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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.

Feb. 23, 2010

How Accurately Must You Play? --- Part I of II

Usually when I write about how much a game is worth I say something like, "Assuming accurate play, NSU Deuces Wild returns 99.73%." That type of discussion ignores the subject of players who DON'T play accurately. Let's look at that subject now.

First some basics. First, by the "return on the game," I'm including the game itself, the slot club, any point multipliers, certain promotions like "card of the day" or "200 coins if you hit a royal flush," cash drawings you're participating in, and the monthly mailers, if any. Some of these numbers can be determined exactly and some must be estimated. The value of a cash drawing, for example, is very difficult to determine because you don't know how many tickets are in the barrel. But there are players who regularly win thousands of dollars in drawings a year and they earn their tickets playing video poker. Surely it's possible to get some idea whether the drawings add 0.005%, 0.1% or some other value.

Second, the return on the game MUST exceed 100% if you wish to be a long-term winner at this game, although we can still address the accuracy issue on less-than-100% opportunities. For example, later we'll see that a player who plays at a 99.7% accuracy rate gives up about $30 in hourly equity if he's a 1,000-hands-per-hour $2 player. If the game had the potential of paying $20 per hour assuming perfect play, this player gives up all of this potential and is now paying $10 hourly to play the game. If the game had the potential of costing the player $100 per hour if played perfectly, it will now cost him $130 per hour.

Third, when discussing accuracy, I don't care how the hands turned out. If you started with Kh Qh Jh Th 4h in any video poker game it's proper to throw away the 4h and draw another card. If you make that play, you're playing accurately. Whether you draw the Ah this time or not is irrelevant insofar as accuracy is determined. For many people it is NOT irrelevant emotionally, but that's a subject for another day.

Fourth, by "accuracy" I'm not referring to the percentage of hands played correctly but rather by how much the incorrectly-played hands affect the Expected Value (EV). As an example of a major error, let's consider the hand Kh Kc Jc 8c 3c in 9/7 Triple Double Bonus. The accurate play, of course, is to play the clubs, which have a 5-coin EV of 7.23405. If you hold the kings the EV is 6.65865. The accuracy of this play is 6.65865 / 7.23405 = 92.05%. As an example of a minor error, consider Kh Th 7h 6c 3d in 8/5 Bonus Poker. Holding the king by itself is worth 2.29265. Holding 'KT' is worth 2.2689 (98.96% accuracy). Holding 'KT7' is worth 2.0259 (88.36% accuracy).

Fifth, we are looking at your accuracy over 1,000 or more hands. Most players have at least a few blind spots in their strategy. If these blind imperfections are rare and each worth very little, the net effect on overall accuracy is minimal. Players with major imperfections on several types of hands will have accuracy ratings considerably less than 100%.

To get any kind of reasonable measurement of your accuracy you need to use computer software. If you're using "Video Poker for Winners," the procedure is as follows:

On any particular game, go to TRAINING STYLE. Set PLAY AGAINST to perfect play and set LEVEL OF DIFFICULTY to MIXED. I suggest having WARN turned on so you can make it a learning-process while you're obtaining your accuracy measurement, but this doesn't really matter so long as you AUTOHOLD turned off. Then click on ANALYZE and then OVERALL PLAY. In the upper right corner click on RESET TO ZERO. You're now ready to begin. Play 1,000 or more hands and go back to OVERALL PLAY. Then click on RETURN and look at the box labeled RETURN %.

Other video poker software products enable you to figure out your accuracy as well. Although each product has different features, they are in complete agreement as to what the correct play is on any particular hand. If they all dealt the same hands, the percentage accuracy figure you got on any of the products would be identical. It comes down to how good the Random Number Generator is. I do know the RNG on Video Poker for Winners was programmed by people who program for IGT. The RNGs on the other video poker software products were not.

This week was preliminary --- providing you with definitions and explanations. Next week we'll continue the discussion of how much accuracy do you need.