VIDEO POKER

How Shirley Learns a New Game

Unlike me, Shirley does not have a real passion for video poker. Or any other game, for that matter. She is a people person. She is a generalist --- in that she can do hundreds of things at a pretty decent level. I am a specialist, who can do a few things at a very high level, and many other things not at all.

Shirley doesn't learn every game that I do. But if a game will be going on for quite some time, then I teach it to her. To start with, we need the strategy written down. With all of the rules. In our example from last week, we were trying to learn a new form of 8/5 Bonus, where all quads return 35. So for that game, the strategy started out by saying: It's just like 9/6 Jacks except: and then I listed twenty exceptions.

To write out a strategy precisely, you need to agree on nomenclature. Every strategy card author has his own terminology. The nomenclature Shirley and I use is the one developed by Liam W. Daily. This nomenclature is used on the cards produced by Daily and myself. Assuming you want to write out the strategies at a high level, you need some way to describe various kinds of penalty card situations.

Then using either playing cards or a pencil and paper, I list problem hands for Shirley. The first time through she might miss four or five of the hands, even with the strategy right in front of her. The second time though she usually misses one or less.

If we review the strategy the next day, she'll remember maybe a third of the special conditions. So we'll go through them all again and she'll miss three or four. And the second time through that day, she usually doesn't miss any. If we do it again the next day, usually she will miss only one or two the first time through.

Clearly she improves from day to day. But if we take two weeks off and then revisit a game, it is like starting all over again. She will remember some of the points, but not many. So we go through the twenty or so problem hands and she'll miss some. The next day, she might miss only one. But take a few weeks off again and we start the learning process all over again too. Even today, if we have been playing Double Bonus for awhile and go back to Jacks or Better, or vice versa, we will review first because she will have forgotten the fine points. And she has been playing for five years.

Early in our relationship, these sessions used to tie knots in Shirley's stomach. She wanted to be able to remember the strategy, but the rules just wouldn't stick. And having me tell her she was wrong, over and over again, didn't help her opinion of herself --- or her opinion of me either. There were times we wondered if she would EVER be able to keep the hands straight. But it was clear to both of us that my life was going to be playing video poker and writing about it and if she was going to be part of it, she had to learn. Finally she learned 9/6 Jacks or Better pretty well.

Now when we go through the practice sessions, Shirley is not nearly so anxious about them. First of all she knows that the world isn't going to come crashing down if she doesn't learn the hands right away. But also, since she has been practicing so long, she is able to learn a new game much more quickly than she could in the past.

What is surprising to me sometimes is that we have been able to work this out. Having me be the "boss" and the "teacher" really rubs her the wrong way sometimes, and if she is upset at me about anything, the study process is very strained. And sometimes impossible. It helps, I suppose, that I was an expert before she met me and if she had not been willing to put up with video poker learning process, our relationship would never had gotten past the casual dating phase.

I know several pro players who have wives that play quite inexpertly, but the guys are willing to put up with it to keep the peace. As it turns out, most pro players are men. If more of them were women, I'm sure I would know several women players whose husbands played quite inexpertly too.

But as the old folksy saying goes, you have to dance with the one who brought you. Whoever your partner is, you have to find a way to work with whatever strengths you each have. We still struggle with it sometimes. It's part of not living alone. You can avoid this sort of problem completely by living by yourself, and some people choose that lifestyle, but I prefer the problems of living WITH somebody to the problems to living by myself.