| Is it worth the time and effort required to learn the special moves that will take us all the way to the potential 99.54 percent return on 9-6 Jacks or Better-the "9-6" representing paybacks of 9-for-1 on full houses and 6-for-1 on flushes? Is it worth expanding an already lengthy strategy table to get all the way to 100.17 percent on Double Bonus Poker? There's no agreement on that point among some of the most serious video poker devotees. In fact, penalty cards recently were the topic of a lengthy discussion on a video poker e-mail list to which I belong. The list is distributed through vphomepage.com, a pay Web site operated by Skip Hughes. I find the site a terrific source of information, and the discussions on the e-mail list are often fascinating. At issue is what to do with hands such as King, Queen, 5 of hearts, 9 of clubs, 2 of spades. The 9 is a straight penalty card, because if we hold just King-Queen and discard the 9, there is one less card available to complete a straight. Likewise, the 5 is a flush penalty card. In a game such as full-pay Double Bonus Poker, which has higher flush and straight paybacks than most Jacks or Better-based games, penalty cards create all kinds of special-case strategies. In the above example, the mathematically best play is to hold King-Queen-5, which has an average return of 2.817 coins per five wagered, while the average return on holding just King-Queen is 2.805 coins. But what if we're dealt a 7 of clubs instead of the 9? A King-high straight doesn't reach all the way down to the 7, so there is no straight penalty. Now the best play is to hold just King-Queen, with an average return of 2.825 coins, with the average return on King-Queen-5 remains 2.817. Consider those numbers. In the first case, the best play gains us just over a penny per occurrence on a dollar machine. In the second case, we gain just under a penny. With such a small difference, wouldn't we be better off to follow a single strategy for all hands with King-Queen and a small card of the same suit, and ignore the penalty cards? Many posters on the Hughes group think so, including Hughes himself. His strategy cards, currently out of print but due back soon, ignore penalty cards. Hughes notes that the strategy on his cards for 9-6 Jacks or Better produces an average return of 99.543 percent, compared with 99.544 percent for perfect play, including penalty cards. Even in full-pay Double Bonus, with a pay table that creates lots of room for special cases, a penalty card-free strategy produces a return of 100.1615 percent, not far off the 100.1725 percent with perfect strategy. At the most basic level, place numbers offer craps only a couple of reasonable opportunities. Place bets on 6 or 8, with house edges of 1.52 percent, are among the better bets at the table. But bets on 5 or 9, with house edges of 4 percent, and on 4 or 10, with house edges of 6.67 percent, are wagers to avoid. There's a way to improve your odds on 4 or 10, and that's by buying the numbers instead of placing them. You pay the house a 5 percent commission, and in return you're paid true odds if your bet wins. That lowers the house edge to 4.76--a bit too high for my taste. But my old friend Frank Scoblete, author of Beat the Craps out of the Casinos and Forever Craps, always has a play up his sleeve that's far from basic. In the August 2002 edition of Casino Player magazine, he notes that Treasure Island casino in Las Vegas charges players a $1 commission only on WINNING $25 buy bets on 4 or 10. That, he says, lowers the house edge all the way to 1.3 percent, making the 4 and 10 playable numbers. |
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