VIDEO POKER
 Bob Dancer writes a video poker column for beginners to experts. He also writes a column each week with Jeffrey Compton titled Player's Edge, which features information on promotions at various Las Vegas Hotel. Player's Edge is published each Friday in the Las Vegas Review-Journal. Click here to send Bob Dancer an e-mail.
Aug 27, 2002
Analyzing Castaways "6 Ways To The Royal" Promotion
I was sent the rules to an upcoming promotion by the Castaways and was encouraged to let my readers know how I would play it. The promotion is for $1 and lower video poker machines and will run every Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday in September. Assuming max coins, no wild cards, at least 21 --- i.e., the standard rules for most promotions, the promotion goes like this.
Royal flushes dealt (drawing 0 cards) will receive -- 500-coin bonus.
Royal flushes holding 0 cards and drawing 5 cards -- 500-coin bonus
Royal flushes holding 1 cards and drawing 1 cards -- 400-coin bonus
Royal flushes holding 2 cards and drawing 2 cards -- 300-coin bonus
Royal flushes holding 3 cards and drawing 3 cards -- 200-coin bonus
Royal flushes holding 4 cards and drawing 4 cards -- 100-coin bonus
Probably the average bonus will be more than 300 coins, so this promotion will add about almost two tenths of a percent. They normally also run multiple point offers at various times during the day and week, and this two tenths of a percent bonus is on top of that.
For the most part, when you hit a royal is luck and most players collecting this bonus will be playing their normal game. Players who seek every edge, however, will make adjustments to their play. These players will likely be playing quarter Deuces Wild or quarter-or-dollar 10/7 Double Bonus anyway as these are over-100% games to start with. It makes no sense for players to work hard to squeeze an extra hundredth of a percent or so out of a game that normally pays 98%. For the same effort, he could change games and get over 100% right away.
I would make the following changes to quarter Deuces Wild. Most of the changes deal with fine points that would be neglected by most players. That is fine with me. Most players are not willing to work hard enough to become winners. I will use either parentheses or quote marks to indicate suited cards.
Drawing three cards, all of the changes obviously deal with hands that start out as 2-card royal flushes.
Hold "QJ" or "QT" over any inside straight, as long as there is no flush penalty in the hand.
Hold "KJ" or "KT" with no flush penalty 9 penalty exists
Drawing two cards, the only strategy change I found was when the hand was exactly "QJT8"K. In standard full pay Deuces Wild you hold QJT8. With this promotion, I'd hold QJT.
With 10/7 Double Bonus, I'd make the following changes:
From "KQJx" (where "x" is any suited card too low to be in the same straight flush as the other cards), hold KQJ.
Prefer "QT" to (975) or (965).
Prefer "JT" to either JT97 or JT97.
Prefer "JT" to "JTx" with an A8 in the hand
Those are all of the changes I'd make. There may be others I missed, but the gain for each additional one is very small and the promotion isn't worth that much to start with. If the casino were offering bonuses significantly larger than these, I'd work harder to figure out every last one.
Is it worth it to find even this many corrections for a promotion only worth a tenth of a percent anyway? Good question. I'm sure many players, and most other video poker writers, would answer "no." I still say "yes." Since 1994 when I started video poker, I have earned many extra tens of thousands of dollars by consistently going after that last tenth of a percent. This didn't come entirely by playing quarters and dollars, of course, but my success at the lower games allowed me to obtain a sufficient bankroll to attack the higher games --- where I still sought to squeeze each possible tenth of a percent. Using WinPoker or other tools to seek out the edge becomes a mindset. Once you do it a few times, it becomes easier.
Part of the benefit spending a half-hour or so determining which hands change with this promotion (by changing the royal to 4300 coins and then checking the close 2-card royal hands and then changing the royal to 4200 coins and checking the 3-card royal hands) is to review the strategy itself. Unless you have reviewed it recently, you very likely have forgotten in Double Bonus that when you have "QT" (A9x) you hold (A9x) but when you have "QT" (A8x) you hold "QT". The more often you check the strategy looking for exceptions, the better the regular strategy itself sticks in your brain. If you can play these games at a very high level without regular review, your memory is better than mine.
My next two columns are going to continue this theme --- specifically looking at how I would use WinPoker to decide whether to hold both pair or a single pair in NSU Deuces Wild if a casino were running a 100-coin bonus for a natural 4-of-a-kind in one of those pairs. You might want to address that problem yourself before reading my approach
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