We're Mad as Hell and We're Not Going to Take it Anymore!

            Thanks to Facebook, the average person now has the opportunity to reach out to many people very easily.  Many companies have a presence on Facebook, so if you want to ask a simple question you can do so easily and probably get a quick answer either from the company itself or another customer.  Of course, you also have the opportunity to let a company know when you are disappointed in its performance in some way – although, I can’t promise that they won’t quickly delete your post if they don’t like it. 

            Of course, a single person saying they don’t like something about a particular company probably won’t be very effective at getting the company to make changes.  Sometimes, what occurred was an aberration and a company will quickly rectify the situation in some way.  Unfortunately, many times, companies simply put policies in place that don’t really put their customers first.  They somehow get the idea in their heads that they can treat their customers any way they want and they’ll just keep coming back.

            The question is did they get this idea based on past experience or are they just using wishful thinking?  It is probably a combination of both, which has always bothered me quite a bit.  Why do people allow themselves to be treated poorly by a company that they are paying to do something?  It seems like as customers we have set our expectations so low that we’ll take anything that comes our way.  We have lost the art of a good effective boycott of a company that chooses to abuse its cash-paying customers!

            No, I don’t have a particular company in mind (at least not a Las Vegas casino).  We did just finish a rather eventful trip to Las Vegas, with both highs and lows in customer service.  In the end, our rental car company (mostly) came through after a flat tire left us stranded on I-15 near Flamingo.  A very heartfelt “THANK YOU” goes to the NV-DOT worker who came to our rescue!  As a result of the way we were treated by the rental car company, we very nearly were in a position to find a new regular company to use on our trips.  Fortunately, the manager stepped up and made amends for one of his employee’s poor behavior and judgment. 

            Still up in the air (pardon the pun) is how our airline will deal with a far worse situation.  I’ll save these details for a future column (or my blog!).  The bottom line is that the airline will either make the situation right or we’ll be looking for a different airline to use when we travel.  If you allow a company to treat you poorly and you just keep using them, then the company learns that they can treat you poorly with no consequences.

            So, what does this have to do with casinos and gambling?  Casinos are companies.  You are their customers.  If you don’t get treated the way you want to, you are well within your right to ask to be treated differently.  If what you are complaining about is a specific rude occurrence or employee, don’t hesitate to speak to a supervisor or manager.  While the casinos have tightened their belts greatly recently, most do not want to be known as a place that treats people badly.  A few years ago, I complained that my non-smoking room smelled a lot like smoke and I even found a cigarette butt near the window.  A half an hour later, my wife and I were being moved to a 1 Bedroom suite on the top floor.  All I asked for was a replacement room for the one I had booked!

            Sometimes, the problem is a casino policy.  These can be far tougher to get changed on short notice.  If the casino has decided to make significant changes to their cashback or comp policy, or slashes its paytables, you can voice your dislike, but it is not as likely that a manager can just restore your prior level of either.  They might be able to do something to make you feel a bit better if you ask, but at some point you will have to ask yourself if you want to ‘agree’ to this change by continuing to go to that casino or if you want to make your unhappiness clear by going elsewhere.  Just keep in mind that if you change nothing about your habits – that is you keep going back just as often and play just as much, you will be quietly telling the casino that the change is completely acceptable to you.  On the other hand, if enough people reduce or eliminate their trips to this casino, you may just find them changing their policy again – but this time in your favor.

            The bottom line is that every dollar you play is like a dollar spent at a retailer.  You choose where you play and how much you play.  There are literally dozens of casinos in Las Vegas, and although many are now owned by the same corporation, there is still enough competition to let a casino know that you’re not going to take it anymore and take your business elsewhere.  Don’t be afraid to speak with your dollars!

            Speaking of Facebook, if you get a chance, go on over to my FB page and ‘like’ it!

(http://www.facebook.com/pages/Gambatria/153757698005564).  You can also do this from my website at www.gambatria.com.

Time for a Break

           Does anyone know why there are 4 quarters in football or basketball?  I can understand a some reasons for a halftime, but what is the point of the roughly 2 minute break that splits each half into its own half?  If they played just one 30 minute half in football, or 24 minute half in basketball would it really change the outcome of any game?  Maybe the athletes need the 10-15 minute break in the middle of the game to catch their breaths or to have the coach have a better chance of analyzing what they are doing wrong or right, but I can’t help but feel that the majority of the reason for these breaks is to raise money by selling commercials.  My argument is only strengthened by the fact that basketball has even instituted the ‘TV timeout’ requiring the game to stop at certain intervals if one of the team’s has not called a timeout.

But, the purpose of this week’s column is not to complain about the amount of commercials in our sporting events, but to question the notion that taking some sort of break after a relatively short period of play serves no real purpose in terms of the outcome of the game.  The same is frequently true of video poker.  I certainly don’t advocate playing for hour after hour after hour without taking a break.  Video poker can be mentally exhausting given how challenging the strategy can sometimes be.  At the same time, believing that setting up artificial ‘breaks’ will somehow change the mathematical outcome (i.e. how much money you will win or lose) makes more sense in the NBA than it does in LV. 

Time outs in video poker can serve essentially two purposes.  The first is that it can refresh you if you are tired.  Playing video poker properly takes more energy than many other casino games.  It is one of the reasons it is not for everyone, because not everyone wants to think while they are being entertained.  If you find that you are making mistakes or simply not enjoying yourself, taking a break can be a good thing.  How long of a break?  I can’t answer that one.  If stretching your legs and coming back in 5 minutes clears your head, than that is long enough.  For others, they may want to catch a bite to eat.  For yet others, once they reach this point, it is time to go home, whether that be for the evening or for a month.  The length of the break exists only so that you can come back ready to play, mentally.  The actual length of the break (or even the existence of a break) makes no difference whatsoever from a mathematical perspective, unless you are making mistakes in your play.

The second reason for a break is a psychological one, which itself is broken into two possibilities.  The first is that you’ve lost a significant portion of your bankroll relatively quickly, and it might be a good time to stretch your legs.  I’m not buying into the notion that the machine needs to cycle or by moving to another machine you’ll somehow increase your chances of hitting the big hand.  Rather, repeatedly losing takes a toll on your mind.  You’ll get frustrated and either make mistakes accidentally, or decide to take chances you’d be better off not taking in some hope of getting all of your money back quickly.  This just leads to larger losses. 

The other side of the coins is that it is not a bad idea to take a break when you are winning also.  Most casino games are ‘negative’.  That is, you’re going to lose in the long run.  Video poker, when played expertly, should allow a Player to walk away a winner about 40% of the time for a reasonable length session (3 hours).  If you choose to make it a 6 hour session, the likelihood of winning over that time will decrease.  It’s nice to walk away a winner once in a while.

Again, I can’t give you a specific answer as to when to take break based on how much you’ve won or lost.  This is a personal decision based on your own psychological makeup.  Professional players can stay very focused even during a very poor session because they are playing hundreds of hours per year.  The recreational Player is not as likely to be able to do this.  You’re on vacation and you hope to win back the cost of the trip playing video poker.  You start off down, you get frustrated and you start taking more chances (i.e. not playing according to the strategy).  At this point, it is a good time to remember you are on vacation.  Go hit the pool and come back later or tomorrow when you’re in the right mindset to play and have fun.

One last point, I’d like to make for this week.  Earlier I stated that in a 3-hour session you’re likely to win about 40% of the time.  I’ve covered this topic before.  It is very easy to manipulate your sessions and your bankroll so that you win 90% of your sessions.  You’ll be able to boast to all your friends how you ‘beat the casinos’ most of the time.  Unfortunately, this may give you bragging rights, but doesn’t do anything for your bank account.  Your losing sessions will simply be that much larger than your winning sessions.  In the end, the amount of money you win will be based on the cards you are dealt and the way you play them – PERIOD.  It does not matter if you take no breaks or a hundred breaks.  If you play each hand the same way, you’ll have the same results whether it takes 100 seconds or 100 days to play those hands.  But, for those who want bragging rights, I'll soon review how to ‘beat the casino 90% of the time’.

That's Why They Call It Gambling

            I’m in Las Vegas this week, penning this column from my hotel room.  The other night, I was playing video poker at Sam’s Town, next to a guy who was playing single-line Multi-Strike video poker.  I’m familiar with how the game works, but I have to admit, my knowledge of the strategy changes for this intriguing game is extremely limited.  I know that you have to alter your strategy to increase win frequency at the expense of payback when you are on the lower 3 lines without having received a ‘Free Ride’.

            For those unfamiliar with the game, allow me to try and explain the game.  There are four ‘levels’ in Multi-Strike.  To move up to the next level, you have to get a winning hand on the prior level.  Each of the levels pay progressively more than the previous one.  Thus hands on Level 1 pay 1 times the paytable.  Level 2 hands pay 2 times the paytable.  Level 3 hands pay 4 times the paytable and Level 4 hands pay 8 times the paytable.  To play the game you have to wager at least 1 unit on EACH level.  Thus to play ‘max-coin’ you have to wager 20 units – 5 coins times 4 levels.  This means you are paying for a level that you may never reach for each hand.  On each level, you play a brand new hand of video poker. 

            Roughly speaking, a Player playing proper ‘normal’ video poker strategy will win 45% of his hands.  This can be raised a bit if you tweak the strategy to focus a bit more on winning as opposed to how much you win.  However, at 46-47%, you would get slaughtered playing Multi-Strike because the odds of winning the 3 hands at Levels 1 through 3 would not be enough to be worth putting up the extra coin each time.  Thus, the game also incorporates what is called a ‘Free Ride’.  This is randomly generated by the machine to give the Player an automatic trip to the next level.  The Player continues to play the level that gives him the Free Ride, but even if he loses the hand, he still proceeds to the next highest level.  The impact of this feature is to bring the win frequency very close to 50%.

            I’ve never analyzed Multi-Strike, so I can’t provide you with a payback of the game.  Also, there are numerous versions of the game to correspond to regular games (i.e. Jacks or Better, Bonus, Double Double, etc…).  Additionally, the game does not clearly provide the frequency of the Free Ride feature at each level which is required to calculation an accurate payback.  I have seen published numbers from IGT (maker of the game), but there is no way to know for sure if there aren’t different variations and which games are programmed for what frequency.

            Then again, the point of this particular column was not necessarily an analysis of Multi-Strike.  The Player I mentioned earlier came across an interesting hand.  He was dealt an Ace High Straight that was also a 4-Card Royal on Level 3.  The Straight paid 4 units times 4 (for Level 3) for a total of 16 units (I didn’t notice what denomination the guy was playing).  He now faced the choice of sticking with that win and guaranteeing a shot at Level 4, OR going for the Royal Flush which would pay 1000 units (250 times 4).  By going for the Royal, he would also risk not winning at all and thus, not being given an opportunity to play the Level 4 hand.

            First, I’d like to look at this as if it didn’t happen in Multi-Strike.  So, the question is, when dealt a Straight that is also a 4-Card Royal, what is the right play?  Keep in mind, in this particular case, the Player was NOT playing max-coin, so the payout for the Royal was ‘only’ 250.   To fully analyze this situation, we need to look at every possible outcome of going for the Royal.  However, even at a quick glance, we get our answer.  The Player is essentially risking 16 units to win 1000, which is more than a 60-fold increase.  With 47 cards remaining in the deck, he has a 1 in 47 chance of hitting the Royal, which means his potential winnings are greater than the risk.  This tells us that he should go for the Royal.  When we realize that he will also have an additional chance to get a Straight Flush, 7 more ways to get a Flush, 5 more ways to get a Straight and 9 ways to get a High Pair, the decision to go for the Royal becomes an easy one.   The expected value of going for the Royal is about 8.19, while holding the Straight was only 4.

            Of course, in the specific case I’ve spelled out, the decision was a bit tougher.  By going for the Royal, he still has 23 out of 47 chances to wind up a winner and get to Play Level 4.  But, by holding the Straight, he has a 100% chance of playing Level 4.  We cannot dismiss this from the equation.  The expected value for Level 4 is about 7.84 (assuming a 98% payback multiplied by 8).  However, this assumes that we definitely get to play it.  In the case of going for the Royal, we need to multiply this by 23 and divide by 47 to account for the probability of getting to Level 4.  This is only 3.84. 

            So, we need to add these amounts to the respective EVs stated earlier.  While the decision gets quite a bit closer, going for the Royal still edges out the Straight by about 0.19.  I have to admit that I didn’t exactly do this calculation in my head when the guy looked my way (not knowing who I was) and I said “I’d go for it.”  Good thing for me and for the guy playing that he hit the Royal!  Yes, folks – that’s why they call it gambling!

As Plain as the Nose on my Face!

            I have frequently stated in my column that the biggest difference between slots and video poker is that in video poker ‘everything is known’.  What does this mean?  Well, it DOES NOT mean that anyone knows exactly which cards are about to be dealt or drawn.  What it DOES mean is that because the cards are random, we know what will happen over the long run and we know the probability of winning hands forming.  Thus, we are able to create a strategy that maximizes the amount of money we can win by using these probabilities and the payouts of these winning hands.

            When you walk up to a Roulette Wheel, everything is known also – and fairly simplistic.  If you bet a single number (and assuming a single zero wheel), you have a 1 in 37 chance of winning.  If you bet ‘Odd’ or ‘Black’, you have an 18 in 37 chance of winning.  If you sit down at a Blackjack table you know that the probability of you getting a blackjack is about 4.75%.  This information is all known because you’re dealing with real life objects that have a clear probability and are completely random.

            The same is true of video poker.  The fact that it is a digital deck does not change the randomness.  Everything about the game would be the same if you could somehow play it with a real deck of cards.  The overall math is a bit more complex than figuring out the probability of a single number in Roulette or of getting a blackjack, but the concepts are the same.  Let’s start with a simple example.  Let’s say you are dealt the following:

3♥        4♦        5♣       6♠        10♥

            The play is fairly obvious.  Discard the 10 and go for the Straight.  What is the probability of drawing the Straight?  There are 8 cards that will complete it, with 47 possible cards to be drawn.  Thus, the probability is 8/47 or about 0.17.  With a payout of 4, we multiply this by the probability to arrive at the Expected Value (EV) of this hand of 0.68.

            What if we make the hand a bit more complex?  What if the 10 was another 6?  Now there are two possible plays.  We can do as we did before and go for the Straight or we can discard the 3-4-5 and hold the Low Pair.  We don’t have to guess what the right play is.  While the specific result for a single hand will be determined by the Random Number Generator of the machine, we can look at every possible outcome of each situation and determine which results in the higher Expected Value.  When we look at all the possible draws or use some combinatorial math, we find that starting from a Low Pair and drawing 3 cards (16,215 possible outcomes) will result in 45 Quads, 165 Full Houses, 1854 Trips, 2592 Two Pairs and 11,559 losing hands.  When we multiply each of these by the payouts of each hand, and divide the total by the total possibilities, we come up with our EV of a Low Pair, which is 0.82.

            This is considerably higher than the EV of the 4-Card Straight (0.68).  Thus, the proper play is to hold the Low Pair.  By looking at every possible (2,598,960), every possible way of playing each one (32) and every possible draw for each of these ways (varying depending on how many cards are drawn), we can figure out the probability of absolutely everything that can happen in video poker.  In total, we have to look at more than 675 BILLION combinations of Deals/Draws.  Fortunately, with the help of today’s computers, this really isn’t all that daunting of a task (and there are some shortcuts to help!).

            The important thing to realize is that there is no guesswork here.  There is hard, cold and very precise math based on a 52-card deck and the idea that the probability of any card appearing is the same as every other card.  A long time ago, I saw someone suggest that the way to tell if a slot machine is a ‘good one’ is to play 20 times and count the number of winners.  A machine set to pay more will have a higher win frequency than one set lower (I can’t even verify this much!), so based on how many winning hands you have in the 20 times gives you an idea of if the machine is a good payer or not!  HUH??

            Show me a video poker machine’s paytable and I’ll tell you the win frequency and the payback in a matter of minutes (okay, if it’s something new, it might take a bit longer!)  This can be done because there is nothing hidden in video poker.  The payback is known.  The hit frequency is known.  The strategy is known.  Everything is known!

            If you’d like to know more, one of the best ways to learn more about video poker is from my father’s book Video Poker: America’s National Game of Chance.  It is 200 pages of dozens of some of my father’s best articles about video poker, all geared to teaching you how to play in a more laid back way.  It retails for $19.95, but for a limited time, I’m making it available for ONLY $6 each or 2 for $10, which includes 1^st class shipping and handling.  Send a check or money order to Compu-Flyers, P.O. Box 132, Bogota, NJ 07603.

Near Miss Adrenaline Rush

            The misconception about how slot machines work is truly staggering.  Recently I had a conversation about the current generation of video slots with some friends.  As I’ve stated many times before in my column, there seems to be near unanimous consensus that many of these video slots are so confusing that even knowledgeable people can’t figure out when they won and when they lost.  This, in my opinion, takes away from whatever ‘fun’ slots can be.  It does not change their very nature.

            One of my friends in this conversation remarked how with the older mechanical slots, at least you know what your chance were of getting a particular symbol!  I had to explain to this person that this was not the case at all!  While the new video slots may have 30 or 40 different symbols on a ‘reel’, and the older mechanical ones may have only 10 or 15, this doesn’t really change a thing about how they operate.  It only gives them less combinations to show the Player, but it has absolutely NOTHING to do with the odds of any particular set of symbols from being the final ‘hand’.

            Let me make sure everyone understands this completely.  Let’s take an older mechanical slot that has 12 different symbols on it.  For argument’s sake, let’s say they are Red 7, White 7, Blue 7, Triple Bar, Double Bar, Single Bar, Cherry, Plum, Orange, Lemon, Bell and space/nothing.  If each of these symbols appears on each reel exactly once, there would be 12 times 12 times 12 possible combinations of symbols, or 1728 combinations.  Assuming each symbol appears with the same probability, you’d get 3 Red 7s on average 1 in 1728 spins.  Of course, you’d also get 3 oranges just as often, which makes it difficult to pay 5 for one and 1000 for the other!

            So, very quickly we learn that the odds of each symbol appearing are not the same.  Perhaps the Cherry is programmed (YES, even on mechanical slots) to appear 20 times more often than a Red 7.  Well, this by itself is not very surprising.  Of course, since no one but the casino and/or the manufacturer know the specific programming, the Player has no way of knowing what the odds of anything are.  But, it doesn’t stop there.  The symbols on the reels are not programmed independently.  Rather, each of the 1728 possible combinations is assigned a probability of occurring (many of the combinations may have ZERO chance of occurring).  In this manner, the casino can control the result completely!  It is much more compelling for the Player to get Bar, Bar, Plum instead of Plum, Bar, Bar.  Once the Player sees Plum, Bar he knows he has lost.  But, with Bar, Bar his adrenaline starts pumping.  When that Plum shows up, the sense of just barely missing is in full force and the Player is compelled to try again because he ‘just barely missed!’

            Yes, I’m saying what you think I’m saying.  Near misses are programmed into slot machines.  I read an article a couple of years ago in The Economist that discussed how scientific testing shows that near misses can trigger a similar neurological response to actually winning.  So, by feeding you all those near misses, the casino is almost tricking you into feeling like you won.  Let me also be clear about another point.  This is absolutely and completely legal.  In reality, playing a slot machine is no different than buying a lottery scratch off ticket.  Whether you’ve won or lost is determined the moment you say ‘spin’.  You’ll get a few wins.  You’ll get some ugly losses.  Mostly, you’ll get a lot of just barely missed. 

            When we compare this to video poker, we find out that there is very little similarity.  Yes, the 5-card deal is determined the moment you say ‘Deal’, but the probability of each card being dealt is the same as every other card.  From there, you have 32 different ways you can play the hand, and the resulting draw will be based on randomness.  Each of the remaining 47 cards has the same probability as the others of showing up in the Draw.  Because of this, the ‘near misses’ you get in video poker are not pre-determined, but rather part of the excitement of a 5-card draw poker game.

            This is just one of the many reasons my father, Lenny Frome, felt that video poker should officially be declared America’s National Game of Chance.  There’s nothing rigged about it.  There are no purposeful near misses.  Everything about the game is known and it offers high paybacks for those who learn the strategy required to play it.  One of the best ways to learn more about video poker is from my father’s book Video Poker: America’s National Game of Chance.  It is 200 pages of dozens of some of my father’s best articles about video poker, all geared to teaching you how to play in a more laid back way.  It retails for $19.95, but for a limited time, I’m making it available for ONLY $6 each or 2 for $10, which includes 1^st class shipping and handling.  Send a check or money order to Compu-Flyers, P.O. Box 132, Bogota, NJ 07603.

Blurry Lines

            Recently, one of my ‘friends’ on my Gambatria Facebook page posted up a poll.  They asked people what they play when they go into the casino – table games, slots or other.  I wasn’t sure what to answer.  I tend to split most of my time between blackjack and video poker.  In the end, I decided that video poker was probably the most appropriate answer for me, though.  So, my first reaction was to check the ‘other’ box, but then I began to wonder if maybe the creator of the poll may have included video poker in the choice for ‘slots’.

            If you’ve read my column over the years, you know how much I hate it when people consider video poker to be slots.  They’ve been frequently categorized as such because of the physical similarity of the machines.  Once upon a time, slot machines meant mechanical reels in a wooden box, while video poker was a computer monitor in an identical wooden box.  Then slot machines went digital too and now both are essentially computers in a box.

            But, is this REALLY how we categorize casino games?  By physical characteristics?  It is ironic that originally video poker machines were put into slot-machine boxes and then over time, slot machines were put onto video poker computers in those same boxes.  While they are not so easy to find anymore, if a Player plays a stand-alone video blackjack machine are they playing slots because of the hardware?  Not in my book!

            As the technology of the casino has evolved, the lines have become even more blurred if we look only at the technology and/or hardware that the game is being played on.  Some jurisdictions don’t allow live dealers and/or actual cards, so they only allow some of the newer hardware in – fully electronic tables, where chips and cards are digital and there is either no dealer to speak of or perhaps just a moving image of one.  If you play blackjack on one of these machines are you still playing slots?  Or, are you only playing slots if the machine looks like a slot machine and you’re playing in a non-social environment?  On the other hand, if you’re sitting at something that looks like a blackjack table (or does it look like a set of new fangled slots all hooked together?) then you’re deemed to be playing a table game?

            These new electronic tables have proven the folly of considering a video poker machine to be a slot machine.  We can’t categorize games by the technology that they are played on.  A mistake was made a long time ago to not consider video poker machines as their very own category.   In most ways, they are actually far more like table games than they are slot machines. 

So, perhaps the real mistake was not considering video poker machines to be slots, but to not recognize that slot machines are like nothing else in the casino industry.  They are truly what their long nickname implies – one-armed bandits (only they no longer even have the one-arm!)

            When you sit down at a table game or a video poker machine, I can tell you the exact payback of every wager on the table.  Some of the wagers require learning a complex strategy, others are simple and yet others require no strategy at all.  But, even this last category has known probabilities for each of the paying hands.  When you play Pair Plus (of Three Card Poker) you have nothing to do, but you know exactly what the odds of getting a Three of a Kind is.

            Video poker fits this mold perfectly.  In fact, the strategy required to play video poker is on the complex end of the scale.  It could be argued that this is the exact reason why it was created for a digital platform.  In theory, a casino could put out a blackjack table and deal a paytable version of draw poker.  Each Player could get five cards face down and discard as few or as many as they want.  The payback of this game would be identical to that of a video poker game with the same paytable.  Voila!  ‘Video poker’ is now a table game!

            None of this is true for slots.  Not only is there no strategy whatsoever, you also have absolutely no way of knowing what the payback of a machine.  Two machines sitting side by side appearing to be identical could be set to pay either identical paybacks or paybacks differing by 10% or more!  A machine could be changed overnight to pay 10% less than it was set to the day before and there’s no way of you knowing this.  Absolutely NOTHING is know about the probabilities of a slot machine by the Player and there is no way to get this information. 

            Saying that video poker is slots would be like saying the Space Shuttle and a coffee maker are the same thing because they are both machines.  It just doesn’t add up.  To help you better understand video poker machines and to break the slot habit, our special for June continues.  You can get Expert Video Poker for Las Vegas for just $7.95 (reg $9.95) by sending a check or money order to Compu-Flyers, P.O. Box 132, Bogota, NJ 07603.  

A Slot Upgrade?

             This past weekend, we had some friends over for lunch.  Invariably, the conversation winds up on my relatively unique profession.  Somewhat ironic in this case as one of the other guys is a hedge fund manager who counts as one of his clients one of the top poker players in the world.  Then again, some would argue that we’re both in the same general profession – casino gambling!

            I got asked the usual question of what the best games to play are and how I got started in the profession.  At one point, the subject turned to slot machines.  There was both good news and bad news to report here.  On one hand everyone seemed to agree that these were amongst the worst payers in the casino.  On the other hand, not everyone admitted that they would never play one.  For those whom are intimidated by the table games, the slots still are the mainstay – no matter how bad they pay.

            I remarked how I had just read an article talking about a comeback that is being made by ‘old fashioned’ mechanical slots.  Everyone in the room agreed that the older slots were better than the newer ones.  A few reasons were cited.  One was that they actually had a handle to ‘pull’.  Another was the clinking of the coins coming out when you won.  I actually commented that I wasn’t sure if the machines making the comeback are ticket-in/ticket-out or truly old-fashioned in that they accept and pay out real coins. 

            One of the reasons I cited for the popularity of the mechanical machines was that you could actually tell when you won or lost.   As I’ve written many times in my column in Gaming Today, I have occasionally put a $5 machine into a penny or nickel video slot machine in order to kill some time.  I then press a button that says “Play max lines” and press another that says “Spin”.  When the reels are done ‘spinning’, the machine then tells me that I either won some number of coins or that I lost.  No matter how many times I try to figure it out, I can’t tell on my own WHY I’ve won when I do!

            I’ll see several identical symbols on the same line only to find that’s not really a line to this 5 ‘reel’, 27-line machine!  Someone should tell some of the slot manufacturers that a ‘line’ usually denotes a STRAIGHT line between two points, not an up and down line that looks more like a heart monitor!  Is it any wonder that people are not having fun playing slots anymore?  It wasn’t good enough when the casinos were essentially taking the Player’s money with 92-93% slot machines, now they have to do it in a way that most Players have absolutely no idea what is going on?  For anyone reading this, please tell me – are you really having fun playing the newer video slots?  I’m sure it’s a lot of fun when you get to a Bonus Round on something like Wheel of Fortune, but do you even know why you got there? 

            I remember playing one slot machine that put me into some sort of Bonus Round.  I won about $25 (on a nickel machine) in under 5 minutes.  I couldn’t tell you why I wound up in the Bonus Round or what I was trying to do while in it!  It just kept telling me to pick boxes and I did.  Each time it opened one, I won more coins.  Hey, I was very happy to win $25 in a few minutes, but I have to be honest.  I can’t really say I had any fun doing it.  I could’ve just as easily lost my bankroll (okay, it was only $5 for the slot machine) and been just as clueless.

            As I raised this point to my guests, there was universal agreement.  While some of them admitted to still playing them, none said they had fun while doing it.  My hedge fund manager friend does all he can to dissuade his wife from playing the slots at all – just based on their horrible paybacks.

            Of course, I have mixed emotions about a comeback for the mechanical slots.  They still have the worst paybacks in the casinos and I would much prefer that slot machines go the way of the dodo bird.  There are SO many better games to play in the casino with better paybacks and that are more fun.  I know that one of the reasons people avoid them is sometimes they are intimidated to play new games that they don’t know how to play.  So, we try to make it a bit easier with our books and booklets.

            Today, May 12^th, 2011 would have been my father’s (Lenny Frome’s) 85^th birthday.  So, for the rest of May, we’re offering some special prices on our titles:

•         Winning Strategies for Video Poker and Video Poker: America’s National Game of Chance (both books) for $19.26 (his birth year)
•          Expert Video Poker for Las Vegas or Expert Video Poker for Las Vegas for just $5.12 each.
•          Any of the Expert Strategy series books (Three Card Poker, Four Card Poker, Let It Ride, Spanish 21, Caribbean Stud Poker, Mississippi Stud or Blackjack Switch)  - 1 for $4.85, 2 for $8.85, 3 for $11.85 or all 7 for $19.26

            To learn more about any of these titles, go to my website at www.gambatria.com and click on the “Products” tab.  If you would like to order any products, just send a check or money order to Compu-Flyers, P.O. Box 132, Bogota, NJ 07603.

Coming Up Aces

            When it comes to video poker, I think there is no doubt that the Ace is by far the most enigmatic card in the deck.  In the old days when we only had jacks or better video poker, the Ace was actually worth far less than most people gave it credit for.  In video poker an Ace High Flush or Ace High Straight has no more value than a 7-High hand of the same rank.  Whereas a Full House with three Aces is nearly unbeatable in table poker, it has no more value than 3’s over 2’s in video poker.

            The only additional value an Ace has is as a High Card.  In this regard, it has the same value as a Jack, Queen or King.  These four cards give extra weight to the expected value of our partial hands because of the opportunity to pick up a High Pair.  Once you have a High Pair or better, they provide no additional value.  This is where the irony starts to build.  A single Ace actually has the lowest expected value of any single High Card (tied with a King).  This is because an Ace inherently creates only INSIDE Straights.  With a single Ace you still have two shots at a Straight (10 – A or A-5), but if you add an Ace to any other High Card (i.e. J-A) you leave yourself only once chance to make a Straight.  Whereas, if you hold a J-Q, you can make a Straight multiple ways (8-9-10, 9-10-K, 10-K-A). 

            We overlook this weakness when we have an opportunity to hold two suited High Cards (i.e. a 2-Card Royal).  We would rather hold a suited J-A then an off-suit J-Q.  However, when we have three unsuited High Cards and one of them is an Ace, we do NOT keep the Ace.  Thus, if dealt J-Q-A, J-K-A or Q-K-A (offsuit), we keep the two NON-Ace cards.  The reduction in our chances of grabbing a Straight by keeping the Ace is greater than the benefit of keeping the third High Card.

            Thus, we see from all this that the almighty Ace is really not so almighty.  From an expected value perspective it is the weakest of all the single High Cards.  Fortunately for the Ace, someone invented the Bonus Poker variations of video poker restoring it to its full glory.

            The Bonus Poker variations turned the values of cards a bit upside down.  Pairs of Jacks or Better still paid 1 so this kept the extra value of the single High Card.  However, the 2^nd tier of Bonus Payouts for Quads went to 2’s – 5’s.  This gave extra weight to these cards as they started to Pair up.  No one discards three of a kind so that wasn’t an issue, but all of a sudden ‘Low Pairs’ had to be split between ‘very’ low (2’s – 5’s) and just low (6’s – 10’s).  The top Tier (Aces) is what restored the Ace to the top of the pecking order.  Not only did it have value as a singleton above the low cards, it now had the top value as it began to Pair up and Players hoped to collect all four of them. 

            In reality, the paytable of the original bonus poker doesn’t do much for the Aces.  Obviously a Pair of Aces has a higher expected value, as does that of the single Ace – but not enough to really change how we play our hands.  However, as we move up the ladder of bonus games, this begins to change.  In Double Bonus Poker, a Pair of Aces outranks a 3-Card Royal, but a Pair of J-Q-K’s does not outrank all of them.  If you’ve got Trip Aces with another Pair (i.e. a Full House), you’ll throw away the Pair to go for the fourth Ace.  Don’t do that with any other Three of a Kind!

            If we move up to Double Double Bonus, we now find that if we’re dealt a Pair of Aces with another Pair (Two Pair) that we discard the other Pair hoping to get dealt the remaining two Aces.  The power of the Ace is complete!

            The most important lesson in all of this is that you need to learn the strategy table for whatever game you are playing.  You also need to discard your pre-conceived notions about cards and their values.  In table poker an Ace is a very powerful card.  In most versions of video poker, it is just another High Card and not even the most valuable of them.  Video poker is not about kickers and eking out a better hand.  It’s a game about cold calculated math.  

Take A Stroll Through the Casino

It has been more than 20 years since my father, Lenny Frome, began writing about video poker. I think he had two goals when he started. The first was to tell people about this relatively new casino game which had paybacks about as high as any in the casino – and in some cases over 100%. The second goal was to get people away from slots which have arguably the absolute worst paybacks in the casino. Two decades later, it would appear that while much good work has been done, much more is needed.


The most common question I’m asked by friends is “what is the ‘best’ game to play in the casino?” In this case, ‘best’ means having the highest payback. Usually, most people start to answer the question before I can and start with blackjack – which is essentially a correct answer. With a payback of 99.5% (give or take, depending on the rules), blackjack must be described as being one of the ‘best’ games to play. Of course, the original version is a bit slow and requires a significant degree of strategy, but that really isn’t part of the equation at the moment.


Frequently, the next answer that comes up is Craps. This is a bit tougher to size up. Craps is really dozens of different independent wagers so determining the ‘payback’ of Craps is not only difficult (if not impossible), it is also meaningless. Avoid all the proposition wagers with horrible paybacks and you’ll have a much higher payback than the guy constantly buying ‘hard ways’ bets. Craps can be a really fun game with a lively table and when a shooter gets hot. Playing with just a couple of Players and/or during only cold or slightly warm streaks and it I prefer games where you can sit down!


After blackjack and Craps, the person who asked the question finally goes silent. It is almost as if the casino still only has about 4 options – blackjack, Craps, Roulette and slots. Well, I guess the good news is that the silence means the most people have figured out that you’re not going to win money playing slots. As for Roulette, well, it is a bit like Craps, but almost every wager has the same so-so payback. But what about the rest of the casino? Over the past 20 years, the casino floor has changed tremendously. Many of the people who ask me the question do go to the casino. Have they not noticed all the other games?


I don’t know who is more surprised. The person I’m talking to when I say “video poker” or me when they respond “what’s that?” I guess if you’ve always been a table game person maybe you haven’t noticed that not all the ‘slot machines’ look alike. Of course, this was truer when slot machines still had handles and video poker machines didn’t. With the advent of video slots, the casual observer may just see lots of lights and colors on a computer screen and think they are all the same. I’ve spent many columns explaining the vast differences between slots and video poker to need to do so again today.


Once I explain what video poker is to the person who asked the original question, they are even more surprised to find out that a ‘routine’ payback can be about the same as blackjack and that there are still a fair number that can be found that have paybacks over 100%. This, of course leads to an explanation of what it takes to exploit such a Player advantage. Yes, you can probably make 30k-40K a year playing quarter video poker, but it would take playing 40 hours a week in a smoky casino, playing very disciplined and it would be a lot like having a very streaky commission job. You might earn nothing one year and earn 50-60K the next. This is not necessarily an easy job or one suited for anyone. The ultimate irony comes when I find out the person I’m talking to is an attorney, here in the NYC area, who is probably pulling down at least a few hundred thousand a year. I don’t think he’s giving up his day job!


So, I guess after more than 20 years of trying to get people to break the slot habit, we can confidently say we have achieved some success. I think the number of people who think that they have a shot at the slots has gone way down. At the same time, the campaign to keep teaching people about all the other games in the casino goes on. From video poker to blackjack to many of the newer table games that offer higher paybacks than the traditional casino games – many while offering a good deal more excitement too. The next time you head out to the casino, before you sit down to play, just walk the casino floor and check out all the games you may not have known existed. Then, to learn more about it, head over to my website and there’s a good chance I already have written about it. If not, feel free to drop me a line and I’ll do my best to cover it in the near future.

Bankroll Considerations

  

            Recently, I answered a question from a reader about what to do when you win ‘big’ early in your session.  Of course, both ‘big’ and ‘early’ are rather subjective terms.  Ironically, the definition of big probably has less to do with the denomination you are playing and more to do with the size of your bankroll.  If you showed up with $20 and you hit a $100 hand, you’re more likely to stop than if you came to the casino with $1000 and hit a $100 hand.  In the first case, the Player was probably bankrolled too small and in the latter case, it was overkill.  But it is just a normal human reaction to place the size of the winnings next to the amount of money we show up with to determine what ‘big’ is.

            This, of course, leads to an important question - and one that I’m frequently asked.  What is the right size bankroll for video poker?  To answer that, we need to define some things.  First – what is bankroll?  I’m going to drive my English teachers nuts by telling you what it isn’t.  It isn’t the amount of money you put into the machine.  It’s not the amount of money you head off to the casino with.  It (hopefully) is NOT your life savings.  Bankroll is the amount of money that is the maximum you are willing to lose before calling it quits over some period of time.  So, if you go to the casino with $100 in your pocket, but know full well that if you lose it, you’re going to head to the ATM to get more – then $100 is NOT your bankroll.  Conversely, if you’ve got $1000 in your pocket and if you drop $200 you are heading for your hotel room, then the $200 is your real bankroll and not the $1000.

            So, what does this bankroll really do for us?  Well, it sets a maximum that we can lose over some defined period of time.  Maybe it is a single session over a single day/night.  Or, maybe it is the amount we are willing to lose over a week-long vacation.  Why is it important?  Well, besides setting some limits for ourselves, it is also tells us that at the point we’ve lost that much, we are done.  There is no coming back from that loss with a hot streak.  So, if we were to sit at a $5 blackjack table with $5, we have to realize that if we lose that very first hand, we’re done.  If we sit down with $20, then we have to lose 4 more hand than we win (ignoring doubling and splits) to be ‘broke’.  If we sit down with $1000 then we’d have to lose 200 more hands than we won.  With a $5 bankroll, you have a greater than 50% chance of going bust just on the first hand.  With a $1000 bankroll, you might be able to play weeks or months before going bust.

            While we assign a payback to every game, and we can calculate the anticipated loss over a period of time for that game, this is just a theoretical average over time.  Most casino games are fairly volatile which is simple terms means STREAKY.  So, if you play an hour of $5 blackjack, you can realistically expect to lose about $8.  If you start with $100, you’re almost guaranteed to get thru that hour.  If, however you start with $10, your chances of playing the entire hour go down considerably, which ironically means that you would lose MORE than the ‘average’.  By not allowing yourself a reasonable opportunity to come back from a cold streak, you in essence do yourself a grave disservice.  This is why showing up with the right size bankroll is so important.

            One could thus argue that the right size bankroll is one that makes sure that you have ZERO chance of going bust before you are done playing the amount of time you want to play.  There is a certain amount of truth to this notion, but it removes the human element.  It is too easy for us ‘greedy’ human to decide to play longer or up our wager if we have too much cash on hand.  Also, sometimes it is not so practical to do this.  To play an hour at $5 blackjack, we would merely need to show up with $150-$175.  If, however, we wish to play 3 hours of video poker – max-coin quarters – we would need almost $2000 (assuming 500 hands per hour).  This is probably overkill if you’re playing a full-pay jacks or better machine.

            I created a program that simulated video poker.  It started with different bankroll amounts.  If at any point in the 1500-hand session the Player lost more than his bankroll, he was considered to have ‘busted’ and the session ended.  For the moment, I just focused on the percentage of busts and did not bother keeping track of how far into the session the Player was or how he would’ve done had he decided to go beyond his bankroll (i.e. how often does he recover his initial bankroll by using yet more money).

            If the Player starts with 200 wagers ($250 for a max-coin quarter machine), he went bust only 1.39% of the sessions.  If we cut our bankroll down to 120 wagers ($150), our Player went bust just a smidge under 20% of the time.  If the bankroll is reduced to 80 wagers ($100), we find that the bust rate goes up to over 43%.  If the Player tries to get away with a mere $50 bankroll, he’ll find that he’ll lose it all about 73% of the time.  Try and get away with only $25 and you’ll lose the entire bankroll more than 87% of the time.

            So, what’s the right amount of bankroll?  There is no absolute right answer for that.  You have to decide how much you’re willing to risk that your session ends prematurely.  But, if you’re looking for some advice, based on the numbers presented here, I’d go with 120 wagers ($150).   You’ll go bust only 20% of the time, and if you’re night is going that bad, you might just be best off calling it a night.

What To Do When You Win Early

            A couple of weeks ago, a reader sent me a note asking what he should do when he finds himself up significantly very early in a session when he expected to play 4-5 hours.  This is not an easy question to answer as it is really isn’t a math question.  The bottom line is that if you are playing a game with a payback below 100% (you can choose to throw in comps and cashback if you want) then you are playing a game in which you will lose over the long run.  The more you play, the greater the likelihood that you will lose and the amount you are likely to lose (from the beginning of time) continues to go up. 

            Of course, using this logic, you should never play any game with a payback below 100%.  So, if your only reason for playing is winning then you should stop now unless you are playing some of the video poker machines that pay over 100%.  However, as I have long surmised, most of you play in the casino for entertainment purposes.  We all want to win when we play, and the games are created to allow you to win some of the time over short sessions.  So, what is the answer when we’re up $100-$200 after 20 minutes of play after taking a long drive to the casino and expecting to play deep into the night?

            I’ve already explained the mathematical answer, but I don’t think that’s the one my reader was looking for.  So, the question has to be answered more from an emotional standpoint.  First of all, it is good for the psyche to win some of our sessions.  So, it might not be a bad idea to just walk away for the evening.  If you make these trips on a regular basis, giving up the few extra hours of play and driving home may be one solution.  Another possibility is to take your winnings and find something else to do in/around the casino.  Most have some other form of entertainment available.  Go see a show or a movie.  Go bowling.  Head to the video arcade (Pac-man, not video poker!).  This latter one is one of my personal favorites.  I can make a dollar last pretty long on a pinball machine! 

            Another possibility is to take it down in denomination.  If you’ve been playing quarters, maybe you want to try nickels for a little while.  If you’ve been playing multi-play, go back to playing a single hand.  The simple fact is that the math is against you and you can’t change that.  The key is to not allow yourself to lose your psychological edge.  You hold in your hand the casino’s money.  There is no reason to give it back. 

            The last thing you want to do is losing your composure.  It is human nature to get frustrated when the winning streak stops.  We start losing some of what we won and we want to get it back.  So, we start increasing our wager or taking bigger chances in the hopes of recovering some of what we started to give back.  If we were already on a downswing, our bankroll may be dwindling which limits the downside.  Or the credits may almost be gone from the machine so it will give us a reason to stretch our legs.  If, however, we just had a big win, these braking mechanisms won’t be there. 

            At the very least, I advocate hitting the “Cash Out” and taking your ticket out and going to cash it in.  Start with a new $20 after taking a little breather.  We’ve all seen the little disclaimer on advertising (when talking about stocks and the like) that past performance is not necessarily and indication of future gains.  Nothing could be more true for gambling.  In fact, it may be even more true for gambling.  What happened in the past is meaningless.  The game you are playing has a particular payback and that is what you can expect to happen over the long run going forward.  You simply cannot change this.  But, you CAN change how you let it effect you.

                    

How About a Comp System that works?

            A lot of noise was made recently by Las Vegas Sands announcing that they were making significant changes to their comps program.  They were going to greatly reduce the number of free rooms and other things they give out to the masses.  A couple of months ago, I wrote a column about this, expressing that under the conditions that the Sands operates, it really may not be a bad move on their part.  While I think it is a bad idea for casinos that cater to locals to cut back on things like this, I think that the casinos that rely on the out-of-town tourists should have a very different model.

            A few weeks ago, I saw an article that talked about how the Sands was changing its cashback as well.  If I recall correctly, they would now be giving video poker Players back 8% of the theoretical house advantage.  So, if the machine you’re playing has a 1% house edge (99% payback), you be getting back 0.08% of your total wager.  If you’re a max-coin quarter Player, playing 800 hands per hour, you’ll get 80 cents back for each $1000 you drop into the machine.  The expectation is that you’ve lost $10 of that $1000 over the hour.

            I saw a tweet that commented on this, using a full-pay jacks or better as an example.  With a house edge of just 0.4%, the Player will be getting back 0.032% of his total wager.  In my prior example – 32 cents per hour or just under $1 for a 3-hour session.  So, if you go to Las Vegas and play at the Sands, you’ll get back just over $6 if you play every night for 3 hours per night.   I responded to the tweet that this case was non-existent.  Las Vegas Sands does not offer full-pay machines, so their Players will get back far more.  This really is not a good thing, on the whole, for Players.  I’d rather play a full-pay machine then get 3 times the cashback by playing a poor machine.

            That said, I have to go on the record as saying that I think this is the most ridiculous way to calculate cash back.  I’m not blaming the Sands.  Casinos have used ‘cash in’ as the deciding factor for years.  They combine this with a more generic ‘payback’ of a game to determine a percent of ‘cash in’ that Player should receive as a rebate.   To figure out a better system, we should first ask, what is the point of such a rebate?

            Over the past decade or two, many companies have instituted similar such rebates of one type or another.  I have a key ring full of ‘loyalty cards’ that I carry – from my supermarket, drug store and other retailers.  One drugstore gives me a 2% rebate on most of my purchases.  Does this really make me go there for my purchases?  I don’t think so.  But, once a quarter, I get a coupon for a couple of dollars and I feel compelled to use it before it expires.  If I’m disciplined, I buy only things I truly need or buy something that costs only the amount of the coupon.  Of course, we know that it doesn’t always work out so well.  The goal of this cash back is to get me back into the store at a time when I may not really need much of anything and then spend more than the coupon is worth.  This would seem to be similar to the casino model.

            There is, of course, one major difference.  When I buy something in a store, I bring home something tangible.  In the casino, it is not quite the same.  I hope you all enjoy the entertainment you get there, but you’re not bringing a specific item home.  Also, the need for discipline is far greater in the casino.  $2 is $2 in the drugstore.  In the casino, some can make their money last much longer than others.

            So, if we have two players who play identical video poker machines and one plays it ‘Expertly’ and plays at 99% and the other plays it rather poorly and plays only 95%, why should they receive the same cashback.  Mind you, I’m not talking about how they ACTUALLY do with their bankroll.  I’m talking about the theoretical payback of how they play each hand.  The machine can be easily programmed to keep tabs on this.  In this scenario, the Player who plays poorly will actually receive more money than the one who plays properly.  From a casino perspective, I would think this would be a no-brainer!

            Let’s be real, here.  If I’m playing the machine, why would the casino want to give me much money back?  I’ll drop $30 in 3 hours and then they’ll give me $2.40 cents back.  Realistically, they can’t give me much more.  Also, if I’m a good Player, I’m losing relatively little and just how much incentive do I need to come back?  Will $2.40 really bring me back to this casino?

However, if I’m a bad player and my play would dictate that I should lose $150 in those 3 hours, I would now get back a $12 rebate.  If I’m that casino, I want to bring back this Player more than the Expert Player.  Give him $12 to play with.  He’ll likely lose far more than that while playing at 95%. 

            So, yes, I AM advocating that bad Players get more cashback than good Players.  However, I’d still rather be a good Player getting less in cash back than a bad Player getting more.  Some of you may wonder about a system that pays cashback based on how much the Player actually wins or loses.  In a future column, I’ll discuss my thoughts on that.

            I’d like to hear what you have to say about this, so PLEASE feel free to leave comments – but let’s all be civil!

How About That Strategy? It Works!

            This pretty much speaks for itself:

http://fbg.me/App/Posts/BlogPost.aspx?pstid=29444&pstaid=462

             Someone playing a $2 full-pay max-coin Double Double Bonus Poker hits an $8000 Royal Flush starting from a 2-Card Royal!  Without knowing who hit it (and I don’t), we really don’t know to what extent this Player follows Expert Strategy.  For all I know, he discarded a Pair of Jacks to go for the 2-Card Royal.  But, lacking this information, I’m going to use this picture to demonstrate some key components of Expert Strategy.

            Play the right machine – Well, Double Double Bonus isn’t exactly the ideal machine to play with its 98.8% payback.  However, it multiple jackpots (Royal and 4 Aces w/kicker) has made it immensely popular.  From the picture we can see that the Player chose to play one that is full-pay (1/1/3/4/6/9).  Before the payout on this hand, the Player had about $535 remaining in their bankroll.  If they play a short-pay machine, perhaps the bankroll is exhausted before they have the opportunity to win the $8000!

            Know the right strategy – This is really the crux of this column.  We don’t know what hand the Player was dealt, but we do know that he held the suited J-A.  2-Card Royals make up about 7-8% of our playable hands.  Misplaying them can be rather dangerous to your bankroll.  When my father, Lenny Frome, developed his first strategies for video poker, one of things that surprised him was that most 2-Card Royals outranked 3 High Cards.  Given the unlikely odds of hitting a Royal, intuitively, one might think that you’re better off having 3 High Cards increasing your chances of a Jacks or Better or a Straight.  But by holding 3 off-suited cards, you eliminate all chances of a Flush, reduce the likelihood of Trips and eliminate Quads and the Royal.

            ‘Unlikely’ is also a relative term.  The actual odds of hitting a Royal from a 2-Card Royal is ‘only’ 16,215 to 1.  In the grand scheme of the casino, this isn’t really all that rare.  If one out of 13 hands is a 2-Card Royal and 1 in 16,215 of these will result in a Royal Flush, then we’re talking about 1 in 210,000 hands will have this ‘fate’.  At 700 hands per hour, this means about 300 hours of play.  Depending on how serious of a Player you are, this might take weeks or months, but in a casino with hundreds of video poker machines being played 10-15 hours day each, it’s happening every day all over the place.  So, why not you?

            Of course, you increase your chances of it being you if you play your 2-Card Royals correctly.  This will, of course, depend on the specific game and paytable you are playing.  In the case of Double Double, here are some key pointers:

            -  A 10-A 2-Card Royal is NOT playable.  We hold only the Ace if we have no alternatives.

            -  We Play J-Q-K-A (off suit) over a 2-Card Royal

            -  Pay attention to all of your cards and don’t just focus on the 2-Card Royal.  You might be dealt 4-5-6 of one suit and a J-Q of another.  The 3-Card Straight Flush outranks the 2-Card Royal by a considerable margin.

            -   Do NOT discard any Pairs to go for a 2-Card Royal

            This list is hardly meant to be comprehensive.  If while reading it you realized that you didn’t know these things, you might want to brush up on your game before you spend real money.  As always, it is important to learn the strategy table of the game you intend to play and stick to it. 

            This way, maybe next time I post up a picture of a big jackpot, you can sit back and say “That’s MINE!”

Everyone's a Joker!

            I’m continuing last week’s column by continuing the discussion of Joker Wild video poker.  This game is still available in numerous casinos around Las Vegas and offers a 100.65% payback.  As always, of course, it offers this payback ONLY if you find the full-pay paytable.  You should be looking for the following:

Hand	Pays*
Royal Flush (Natural)	800
Five of a Kind	200
Royal Flush (Joker)	100
Straight Flush	50
Four of a Kind	20
Full House	7
Flush	5
Straight	3
Three of a Kind	2
Two Pair	1
High Pair (K’s or A’s)	1

* With Max-Coin play

            There are a total of 50 entries on the strategy table for this version of Joker Wild.  However, they are split up between Joker hands (23) and non-Joker hands (27).  When thought of this way, the process of learning the strategy table becomes much simpler.  First let’s focus on the non-Joker hands which make up almost 90% of the total hands.

            The top half of the non-Joker strategy table has few surprises.  Most of the hands are the pat hands for which there is little to decide.  One key point is that you will discard a Straight to go for any 4-Card Straight Flush.  You do NOT break up a Flush, however, for these cases.  A 3-Card Royal ranks above a High Pair, but below Two Pair and 4-Card Straight Flushes. 

            The bottom half of the non-Joker strategy table contains the hands with an expected value less than 1 so these are the messier partial Straights, Flushes and Straight Flushes.  The key points here are NO 3-Card Straights are playable and NO 3-Card Flushes are playable.  3-Card Straight Flushes, however, are quite playable, but generally below a Low Pair (except for a non-inside 3-Card Straight Flush), but ABOVE the equivalent 4-Card Straight.  So, if you have a 3-Card Straight Flush that is also a 4-Card Straight, you stick with the 3-Card Straight Flush most of the time.  The payout of only 3 on the Straight makes a significant difference for these hands.  If you have a 2-Card Royal that is A-K, K-Q, K-J or K-10, it will outrank holding only the single High Card.  However, it is preferable to hold a single A or K over a 2-Card Royal of 10-J-Q (2 of the three).  A 2-card Royal consisting of an Ace but not a King is not playable.

            It probably is no surprise that on the non-Joker half of things, 3 hand types make up about 70% of all our hands dealt – Low Pair, 1 High Card and Razgu.  This last hand – where we throw all 5 occurs about 12.5% of the time for hands without a Joker, which is 4 times more frequent than in jacks or better.

            On the Joker side of things, we find that the lowest playable hands are 4-Card Straights and 4-Card Flushes.  If after accounting for the Joker you still have an Inside 4-Card Straight, you do NOT play this (i.e. 4-5-JKR-8-Q).  As in non-Joker hands, a 3-card Straight Flush is played over a 4-Card Straight.  Since every hand with a Joker is by its very definition at least a Pair, which one of the 4 remaining cards to you decide to keep if dealt nothing much but the Joker?  You don’t!  Over 10% of our Joker hands will result in a Joker Razgu where we throw the other four cards.  There is no Joker Low Pair hand in Joker Wild.

            There are three secrets to winning at Joker Wild video poker.  The first is to find the right game to play.  There are a lot of different paytables out there and even a variation of Joker Wild that pays beginning at Two Pair, albeit harder to find and not nearly as lucrative.  The second secret is learning the strategy.  It’s really not that hard of a strategy to learn, but if you go in trying to adapt your jacks or better of your Bonus Poker strategy to Joker Wild, you’re going to get killed.  Last, but not least, you need to get your fair share of Jokers.  The payback is all in the Joker hands and if you don’t get your fair share of them, you’re not likely to have a winning session.  The good news is that the payback is above 100%, so you only need your fair share.  If you happen to get even more – all the better for you.

A Wild Ride on the Positive Side

            Frequently, people come up to me asking what is the best game to play in the casino and then answer it themselves by saying, “blackjack, right?”  By saying ‘best’, I usually assume they mean the best paying.  As table games go, they are essentially correct, although it may depend on the exact rules being used.  As for the best paying games (not just table games), the answer to that one is without a doubt video poker.  A decade ago, finding a video poker machine paying 99.6% or better in Las Vegas was easier than finding those little sheets of paper with semi-naked girls on them strewn on the strip.  Today, you have to search a little harder, but they are still there.

            While my father, Lenny Frome, added greatly to the popularity of video poker through his hundreds of articles and numerous books, he is also probably partly responsible for the disappearance of these ‘positive’ games.  Let’s be real.  The casinos don’t exactly purposefully put out games over 100% very often.  No one knows exactly why ANY were allowed to hit the casino floor.  We can only assume that because so many players played so poorly in the early days that the casinos never bothered to notice the few who might take advantage of the situation.

            Also, unlike a table game, which focuses more on a table minimum, video pokers focus on a machine maximum.  A $5 blackjack table allows the player to frequently play up to at least $500.  If that table were somehow created to allow a Player advantage, the Player could win a lot of money at $500 per hand.  With a mere 0.65% Player advantage and playing 30 hands per hour, a $500 blackjack Player could win $110 per hour.  Not a bad salary.  A 25-cent video poker machine allows for the Player to play $1.25 per hand.  At 800 hands per hour, this is still only $1000.  A machine paying 100.65% will afford the player a $6.50 per hour profit.  It beats losing, but tough to make a living off of it. 

            Why did I pick 0.65% as the Player advantage?  This happens to be the advantage for a relatively common form of video poker – Joker’s Wild (A-K).  When I say ‘common’, I don’t mean that you’ll find it at every casino.  I’m not sure you can find any 100+% payback machines along the mid-strip area of Las Vegas.  So long as the Players there are in awe of the marble statues while they play short-pay machines, there is no reason for the casino to offer anything but.  According to my friends at VPFREE, you can find these machines in about a half-dozen casinos in Las Vegas. 

            Now, before you go giving up your day job to go play these Player-friendly machines, I have to tell you that the highest denomination you’re going to find is a quarter machine – which will generate the $6+ per hour I mentioned earlier.  The casinos have figured out that a quarter machine will not attract the professional video poker Players and thus they don’t care much if a couple of people walk away a winner every now and then.  But as I said earlier, it beats losing.

            Learning Joker games can appear to be a bit challenging at first.  The strategy table has 50 entries on it which makes it rather long.  However, when you realize that the hands are broken down to Joker vs. Non-Joker, you realize that you actually have 2 relatively short tables to learn.  The fact that game pays for a Pair of Kings or Better (and not Jacks) means that the need to keep track of the number of High Cards is greatly diminished. 

            One of the toughest parts about playing a Joker’s Wild game is the volatility.  If you don’t get your Jokers frequently enough, you don’t stand much of a chance.  Joker hands account for just under 10% of the total number of hands.  The payback when you have a Joker is a whopping 286%!  For the other 90+% of the hands it is a mere 81.3%.  Expect to see wild swings in your bankroll with this one.

Happy Birthday to the Father of our Country!

Many years ago, I remarked to a high school classmate that I shared a birthday with George Washington. He looked at me and said, "you were born on the third Monday in February?". I just didn't know how to respond!

Today is the 279th anniversary of the birth of George Washington - and my 45th birthday. I'm trying not to think too much about being "mid 40's". I'd rather just go with you're only as old as you feel! Um, er...On second thought that may not be a good idea either. How about, you're only as old as your children make you feel? No, that doesn't work either - I have a teenager who keeps telling me how old I am. How about, you're only as old as your YOUNGEST child makes you feel? I like that one. My four-year old likes to jump on me like I'm still 20-something, so I'll stick with that one.

Well, all over the country they have been having President's day sales this past weekend. The cool part about being the 'President' of a company is I get to have a President's day sale in my own honor! For this week only, we are offering our best-selling books at a very special price of $4.50 (for my 45th birthday!), which includes shipping and handling (in the U.S.). Pick from Winning Strategies for Video Poker, Video Poker: America's National Game of Chance or Expert Video Poker for Las Vegas. You can order one or as many as you'd like. Send a check or money order to Compu-Flyers, P.O. Box 132, Bogota, NJ 07603. Please make sure it is postmarked by 3/1/11.

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

---

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.