Not My House

Not My House

Have 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.

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Which Bonus to Play and Why

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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Bankroll Shenanigans

            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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