I have nothing really to say but I wanted the 100th post of this thread

Maybe we should start a running Royal Flush thread?

I am at 4 for the year...

For JoB, If you have a 4 flush with say a pair of Kings, do you always hold the Kings? Also same for straight draws, if you hold 4 card straight with pair of Jacks, so you always hold jacks?

always hold the pair, unless it is 4 to a Royal...

If dealt a straight with 4 to a straight flush, hold the straight...

I'd rather hold 4 to any straight flush over a pair too, imo. And you should break the straight or flush if it's a 4 to a Royal draw but keep it if its only 4 to a straight flush.

Also in general, Donkey Kong, you hold 3 to a Royal over 4 to a regular flush, but you would hold JJ through AA over either flush draw.

Open Ended straight flush, I would consider going for... Gut Shot straight flush and any other dealt made hand (besides Royal Flush of course), I would not break up anything for.

I mix it up sometimes depending on my session...

I once broke up a pair of Aces playing Double Double Bonus to hold 3 to the royal and the royal hit.

The other night, I was dealt QhQcKh... Part of me was saying, hold the KQh, I heald the pair of Q, the draw was TJAh

You never know...

Soooo...triple play can be addictive. And also expensive.

I burn enough money playing video poker by trying to be as optimal as possible (mainly because I really only can afford nickel machines). Screw mixing it up.

Anyone know if there are any full pay tables at the CT casinos? I might start grinding if there are, so I can have something to do that isn't terribly -EV when I go on tilt and have to leave the poker table.

vpfree2.com

I might have to find another hobby or completely change my way of thinking like an advantage VP player. Here are my stats since I started:

Total Buy In: 3,675.75
Total Cash Out: 1,480.75
Total Coin In: 48,485.00
Total ROI: 95.47%
Estimated Hands: 38788

Net Win/Loss: -2,195.00
Exp. Win/Loss: -223.03

I heard good things about video poker at South Point and they were running a promotion. 1250 points through gives me max entries into a nightly drawing and they accumulate through the month of August. $10k for the first drawn name ($20k if you're present) and $1k for 2nd-10th names drawn. I figured that if I earned the max entries every day, I'd have at least a razor thin edge on the 9/6 JOB with free play.

The last $36k or so coin through was played at South Point. About $20k of that was triple play quarters 9/6 JOB and the rest single line quarter 9/6 JOB.

My first mistake was not having a plan to maximize my EV every time I drove to the casino. Second mistake was moving up to triple play quarters. I accepted the higher variance for the same quarter coins however I did not realize I needed a much bigger bankroll. The jump from $1.25/play to $3.75/play is huge and I should not have played so much.

So should I stop playing triple play quarters? I don't know yet. I'm accumulating points at a faster rate. This will allow me to play through the required $1250 coin in at about a third of the time than single line. What I need to do here is quantify how much my time is worth. Is it worth it for me to play 20 minutes (estimated to get $1250 coin through) of triple play at a higher variance than an hour of single line? It depends but I have to research that. Chances are that the answer is easy: I need a bigger bankroll.

The biggest change I'm going to make right now is to stop play at 1250 coin in. Other than that, I will have to do some research to find out what other changes I need to make (i.e. new games, other promos, etc.)

You have your cash lost listed but what about promos other than the drawing. I think a big part of advantage play would be the free items you receive as well.

There is nothing wrong with moving up to a multi line machine... you can do it for less variance, but not moving up...

For example...

$5 VP = $25 a hand single line
$1 VP 5 line = $25 a hand
$0.50 VP 10 line = $25 a hand
$0.10 VP 50 line = $25 a hand
$0.05 VP 100 Line = $25 a hand

You can move up that way for less variance, it could be more entertaining, and your money will go further playing the 100 line, but, hard to find a 9/6 JOB game on that...

I feel most comfortable with 5 line, I feel its the best balance for breaking even / profit per hand... (ie, only need one 2 pair, and one three of a kind to break even...

Those figures include the free slot play at a rate of 333 points = 1 dollar, which I take out periodically. I probably should keep track of how much I use, but should it really affect my bottom line? Like my ROI is 95.47% but without free slot play it's 95.47% - 1/333 = 95.17%. Not really much difference in using either number for keeping score in that I'm running below expectation. I can probably ask the slot club how much I used.

As far as other free goodies, I expect to get a mailer next month. Hopefully I don't go broke by then. Jk jk.

I said to myself "ooo, look a new way to play...3 lines instead of 1!" then got slightly addicted. It was a lot more fun than single line and I did not realize I was playing so much until it cost me.

I went back last night to submit my entries and play some more. I decided to do a walk around of the floor again in search of more multi line games and I was lucky enough to actually find a 50 play nickel machine with 9/6 JOB (only 4 of them as far as I saw.) So I sat down and played 5 line max coins for $1.25/hand but it was sooo slow. It was an action gaming multiplay machine but the turbo setting is not as fast as the other action gaming "all star" machine I got owned on. I guess it's a slight compromise for less variance plus I can accurately hold the right cards. I might bump it up to 6 or 7 line to keep my hourly coin in the same as single play.

I played a weird game a few weeks back that I have never played before. It was 4 or 5 lines but you only played the first line but if you won then you played the 2nd line but at a multiplier and if you won then you played the 3rd and so on. The pay table was not so good and if I am remembering correctly you payed for all the lines even though you may not get past the first one. I played this a few weeks ago so all the details are fuzzy. I only put a $20 in on a $0.25 machine and I blew through that in minutes. It was a fun game but I could just imagine how -ev it really was.

That's multistrike. I believe it's +ev according to wizard of odds.

I have the winpoker app for iphone that somebody here recommended. I like that it gives tips but is there one where I can adjust the payout tables and the correct strategy for that?

No, it's generally not +EV in terms of casinos offering >100% return machines. They may exist in Vegas, but they sure as hell don't exist anywhere else. It is always better to play 4 lines than 1 if you play the game "correctly", however. For example, at 9/6 JoB, the machine returns 99.79% in Multi-Strike mode while normal JoB returns 99.54%. In my area, St. Louis, you probably can't find a quarter machine to pay better than 8/5 though. And doesn't help when now you have to wager 4 times as much while your variance roughly quadruples between the two game formats. So in terms of money, the variance is about a 16-fold difference between a quarter 4-line MultiStrike machine vs. a single line quarter JoB machine.

Also this is a game many people will make significant errors in playing without realizing strategy adjustments. In a JoB game, you should toss a small pair in favor of 2 high cards on either Level 1 or 2. Also never hold OESDs on Level 1 with no high cards; the punishment for failing to make the next level is far too great. A full strategy for this game is shown by the link below.

http://wizardofodds.com/multistrike/appendix2.html

Is there a such thing as +EV and high stakes?

I think I heard Shackleford say in a video that +EV VP machines are very low stakes, like 50 cents or so might be the highest stakes. Thinking about it, but if this is true then I'm not gonna waste my time.

to get +EV on highstakes machines, you need some sort of promotion like going on point multiplier days or be playing a progressive machine where the progressive has grown to an amount large enough to swing it into your favor.

Yeah, sorry. When I meant it was +ev, it has a better return than the regular FP machines.

Yea..the iphone and iPad app that Bandit recommended allows you to change all that and more..

Video Poker + Perfect Play Trainer
http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/video...420985787?mt=8

You can change the pay tables to match the machine you play on, and the trainer will automatically calculate the optimal perfect play.

I play a lot at the Indian Reservations, and they dont have 9/6 JoB. So there is no use training for 9/6 when i dont play on 9/6. I took a picture of the pay table at the reservation, and entered it into the app.

Its pretty funny, if you set Jacks or Better to pay out 100. The trainer advises you on some nifty moves to shoot for Jacks or Better which pays (in my fantasy paytable) more than Straights! haha. funny.

A cool feature the app has, allows you to enter in 5 cards, and it will instantly tell you the most optimal play. I carry my iPhone to the casino, and when I get stuck, I look to the advice of my iPhone. Its like having the Wizard of Odds sitting next to you.

The trainer is pretty amazing, and it records how many perfect plays you have in a row. My top is 97 perfect plays in a row. I always screw up.
The wifey has 75 perfect plays in a row. We like to compete.

Its like a game within the game. very fun.

Go to the link and read the description, its full blown feature rich.

Bandit, whats your perfect play count in Video Poker + Perfect Play Trainer?

215. I find myself yelling "dammit" after every warning sound lol.

However there are some inaccuracies with its hand analysis. For example if you are deciding between holding a king vs suited king and ten, standard play is hold KT. If you have to discard a 9 and flush penalty, hold only the king. Using the analyzer for KsTs5s7h4d it will tell you to hold the king only, which is wrong.

Now when you're going for perfect play in-game, it WILL make that annoying sound when you hold only the king. I haven't gotten around to bringing this to the attention of the developer.

I have winpoker and video poker+perfect trainer. You can change paytables on both and also save a user defined paytable. However video poker has much nicer graphics. Winpoker hasn't been updated in a year but it's hand analysis is more accurate and has a ton more games including deuces wild, of which I'm learning the NSUD variant.

Brutal. Now you've went through almost a whole royal cycle without hitting one. That will still happen with a probability of 1/e = 36.79%.

But even without the royal, you're still running 2% below the expectation of the machine's return without a royal. This latter unluckiness is much worse as the standard deviation among for a sample of 38,788 hands without a royal is only 379 bets. Even after deducting a Royal Flush expectation, you're still down 946 bets from what is expected (i.e. a 97.56% return). So if we use the normal "bell-curve" approximation (this isn't a terrible estimate when you toss out the royal), you are still running 2.5 standard deviations below the mean for results that don't include a royal. This will happen about 1 in 161 trials. Note this number has been determined by you solely playing single line JoB. I read that you played triple line JoB for awhile, this will happen a bit more frequently playing triple line obviously.

And for both of these to happen so you can run at 95.5% for this long of a stretch: (0.3679)/161 = 1 in 438. Obviously you can't claim anything is rigged, but video poker is seriously hating you right now.