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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.

For more details and a schedule of Bob's free classes, visit www.bobdancer.com.

Oct. 23, 2007

An Interesting Situation in Double Deuces

Double Deuces is the name of the Deuces Wild game where four deuces pay 2,000 coins rather than the typical 1,000. There are two pay schedules available. 16/11 (for 5-of-a-kind and straight flush respectively) returns 99.62% and is a reasonable game with a decent slot club. 15/10 returns 98.86% and should be avoided by anyone wanting a decent shot at winning. In today's column, I'll be speaking of the 16/11 pay schedule only.

(In the past, the El Cortez in downtown Las Vegas had a 16/13 pay schedule with a 4,700-coin royal. These machines are no longer available.)

In the one-deuce section of the strategy chart, the king-high 3-card royals (i.e. W'KQ', W'KJ', and W'KT' --- where the W refers to a wild card) have exactly the same values. If the remaining two cards are unrelated (i.e. lower in rank than a nine and not of the same suit), this value is $5.65 for the 5-coin $1 player. The perfect 3-card straight flushes (i.e. W'67', W'78', W'89', and W'9T') also have the same value. If the remaining two cards are unrelated, these 3-card straight flushes have a value of $5.73, which is slightly higher then the king-high royal flush draws.

So what happens when we combine both the king-high 3-card royals and the perfect 3-card straight flushes into the same five cards?

It strikes some people as curious that we can have a 3-card royal flush and a 3-card straight flush in the same five cards. This is because we're counting the deuce twice.

If the 3-card straight flush we're talking about is W'9T', then adding any K-high 3-card royal results in a 5-card straight worth $10. This is far more valuable than either the 3-card royal or the 3-card straight flush.

If we rank the hands in order, we come out with the following:

W'89' > W'KT' > W'67' > W'KJ' > W'78' > W'KQ'

This is rather complicated. This list is 100% accurate and doesn't mention penalty cards, but isn't very simple. A discussion of penalty cards, however, actually simplifies this list.

Let's first compare the two hands W'KJ' "67" and W'KT' "67". We know from a few paragraphs ago that the 3-card royals are worth $5.65 apiece since both the six and the seven are far enough away from the 3-card royal that they don't interfere straight-wise. In the first hand, the W"67" is worth $5.73 but in the second it is worth "only" $5.64. What makes this 9¢ difference is that the ten in the W'KT' is close enough to the W'67' to interfere with the number of possible 6789T straights (where one or two of the cards are wild).

Similarly, the jack from W'KJ' hurts the value of the W'78' straight. The W'KT' hurts the W'78' even more than it hurt W'67' because it interferes with both the 6789T and the 789TJ straights.

This doesn't explain why W'89' is the highest valued element in the list. Clearly W'KQ', W'KJ', and W'KT' ALL hurt the value of the W'89'. So what gives? The answer is that the nine in W'89' hurts the value of the 3-card royal. Losing out some chances for the KQJT9 straight hurts the 3-card royal by the same 9¢ that we saw previously.

If I were creating an advanced strategy card (where the abbreviation "sp" means "straight penalty," I would say:

SF3 0i W'67' - W'9T'

RF3 W'KQ' - W'KT' (RF3 K-high with no sp > SF3 0i with sp)

If I were creating a recreational strategy card where a bit of error is tolerated for the sake of simplicity, I would say:

SF3 0i W'67' - W'9T'

RF3 W'KQ' - W'KT'

Finally, if I wanted it completely accurate without using penalty cards, I would list it the first way shown in the article --- which is the way it is found in "Video Poker for Winners." If you wish to use other strategy creation products for this game, you'll come up with a less accurate strategy --- although percentagewise the difference is negligible.

Each player needs to decide how important accurate strategies are and how hard he is willing to master these strategies.