VIDEO POKER

Planning To Play A Promotion --- Part I of II

The person then told me that NSU Deuces Wild (i.e. the game where 5-of-a-kinds return 16 and straight flushes return 10) was the only game he liked to play and asked me to consider the hand 5h 5s 9d 9c Jh. The normal play in NSU is to keep 5599. But with this promotion going on, could it be right to hold just the card-of-the-day pair? I told him I didn't know, but I'd think about it.

For bottom-line-only folks, the correct play is that you still keep the two pair. But that's not a really useful answer unless you know how that answer is derived. Because next time the bonus might be 200 coins, or 50. Maybe 55552 counts and maybe it doesn't --- depends on the rules. So this column is devoted to discussing how I figured out the answer.

My tool of choice is the program "Bob Dancer Presents WinPoker." (If you want a copy in a few minutes, you may get one for $29.95 at www.zamzone.com.) If we were looking at the same question in Jacks or Better, figuring out the answer would be a lot easier. In WinPoker, I could actually enter a return of 225 for quad 5s while keeping 125 as the return for all of the others. I could determine exactly how much the promotion added to my expected value and could verify that, in 9/6 Jacks or Better anyway, the correct play for all hands remained the same. But for Deuces Wild variations, WinPoker does not have the capability to have different returns for different quads. So what do we do?

I attacked this game by using the Deuces Deluxe shell. Deuces Deluxe is an old Sigma game, relatively rare today, where you received a different return for NATURAL quads and straight flushes than you did for these same hands using wild cards. Since this promotion dealt with natural quads only, I figured this might be the way to go.

So within Deluxe Deluxe, I clicked on "options" and then "change pay schedule". On the 5-coin side, I entered 50 for natural straight flushes and wild straight flushes, 20 for natural and wild quads, along with the rest of the normal NSU pay schedule. I closed that and clicked on "analyze" and then "game." I ran that to verify the game returned 99.73% --- which I knew from running this pay schedule within either the Deuces Wild or Loose Deuces shell. This checking the return is an important step. There are a lot of different numbers in a pay schedule and it's necessary to make sure you have them all correct.

Once I had the correct pay schedule, I clicked on "analyze" and "any hand" and entered the hand 55669. I discovered that holding 5566 returned 3.40 coins (which means $3.40 if you are a dollar player), and holding a single pair returned only $2.74. Although I didn't know what the amounts would be, I knew that holding two pair was the preferred play in this game, so this was no surprise.

I then changed the pay schedule so that all natural quads paid 120. This would be the case if ALL cards were card of the day at the same time, which certainly isn't the case here. But it should allow me to ask the question I want. Now when I go to "analyze any hand" and enter 55669, I see that the return for 5566 remained at $3.40. This is no surprise. This hold is only affected by the value of a full house, and that wasn't changed.

The return for either 55 or 66 shows as $2.98 --- meaning that if either one were the card of the day, the return for holding a pair of them would increase by 24¢. (I know the value of the other one would remain at $2.74 because in actual fact only one of them would be card of the day at a time. But I also know that when I hold 55, for example, the only possible natural quad in the hand is 5555, so showing the higher return for all quads gives me the correct answer to this question.) This is not nearly enough as holding the two pair still remains superior by 42¢. But at least now we know how to get the answer because next time the promotion might be a little different.

I've never provided "homework" before in this column, but I will this time. First, how can we estimate how much this card of the day promotion adds to the return on NSU? And second, assume that the rules allowed you to be paid the extra 100 coins for 55552 (i.e. where you had a natural 4-of-a-kind even though the fifth card was wild), but not 55522, or 55222, or 52222. My question to you is how would use WinPoker to analyze whether this was enough to change the play to 55669? I'll provide the answer next week.