Is it Better to be Lucky Than Good?

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Is it Better to be Lucky Than Good?

            Many, many years ago, in a former career that I had (as a Senior Director of IT for a Fortune 50 company), a colleague remarked to my boss how it was better to be lucky than to be good.  To be clear, she was talking about work.  I remember my boss telling me about this conversation and needing to be calmed down.  That boss, who is still a good friend of mine to this day, is a person I consider to be one of the very best at what he does.  The notion that someone would rather be less skilled but lucky drove him nuts.  Quite frankly, it didn't do much for me either.

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Positive Games

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            I love the look on people's faces when they hear me say that there are some video poker machines with paybacks over 100%.  First, it goes against what we all know to be true - that all games have a casino advantage.  Second, they don't even fully realize what I'm saying.  So, let me make it quite clear.  A payback over 100% means that in the long run, the Player will win money.  This is the total opposite of our thinking for virtually every type of game.  Normally, a casino game offers the Player the opportunity to win in the short run but the Player will still lose over the long run.  With these games over 100%, or what we call positive games, the Player might lose in the short run, but his bankroll should increase over time.

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Which Bonus to Play and Why

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Which Bonus to Play and Why

           I almost never play jacks or better video poker anymore.  It is to video poker what blackjack is to table games.  That is to say, relatively boring.  Unlike blackjack, whose strategy is more complex than most table games, jacks or better strategy is about average in complexity for video poker.  Overall, though, it is the least volatile of the video poker games.  This means that your chances for big wins (or big losses) is smaller than with many other versions.  There is only one big winning hand in jacks or better and that is the Royal Flush.  It hits about every 41,000 hands, it will take a few dozen hours of play to hit one, on average.  In between, there's a lot of High Pairs and Two Pairs.  And, even when you hit a Four of a Kind, it pays 'only' 25 for 1.

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Not Quite Perfect

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Not Quite Perfect

 This week, I received an e-mail from a reader looking for the strategy for Triple Double Bonus Poker.  My home grown programs do not handle the 'kicker' situation for games like Double Double or Triple Double Bonus Poker, so I could not provide it to him.  If he insists on playing it without the totally correct strategy, his best bet would be to use Double Double Bonus strategy for the most similar paytable as the Triple Double Bonus.  Don't get me wrong, I don't recommend just using whatever is the next best paytable.  Sometimes, the impact may be slight, but other times it might be far more significant.

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Bankroll Shenanigans

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            The number of friends that I have here in Las Vegas who have been asked which casino they live in is astounding.  I live in the suburbs of Las Vegas and not particularly close to a casino.  There are a couple of 'locals' casinos about 3-4 miles from my house.  I've made no secret of the fact that I don't go to the casinos very often to actually play.  To me, playing is a form of entertainment.  When I used to vacation in Las Vegas, I would play far more often than I do now that I live here.  Living here, I do as most of the rest of you do in an average day.  I do my work.  I go shopping.  I do yard work.  I fix things that have broken in the house.  In the evenings, we do family dinner, watch some television and read stories to our son. 

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