Learning a new video poker game

My wife and I both started gambling more or less seriously as blackjack players, but about four years ago, when we started coming to Las Vegas for vacations, she decided to start playing video poker. As a music teacher, she was going to approach this like learning a new instrument, which meant practicing until she could play well. But first she had to decide which video poker game to learn.

Many experts suggest learning jacks or better first. Full pay or 9/6 jacks is easy to learn. It is widely available in all popular denominations. Most important, it is the basis for many other popular games, including bonus poker, double bonus poker and double double bonus poker. The big drawback of jack is its payback -- 99.54 percent with optimum play.

She became interested in full pay deuces wild, mostly because of its strongly positive payback -- 100.76 percent. Full pay deuces is harder to learn than full pay jacks, but not extremely difficult. It’s also more volatile -- wider swings of wins and losses -- but not dangerously so. The game was available almost exclusively in quarters, but that is what she wanted to play. And it was more widely available then than it is now and the casinos were giving more points and other comps for those playing it.

She decided to learn full-pay deuces, and it served her well. When we moved to Vegas three years ago, I followed in her footsteps. We both later learned other deuces games, including loose deuce deuces wild and “not so ugly” (16/10) deuces, which allowed us to play at the dollar level.

Recently we decided to take another look at 9/6 jacks, mostly because it is now the best game available at some of the casinos we want to play at, including the M Resort. And we have discovered some good full pay jacks progressives.

I have started playing using the simple strategy found on Wizard of Odds Web site (I learned to play the full pay deuces using the Wizard’s simple strategy for that game). This strategy uses words, which I am more comfortable with than the symbols used in the more advanced strategies. There’s a trade-off in payback -- the simple strategy gets you 99.4 percent instead of the game’s full potential, 99.54 percent. But it’s a good stopgap until I can learn the advanced strategy.

As casinos change their video poker inventories and the rewards they offer for playing different games, it is necessary to learn new games to take advantage of new opportunities. Fortunately, learning jacks or better has been -- so far -- a lot easier than I had expected.