Strategize
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Every casino game that is more than pure luck has some
strategy associated with it. This goes
beyond the basic strategy that simply says you're better off not playing at
all. For many games, the strategy can be
summed up with a simple sentence or two.
For Three Card Poker, it is Play Q-6-4 or better. Four Card Poker has a two sentence strategy
that tells you when to fold and when to Raise.
Let It Ride's strategy takes a few sentences telling you when to pull
down the 1 and 2 wagers.
As strategy gets more complex, it is helpful to try and
put it into as easy as a format as possible to help a mere mortal to utilize
it. It is relatively easy to program a
computer to play a game perfectly. Very
few humans can take every game to this level.
Also, expending that much energy on memorizing a very complex strategy
can pretty much sap the fun right out of the game. Blackjack utilizes a relatively simple matrix
that crosses the Player's hand with the Dealer's upcard.
Creating a strategy for video poker is quite a
challenge. As said earlier, telling a
computer which one of the 32 ways to play a hand is relatively easy. But, there are 2,598,960 unique 5-card deals
from a standard deck. Coming up with a
way to group these together in a way that a Player can use is a whole different
story. I believe it was my father, Lenny
Frome, who was the first person who accomplished this. He grouped hands together in a way that
Players could easily understand and hopefully memorize.
A video poker strategy table consists of only two
columns. The first contains the hand
rank as it was categorized by my father.
The second contains the expected value of the hand. Ironically, this second column isn't even
needed to play video poker properly. It
is there just for reference. So, that
means the video poker strategy table consists of a single column - usually with
about 30-40 rows/entries in it. To play
video poker the correct way, you have to memorize the order of these
entries. This is not nearly as daunting
as it seems. About 10-15 of these
entries are more than a little obvious.
So, you're left with about 25 hand types that you need to learn.
Let's start at the top of the strategy table which
contain the most obvious hands:
· Royal Flush
· Straight Flush
· Four of a Kind
· 4- Card Royal
· Full House
· Flush
· Three of a Kind
· Straight
We'd be having a great night at video poker if these were
the only hands we were dealt. These are
all big winners, all with expected values of 4.00 or better. In fact, only one of these hands is not a
sure winner - the 4-Card Royal. This is
also the only hand that might overlap with any of the others, creating the only
strategy decision in the bunch. What do
you do if you are dealt a Straight (or a Flush) that is also a 4-card
Royal? Well, now you know the
answer. You have to throw away the sure
winner to go for the big winner. The
good news is that if you have a 4-Card Royal, you have a very good chance of
still winding up a winner. There are 47
possible draws, 1 of which will result in the Royal. Another will give you a Straight Flush. 6 or 7 more (depending on whether you threw
away a Straight or Flush) will result in a Flush. 5 or 6 will result in a Straight and a host
more will give you at least a High Pair which will seem like small consolation.
While this decision might be agonizing, mathematically,
it is very clearly the proper play. The
expected value of the 4-Card Royal is 18.66.
The expected value of the Flush is 6 and the Straight is 4. Of course, don't expect to see this hand
every hour. A 4-Card Royal will show up
once in about 2700 hands and only about a third of these will be a Straight or
a Flush. One other key point to
note. Do NOT throw away a Straight Flush
to go for the Royal. That Straight Flush
has an expected value of 50 which far exceeds the 18+ of the 4-Card Royal.
Next week, I'll move down the strategy table to the hands
that require a bit more thought.
