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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.

April 22, 2008

What's The Next Game? Part I of II

Let's assume we have a Las Vegas quarter video poker player named Connie who plays Full Play Deuces Wild exclusively. Why that game? Well, if you're a quarter player and play in Las Vegas it's arguably the best single game to play. She could have gotten this advice from me or any number of other players.

Although she's been winning, Connie knows the number of places where she'll be able to play this game are dwindling, and the game keeps getting penalized more and more. Casinos are requiring additional coin-in to earn points and refusing to send "checks in the mail" bonuses to FPDW "specialists." And she wants to play for higher stakes and this game just isn't around for more than quarters.

Connie has heard from others that in some casinos profitable versions of NSU Deuces Wild, Jacks or Better, Double Bonus, Double Double Bonus, Super Double Bonus, Joker Wild or other games may be found. The question is which game should she learn next, and what's the best way to go about it?

There's no clear cut right answer, but the number of things to consider while trying to figure it out aren't that numerous. This week we'll look at the things to consider and next week we'll examine the process of learning another game.

1. First, Connie should know what her purpose is for learning another game. In this article, I'm assuming her purpose is to make money. If her purpose is to, say, flirt with a particular bartender at the Billy Bob's bar at Sam's Town, her decision matrix will be quite a bit different than what I outline.

2. Second, she should have a specific casino and specific stakes in mind to play this new game. Learning 9/5 Double Joker poker, for example, is not a particularly good use of your time in Las Vegas, although it might be a smart bet if you played in Atlantic City.

The database members.cox.net/vpfree/LV.htm is good source for the best games in Las Vegas. While this is generally accurate insofar as the games and how much the base slot club pays, it just scratches the surface. Connie also needs to know how much the month mailers are, if any, and how frequently they have multiple points or other promotions. It takes awhile to gather this information.

A "video poker friend" is often the best source of this information. If Connie has been playing FPDW for some time, she's undoubtedly run into the same players over and over again. She probably has some opinion as to how good these other players are. Many are willing to talk while playing and share what they know. If Connie asks enough questions to enough fellow players and has any social skills at all, eventually she'll get some good information about this.

Keep in mind that she'll get too much information and contradictory information. Sorting things out is part of the process, and sometimes you just have to go forward with some amount of uncertainty.

3. Let's assume Connie has narrowed it down to Double Bonus Poker and NSU Deuces Wild. Which should she pick? NSU has the advantage/disadvantage of being similar to FPDW. NSU will be easier to learn as much of the underlying structure is the same. However, differentiating between similar games is tougher than differentiating between dissimilar games.

Double Bonus, on the other hand, will be tougher to learn as the mindset is totally different. In my opinion this is time well spent and she should bite the bullet and learn this game. There are MANY other games similar to Double Bonus. Once she learns this game, other games will be easier to learn.

4. Connie needs a back-up plan. Double Bonus is rarely mentioned as a "fun" game. It could be she finds it too difficult or she just plain doesn't like it. If so, she should start over again with the next game on the list. There are enough profitable video poker games that skipping one or two for whatever reason is not much of a setback.

Next week we'll discuss the way to learn this new game. If you think I'll be recommending Video Poker for Winners and the Winner's Guide for the game you're right. But there are several additional things to talk about along the way.