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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 19, 2008

Which One Is Luckier?

Let me give you two nice choices.

A. You're dealt Ah Kh Qh 6s 3d in a video poker game. You hold the hearts, of course, and are delighted to see the other two heart royal cards come out.

B. You are dealt a royal on the same machine.

My question to you is which one of these nice events was luckier?

It is unquestionably true that dealt royals are less frequent, occurring once every 650,000 hands rather than once every 40,000-50,000 hands in most games. But does "less frequent" amount to "luckier?"

It is true that a dealt royal is a bigger surprise than one where you drew two cards. But is "bigger surprise" the same as "luckier?"

It is true that holding the three hearts required some minimal amount of skill and receiving a dealt royal required no skill at all. Does whether or not there is skill involved detract from the luckiness?

To be sure, there are many hands when you end up with a royal where the level of skill required is considerably greater. There are also a number of hands where skillful players will NOT get a royal but unskilled players will. Take the hand Ac Kc Tc 4c Jh, for example. In the highest-paying versions of Jacks or Better, Double Bonus, and Double Double Bonus, the correct play is 'AKT4', yet many not-so-skilled players will incorrectly hold 'AKT'. From 'AKT', it's a 1080-to-1 shot to get the royal this time. From 'AKT4', it's impossible. Does ending up with a royal flush on a misplay (even if you don't realize it's a misplay) affect how lucky you are?

Since only about one in 16-20 royals is dealt, on average, many people have never received one. If you tell one of these people that you got one, THEY will tell you how lucky you are, whereas a "regular" royal won't generate these comments as frequently. Does someone TELLING you you're lucky mean you ARE lucky?

In truth, I don't know the answer to these questions. In my opinion, there's no essential difference between a dealt royal and a royal you had to "earn" by the correct play. To me, since I'm ALWAYS going to play the first hand the same way, whether the finishing cards came out before or after the draw is inconsequential. So in my opinion, both A and B above are equally lucky.

There are some situations, however, where I believe that dealt royals ARE luckier than undealt ones.

One of these examples happened to me in 1998 (I think) at the Orleans. At the time, they had $5 Triple Play 10/7 Double Bonus --- with a cash slot club! (Those days are long gone.) For a one-month period, they were doubling all dealt royals. Shirley and I were partnered up with another couple and sure enough, a $60,000 royal was dealt --- which was doubled to $120,000. Connecting on a dealt royal DURING A JUICY PROMOTION is surely lucky, and since connecting on regular royals wouldn't have generated the bonus, being dealt a royal here MUST be luckier. To be sure, we'd calculated that this promotion added another 0.12% (800 times your bet / 650,000 = .00123 = 0.123%), but we also knew the odds against hitting it in the 6,000 or so base hands we were going to play over three days were mighty long.

On multiple line games, like Triple Play through Hundred Play, including Spin Poker, dealt royals are automatically lucky, because instead of getting one royal (which is nice), you get LOTS of royals, which is MUCH nicer. This seems luckier to me.

Another situation which combines the first two ways is on a game like Super Times Pay. This is a multi-line six-coins-per-line game where you usually play without a multiplier. On occasion you get a 3x, 5x, 8x, 10x or other multiplier. Since the multipliers are so rare and a dealt royal when the multiplier is in effect is able to capitalize big time on this multiplier, I would call receiving a dealt royal when a multiplier is in effect as being super lucky.

One reason I'm having so much trouble deciding which is luckier is that there is no universally-accepted definition of what luck is. As one Supreme Court justice once said about a different matter altogether, "I can't define it, but I know what it is when I see it."

Related to this is that even though it can't be defined to everyone's satisfaction, many people have strongly-held opinions on the subject. And since we can't agree on terms, no amount of discussion will ever resolve this definitively. But that won't stop the arguments!