollar Deuces Wild game is slightly better than the max coin quarter game. Both are negative. Unless there are comps involved and there sometimes are, I like the single coin dollar games better. Why?

It's cheaper to play because the hourly coin-in is 20% less. In return for this saving, you give up $50 on each quad deuce ($200 vs. $250). The big difference is the royal flush. If you hit one, you are penalized $750 playing single coin dollars. But, you earned 5 more coins for each wild royal and 3 more coins for each 5-of-a-kind by playing dollars. As the odds show, both games have about the same return.

The big difference for me is the excitement level. It's hard to put a value on this as it varies with the player. I like playing cheap and being only button away from a really big jackpot. I can't tell you what a thrill it is to reach down, hit the max coin button and hit a quad deuce for $1,000. I have done this many times and it's one of the most entertaining things you can do playing small. Multiply this by four and you have the thrill of being handed a stack of forty $100 dollar bills. Getting a hand pay is something a single line VP quarter player never sees. I average one of two of these a year.

The problem with this style of play is it's based purely on luck. Anyone who is concerned with that is not going to play a negative game in the first place. If I am given the choice of not playing at all or playing these games, I play them for the entertainment value and I play them small.

Over the last month, I have been testing a new strategy at the Tampa Hard Rock. For the above reasons, I switched to single coin fifty cent and dollar deuces wild at this casino. I play $20 at a time and switch to max coins whenever the counter reaches $30 at 50 cents or $40 at dollars. In both cases I return back to single coin play at $20. I also set a $50 cash out limit for 50 cents play and $100 for dollar play. This is my going home money.

Playing this way allows me to play all day with $300. So far, I have broken even or made money on every trip. If I play VP all day and go home with the same money I went with, I consider this a win. I hit a $500 quad deuce two weeks ago, so I am ahead so far.

THIS IS NOT A WAY TO BEAT THE CASINO! This is a way to use the casino's odds structure to your advantage. The advantage is in the extra entertainment value of playing this way, not the long term result.

Many players would hate this style for play, so it's not for everyone. Whenever I suggest it, players tell me they would be afraid to hit a single coin royal. I tell them a quad deuce happens nine times more often and hitting one at max coins pays the same as a max coin quarter royal. I also tell them they can gain better odds in the short term. This gets them thinking, but it doesn't normally change their mind. I'm not trying to change anyone's mind. I'm relaying how I like to play. If you understand why I like to play this way, you will understand me.

I will be playing this way for the rest of the year and reporting what happens both good and bad. With a little luck, I may hit a big royal. I'm not counting on it, but it's happened before. In any case, I'll be having fun.

[wildman49]

I just did a rough tax calculation last night and it's not good. My AP play is costly. I am shutting down play for the year and playing off free play for taxes. Will collect 3k over the next 10 weeks but will have no free play going into 2019.

I like your play here Phil, I have played CS years ago and really liked it. One can play all day on little money. I had many 1 coin royals, as long as one is ok with them CS is a cheap way to play. I do have 20 coin machines that helps not giving up the the royal bonus by playing 5 nickels then max to 20. Hit a few $200 royals. Will be looking at CS for 2019 even as I have good games at max bet, some times it's just about playing least that one can is not a bad play.

[FloridaPhil]

CS 2.0 is similar to splitting your bankroll. You could consider single coin play as regular play and your max coin hands as pot shots. In a normal day's play, I can usually make the switch to max coins 3-5 times. Some days I can stay at max coins much of the day which really boosts my free play and comps. I enjoy playing this way much better than sit around playing playing a max coin quarter 97% game all day. It adds excitement without adding cost.

[billryan]

Does splitting your bankroll result in playing at a lower percentage? Result in reduced Royals?
So how are they similar? One reduces your potential losses and the other reduces your potential winnings.

[tech58]

WM49 still trying to figure out your Eagle plan. You were killing them then quittsville. I have uncertainty's about their attitude towards VP players. I have doubled coin-in for Diamond and have been dissed for a meal comp. Can we compare notes or something? Bonus days ahead can i buy you a beer?

[olds442jetaway]

One of these days, I would love to have a cs marathon at Mohegan Sun with the forum gang. We could play non stop for a day or two on one of the very few machines that pays the correct amount for the royal at bet one. Pool the money up front. Play in shifts. Share the gains and losses equally. Have meet and greet sessions. Share stories and pics of the good hits. At the end divide up the credits in the machine and see how we did. Could be fun.

[FloridaPhil]

One of these days, I would love to have a cs marathon at Mohegan Sun with the forum gang.

That would be fun. Using CS on a game without a royal penalty would be great. You could play until your arms fell off for pocket change. The free drinks would be just as good, the casino would look the same and the girls would be just as pretty. If you managed to hit a lucky hand, you could go home a big winner.

I have done my own live casino simulations on CS and it's a winner as far as I am concerned. You won't beat the casino, but it will provide you with hours of entertainment without costing a lot of money. To enjoy it, you have to get over hitting a single coin royal. That's the casino's temptation to get you to put more money through their machines. With most of the VP games we have today, more money through the machines means bigger losses.

I don't always use CS. With the odds and comps dropping the way they have been, I find myself using it more and more.

[wildman49]

WM49 still trying to figure out your Eagle plan. You were killing them then quittsville. I have uncertainty's about their attitude towards VP players. I have doubled coin-in for Diamond and have been dissed for a meal comp. Can we compare notes or something? Bonus days ahead can i buy you a beer?

Tech going to move this to Strategy form.

[New2vp]

CS 2.0

Let's talk about playing VP for fun. When I walk into a new casino, the first thing I do is walk over to the single line video poker games. I like to play Deuces Wild, so I check the quarter odds first. Normally, I find the common 100/60 game. This game is a 97.579% game playing max coin quarters. Then I check the 50 cent and dollar odds for the same game. It is common to find the dollar game is 98.9% at max coins. This is true in Tampa, Biloxi and Cherokee. Hollywood is different because there are a few 98.9% quarter games if you can find them and Tampa offers 98.9% deuces games starting at 50 cents.

The single coin dollar Deuces Wild game is slightly better than the max coin quarter game. Both are negative. Unless there are comps involved and there sometimes are, I like the single coin dollar games better. Why?

It's cheaper to play because the hourly coin-in is 20% less. In return for this saving, you give up $50 on each quad deuce ($200 vs. $250). The big difference is the royal flush. If you hit one, you are penalized $750 playing single coin dollars. But, you earned 5 more coins for each wild royal and 3 more coins for each 5-of-a-kind by playing dollars. As the odds show, both games have about the same return.

The big difference for me is the excitement level. It's hard to put a value on this as it varies with the player. I like playing cheap and being only button away from a really big jackpot. I can't tell you what a thrill it is to reach down, hit the max coin button and hit a quad deuce for $1,000. I have done this many times and it's one of the most entertaining things you can do playing small. Multiply this by four and you have the thrill of being handed a stack of forty $100 dollar bills. Getting a hand pay is something a single line VP quarter player never sees. I average one of two of these a year.

The problem with this style of play is it's based purely on luck. Anyone who is concerned with that is not going to play a negative game in the first place. If I am given the choice of not playing at all or playing these games, I play them for the entertainment value and I play them small.

Over the last month, I have been testing a new strategy at the Tampa Hard Rock. For the above reasons, I switched to single coin fifty cent and dollar deuces wild at this casino. I play $20 at a time and switch to max coins whenever the counter reaches $30 at 50 cents or $40 at dollars. In both cases I return back to single coin play at $20. I also set a $50 cash out limit for 50 cents play and $100 for dollar play. This is my going home money.

Playing this way allows me to play all day with $300. So far, I have broken even or made money on every trip. If I play VP all day and go home with the same money I went with, I consider this a win. I hit a $500 quad deuce two weeks ago, so I am ahead so far.

THIS IS NOT A WAY TO BEAT THE CASINO! This is a way to use the casino's odds structure to your advantage. The advantage is in the extra entertainment value of playing this way, not the long term result.

Many players would hate this style for play, so it's not for everyone. Whenever I suggest it, players tell me they would be afraid to hit a single coin royal. I tell them a quad deuce happens nine times more often and hitting one at max coins pays the same as a max coin quarter royal. I also tell them they can gain better odds in the short term. This gets them thinking, but it doesn't normally change their mind. I'm not trying to change anyone's mind. I'm relaying how I like to play. If you understand why I like to play this way, you will understand me.

I will be playing this way for the rest of the year and reporting what happens both good and bad. With a little luck, I may hit a big royal. I'm not counting on it, but it's happened before. In any case, I'll be having fun.

A few results that you can expect from this style of play. There is a lot of info here, so I'll focus primarily on the strategy that you laid out for dollars. I'll hint at some of the 50-cent results, but not include that much detail at this point.

When you insert a $20 bill, using the strategy described, you can expect to play on average 179.18 hands before busting or cashing out a white ticket. There is a lot of variance so individual sessions can be much longer or of course shorter. The more sessions you play, the closer you can expect to get about 179 hands per session. With fifteen $20-bills in your daily bankroll, this works out to an average of 2688 hands after going through all 15 sessions.

The hands in a session break down as follows with 97.34% of the hands being short-coin:

Short-coin 174.426
Max coin 4.758

This split is considerably different depending upon the eventual outcome. Some of the bust sessions may have no max-coin plays at all. And sometimes a short-coin jackpot will take you right to cash-out. Total plays and max-coin plays are shown below for the various outcomes.

Bustouts: Total 178.65, Max-coin 3.56
Short-coin Jackpots: Total 160.17, Max-coin 5.35
Max-coin Wins: Total 197.55 to 207.65, Max-coin 21.28 to 30.84 (the averages are different depending on which outcome puts you at or over $100)

Now let's look at how the sessions will end. Below are the outcomes, and average white tickets. Despite the big numbers at the bottom end of the table, the average cash-out is $179.53. Note that the short-coin cash-outs actually average higher than the max-coin cash-outs.

Busted....................91.25%...$ 0.00
Short-coin Deuces....3.27%....$ 217.74
Short-coin Royal.......0.38%....$ 267.74
Max-coin Straight......0.16%....$ 101.37
Max-coin Flush.........0.17%....$ 102.99
Max-coin FH/Quad....1.56%....$ 104.53
Max-coin SF..............0.71%....$ 111.39
Max-coin 5ofaKind....1.49%....$ 124.32
Max-coin WildRoyal...0.91%....$ 174.32
Max-coin Deuces.......0.09%...$1,049.42
Max-coin Royal..........0.01%...$4,049.42

The calculations are not criticism, but I would comment on your implication of frequent winning, based on your assertion that you had "broken even or made money on every trip." I would speculate that either you have had very few trips, were quite lucky, or didn't play exactly how your strategy was described. With the minimum size of a ticket being $100, if you get 3 or more tickets, you ARE guaranteed to win or breakeven. But with a 91%+ whiff rate, you will get 0 white tickets over 25% of the time. You will get 3 or more tickets only 13.8% of the time. While you could win a lot, 68.5% of the time you will lose, and 25.3% of the time your daily bankroll will be totally depleted.

Tickets...Probability...Avg. Gross Win....Probability < $300
0..............0.2533..........$0.................100%
1..............0.3642.......$179.53..............98.86%
2..............0.2444.......$359.06..............29.26%
3..............0.1015.......$538.59................0%
4..............0.0292.......$718.11................0%
5..............0.0062.......$897.64................0%
6..............0.0010.....$1,077.17...............0%
7..............0.0001.....$1,256.70...............0%

To get profit, you have to subtract $300 from the Gross Win figure. And you could get 8 or more tickets, but I didn't include those numbers since the probability to 4 places is zero.

Maybe you have played more 50-cent play than dollar play? There is a lower whiff rate of only 82.2% bust-outs, and you obviously can play longer on 15 sessions (average of 5514 hands per 15 sessions) and you will get more tickets, about 2.67 per 15 sessions. The chances of busting on all 15 sessions is down to 5.3%. But the average ticket size is smaller, $87.97, and the rate at cashing less than $300 is actually higher than the rate at dollars. 72.43% of the time, you will end 15 sessions as a loser. So whether you play dollars or halves, this strategy will not have you winning most of the time.

The stated allure of this method for you playing max dollars is the chance of a big win, $1000 for max-coin deuces and $4000 for a max coin royal. The numbers say that you will get 34.42 short-coin royals for each max-coin royal that you will get. And 36.76 short-coin quad deuces for each max-coin quad deuce. You will get a max-coin royal on average every 1,634,652 hands. Be hopeful that you won't run into any 3- or 4-cycle droughts. And max-coin quad deuces can be expected on average once per 201,375 hands. I know it would cost more, but if the allure is to get 4-digit dollar jackpots, it seems like quarter deuce max-coin royals will show up 3 or 4 times more often than your 4-digit jackpots with CS 2.0.

Actually your harshest critic may be a guy named FloridaPhil from earlier this year.

Time to update my VP strategy for 2018. A lot is changing in the VP world. Casinos all over the country are pulling video poker machines and replacing them with slots. VP odds and comps have been and are being seriously reduced. There still may be positive VP opportunities for those willing to uproot their family and move to Vegas. That's not an option for me.In order to revise my VP strategy, I had to first determine why I was playing video poker. After all, if you don't know what you want, you don't know how to get there. I play video poker as a hobby. I enjoy my days at the casino. I take the back roads to get to the casino which makes my trip a pleasant drive though the country. I'm in no hurry to get to and from the casino. I actually enjoy playing VP, winning or not. When my wife comes along with me, I enjoy it more. We talk along the way. She tells me about her day and what's on her mind. I listen to her and we actually communicate. Pretty rare these days.Don't get me wrong, I love to win and I hate to lose. The difference is I don't need to play VP so I can live a nice lifestyle. I live a nice lifestyle because I earned it by working hard all my life. Because of this fact, a small VP win feels just as good to me as a big win. I hate losing. If I hit a $1,000 royal flush and give it back the next day, I am seriously depressed. That is something I will do most anything to avoid. So what is my new VP strategy? It's actually not new at all. It's a strategy that allows me to enjoy VP on my terms. It doesn't require a big bankroll and it is as exciting as I need it to be. Since the first of the year I have hit $4,000 worth of royals using this strategy. I have been very lucky. The good news is, even on days when I don't hit a jackpot my losses are minimal. I do not expect to make money playing this way. I do not expect to lose a lot of money either. All I expect to do is to have fun playing VP.For years I have been playing single line Deuces Wild. My wife still plays that game and does well. It doesn't work that well for me. Deuces Wild strategy is somewhat difficult, especially in the small exception errors. Small errors add up. Deuces Wild variance can also be an issue. With so much riding on the royal and a quad deuce, the lack of either can make for a bad day. Finally, deuces wild royal flushes aren't as common. The DW cycle is 5,000 hands longer than Jacks.My current game of choice is Jacks or Better or Bonus Poker. Most of my Jacks games are 8/5. Bonus Poker is 7/5. I don't like to play worse games, but I will if that's all I have. If you want to hit a lot of royals, you must play a lot of hands. Due to doubling your money for two pair, these games let me play more hands for the money. In VP math this is called variance. As far as I am concerned, low variance is "GOLD" in VP. If you wonder why players complain about rigged machines, I think it's due to playing high variance games. The second change I made is to always play max coins. Playing single coin is for a player on a severely limited budget. If that's not you, play max coins. If you ever play single coin VP for money again, you are begging for disappointment.My third change was to stop changing denominations. I decide what denomination I am going to play and I stay there. For years I played at a low denomination and switched higher when I doubled my money. Some people do the same thing when they hit a slow spell (Martingale). I found this to be a long term loser. Pick a denomination and stay there. Then you always know the cost of a hand and the payout for the jackpot. My forth change was to stay with quarters. If you play 96-98% games like I do, you are going to lose long term. If it's worth $10,000 for you to hit a $4,000 dollar jackpot, go for it. I'm just as happy with $1.25 a hand and a $1,000 royal.If you need to, here is a way to wean yourself away from dollar video poker. It worked for me and it might work for you. When you are in the casino and that little voice in your head is telling you to bet big and visions of big jackpots dance in your eyes, think about the feeling you are going to have when you lose and walk out broke again. It's just not worth it. It took me over 10 years to come to this place. There's good information in this post if you want to use it. How you play VP with your money is your decision. I can only tell you what happens when I play with mine.

This information from your critic may not be accurate. But he did seem rather adamant. Of course, two weeks earlier he was singing the praises about deuces over quad-based games, so you may want to consider his analysis with the proverbial "grain of salt."

[FloridaPhil]

Perhaps this will clear up some of the confusion? I use both strategies. If I can play near 99% games or better, I always play max coins. I use CS when the odds are less than 98% or the comps are worthless. I will be playing in Hollywood this weekend. I will be playing max coin quarter 8/5 Bonus Poker with fully comped rooms, drinks and food. Two weeks from now I will be playing in Murphy North Carolina where the best quarter game is 97% and there are no comps. I use CS when I play at Murphy.

This strategy works well for me. It could work for others as well. Some players believe there is only one way to play VP. As the odds change, I change.