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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. 2, 2010

"I'm Dying to Know"

This coming Thursday (Feb. 4) I'll be teaching Double Double Bonus Quick Quads at the South Point. During last week's class (Super Double Bonus) I was giving the attendees a preview of the upcoming class. I wanted to remind them what class was coming next and also that there was only going to be one class beginning at 1 p.m. rather than the usual two classes.

I have software for class demonstration purposes that in includes Quick Quads on it. I selected the cards (suits mixed, obviously) 777AK in the Five Play version of Double Double Bonus. I explained that in every other video poker game the correct play is 777, but in Quick Quads the correct play is 777A. I told the class that there were several unusual plays in Quick Quads and I'd be covering the ones that related to Double Double Bonus in the upcoming class.

Insofar as I was concerned, I had made my point and so I started to speak about what was next. A lady in the back, "Julia," lifted her hand. "I'm dying to know how this hand plays out. You must play it all the way through. The suspense is killing me!" Julia seemed to be breathing a bit faster than usual.

I didn't want a coronary in the class, so I had my assistant press the deal button. We didn't get a Quick Quad, but one of the hands turned out to be four natural sevens. The others ended up as 3-of-a-kind.

While I didn't mind Julia's request, my thought at the time was that the result of this particular hand in practice is totally irrelevant. I knew going in that for each of the five lines there was 1 chance in 47 of drawing the case 7, three chances in 47 to draw another ace to get a full house, and four chances in 47 of drawing a 6 and getting a 777A6 Quick Quad. Perhaps my students didn't have these numbers at their fingertips, but they will when the class occurs.

What is important to me is "Did I make the correct play?" What is unimportant to me (at least in practice) is, "How did it turn out this time?" My goal when I practice is to get better. I want to uncover any mistakes I'm making in my game and correct them. I get no useful information out of looking at the draw. If there was a way to turn the draw off I would. (I sold WinPoker for years. You can turn off the draw there. WinPoker doesn't include Quick Quads, however. Video Poker for Winners doesn't yet, but it will in its next version. I hope in the same version that VPW allows for the draw to be turned off as well.)

I can see that if you're playing this game for large stakes (however you define that term), whether you connect on one or more 260-point quads is important. Professional players playing two machines at once don't bother with looking at any result short of a W2G, but most players do. There's a small thrill every time we get a quad and those thrills are part of the reason we play the game.

But in practice, we're playing for no stakes at all. We can get dealt a royal flush and receive nothing at all. We can lose 20 hands in a row and not suffer any real loss. It's possible you get the same thrills in practice, but I certainly don't.

In my classes, people have come up and told me about hundreds of royal flushes they've gotten -- sometimes big ones (to them) that they're proud of. Only two or three times has someone come up and told me they were really proud of hitting a royal flush on either WinPoker or Video Poker for Winners.

On the contrary, sometimes people feel that when they get a royal flush in practice that they've "wasted" one. Presumably they believe they only have a certain allotment of royals due them and if they use them up in practice they won't get them in the casino. (This, by the way, is ridiculous. Every hand is freshly dealt from a fair deck and whatever you've received in the past is immaterial with respect to what you get next time.)

It's not that I'm telling Julia what she should be interested in. Everybody has different things that catch their fancy. What I am saying, though, is that checking the results of hands while practicing will not help to improve your game. If it floats your boat, though, go for it.