Thursday, October 4, 2012

Why we lose at video poker

How often after a losing session have you thought, or heard another video poker player say, "I just didn't get enough four-of-a-kinds" or "I hit the deuces but pissed it all away." We tend to blame the cards, and sometimes they can be merciless, but there are three bigger reasons why we lose:

1. We aren't using the proper strategy for the game we're playing. Teacher and author Bob Dancer estimates that half of all video poker players switch among games but use the same or almost the same strategy for all of them. This won't hurt much in some cases, but in others it can be extremely costly. Even different versions of the same game can require significant strategy changes. For example, in some versions of deuces wild, you should hold two pair. In others, you should hold only one of the two pair. It depends on whether the full house pays three or four per coin bet.

2. Because the big-payout hands make up a significant part of the return in all video poker games, you are going to lose most of the time when you don't hit a royal flush, four deuces, four aces, etc. The good news is that when you hit one of the big-payout hands, you are likely to win more in that session than you lose in your losing sessions (although this obviously is not always true).

3. Finally, the main reason we lose is that we are playing games that cannot be beaten. In Nevada, there are still games available with a long-term return, with perfect play, of more than 100 percent. These include full-pay deuces wild, double bonus, double double bonus and loose deuce deuces wild. There are many other games on which a player can achieve an overall return of 100 percent or more if slot club benefits are taken into account. Depending on what a particular casino is offering, most games with a return of 99.5 percent or better fall into this category. These include 9/6 jacks or better and 16/10 "not so ugly" deuces wild. It is sometimes possible to get benefits that bring the return of a 99 percent game above 100 percent.

If you play games with much less than a 99 percent return, you are almost certainly going to be a long-term loser, no matter what the casino gives you for playing. Further, although winning sessions are certainly possible with lousy-paying games, you will have fewer of them than with better games, you will usually lose more money when you lose and you will usually win less money when you win.

Let me give you example. There's a small casino near the Las Vegas Strip called Ellis Island (named for its ower, Gary Ellis). It's known for its steak dinner special, microbrewery, karaoke bar and barbeque. For 40 years it's been popular with locals, particularly employees of other casinos, as well as value-oriented tourists.

My spouse and I have been regular players at "the Island" since we moved to Vegas. For the past couple of years or so, we have played single-line 9/6 jacks or better at the $2 and $5 denominations.

On a recent visit we were disappointed to find that our 9/6 jacks had been downgraded to 9/5. That means instead of paying six coins per coin bet or 30 for a max-coin bet, the game now pays five per coin or 25 for a max-coin bet. For a $5 player betting max coin, that's a pay cut of $25 per flush, from $150 to $125. For a $1 player its's a cut of $5 per flush, and for a quarter player, of $1.25 per flush.

Assuming you're playing proper strategy, the cost per hour or per session depends on how fast you play. Approaching the problem from a different direction, I figured that the cost of this change to a $5 max-coin player playing 600 hands an hour at approximately $150 an hour! (My method was to find the difference in payout between the 9/6 and 9/5 games -- approximately one percentage point -- and multiply it by the amount of money a $5 player runs through the machine at 600 hands an hour. With a max-coin bet of $25 an hour, that comes to $15,000 an hour. One percent of that is $150.)

This shows the importance of checking the pay table of any video poker game before you shovel in your money -- and of knowing what numbers to look for. With video poker, the pay table is the price tag.

You should know the common versions of each game you play regularly and how much they cost the player. As I have pointed out many times, an invaluable resource for this is Jean Scott and Viktor Nacht's Video Poker Scouting Guide.

As for Ellis Island, I don't know whether I'll continue to play there. I do know that I will not be playing 9/5 jacks or better there or anywhere else, barring circumstances so unusual they are difficult to imagine.