The purpose of the last several columns has been to show that math drives everything in the casino. While the casinos have a macro approach, the Player has a more micro approach, generally looking at things in shorter sessions. Also, the Player doesn’t really care how any other Player does, only himself. When you are looking at it this way, it all begins with each hand. In the end, the total experience is nothing more than the sum of its parts.
Read MoreHave you ever been tempted to throw away a Full House and go for the Four of a Kind? In a Jacks or Better machine this is essentially a suicidal move. The Full House is obviously worth the full 9 EV. The Trips is worth only 4.3. Further, it is not like the Quads will pay some significant amount of money. Quads paying only 25 doesn’t seem like enough of a payday to even contemplate giving up that Full House.
Read MoreThis past week, with my son in town, I found myself sitting at a blackjack table. When I was in my 20's that is what I played when I went in to the casino. It had a good payback (99%+) and it required a fair amount of skill in the form of strategy to earn this payback. When video poker came along, I slowly found myself playing more of that and less blackjack. Nowadays, I almost never sit at the blackjack table except when my son is in town and drags me over. My experience this past week only reinforced why this is so.
Read MoreThis past week, I ventured over to Red Rock Station and had what was possibly the worst video poker session I have had in years. I was playing Double Double Bonus on a Multi-Strike machine and I just had no luck from beginning to end. To win at Double Double, you have to get the Bonus Quads. To win at Multi-Strike, you need your Four of a Kinds to appear at the higher levels. Well, I certainly didn't get many of the Bonus Four of a Kinds and what little I got in Quads were at the bottom two levels for the most part.
Read MoreOne of the questions I'm often asked is how do you know when to stop playing. This is not an easy question to answer. It is a good idea to go in with a plan. But, it is tough to give a one size fits all answer. Some people have in mind an amount of time they want to gamble. Others say that they'll only lose a certain amount. Both of these are part of the reason why they can build multi-billion dollar casinos.
Read MoreMany, 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.
Read MoreToday, I received an e-mail from a reader regarding casinos that offer 100.17% payback video poker machines. He wanted to understand why casinos offer these machines, questioned the benefits of the casino of doing so and wondered if perhaps, the casinos essentially hope that Players don't play them. I'm assuming that the game the reader was talking about was the Full-Pay Double Bonus machines. This paytable can be found in numerous casinos here in Las Vegas, but I'm not sure if you'll find them anywhere else. But, today's discussion is less about the specific game and more about video poker machines with paybacks over 100%.
Read MoreMath can play some very nasty tricks on the unsuspecting human. It can do quite a number even on those of us who are pretty good at math. It is these 'tricks' that can so easily distract a Player, causing him to believe all sorts of outlandish things - like the machines are rigged. This, in turn, can cause a Player to wonder why he should follow any strategy based on math if the games are rigged. Really, the question you SHOULD ask is if the games are rigged, why would you want to play them at all?
Read MoreAnecdotal stories can help you remember what you're supposed to do in the casino, but they are not a good basis for what you actually should do. This past week, I had the opportunity to sit down and play some blackjack at the Suncoast Casino here in Las Vegas. My son was in town and he likes the tables more than video poker. I'm not really sure why I don't play blackjack much anymore. I know the game as well as anybody, and I play it as well as I play video poker (maybe better!). I think it is probably more about me finding video poker to be more exciting (i.e. more volatile) and that gives a greater thrill while playing.
Read MoreA couple of weeks ago when I discussed the notion that skill based gaming has existed in casinos for many years, I received numerous comments from readers. One that I found to be particularly interesting was because it seemingly relegated video poker into the same category as slot machines. Maybe, even worse. He basically said that video poker "gave the casinos a license to steal and plain irons people out." I wrote back to the writer explaining why I disagreed strongly, but I never got a reply.
Read MoreA few months ago, I wrote a column that discussed the value (or lack there of?) of a Suited Hand. It started by discussing the relative value of a suited pocket hand in Texas Hold'em vs. an unsuited hand. It then touched on the topics of 3-Card Flush and 2-Card Royals in video poker. The former is quite unplayable and the latter is just barely playable due to the 800 for 1 payout of the Royal and the added value of the High Cards you would be holding. It also glanced over the 3-Card Straight Flush. The black sheep of video poker hands.
Read MoreThe inspiration for this week's column comes from a friend of a friend. A friend of mine has a friend who is an avid fan and frequent player of video poker. His question was one that I've heard many times throughout the years. It deals with the method that the video poker machine uses to deal cards - specifically the potential draw cards.
Read MoreExpert Strategy consists of three key components - (1) Know which games to play, (2) know the right strategy for those games and (3) know what to expect. I find the third one to be the most intriguing. When it comes to video poker, I realize I'm hardly the only source for video poker information. There are other writers and there is a variety of practice software out there. These will all help you to learn the first two. But, I think it is a combination of my math skill and the ability to explain it to the masses that help to separate me from some of these other sources. One doesn't really need to know what to expect in order to master the first two, but learning it is what keeps the Player disciplined to stick to the plan.
Read MoreSeveral months ago, I listened to a speaker talk about the next wave of games that should be hitting casinos in the coming years. He was talking about skill-based games. I loved how he started his discussion, stating that skill-based games have existed for years. After all, video poker has been around for a couple of decades now. I almost fell off my chair. What he stated was incredibly true, and in my opinion incredibly obvious. But, it just didn't seem to be anything that was stated publicly too often.
Read MoreLast week I reviewed some relatively common positive paytables. Positive meaning paytables with a payback of over 100% meaning the Player should win in the long run. In that column I spoke of a Deuces Wild paytable that meets this qualification. There are actually more Deuces Wild paytables over 100% than any other variant of video poker. No one knows the reason for this for sure, but I can only guess it goes back to the early days of video poker before a complete mathematical analysis was run on the game. I have always surmised that when these original paytables were created that they developers took their 'best guess' as to how Players would play hands instead of fully recognizing that there is only one proper way to play the hand.
Read MoreThis is not a topic I cover often. They were ignored by my father, Lenny Frome. There are some that took this as an error he made in his video poker analyses. Nothing could be further from the truth. He was quite aware of them. His goal for video poker - and all other games - was to give the Player a strategy he could utilize in the casino. Video Poker strategy is complex enough for most versions. Not everyone can master it. Adding another layer of complexity for a relatively tiny additional return just didn't seem prudent to him. For the most part, I agree.
Read MoreToday's topic comes courtesy of a friend of mine who asked me over dinner tonight if he was way off base by saying that sometimes it seems like video poker machines get into hot streaks. You hit a bunch of solid hands and you just feel like you're going to get a Four of a Kind and all of a sudden you do. He wanted to know if he was imagining things.
Read MoreLast week, I glossed over the cost of playing less than full-pay machines. This week, I'm going to jump into this topic a bit further. Full-pay machines are the version of a particular type of video poker that have the commonly found highest paybacks. The obvious example of this is what is called the 9-6 full pay jacks or better machine. We call it 9-6 because this is the payout for the Full House and Flush. What about the other pays? Well since the bottom 4 pays are usually 4-3-2-1, we don't see much variation in these payouts. Lowering any one of them would require an identical payout for two hands of different ranks. Casinos try to avoid this where possible.
Read MoreIs Video Poker a game of chance or a game of skill? Before we can make this decision, we need to really define what each one is. What does it mean to say that something is a game of chance? What does it mean to say that something is a game of skill? At first glance, these might seem like easy questions to answer, but I think when you start really analyzing them, the answers get a bit more fuzzy.
Read MoreI've been writing for Gaming Today for about 12 years now. I'm not sure of the total number of articles I've written, but it's been about 550 of them. The majority of them have been about video poker. It is almost hard to believe that I have been able to come up with 350 or 400 different topics. Then again, I really haven't. I do repeat topics from time to time. This is for two reasons. The first is that there's a good chance that the people who read a column in 2008 are not necessarily the same readers in 2014. The second is that some topics need to be repeated over and over and over again because it is very obvious that the vast number of Players haven't gotten the message, even when they are regular Players.
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