VIDEO POKER

It Might be Impossible

In common English, people use the word "impossible" rather loosely. I might say, for example, that it's impossible for me to speak Mandarin Chinese. While that's 100% true as I write this, it's at least conceivable that I could take some classes, hire a tutor, or perhaps live in Beijing for a year and somehow learn my way around that language. (Don't hold your breath.) So even though I said "impossible," I didn't really mean it. I really meant I didn't know how "yet."

On the other hand, if I was looking to "leap tall buildings in a single bound," that's impossible for me today and will remain so in the future --- assuming I'm not using helicopters or rocket ships to assist me.

This is an important distinction to make in video poker. Take the hand 24568, of mixed suits, in Double Double Bonus. The correct play is to hold one of the inside straights 2456 or 4568. In Nevada and other states that deal the cards fairly, the two plays are equivalent. It's impossible to know what card is coming next.

The only cards that will possibly do you any good are a 3 and a 7. If a 3 is coming next, you certainly want to hold 2456 so you'll end up with a straight. If a 7 is coming next, you want to hold 4568 instead. But however hard to try to guess which card is coming next, it's impossible to know beforehand.

Now look at the hand 35678 of mixed suits in the same game. If you hold 3567, you're looking to draw one of the four 4s remaining in the pack. If you hold 5678, however, you're looking for EITHER one of the four 4s OR one of the four 9s. It's still impossible to know what's coming next, but a smart player will choose the 5678 because he'll have twice as many chances to fill in the straight.

In the previous paragraph we had a situation that was impossible to know for certain (i.e. the rank of the next card) --- but we still could use logic to determine that one play was better than another. This is an important concept. Just being "impossible to know for sure" does not mean that we are without resources to make an intelligent choice. Another way to say this is that even though video poker is dealt randomly, we can still determine the correct play on any hand.

Similarly, we can sometimes judge one machine as being superior to another even though it's impossible to know for sure what hands will be dealt. If two pay schedules are identical except one of them returns more in one category, we can usually say the machine with the better pay schedule is superior. I say "usually" because sometimes there are tax considerations making a game with a royal flush payout of $1,205 less attractive than the same game with a royal flush payout of $1,195. These tax considerations are relatively rare, however. Usually a higher pay schedule means a better play.

The words "impossible," "always," and "never" give many players problems in strategies because we're not used to dealing with absolutes. Most of us like a little wiggle room and don't want to speak literally. When Shirley tells me, "You NEVER take me dancing, anymore" she doesn't really mean "never." She means that I haven't taken her frequently enough or recently enough to keep her satisfied. As many of us have found out the hard way, when she tells me this, she certainly doesn't want to be corrected on her English or her logic.

But in video poker, in Double Double Bonus and many other games the strategy is that a low pair is NEVER preferred to a 4-card flush. And in this case, when we say "never" we really mean "never."

Some people find it easy to go from the absolutes in video poker to the non-absolutes in everyday English. Others find it "impossible."