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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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Sep 11, 2007

How Different is it?

In Laughlin there's a casino called the Tropicana Express, which used to be known as the Ramada Express. One of their signature games is 8/5 Bonus Poker where you get paid triple for four sevens, assuming you are betting maximum coins and have your slot club card inserted. It's not a new game, but I haven't seen it analyzed before.

First of all, we want to know how much the game is worth. If you put it on Video Poker for Winners or other computer software, it'll tell you the game is worth 100.045%. If you've studied enough "card of the day" promotions to know that adding a 250-coin bonus to a card between twos and tens is worth 0.88% and if you also know that normal 8/5 Bonus Poker returns 99.166%, then you can ballpark the return on the game as 100.046%, which is very close to it's true amount. (Sometimes you come across a game in a casino and want to play it before you have time to check it on your computer. In these cases, ballparking it is absolutely necessary.)

While being over 100% is good, it is BARELY over. To figure out how good the game is, you need to add in the cashback from the slot club. At the Tropicana Express, this is a challenge. If you go to the booth and ask them how much it takes to earn a point and how much points are worth, they'll give you a piece of paper with 19 different entries on it. If you play 25¢ video poker, for example, it takes 30 coins to earn a point. If you play 50¢ video poker, it takes 35 coins to earn three points. If you play $1 video poker, it takes 30 coins to earn thee points. If you play $5 video poker, it takes 20 coins to earn 4 points. Once you earn these points, you can redeem them at a rate of 1,000 points earns you $5. (It doesn't include $25 video poker on this list but through questioning you will find out that the rate is the same as on $5 machines.)

Without spending the entire column on how to figure this out (Video Poker for Winners does it nicely for you), the return comes out to be for 0.067% for 25¢ video poker, 0.1167% for 50¢ video poker (for which I'm not positive this game exists), 0.05% for dollars, and 0.02% for $5 (for which the game has progressives), $10, and $25.

Although these rates are rather piddly, the casino regularly offers 5x and 10x point multipliers for its better customers. That could make it a good game, especially for $5 and higher players who regularly must fade tighter games than you find for lower denominations.

So the next thing to consider is how does the strategy change when the return on four sevens changes from 125 to 375 coins? Here is the detail I got from Video Poker for Winners when I added the bonus for four sevens.

Game Return	100.045 %
Standard Dev	4.6654
Variance	21.7657

	Pay	Frequency	%Probability	Occurs Every	% Return

Royal Flush	4000	64.5975	0.002	40,233.13	1.99
Straight Flush	250	277.66479	0.011	9,360.06	0.53
4 Aces	400	508.9871	0.02	5,106.14	1.57
Four 7s	375	456.98616	0.018	5,687.17	1.32
4 2s,3s,4s	200	1370.31086	0.053	1,896.62	2.11
4 5s thru Ks	125	3805.03695	0.146	683.03	3.66
Full House	40	29925.16259	1.151	86.85	9.21
Flush	25	28276.69744	1.088	91.91	5.44
Straight	20	29163.65252	1.122	89.12	4.49
3 of a KIND	15	193539.79107	7.447	13.43	22.34
2 Pair	10	336065.98486	12.931	7.73	25.86
Jacks or Better	5	559450.01482	21.526	4.65	21.53
No Win	0	1416055.11333	54.485	1.84	0

I needed to compare this to regular 8/5 Bonus. For that game we get:

Game Return	99.166 %
Standard Dev	4.5721
Variance	20.9041

	Pay	Frequency	%Probability	Occurs Every	% Return

Royal Flush	4000	64.5975	0.002	40,233.13	1.99
Straight Flush	250	277.66479	0.011	9,360.06	0.53
4 Aces	400	508.9871	0.02	5,106.14	1.57
4 2s,3s,4s	200	1370.31086	0.053	1,896.62	2.11
4 5s thru Ks	125	4262.02311	0.164	609.79	4.1
Full House	40	29925.16259	1.151	86.85	9.21
Flush	25	28276.69744	1.088	91.91	5.44
Straight	20	29163.65252	1.122	89.12	4.49
3 of a KIND	15	193539.79107	7.447	13.43	22.34
2 Pair	10	336065.98486	12.931	7.73	25.86
Jacks or Better	5	559450.01482	21.526	4.65	21.53
No Win	0	1416055.11333	54.485	1.84	0

If you compare the numbers, you'll see that they are identical in the "occurs every" column. That is, in both games you'll get a royal every 40,233.13 times, a straight flush every 9,360.06 times, etc. That means there are NO strategy changes between the two games. If there were even one difference in how any of the 2,598,960 hands are played, these numbers would be a little different. Therefore, if you know 8/5 Bonus strategy, you know the strategy for this game. Had these numbers been even a little different, I would have checked hands until I found the ones that were different.

There are those who will tell you that using 9/6 Jacks or Better strategy on this game will get you within about 0.01% of perfect. That's true, IF you know 9/6 Jacks strategy perfectly and being within 0.01% is good enough for you. My personal view is that there are numerous categories of hands that are played differently between 9/6 Jacks and 8/5 Bonus. My personal goal is to play the game perfectly, so using an approximate strategy (even one that gets me to 99.99% of perfection) simply isn't acceptable. Your priorities might be different.

If this game is of interest to you, you need to play it soon. The GM promises that within the next few months there will be a simplified slot club, awarding 1% for all slots and video keno and 0.33% for video poker. I suspect that this change will cause the removal of this game for all denominations higher than 25¢ or 50¢.