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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 29, 2008

What's The Next Game? Part II of II

Last week the question is how does a quarter player decide on which game to learn second, after first mastering Full Pay Deuces Wild. I somewhat arbitrarily picked 10/7 Double Bonus. Now the question is how to go about learning the new game.

Classes are always a good place to start if they're available. I'm currently not scheduled to teach anywhere, but I'm negotiating with a casino and optimistic there will be more classes soon. If you're in Vegas during that time period, it will be time well spent to attend the classes. You can depend on it that Double Bonus will be one of the games taught. Every other semester there will be an "Advanced Double Bonus" class taught, which should give you a good taste of the fine points in the game. Although to get the most out of that particular class, you should have studied the game by yourself beforehand.

Using computer software to learn a new game should be a given. I recommend "Video Poker for Winners," but there are others on the market. There are enough special one-of-a-kind hands in Double Bonus that virtually everyone NEEDS to get correction from a computer before they have the game mastered.

The Dancer/Daily "Winner's Guide for Double Bonus" should also be on your must-read list. This volume starts from raw beginners and takes you through four different strategy levels until you're playing at an advanced level. Every possible hand you could have trouble with is discussed.

Once you have the software and Winner's Guide, what then? Reading the volume and practicing for five or ten hours will get you to the 98 percent or 99 percent accuracy level, depending on your innate skill, study habits, intelligence, etc. If that's going to be your level of achievement, you should skip this game and go back to FPDW.

Playing FPDW at the 99.5 percent accuracy is still profitable (although barely) and is easier than the 99.7 percent-99.8 percent accuracy level it takes to play minimally-profitable Double Bonus. The exact accuracy level required depends on the slot club. So if you're going to be playing Double Bonus at a profit, you essentially need to be playing it above the 99.9 percent accuracy level.

Although that sounds pretty high, and it is, it's a reasonable goal for players wishing to profit. And it'll put you ahead of 90 percent or so of other players. The bottom line on 10/7 Double Bonus is that the casinos make money on this game because most players don't play it well enough.

To get to the 99.9 percent level or higher (I recommend higher), you're going to have to read the Winner's Guide more than once. Whether it puts you to sleep or not, you're going to have to get so you understand the concepts essentially perfectly -- at least through Chapter 5, which covers Basic Strategy. The last 40 or so pages in the book will allow you to go from the 99.99 percent accuracy level to 100 percent, but it helps you much in the first 99.98 percent only in a roundabout way. In addition to the study of the Winner's Guide, you're going to need to be practicing on the computer. On Video Poker for Winners, you'll want to be practicing the Advanced hands. If you still have WinPoker, you're going to want to set the "hard hands" to 0.02 coins or less and practice those. Even if you don't plan to learn the advanced hands, they will keep cropping up. On hands that start out with Ah Ks and three "essentially nothing" cards, usually you'll hold the ace by itself, sometimes you'll hold AK, and occasionally another combination. If you set Video Poker for Winners to playing against strategy, you'll always pick the ace and that's that. If you set it to playing against perfect play (which I recommend), you'll get the full range of results, and you must know the game pretty well to get these correct. Even though the penalty cards only get you about 0.01 percent extra, which for a quarter 800-hands-an-hour players is worth 10 cents an hour (which many players consider negligible -- I don't), there is a real benefit for aiming high. Most of us don't reach our goals. But those who REALLY try to play at the 100 percent level often reach 99.98 percent, while the players who "only" try to play at the 99.99 percent level frequently play at less than 99.90 percent. Other people phrase this attitude as "if you're going to do something, do it right." Taking short cuts is very common, but it's not the road to success.