Overlapping Hands - a Jacks or Better Quiz

            We’ve all been there.  Up comes 5 cards.  You turn to your spouse or a friend or maybe a complete stranger and you say, ‘Which should I hold?  The Low Pair or the Straight?  The Low Pair or the Flush?  Should I go for the Royal?’

            The good news is that the overwhelming majority of Video Poker hands require very little decision making.  Once you realize you’re not playing Table Poker and there’s no reason to keep ace kickers, most hands are pretty obvious as to what to keep and what to throw. 

            There are, however, some frequently occurring hands that leave most novices and even many experienced players wondering.  It’s not necessarily because the choices are of nearly equal value as much as each hand looks so tempting.  In reality, there is usually little true decision making skill required for these hands.  Once you have made up your mind to let Expert Strategy be your guide, it simply comes down to knowing which play has the higher Expected Value. 

            So, let’s take a look at some common ‘overlapping’ hands.   Assuming we are playing Full-Pay (9/6) Jacks or Better, how would you play the following hands:

A)        10§     J¨        Jª        Q©      K§

B)        2¨       5¨       8¨       K¨      Kª

C)        2©       2§       3¨       4ª       5§

D)        10ª     10¨     J§        Q©      Kª

E)        10ª     10¨     J§        Q©      Aª

F)         2©       5©       5§       8©       10©

            The 4 card straight in Hand A has an EV of .85, while the High Pair has an EV of 1.54.   Playing anything but the High Pair would be a big mistake.  High Pairs beat ALL 4 Card Straights.   4 Card Straight FLUSHES beat ALL High pairs.

            The 4 card flush in Hand B has an EV of 1.19, while the EV of the High pair is again 1.54.  Once again, High Pairs beat ALL 4 card flushes.  The only types of hands we discard a High Pair for are 4 Card Straight Flushes (inside or outside) and 4 Card Royals.

            Hand C makes us choose between a Low Pair and a 4 Card Straight with no High Cards (STR4H0).  This type of straight has an EV of .68, while the Low Pair has an EV of .82.  A little closer than some of our other examples, but still a clear choice exists.  Play the Low Pair.

            Hand D is similar to Hand C, but the Straight now has 3 High Cards (STR4H3), which makes it the highest ranking 4 Card Straight.  Its EV is .87 which puts it ABOVE the Low Pair.   A 4-card Straight with 2 High Cards (STR4H2) would be a 9,10, J, Q has an EV of .81.  This is one of the more complex strategies to remember with regard to Low Pairs.  Play a Low Pair over ALL 4 Card Straights EXCEPT a Pair of 10’s versus a 10, J, Q, K straight.  In this ONE case, its preferable to play the straight.  It should be noted that there are only a few hundred (out of nearly 2.6 million possible hands) when this particular hand will show up.  While we can’t advocate playing the Low Pair against ALL 4 Card Straights, it won’t cost you a lot in the long run… about .001 of the total payback.  We do recognize the advantage of keeping the strategy table easier to remember.

Hand E is a choice between a Low Pair and a 4 Card INSIDE Straight with 3 High Cards.  The EV of this hand is a mere .53 and is the LOWEST playable 4 card straight.  Its EV is well below the EV of the Low Pair of .82 and thus we play the Low Pair.

Hand F illustrates a 4-Card Flush with a Low Pair.  In this example, the 4-Card Flush has an EV of 1.15, well above the Low Pair’s EV of .82.  This 4-Card Flush has the lowest EV possible for a 4-Card Flush.  The more High Cards the Flush has, the higher the EV.  Of course, if a Flush has 3 High Cards, it becomes a 3-Card Royal and would outrank the 4-Card Flush. 

Let’s sum up what we’ve covered.  High Pairs outrank ALL 4-Card Straights and 4-Card Flushes, but do NOT outrank ANY 4-Card Straight Flushes.  Dealing with Low Pairs is a bit more complex.  Low Pairs are outranked by ALL 4-Card Flushes.  Low Pairs outrank ALL 4 Card INSIDE Straights, and ALMOST ALL 4-Card Straights.  The one exception is a 10, J, Q, K straight.

These rules apply based on this analysis ONLY for Jacks or Better Full Pay machines.  They may very well apply to other, if not MOST other pay tables, but it cannot be assumed that the strategy for one version of Video Poker will apply to other versions or other pay tables.  This is why it is suggested that you limit yourself to one or two versions of the game and become an expert at it before moving on to other versions.

Of course, these are not all the cases that make you turn to your friend and say “Which should I hold?’, but these are among the most commonly occurring and probably among the most commonly misplayed.  Nothing stated here can’t be easily determined by reading the Strategy Table for the particular pay table you’re interested in.  In a future column, I’ll review more common ‘overlapping’ hands.

It's Mathemagic!

          A couple of weeks ago, a colleague discussed with me the possibility of creating a simple three card sidebet for a game he was working on.  Essentially, it was no different than the Pair Plus wager for Three Card Poker. As a favor, I quickly gave him the frequencies for the hands and made sure there was a note that said that these applied ONLY to a standard 52-card deck.  The next day I received a frantic voice mail that stated that he wanted these numbers for a blackjack-style shoe and what did I mean that the numbers only applied to a single deck.  Since there is still the same number of cards of each type relative to the others, shouldn’t the frequencies stay the same?

          This led to a lengthy conversation in which I tried to explain why the frequencies change as the number of decks goes up.  Generally speaking, the frequency of sets (i.e. Pairs, Trips, etc…) goes up while the frequency of runs (Straights) goes down.  Below is a table that shows the frequencies of the winning hands in Pair Plus for both a single deck and a 6-deck shoe.

Hand	1-deck	6-decks
Mini Royal	0.0181%	0.0172%
Straight Flush	0.1991%	0.1896%
Three of a Kind	0.2353%	0.5248%
Straight	3.2579%	3.1021%
Flush	4.9593%	5.8424%
Pair	16.9412%	19.4918%

          The table clearly shows that which I just stated.  The frequency of a Three of a Kind more than doubles when we move to 6 decks.  A pair occurs about 15% more often.  Flushes occur about 20% more often.  In the meantime, Straights decrease by a mere 5%.  Our Royals and Straight Flushes decline slightly as well as they are a blend of Straights and Flushes.  The overall hit frequency goes up about 15% from 25.6% to 29.2%.  Is it any wonder that a paytable that works well for one deck would be a disaster (for the casino) with six decks?   If we were to take the standard Pair Plus paytable and apply it to a 6-deck version, the payback would go from just under 98% to nearly 115%!

          My colleague was having a tough time believing me, and I did my very best to try and explain it.  I used the Three of a Kind as an example.  Once the Player is dealt a Pair, he is looking for 1 of the 2 remaining matching cards with 50 remaining in the deck for a single deck game.  Thus he has a 4% chance of drawing the Three of a Kind at that point (2 out of 50).  When dealing from a 6-deck shoe, there are still 22 cards of that same rank left in the shoe out of 310 cards.  This gives the Player a better than 7% chance of drawing a Three of a Kind from a Pair.  With a single deck, the probability of drawing additional cards of the same rank decreases greatly as each card of that rank is dealt out.  Whereas, with a large shoe, the probability of drawing cards of the same rank does not decrease nearly as much as each was in used up.

          Taking this to the extreme, imagine a game where 4 cards are dealt and you are trying to draw a Four of a Kind.  In a single deck game there is are only 13 ways to do this.  By the time you have been dealt Three of a Kind, you have only a 1 in 49 chance of being dealt the fourth card of the same rank.  In a 6-deck version, you would a 21 in 309 chance – which gives you a 3 times greater chance of hitting it from that point.  In total, you would have 13/270,725 (0.0048%) probability of getting a Four of a Kind from a single deck vs. a 0.0357% probability from 6 decks.  This translates to nearly 7 ½ times as likely to get it using six decks.

          There are many lessons that can be learned from all this.  The first is a simplistic lesson in why casinos like large shoes for games like blackjack.  It is much harder for a Player to count cards and trying to figure out what is coming up.  Just because a few small cards have been dealt doesn’t mean large cards are that much more likely than normal to show.  With a single deck, just a few small cards means the probability of large cards increases by a far larger margin.

          The second lesson is that it is not always that easy to compare paytables from one game to another.  If a casino were to offer a Pair Plus type wager from a large shoe, they would have no choice but to offer lower payouts than they do for a single-deck game.  However, that would not necessarily mean that the overall payback is lower.  You need to make sure that you are always compare apples to apples.  A game dealing 7 cards can’t offer the same payouts as one dealing 6 for like poker hands, but you can’t just look at the payouts and say that one is ‘worse’ than the other.  You have to look at the actual frequencies of each winning hand and determine the true overall payback.

To Comp or Not To Comp

          This past week I read a new story about how the Las Vegas Sands was greatly reducing their comps program.  (see: http://www.lvrj.com/business/las-vegas-sands-cuts-comps-for-average-gambler-115356324.html).  When I first read the title, I shuddered a bit.  Over the past couple of years while Las Vegas has struggled, I have received numerous e-mails from readers (mostly locals) who have watched their comps all but disappear.  It seemed to be happening yet again!

          Comps are the casinos ‘frequent shopper’ reward program.  Many years ago, if you spent enough hours gambling at a high enough denomination, the casino was eager to throw you a buffet, a room, show tickets or any other freebie that they could.  Back then, it was fairly subjective.  There were no electronic cards to throw into the machines, so most slot and video poker Players were not offered any comps.  At the tables, you’d ask to be rated.  You wouldn’t get a reward you didn’t want.  The pit boss would ask you if you’d like a room for the night.  Or you’d casually mention that you were hungry and he’d hand you a ticket for the buffet.

          The idea was to keep the Player happy and in the casino!  The casinos considered the profit center to be the casino itself.  Most of the rest existed only to serve the Player for the rare times he didn’t want to gamble.  Also, comps were an incredible marketing tool.  You appear to be giving the Player something worth far more than the actual cost.  After all, how much does it REALLY cost to feed one more person at the buffet?  How much does it cost to give two tickets to a show that isn’t sold out?  Most of all, you hand the guy a room with a sign in it that says the suite goes for $500 a night, when in reality that is the rack rate and it hasn’t been rented out at the price EVER, and it was going to be empty that night, anyhow.

          Until the huge boom in Las Vegas of the 1990’s, Las Vegas was known as a place where a relatively low-roller could get comped pretty nicely.  Just being a $5 blackjack Player could get you some free stuff.  Here on the East Coast in places like Atlantic City and Connecticut, $5 won’t even get you a place at the table, with minimums frequently being $15 - $25!  Also, as the technology changed, the whole concept of comps changed as well.  Players were given ‘Player reward’ cards to put into the machines and were awarded points based specifically on how much they played.  These points where then directly translated into casino cash that could be spent for items in the casino – from food to shows to rooms to stuff in the gift shop.  Some casinos went further and started giving ‘cashback’ – they sent actual checks to Players that could be used in the casino for a limited amount of time.  This became a critical part of cultivating regular Players – especially locals who could come back in the timeframe allotted. 

          As we all know, in 2008 the economy collapsed.  Many casinos, looking for ways to cut costs began cutting comps and cashback.  Many Players reacted very negatively to this – which should be no surprise.  Cutting out these items was akin to taking money right out of their pockets.  The buffet comp that cost the casino $5, but was worth $10 to the Player wound up costing many of these casinos far more than the $5.  Local players starting shopping around for better deals.  If Casino A wasn’t going to give them a free meal, maybe Casino B would!  Some of the casinos that catered to locals have been hurt by the economy, but some of it has been their own poor decision making in this regard.  They thought that their Players would stay loyal to them even if they didn’t reciprocate.  They were wrong – very wrong.

          So, that brings me back to the case of the Las Vegas Sands cutting back on its comps.  I think we’d all agree that the Venetian is not really trying to attract the locals.  It is a big beautiful place, but it was built to attract the tourists.  The hotel was not built as a place for the casual Player to crash for a few hours before hitting the tables again.  It was built to be a luxury hotel that people would WANT to stay at so they could say they stayed there.  If giving away rooms for free means that people who are willing to pay don’t have rooms, then reducing these comps makes a bit more sense.  

          As the article did not make it very clear as to exactly what they are reducing - are they all but eliminating a ‘reward’ program for the average Player? – I can’t exactly condone their actions.  At the same time, it’s not in the same category as when one of the off-strip properties catering to locals decides that the couple that plays 2-3 hours most every night will no longer get a free buffet every couple of weeks.

          Tell me what you think!

Double Bonus Video Poker Quiz

Double Bonus Video Poker Quiz
Is it any wonder we call Las Vegas, Video Poker Heaven? With this pay table widely available even on quarter machines, we can squeeze 100.1% out of this liberal game, plus the benefits of slot clubs, which put an additional 0.4- 0.7% return on the table.

Pay Schedule

Royal Flush	4,000
Straight Flush	250
Four Aces	800
Four 2-3-4's	400
Four 5-K's	250
Full House	50
Flush	35
Straight	25
3 of a Kind	15
Two Pairs	5
Pair Jacks or Better	5

But it won't happen unless you learn the nuances of the strategy, which is more complex than what you would use on Draw Poker. To see how proficient you are, take this test and find the answers below. If you can get 5 or 6 right, you are ready to take on this challenging game.

Which cards would you hold?

Hand	Card A	Card B	Card C	Card D	Card E
1	3s	6s	9s	Kd	8h
2	4c	7c	2h	3s	9c
3	5s	6s	7s	8s	9c
4	7s	Js	Qs	As	Kc
5	9d	Jh	Qc	Kh	8d
6	4d	6c	7c	8s	2c

Solutions

Hand	Cards	Explanation
1	D	A 3-card flush is playable but one high card is better
2	A,B and E	Much better than drawing 5 new cards
3	A,B,C,D and E	Paying 5 the straight is the play.
4	A, B,C and D	Hold the 4 Card Flush; Try for the Royal only if the Royal pays 960 coins
5	A,B,C and D	Those high cards make it the play
6	A,B,C and D	Even a poor inside straight plays in this game

---

The Year of the Rabbit

            Happy Chinese New Year!  2011 is the year of the Rabbit on the Chinese calendar.  I think the folks at Shuffle Master are hoping it’s the year of the Rabbit too!  In the last few months, one of their latest table games, Rabbit Hunter launched at two casinos in California – Pala Casino and Jackson Rancheria.  I wrote about this game back in November in a lead in to the game being on display at the Global Gaming Expo (G2E) in Las Vegas.  I had the pleasure of working with Roger Snow, Executive VP at Shuffle Master in developing the math for the game.

            Rabbit Hunter is very unique in its betting structure and rules of play.  I don’t know of another game in which you have the opportunity to literally buy an extra card, and as a result, play six cards to the Dealer’s five.  Let me review the basics of the game and then I’ll go into more detail about buying a card.

            To begin play, the Player makes an Ante wager and an optional Bonus bet.  While this Bonus bet is ‘optional’, I will tell you that the strategy makes this wager all but mandatory.  The Player and Dealer are each dealt five cards face down.  The Dealer will also deal a 6^th card to each Player FACE DOWN in a separate spot.  The Player may look at his 5-card hand and then he has to make a choice as to how to play the hand.

He can Fold, forfeiting his Ante and Bonus wager.  He can make an additional wager (Play wager) equal to his Ante which will allow him to go head to head against the Dealer OR, he may make that Play wager AND buy the 6^th card for an amount equal to his Ante wager.  Note, that the Player CANNOT only buy the card without also making the Play wager.  If you choose to buy the card, the money you pay goes right to the casino.  This extra card can help you win more on your other wagers, but the money you pay is gone. 

Assuming the Player does not Fold, his five (or six) card hand will go head-to-head against the Dealer’s five card hand.  His hand will also be used to determine if he wins the Bonus wager.  In both cases, if he bought the 6^th card, he may use any five of the six to make his hand.  If the Dealer’s hand is not at least an Ace High, the Player’s Ante Wager is a push and the Play bet will be paid even money if the Player’s hand outranks the Dealer’s hand.  If the Dealer’s hand qualifies with an Ace High or better, then both the Ante and Play wagers will pay even money if the Player’s hand outranks the Dealer’s hand.  If the Dealer’s hand outranks the Player’s hand, the Play wager is lost. 

            I have little doubt that many Player’s will sit down to play Rabbit Hunter and find the notion of buying a card rather distasteful.  That said, the analysis takes this fully into account, and the paytable in use at the two casinos has a payback of 99.35% which is more than a little competitive.  It is one of the highest for any table game anywhere and just a smidge below Blackjack.

            The strategy for Rabbit Hunter may seem a bit odd at first.  Buying the additional card is mostly for the benefit of the Bonus bet.  While it can have some residual impact to the play against the Dealer, this benefit is limited to low ranking hands or partial hands improving.  For example, if you buy a card with Two Pair and it turns into a Full House, your Bonus pay goes from 2 to 30 – well worth the expense.  But, the impact to beating the Dealer is much smaller.  With a Two Pair you’ll beat the Dealer 92+% of the time vs. 99.9% for a Full House.  The extra 7% is nice, but would not be worth buying the extra card on its own.

            As a result, we find that there are certain High Pairs which are not worth buying the card for.  The improvement from a High Pair to a Two Pair or Trips is simply not enough to warrant buying the card.   Whereas when a Low Pair improves to a Two or Trips, we find that it does pay to buy the card because we turn the Bonus bet from a loser into a winner while ALSO improving our hand.

            When all is said and done, this is the complete strategy for Rabbit Hunter for the paytable in use currently.  I should point out that there are a couple of minor exceptions, but we’re talking about 0.01% or 0.02% of payback as a result. 

Play and Buy the Card when:

-          Player has a Straight Flush that is a 4-Card Royal

-          Player has a Flush that is a 4-Card Straight Flush or 4-Card Inside Straight Flush

-          Player has a Straight that is a 4-Card Straight Flush or 4-Card Inside Straight Flush

-          Player has Three of a Kind

-          Player has Two Pair

-          Player has a High Pair that is a 4-Card Straight Flush, 4-Card Inside Straight Flush or Flush

-          Player has a Pair of 10,J, Q that is a 4-Card Straight or 4-Card Inside Straight

-          Player has a Pair of K that is a 4-Card Straight

-          Player has a Low Pair

-          Player has nothing, but a 4-Card Straight Flush, 4-Card Inside Straight Flush, 4-Card Flush, 4-Card Straight or 4-Card Inside Straight

Fold when:

-          Player has A-8 or less and is not a Play/Buy hand

Play and not Buy when:

-          Any other hand

            With this strategy you will Fold 23% of the time and Buy the Card about 47% of the time.  When you buy and miss, it will hurt.  When you buy and get that Rabbit, it will pay off big time!

           

            Shuffle Master has 8 additional casinos lined up for Rabbit Hunter, including the Las Vegas trial at the Luxor.  Stay tuned for more information on it.  As Elmer Fudd would say, “Here’s to the year of the wabbit. Hehehehehe.”

Let it Ride on Speed - the scoop on Mississippi Stud

            When it comes to developing table games, there is no magic formula and there are no guarantees to success.  Three Card Poker is currently the pinnacle of proprietary table games and thus many inventors try very hard to copy some aspect of it.  Games like Three Card Poker have a “Je ne sais quoi” quality to them, which is French for something like “I haven’t a clue”.  You can’t just take the key components of a game like payback, hit frequency and fold rate, and mimic them to another game and assume you will succeed.

            A great example of this is the late blooming, Mississippi Stud.  This game was launched about 5 years ago.  It really didn’t have much success for 2 years.  It had a single table placement for much of this time, and yet this table was one of the hottest in the place.  But, despite this, many other casinos were not interested.  Then for reasons that no one can put a finger on, it slowly began to spread, and now has about 100 tables in the marketplace. 

            Mississippi Stud is owned by Shuffle Master and was the brain child of its former CEO, Mark Yoseloff.  When the game was given to me to analyze, I don’t think there was a lot of enthusiasm.  I think it was one of those cases where the guy at the top wanted it done, so it was going to get done.  Much of the other games we were working on were variations of Texas Hold’em or involved complicated wagering going head to head against the Dealer.  Mississippi Stud was a relatively simple game and a paytable game.  It is just you against the paytable, which always make analyzing the game rather simple.

            To start play, the Player makes a single wager and receives two (2) cards, while 3 additional community cards are dealt face down.  The Player now has the option to make another wager that is 1x or 3x his original wager.  If he declines to make this wager, he must Fold.  If the Player does not Fold, the first community card is turned over.  Again, the Player must Fold, bet 1x or 3x his original wager.  If he does not fold, the 2^nd community card is turned over.  Yet again, the Player has the same options – Fold, bet 1x or bet 3x.  It is kind of Let It Ride on speed.

            So, just to stay in until the end, you have to be prepared to wager at least 4 units.  The good news it that the paytable begins at a Pair of 6’s and if you get dealt at least a Pair of 6’s on your first 2 cards you have the opportunity to wager 10x your initial wager.  The most common paytable in use is as follows:

Hand	Pays*
Royal Flush	500
Straight Flush	100
Four of a Kind	40
Full House	10
Flush	6
Straight	4
Three of a Kind	3
Two Pair	2
Par of J’s or Better	1
Pair 6’s – 10’s	Push
*This does NOT include the return of the original wagers which are returned as well – payouts are TO 1

            Analyzing Mississippi Stud was relatively easy given that there are just 5 cards dealt.  What should be fairly obvious about the strategy is that once you get a Pair of 6’s or better, you bet all you can because you can’t lose.  However, unlike Let It Ride, you can’t just sit back and wait until you have a winner or nearly a winner.   With the paytable above, the payback is 99.64%.  To achieve this, however, may take some nerves of steel and some patience.  Expert Strategy dictates a Fold Rate of over 50%!  You have to be prepared to dump your hand when the cards are not going you way.  Sometimes, you’ll even have to walk away from multiple units wagered.

            The strategy after the first 2 cards is relatively simple:

q  Bet 3x on Any Pair

q  Bet 1x if you have One High Card (Jack – Ace), two Mid Cards (6 – 10) or a suited 5-6

q  Fold all other hands.  (You will fold 31+% of your hands at this point) 

If you’re interested in the rest of the strategy and statistics of the game, my latest booklet “Expert Strategy for Mississippi Stud” (surprising name, huh?) will give you plenty of both.  You can order it now at a special Gambatria blog price of  $4.95 (reg, $5.95).  Send a check or money order to Compu-Flyers, P.O. Box 132, Bogota, NJ 07603. 

Betting on Grades?

            A few months ago, With my eldest son heading off for college, my sister sent me an interesting article that she read in USA Today.  It was about a website that actually takes wagers on how a student will do in his college courses.  It started last year allowing students from only two universities to get in on the action.  This coming academic year it has expanded to 36 colleges.  Students can actually wager on whether they will get an ‘A’ or a ‘B’.  The website investigates the specific course at that college and requires that the student allows access to his records in order to determine the appropriate odds.

            Much of the article centered on the legality of this website.  Was it technically online ‘gambling’ and thus currently illegal in the United States?  The owner of the website argues that it is not gambling because the entire wager is based on the skill of the student.  Luck plays no part in it.  This argument reminded me of a story that my father told me some twenty years ago about a court case (I believe in Pennsylvania) as to whether or not video poker was a game of skill or a game of luck.

            In that particular guess, two scenarios were developed.  The first where the Player played perfect strategy as we all know it.  In the other, a simple strategy was used whereby the Player played as one might expect him to play if he just attempted to use some common sense.  Keep in mind, that this was a lot of years ago before there were dozens of books and countless software programs readily available for the average Player.  Video poker was in its infancy.  The simple strategy was probably not far from the strategy most Players were using.

            The computer simulations for our two scenarios showed about a 7-10% difference in the paybacks.  Certainly my father felt that showed a considerable amount of success or failure at video poker was skill.  Knowing which cards to hold significantly reduces the loss rate.  The courts at the time, however, saw it differently.  Despite the significant difference in paybacks, they saw that a significant portion of the return comes from which cards you are dealt or draw and not those that you choose to hold.  No matter how much you might try to sabotage your hand, the ‘luck of the draw’ is still going to allow for a return of a significant portion of your wager .

            In the end, it really comes down to the definition of how much of anything in life is ‘luck’.  Does one baseball team beat another because of luck or skill?  Undoubtedly there are elements of both in the outcome.  How much luck is really involved can be rather subjective and then deciding how much is allowed before the outcome is based more on luck than on skill is also subjective.  Playing roulette requires no skill.  You make a wager, a random number is essentially chosen and you win or lose based on this.  Yes, some wagers have a lower house edge and you can save your bankroll a bit by choosing these options, but the overall outcome is based on how lucky you are at picking where the little ball chooses to stop.

            Video Poker undoubtedly relies on a greater degree of skill than roulette.  As was shown in the court case, a Player can absolutely increase his payback by playing correctly relative to someone who doesn’t know what they are doing.  But, is it enough to say it is more a game of skill than a game of luck.  On a relative scale for casino games, I think absolutely.  When we compare it to the notion of betting on one’s college grades, I have to admit that video poker has a higher degree of luck than college GPAs.  However, even with grades, there can be an element of luck.  So, does this make it gambling?  I don’t know.  I guess I’ll just have to see how it plays out.

Video Poker and Random Number Generators (RNG)

A reader sent me a question this week:

If video poker machines have a RNG in them, how does knowing how to play the game come into play since the results are already determined because of the RNG?

Here was my reply:

In the case of video poker (in most jurisdictions), the RNG serves to merely emulate a live deck, not to pre-determine the outcome.  Many years ago, video poker machines supposedly dealt 10 cards upon hitting the "Deal" button.  5 were face up (that the Player could see) and 5 more face down underneath each of the up cards.  When the Player decided which cards to hold and hit Draw, the cards he discarded would be replaced with the ones that were 'underneath' these discarded ones.

For some reason, this did not sit well with some people (and there was some concern that if someone had the RNG code, he could figure out what the 5 hidden cards were).  Over the years, from what I understand, the code for video poker has changed so that the machine deals 5 cards when the Deal button is hit and then when the Draw button is hit, it will deal the appropriate number of cards from the deck, replacing the discarded ones.

In the end, the exact method of replacement doesn't really matter.  The fact that the machine knows what cards were dealt face down or if it knows what the next 5 cards will be does not change anything for the Player.  You don't know what the hidden cards are, so you have to use the probability of each possible outcome combined with the payout of that outcome to figure out what is the best play.

Imagine if you were sitting at your dining room table and you deal 5 cards face up and then 5 cards face down as the 'replacements'.  AS you deal them face down, you show them to a friend (but not to yourself).  The fact that your friend knows these values does NOT change how you should play your hand.  The fact that your friend can know every possible outcome does not change what you should do.  Obviously for the ONE SINGLE hand, this knowledge might cause HIM to play the hand differently, but as the Player you have to assume that those 5 down cards are random - equally likely to be any of the remaining 47 cards.

This is the only purpose a RNG serves in video poker.  It does NOT determine what the final hand will be or what the 5 dealt cards will be in totality.  It only decides which of the 52 cards will be the next one dealt - just as if you were holding a real deck.  If a casino wanted to, they could turn video poker into a table game (not sure how they would handle multiple players, but imagine a live deck and a single player).

By contrast, slot machines do NOT work this same way.  The machine does NOT determine what symbol will show up on each real independently.  Rather, the RNG determines which of the specific final outcomes will be shown to the Player.  This would be like the RNG determining that the Player will be dealt a Pair of 10's and assuming you discard the other 3 cards that NOTHING will improve your hand.

In video poker only the cards are dealt randomly using the RNG.  In slots, the outcome is determined by the RNG.

Gambatria Launched!

            For years, I’ve been asked how my company got the name Compu-Flyers.  As many of you know, the company was started by my father, Lenny Frome.  My dad spent decades as an aerospace engineer before retiring with my mom to Las Vegas.  It didn’t take long for my dad to get completely bored with retirement.  So, he was one of the first people to buy one of the ‘new’ full-color computers/monitors and an expensive color printer.  He thought that he would open up a kiosk at the local mall and print out color t-shirts and calendars and thus, he registered a company called Compu-Flyers.

My father always found the math behind casino games to be quite intriguing and this probably explains why I was programming Blackjack on my high school computer when I was about 15.  Before he got a chance to rent a kiosk, my dad was walking through a casino when he came across a video poker machine, which at the time was relatively new to the casino.  A short time later he was in another casino, saw a video poker machine with the same paytables but they were advertising different paybacks.  “Impossible!”, my father thought. 

He decided to put his ‘color’ computer to different use.  He created the first analysis of video poker.  While there were probably a couple of bugs in it, it was based on the same concepts that every gambling analyst has used since.  Look at every possible outcome and assign an expected value to each possible play.  Whichever play resulted in the highest expected value is the proper way to play the hand.  My father soon discovered that there was not much written about video poker, so he began going to some of the gambling magazines and offering to write about the topic.  Little by little it caught on.

It was suggested that he write a little tipsheet on video poker.  Rather than create another new business, he simply used the name of the one he had already created for any potential buyers.  When the checks started to come in for his ‘50+ tips on Video Poker’, and later on for Expert Video Poker for Las Vegas – the name was a permanent fixture.  It had absolutely nothing to do with gambling, but Compu-Flyers was here to stay.

It’s been more than 20 years since then, and my dad passed away nearly 13 years ago.   When he died, my family decided to keep the company going.  In reality, this meant that I would keep sending out orders, maintaining his website and try to keep his articles in circulation.  In 2003, I decided to opt for a career change.  I left my job as a Senior Director of Information Technology and decided to follow in my dad’s footsteps.  I’ve been privileged to write for Gaming Today, Midwest Gaming and Travel, Midwest Players, Gaming South and others.  I’ve helped launch numerous successful games including Ultimate Texas Hold’em, Mississippi Stud, Rabbit Hunter, Imperial Pai Gow, Mini Pai Gow and several sidebets for these and others.

It is 2011 and the world has changed a bit.  The internet and Social Media (facebook, twitter, et al) have changed the game a good deal.  The notion of “what’s in a name?” may be more important than ever.  After searching for a new name for Compu-Flyers for a while,  I finally came up with Gambatria.  Why and what is Gambatria?  It is a combination of Gambling and Gematria, which is a system whereby numerical values are assigned to letters and/or words. 

According to Wikipedia, Gematria usually provides two meanings – the ‘revealed’ form which is the straight numerical equivalent of the word and the ‘mystical’ form generally associated with Kaballah (the mystical branch of Judaism that so engrossed Madonna!)  This seemed to apply to gambling too.  Parts of the math are quickly and easily revealed like the payback.  Then there are the parts like the strategy and what to expect that take on a more ‘mystical’ flavor.  So, I guess the mission of Gambatria is to de-mystify gaming math. 

It may seem ironic that I turned to a word that is at least several hundred years old in order to bring my company into the new decade.   The mission is still the same – to do the best I can to educate Players about the right way to play all the games in the casino.  The medium is just changing a bit.  Besides writing my weekly column here at Gaming Today, I’m happy to launch this blog  (the one you're on) "Gambatria"ot.com) and I hope you’ll all follow me on Twitter (also “Gambatria”).  Probably no surprise, but you can now find my website at (www.gambatria.com), although http://www.vpheaven.com/ works as well.

I hope you will all bear with me as these sites probably experience some growing pains, and I get accustomed to using these new 21^st century social media concepts to keep in contact with all of you and vice versa.  As a Gambatria Launch Special, you can order Expert Video Poker for Las Vegas for just $7.95 (reg. $9.95).  This includes 1^st class postage and handling.  Send a check to:  Compu-Flyers (sorry, haven’t gotten account cut over yet!), P.O. Box 132, Bogota, NJ 07603.

The Empire Strikes Back

            No game played in the U.S. is shrouded in more mystery than Pai Gow Tiles.  I remember seeing this game more than 20 years ago in Las Vegas and wondering why they were playing dominoes!  My father simply told me that it was a complex game that was played almost exclusively by people from Asia.  There, it was immensely popular.  So, it is no wonder that somewhere along the line, someone decided to ‘Americanize’ it creating Pai Gow Poker.  To be clear, the tiles were not simply converted to cards for this transformation.  Instead, the rules of play for Pai Gow (tiles) were meshed with a poker-based game. 

            As a result of its Asian roots, I think that many still avoid the game as being too complex or intimidating.  In reality, nothing could be further from the truth.   Pai Gow Poker is a very simple game to understand.  The strategy is a bit complex, but unlike most other casino games, in Pai Gow Poker you can ask the Dealer for help and he’s allowed to help and will almost certainly give you the correct information. 

            The rules of play are rather simple for Pai Gow Poker.  The game is played with a 53-card deck (standard 52 plus a Joker).  The Joker is ‘semi-wild’.  It can complete a Straight OR a Flush (or a Straight Flush) or count as an Ace.  So, if you have 2-2-7-7-10-JKR, you have Two Pair with an Ace Kicker.  If you have 2-4-5-6-10-JKR, you have a Straight (or a Straight Flush if the cards are suited).  The Player makes a single wager to begin play.  Each Player and the Dealer is dealt 7 cards.  The Player must split the cards to create a 5-card hand and a 2-card hand (only Pairs and Ranks matter, no Straights or Flushes).  The only rule is that the 5-card hand MUST outrank the 2-card hand.

            The Dealer will also set his cards in this manner using the “House Way”, which is a set of rules which tell the Dealer how to play his hand.  As the House Way is considered the optimal way to set cards, the Player may ask the Dealer to set his cards using the House Way, essentially removing the need to know any strategy at all.

            Once all the cards are set, the Dealer reveals his cards and then begins to compare them to each of the Player’s hands.  For the Player to win, BOTH of his hands must beat the Dealer’s respective hands.  If each Player and Dealer win one of the hands, it is a push.  If the Dealer wins both, the Player loses his wager.  The house advantage comes from two sources.  The first is that the Dealer wins all TIES.  In this case, a Tie DOES NOT mean each wins one hand, but if the Player and Dealer’s two-card or five-card hands are ‘ties’, then it is considered as if the Dealer won that hand.  So, if the Player wins the 5-card hand and ties on the 2-card hand, each Player and Dealer has won one hand and it is a Push.  The second source of house advantage is that the Player pays a 5% commission on all wins (i.e. he is paid 19 to 20 for all wins).

            In the end, the payback winds up at just over 97.25%.  The Player can shave this down considerably by acting as the ‘Banker’, but I’ll save that for another column.  As a result of the two-hand single wager betting, a very large amount of hands end up as a Push (more than 40%), which can be both good and bad.  On the positive side, a small bankroll can last a long time.  On the bad side, the Pai Gow Poker by itself can be considered to be rather slow. 

            As a result, numerous sidebets have been created to spice up the game.  One of the more creative ones is ‘Imperial Pai Gow Poker’ developed by John Feola, President of  New Vision Gaming.  With Imperial Pai Gow, a single sidebet wager gives the Player two opportunities to win a bonus.  He can win if he can form at least a Straight/Three of a Kind or better using any 5 of his 7 cards OR if the Dealer’s 7-card hand is a Jack High or less.  If BOTH occurs, the Player will be paid for BOTH wins!  It really doesn’t get much easier than this.  The paytable in use is as follows:

Player's Hand

Five Aces - 1000

Royal Flush - 200

Straight Flush - 50

Four of a Kind - 25

Full House - 5

Flush - 4

Straight - 2

Trips - 2

Dealer's Hand

9 High - 100

10 High - 20

Jack High - 5

* Pays are TO 1

            This paytable affords the Player a 97.19% payback, which is quite respectable for a sidebet.  Remember that you’re not playing one or the either, you get them both.  So, if you’re dealt a Full House and the Dealer has a 10 High hand, you’ll win 25 to 1.  With Imperial Pai Gow Poker, you get to root for your hand AND against the Dealer’s hand.

            Imperial Pai Gow Poker is already live in several casinos and jurisdictions with more coming on-line in the next few weeks.  It started at the Hopland Sho Ka Wah Casino (Hopland, CA).  John Feola asked that I give a shout out to Mike Gutierrez, the Table Games Manager there, as a thank you for being the first casino to place the game.  It can also be found at The Eldorado Casino in Reno, John Ascuga’s Nugget in Sparks, NV and the Wild Rose Casino in Emmetsburg, IA.   This coming week it should be going live at Terrible’s Lakeside Casino in Osceola, IA and at the Harrington Raceway in Delaware.  Later this month it should make its debut in Gulfport, MS at the Island View Casino.