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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.

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Jan 30, 2007

An Unusual Video Poker Tournament --- Part I of II

The Palms has regular promotions where they give away bunches of money. In January of this year it was called "Open the Vault." The way it worked was that you played for electronic drawing tickets and on a total of six Tuesdays and Fridays, they drew names until they got ten people front and center.

Once it was determined who the winners were, these ten people played a five-minute video poker tournament on 9/6 Double Double Bonus machines. First place got $3,500, second place got $2,000, third place got $1,000, and the other seven received $500 apiece.

In addition, each of the sixty winners returns on Tuesday January 30 for another five-minute tournament on the same machines with a $20,000 prize pool. The first place winner here received $10,000 and prizes went down to tenth place and $500.

For these drawings, the Palms limited your entries to 350 apiece, plus you got one additional ticket per day for swiping your card. The reason for this is they want to spread the winning around and not let high limit video poker players "stuff the ballot box," so to speak. On a personal basis, I'd play more if I could get more tickets than others, but it's easy to see why the casino doesn't want the same players to win all of the time.

I participated in four of the drawings, getting called twice. Shirley participated in three of the drawings, getting called once. All told, a better than average result.

What made this tournament different from others was that more than half of the players were clueless about video poker! You could earn entry tickets playing any game in the house, and many of the people whose names were called had no idea what video poker was all about. If a strong player could play 75 hands over the five minutes, some of these slot players only got in about 20 or 25 hands in the same interval.

Shirley was called first, on Friday January 19. She never plays Double Double Bonus, doesn't play for speed, and has never played a video poker tournament in her life. She asked me, "What should I do?"

My "pep talk," was as follows: Play 9/6 Jacks strategy because you know that. Play as fast as you can, using both hands. You'll get more hands in than the novices and that gives you more of an opportunity to get lucky. There were four or five of my students there rooting her on. As it turned out, she got the only quad in the entire session and won with a score of 620. An excellent result!

The following Tuesday, January 23, I get called. While I don't play Double Double Bonus, I've written about the game and taught the game numerous times so I have a far better understanding of it that Shirley does. Plus I play so much that I "see" the possibilities in the hand quicker than most, in addition to being used to playing with two hands. I expected to be near the top of the players in terms of hands played. The "pressure was on," so to speak, as there were eight of my students watching to see if I was the expert I claimed to be. Unfortunately, I "forgot" to get any 4-of-a-kind, only hit two full houses, and ended up in fifth place with 480. The nightly winner, who had 1,200, was using the touch screen and thinking about each of his plays. But he was clever enough to get an 800-credit set of aces along with a 250-credit straight flush in his thirty-or-so hands.

Three nights later, I got called again. Again I didn't hit a quad, but my five full houses and overall speed gave me a winning score of 665, edging out two other players who had 635 and 620.

I'm assuming that 50 people will show up for the finals. Since they are giving away $20,000, the average is $400 apiece ($20,000/50 = $400). But since I'll be near the very top in terms of hands played, that probably doubles my equity. Still, five minutes is a very short time period and there's a large amount of luck in the results, and half of the money is wrapped up into first place. So what should my strategy be, and should Shirley's be the same as mine? Shirley is, after all, faster than average, but not among the fastest.

My guess is that there will be three people who score 2,000 or higher, which you can get from scoring quad aces with a kicker or a royal. I'm predicting the scores will drop off quickly from there and tenth place, the last one that earns money, will be around 600 points. Shirley and I are playing in the last session (because I teach Tuesday mornings at Silverton) and it's possible that scores will be posted. If the scores are posted, I'll adjust my strategy before we play.

My personal strategy is to play like the dickens and hope to get lucky. I'll use fairly basic strategy because I believe that my speed will give me enough extra hands that I could get into winning territory even if I don't hit a quad (which I probably won't).

With Shirley, though, I'm recommending a different strategy. She isn't as fast and "normal good luck" won't be enough to see her through. She NEEDS at least one quad in order to have a chance even at tenth place. Therefore I'm recommending that she go for quads and royals on every hand --- until she hits one. Once she gets a quad, she should resort to normal strategy.

As examples of how our strategy will differ, with Ah Qs Jd 7c 3h, I hold QJ and Shirley holds the A. From Kc Kh 9s 9d 3d, I hold two pair and Shirley holds the kings. And from Ah Th 8h 3h 2c, I hold four hearts and Shirley holds Ah Th only.

I mentioned that I might adjust the strategy depending on the scores. If the tenth place score is only around 500 points, I'll probably switch Shirley to the "normal" strategy. If tenth place is at 900 points, we'll both use the "go for broke" strategy. Letting the last players to play have information about what scores they need to beat is unfair to the players who played earlier without that information, but if that information is available, players who play late would be foolish not to use it.

While this column first appears on January 30 and the finals will probably have taken place before you read this, I'm writing this before the fact. It would have been easy to delay this column for a week, and then adjust what I say according to how the results actually panned out. The reason I didn't is that when you are competing in a tournament, you need to figure out your strategy BEFOREHAND. I also wanted to point out that individual players should gear their strategy to their own strengths, and so there is no one-size-fits-all strategy in a tournament.

How will it all come out? Right now I don't know, but you can be sure that I'll tell you next week.