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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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Feb 06, 2007

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

In last week's column (available a few clicks away) I wrote about a tournament situation at the Palms. Shirley had qualified once and I had qualified twice for the finals, and we had worked out our before-the-event strategy based on the assumption that it would take 600 points to come in tenth place, which was the lowest one that got money.

Shirley, who is not a particularly fast player, would play a kamikaze sort of strategy for this five-minute tournament. She would be going for 4-of-a-kinds and royals at every possibility --- until she got one. Once she got one of these high-pointers, she would adapt a business-as-usual strategy. The reason we gave her this strategy was that she was unlikely to be fast enough to score enough points without getting lucky.

My strategy, however, was different. Since I can play faster than average, I figured that playing regular strategy as quickly as I could would get me up to at least tenth place --- worth $500. If a high-scoring hand came along naturally, then I'd have a good chance at winning.

On the way to the tournament Shirley and I are reviewing hands. She wants to be sure she will be giving it her best. On a dealt straight, like 56789, she wasn't sure whether she should keep it or not. My answer was, "Either way could work out, but whatever you do, do it quickly."

We got there at 2:15 for our 2:30 starting times. I verified that I had a total of two sessions coming and was told that I could play my second session immediately following my regular round. "Why not now?" I queried gently. The administrator shrugged and agreed and told me to pick my machine.

I felt that picking machines was critical. Playing fast is SO important in this type of event, and the machines are not all equally fast. I had played on two different machines the previous week, so I chose the one where I was able to play the most hands. I wasn't particularly concerned with which of my previous two scores was the highest, but merely on which machine was in best repair. It was a guess, to be sure, because machines get adjusted again and again over the course of time, but I had to use SOME criteria and that's what I chose.

I asked the administrator how the scores had been running. He told me that 2,400 was the top score and nobody else was over 1,000. He hadn't added up all the scores to see what tenth place was, but he thought it would be in the low 600s. This was right in line with my projections, so I set to work.

The buttons were stickier than I would have liked, costing me a couple of hands. I hit no quads and three or four full houses. I ended up with a score of 590, which I figured to be "on the bubble."

In the regular 2:30 session, I drew another machine. The buttons were faster, but luck wasn't with me. I ended up with a score of 480, which I knew was out of the money. I turned around and saw that Shirley had scored 400, which figured because she had given up a lot of scoring opportunities hoping to "catch the big one." When the big one turned out to be elusive, her net score was too low to score.

They announced they would post the results in about twenty minutes. That was no problem because we had some "spend it today or lose it" food money and hadn't eaten lunch yet. We ate at Gardu–o's and commiserated with our "close calls." I'd been dealt 4-to-the-royal once and trip aces twice. Any one of those coming in would have made a big difference. But everybody else had close calls too.

When the scores were posted, it turned out that I was in 7th place, earning $750. To earn last place, you needed 560 points. Going in to the event I was hoping for a better result, but since my actual score could have been worth zero, I was happy with the win. I don't know whether my secondary score of 480 was in fifteenth or thirtieth place. It didn't matter. It was tied for last.

There are some lessons from this event, some of which were pointed out last week.

1. Different players can have different strategies for the same event. Players need to go for their strengths. In a speed tournament, it they are not particular fast, they need to play to get lucky. If they are fast, they don't need to do this.

2. We had a strategy going in. We didn't just "show up" and hope for the best.

3. Since the scores weren't actually posted, I asked the administrator what they were. He might not have told me, but for sure he wasn't going to say anything if he wasn't asked. Although we were in the last round because I taught classes earlier in the day, in general you want to play as late as possible so you can gather this information. If you're playing in the first round, you won't get this information even if you find someone willing to tell you.

4. We were willing to adjust our strategy if it turned out that the scores were running higher or lower than predicted. If I had been told that tenth place was 800 points, I would have used the same strategy as Shirley, figuring there was no way I could get that high unless I got at least one 4-of-a-kind.

5. For the one round I got to choose my machine, I chose it based on how fast I thought I could play, NOT on whether my score was high or low last time.

6. Had the event been a fixed number of hands, or maybe one where there were a lot more competent players, I would have played it differently.