VIDEO POKER

The Importance of Dealt Hands in Multi-Line Games

I've been playing 25¢ Hundred Play NSU Deuces Wild at the Gold Coast during multiple point days. On July 4th, Shirley and I played twelve hours between us and hit 5 royal flushes --- and lost.

On Hundred Play, I believe, DEALT royals play a much more important role in your return than they do in single-line games. In NSU, royals come about every 43,500 hands (approximately), which is every 435 hands on Hundred Play. In single play, royals (dealt or not) pay 800 coins per coin bet. In Hundred Play, un-dealt royals pay 8 coins per coin bet. That is, we "invested" $125 per hand and received $1,000 back per royal. Dealt royals, on the other hand, receive the full 800 coins per coin bet.

Dealt royals happen every 650,000 hands, on average, whether you're playing single play, Ten Play, or Hundred Play. Also whether you're playing Deuces Wild, Jacks or Better, or any other game as long as it has a 52-card deck. In 650,000 hands, the player will have played ($650,000 x $125 = $81,250,000) through the machine and the dealt royal is worth $100,000. Therefore the dealt royal is worth .12% of the return.

In all forms of Deuces Wild, 4 deuces pay a bundle. In NSU, they pay 200 coins per coin bet on single line games, or 2 coins per coin bet on Hundred Play. In our twelve hours, we hit 4 deuces almost 100 times.

Dealt 4 deuces, occurring every 54,000 hands on average, are also far more important in NSU than they are in single line play. In 54,000 hands, the player plays $6,750,000 through the machine, and the $25,000 received for dealt deuces is .37%. The .12% for dealt royals + .37% for dealt deuces = .49% = "about a half percent" for the top hands being dealt.

We played about 250 initial hands per hour, more or less, on the Hundred Play machine. Over twelve hours it added up to about 3,000 dealt hands, or 300,000 total hands. It is not a surprise that we connected on neither dealt deuces nor a dealt royal. But, as we have seen above, when the player does not connect on these hands, he is playing a hand that is a half percent lower than the 99.73% game he thought he was playing.

Is this a complaint? Absolutely not. Hundred Play is an exciting way to play video poker. It is widely believed that playing 25¢ Hundred Play is MUCH less streaky than $25 single play. And it is. However that streakiness is composed of two parts --- the hands where you are dealt top hands (where Hundred Play is actually MORE streaky than single play) and the hands where you are not dealt the top hands (where Hundred Play is LESS streaky than single play.) The dealt top hands is more of a long run consideration, and the "normal" hands dealt is more of a short run consideration. (Neither of these "runs" can be defined precisely, but they are real.) While I have been addressing Hundred Play, the same principles are true for Fifty Play, and to a lesser extent, Ten Play, Five Play and Triple Play.

If you just consider the short run, Hundred Play is ten times less volatile than the 100-times-larger single play. But this totally neglects the importance of dealt big hands. I don't have a methodology to give appropriate weights to the short run versus the long run, so I cannot give you an overall number of how much more volatile Hundred Play is than single play.

And even if I could, this number would vary between games. In Jacks or Better, for example, it's only the dealt royal that affects the long run results. In Double Bonus, the 800-coin dealt aces affects matters slightly less than the 1000-coin dealt deuces do in Deuces Wild, but the 400-coin dealt 2s, 3s, and 4s have a small effect too. In Double Double Bonus, whether you are dealt the 2000-coin aces-with-a-kicker hand is a major factor.

This column provides more "things to think about" rather than "definite answers." That's because my knowledge of these things is a "work in progress" at this point. Perhaps I'll understand it better some day.