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Bob Dancer writes a video poker column for beginners to experts. He also writes a column with Jeffrey Compton, "Player's Edge", featuring information on promotions at various Las Vegas casinos. Player's Edge is published each Friday in the Neon section of the Las Vegas Review-Journal. Click here to send Bob Dancer an e-mail.

July 15, 2003

New Penalty Card Designations for Double Double Bonus Poker

Liam W. Daily and I have decided that Volume 6 of our Winner's Guide series will be on Double Double Bonus (DDB). Liam and I have been resistant for a long time to tackle this game. After all, the version with the highest-returning payout in most places around the country, 9/6 (which means the full house returns 9 for 1 and the flush returns 6 for 1) is under barely 99%. Why should we spend our time working out every last penalty card situation for a game that pays this poorly? We believed that anyone competent enough to understand the penalties we describe will be intelligent enough to go find a better-paying game somewhere.

The other side of this argument is that DDB is the most popular video poker game in the country. For every person who wants to learn Jacks or Better, there are three wanting to learn DDB. And since a number of local casinos (alphabetically, Boulder Station, Fiesta Rancho, Fiesta Henderson, Green Valley Ranch Station, MonteLago, Palms, Sunset Station, Texas Station, perhaps others) have the over-100% 10/6 version of the game, Daily and I decided to bite the bullet and address the game seriously.

We discovered new penalty cards in DDB. A penalty card is one of the originally dealt cards, generally discarded, whose absence from the remaining pack of 47 cards negatively affects one or more of the remaining combinations in the hand. For example, in 10/7 Double Bonus, from Ah Ks 8h 7s 6c we hold the A but from Ah Ks 8h 7s 5c we hold the AK. The reason is that the 5c discard reduces the value of holding the A by itself because now the A2345 straight is harder to obtain. Daily and I called this a low straight penalty, or lsp. In the Bally version of 10/7 Double Bonus, where a 5-coin straight flush returns 400 rather than 250, there is one case where it matters if a low card is suited with the A. We called this a straight flush penalty, or sfp.

In Jacks or Better or Double Bonus, each of the cards in the range [2--5] are equivalent to each other with respect to how much they penalize a single ace. This is not the case in DDB, because [2--4], in addition to affecting the possibility of a low straight or straight flush, also reduce the number of kickers in the deck that are available should three of the four cards drawn to the solitary ace be additional aces. That is, AAAA5 returns much less than AAAA2, AAAA3, or AAAA4. When we distinguish between [2--5] and [2--4], we also need to be concerned with whether the penalty card is suited with the ace.

The resulting four penalty card designations are similar, and there is overlap in the cards that qualify for the penalties. But each is used at least once in the strategy when none of the others would suffice in that particular case. Before we describe each of these situations, first let's list the four designations all at once

a. Low straight penalty --- LSP --- [2--5] --- suited or not with A b. Straight flush penalty --- SFP --- [2--5] --- suited with A c. Kicker penalty --- KP --- [2--4] --- suited or not with A d. Straight flush kicker penalty --- SFKP --- [2--4] --- suited with A

Sometimes a chart assists understanding better than words. The chart below tells you which of the above four designations each of the sixteen cards in the 2-5 range fit. Every card fits into at least one category, and three cards fit all four categories. The chart assumes that there is an ace of spades in the hand.

	LSP	KP	SFP	SFKP

2c	y	y	n	n
3c	y	y	n	n
4c	y	y	n	n
5c	y	n	n	n

2d	y	y	n	n
3d	y	y	n	n
4d	y	y	n	n
5d	y	n	n	n

2h	y	y	n	n
3h	y	y	n	n
4h	y	y	n	n
5h	y	n	n	n

2s	y	y	y	y
3s	y	y	y	y
4s	y	y	y	y
5s	y	n	y	n

So far, all we've done is to DEFINE TERMS. To give example hands of where each of these four designations is appropriate, look here next week. And anyone knowing of any casino(s) I missed in my listing of where 10/6 DDB may be found, please contact me at bobdancer@lvcm.com and I'll include this information in next week's column.