VIDEO POKER

An Interesting Situation in 8/5 Bonus Poker Multi Strike

I haven't played a lot of Multi Strike poker. It's more difficult than average because you need to use four different strategies. Keeping the intricacies of the four strategies straight is one problem. Keeping track of when to use which of the four is another. Neither of these problems is a showstopper for me. If I can find the same or similar return with a game that isn't so difficult, however, I'll travel the easier road.

I decided to learn 8/5 Bonus Poker Multi Strike for a promotion I thought would exist. In July, Silverton offered a quality watch if you played $450,000 coin-in. There were a number of watches you could get from Rolex, Cartier, Baume Mercier, Omega, and Tag Heuer. The retail value for the highest-valued option was $8,750 --- available over the Internet for about $6,400. The casino offered a buy-out option of $4,000 in free play. If you wanted to go through the hassle of eBay, you could get more for the watch than that.

In July I played the game on 8/5 Bonus Poker 25¢ Hundred Play. (In terms of total win, if you wanted to play 90 hours on $1 NSU Deuces Wild, you could earn the watch that way. The $2 machines were excluded. Committing to play 90 hours in one month was a far bigger time commitment than I wanted to make).

The slot club is "comps only." You can redeem the comps for Starbucks gift certificates and various other things at a rate of 0.2%, or at Bass Pro Shop for 0.1%. Playing for the watch earns you either $450 or $900 in gift cards if you play on single point days. More if you play on multiple point days, of which there are several. For me, I buy Tommy Bahama shirts at Bass Pro Shop, but thousands of dollars worth of these shirts are definitely more than I want.

The watch promotion was also good for August --- starting the $450,000 over again on August 1. They had two $1/$2 8/5 Bonus Poker Multi Strike (99.37%) machines that were eligible for the promotion in July. The 0.20% difference between the 8/5 Bonus regular game and the Multi Strike version was worth $900 when you played $450,000 worth of coin-in. So for August, I decided to master that game before August so I could play there. By the time August came around, however, the game was excluded from the watch promotion, so I didn't play it at Silverton. I know of at least two other casinos where this game is the best play at least some of the time.

To study this game you need "Video Poker for Winners." It is the only software licensed to carry Multi Strike. The software provides a strategy and allows you to practice realistically. Trying to play Multi Strike without the benefit of this software means you're taking the worst of it.

Let's look at the totally unsuited combination QJT9. (For purposes of this hand, "totally unsuited" means that the queen and jack are unsuited with each other. The suits of the other two cards are irrelevant, so long as no 4-card flush exists in the hand.)

In Level 1x of Multi Strike, we never hold this combination. Instead we hold QJ. In Level 2x, we usually hold QJ. The strategy on "Video Poker for Winners" has this hand at the very bottom, beneath "Draw 5 new cards" and says "Not Recommended." So what does this mean?

"Not Recommended" means that, on average, we do not hold this combination and we hold QJ instead. It also means, however, that at least some of the time we DO hold this combination, depending on the fifth card. (As we shall see, this designation is incorrect in this particular case.)

Since there is only one additional card necessary to fill out a QJT9 combination into a 5-card hand, it's fairly simple to figure out the exact cases where we hold QJ and when we go for the straight. We simply go the the game in VPW, click on ANALYZE ‡ SELECT SPECIFIC CARDS and enter in an unsuited QJT9. We then cycle through the possibilities of the fifth card and note the results.

To start with, let's eliminate the king and eight, because that would give us a completed 5-card straight and we should hold all five cards. Let's also eliminate a queen and jack, because we'd then have a high pair which is much more valuable than the 4-card straight. So were down to A, T, 9, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, and 2.

A bit of reflection will tell you that 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 are all too far from the QJ to cause straight interference. If any of these 24 cards (four suits multiplied by six ranks) fill out the hand, QJ is superior to QJT9 by 4.05¢ for the dollar maximum-coin bettor.

The ace hurts the value of the QJ by limiting the chances for a straight. This makes QJT9 > QJ by 34.72¢. There are only two aces where this is relevant, because if the ace is suited with either the queen or jack, we'll hold the two suited high cards instead.

The ten and nine also hurt the value of the QJ by limiting the chances for a straight. Usually a pair of nines or tens is superior to QJ, but in Multi Strike at low levels, QJ is higher-valued than a low pair. In this case, however, tens and nines hurt the value of QJ enough so that we hold QJT9. There are three tens and three nines affected by this because QJT9 already holds one of each rank. From QJT9T, QJT9 > QJ by 14.31¢ and from QJT99, QJT9 > QJ by 5.48¢.

On my Level 2x strategy for this game, I have

QJT9 (only when 9p, Tp, or an unsuited Ap) > QJ

You may choose to make this adjustment or not. The current VPW strategy is incorrect however. If you are given a choice between ALWAYS or NEVER preferring QJ to QJT9, the correct choice should be ALWAYS. Ironically making this play will usually be incorrect (by 4.05¢), but the times it is correct more than make up for the times it isn't. (There is enough information earlier in this article about "how much" and "how often" that you can verify this if you wish.)

I was personally involved in tweaking the Multi Strike and other strategies on VPW before it was published. This one got by me and will be fixed in the next version, if and when that comes about.