I was telling ya all a whole bankroll can go on video poker with you never hitting a jackpot. It’s just the way the probabilities can work out. So now here’s the challenge for ya! If you’ve been paying any kinda attention to how I’ve been taking ya through all this, you’ll have noticed I never said which kinda video poker machines I was talking about. Take a minute to think about it. Talk among yourselves if you wanna.

Jack here’s still working his way through that good stuff the wannabe supplier laid on us a few weeks back. We’re mostly keeping that for our own private study. Got a particularly fine brandy here.

When I was starting out as a grease-monkey kid, I was was working on the best technology there was. Ya pulls the handle and the three reels spin. Round and round they goes. Where they stops, noone knows. Even when the new video poker technology came in, we were still talking about a single flop, decide what you’re holding, then draw the replacements from the 47 remaining cards. Now you log in to www.goldencasino.com/ and you’re gonna find a completely different set of beasts on display. More often than not, you’re looking at four or more lines above the flop hand. Ya make the same decision about holding, but the machine repeats your decisions in the lines above. So there’s a separate draw from the virtual deck for each line. That RNG shuffles the remaining 47 cards after the flop between each draw. The Math God expects the same proper strategy that works for the single line, to work in exactly the same way for your base line and however many lines are stacked above it.

Remember what I said ’bout there being no need for the operators to cheat on video poker machines. Ya gotta believe me on that. So, we assume a random draw of cards for each line. That means the Expected Value per hand is the same, no matter how many hands there are. But, for those of you that like the math, ya gotta remember that your decisions on the flop hand are correlated to the lines above. To make the point, if ya hold all five cards in the flop, there’s perfect correlation in all the lines above. But the covariance changes. If you’re playing 9/6 Jacks or Better video poker and you play a single line four times, those are four independent events and the variance between each play simply adds. Now put yourself on a multi-hand machine with one flop and three repeated lines for a single play and the variance per base bet increases by about 30%.

Hey, guess what. If you’re gonna play these online video poker machines with multiple hands, you’re gonna need more bills folded into that bankroll of yours. The more lines above the flop ya play, the heavy that wad of yours gotta get. Kinda makes ya sick to think about it, don’t it?

Well, that’s me done again. Catch ya ’round.

But I guess he’s got a right to ask for you – not that I’m inspired with confidence looking round at you. You’re just playing the pro game in your heads when you read these articles. Ain’t nothing gonna come of it. Anyways, let’s keep the dream going a while longer. That Mr. Ferguson fellah calculates you’d need $10,000 if you wanna turn pro and play the quarter video poker machines. Multiply that by four if ya wanna play the dollar machines. But I reckon that’s a tad optimistic. I’ve seen people burn that and never hit a jackpot. The Math God don’t care nothing for you. If you hit a run of cold machines, ain’t nothing you can do ’cept play through the patch until you come out the other side.

Now’s the time to use that grey matter you hide away in your head. Jack could loan me a pen and we’d do the best math you ever seen on the back of these here fancy coasters. You’ve got the proper video poker strategy nailed. All the most probable outcomes are in play. That kinda calculation would make Mr. Ferguson’s number look a smart bet. But ya gotta ask yourself, what kinda assumptions are we making? Are we assuming you’ve got an infinite amount of cash — that you’re gonna play video poker until all the probabilities work out like the book says they should? And you’ve never gotta take a restroom break or sleep some? You can keep playing until you’re on the right side? And then how we gonna exclude the chance that some other player’s gonna hit the jackpot? Don’t matter whether you’re playing a flat top or a progressive. If it’s a flat top, ya take a break and the next player on “your” video poker machine takes the pot. Playing the progressive, that jackpot can always go somewhere else no matter how fast and well ya play.

So how much’re ya gonna drop before ya give up? Ten grand might be enough to give ya that cushion. But ya might need the kinda eye-poppin’ wad some whale tosses on the table like it’s loose change before ya break even. Are you ready to lose all that? And don’t you never forget. Once you’re tapped out, you’re outa the video poker game until you get the front money together again. Still reading, are ya?

Jack here’s got an expression like he’s sucking on a lemon. He thinks I’m being too hard on ya all. I should make like an angel now I’ve crossed over to your side of the casino. OK. So think of this like video poker boot camp. I’m the ex-marine gonna kick ya round and give ya the tough love ya been missing all these years. You’ll be all the better for it.

Well, that’s me done again. Catch ya ’round.

Just so we know we’re both talking about the same things, I’m gonna run through the winning hands and payouts for a 9-6 Jacks or Better video poker machine like you’ll find at http://www.goldenpalace.com/:

Royal Flush - AKQJ10 in the same suit. This’s the top hand in all kinds of poker. On video poker machines, you can expect one around the 40,000 hand mark — on average, that is. Assuming your head ain’t keeping company with your ass and you’re betting the full five coins, it pays 4,000 coins. If you forgot, it only pays 250 coins for the number of coins you did bet and you put $10 of that in the “F@:@ Me” swear box.
Straight Flush – any five cards in numerical sequence and the same suit, e.g. J10987. It pays 50 coins for the number of coins bet.
Four of a Kind – e.g. four 8s. It pays 25 coins for the number of coins bet.
Full House - three cards of the same value and a pair, e.g. three Queens and two Aces. It pays 9 coins for the number of coins bet.
Flush – any five cards in the same suit. It pays 6 coins for the number of coins bet.
Straight – any five cards in numerical sequence regardless of suit, e.g. QJ1098. It pays 4 coins for the number of coins bet.
Three of a Kind - three cards of the same value, e.g. three 8s. It pays 3 coins for the number of coins bet.
Two Pairs – e.g. two 3s and two Jacks. It pays 2 coins for the number of coins bet.
Jacks or Better – a pair of Jacks, Queens, Kings or Aces. This is the name of the game but has the lowest payout of 1 coin for the number of coins bet.

Now you’re facing off against a machine. Remember, these video poker machines’re crafty mean, waiting for you to screw up big time. They’re programmed to sit there patiently while you let the seconds go by without making up your mind what to do. Did we say you were gonna hit 400 hands an hour? Well, why’re you standing there like a lightning rod waiting for the thunder to roll? Your hands should be a blur.

First rule — hold all the pat hands, i.e. royal, straight flush, four of a kind, full house, flush and straight.

Second rule — break up a pat flush or straight if this will leave you with four cards of a royal.

Third rule — if neither of the first two rules apply, look down the following list of hands, and hold the first card combination you come to:

4 of a royal;
three of a kind;
4 consecutive cards of a straight flush;
two pairs;
4 non-consecutive cards of a straight flush;
one high pair Jacks or Better;
3 of a royal;
4 of a flush;
KQJ10 (any suit);
one low pair (10s or lower);
QJ109 or J1098 (any suit);
KQ9, KJ9, QJ9, QJ8, Q109, J108, J109, J98 (same suit);
3 of a straight flush with 2 gaps;
3 of a straight flush with 1 gap;
2 face cards of the same suit;
KQJ (any suit);
1 face card + 10 (same suit);
2 face cards (any suit);
1 face card.

None of the above, redraw and see if the old RNG’s gonna give ya anything better.

But, to be honest with ya, most professionals prefer to play on progressive video poker machines. We’ll get to the hows an’ whys of that another time. Start with these baby steps. When you’re not crawling no more, we’ll get to the big boy’s strategy.

Key words: video poker (5), video poker strategy (1)

And just one more thing as we get going: this’s the proper strategy for playing video poker hands. You get the same hands in regular poker, you play them different. You’re not trying to beat another player’s hand. In video poker you’re given the pay tables up front. Those’re like your bible, the card combinations to answer your prayers.

So let’s think about those pay tables and the different video poker machines. If you’re playing a flat-top as opposed to a progressive machine, you’ll hafta play slightly different ’cause the probabilities shift as the progressive machines build their jackpots. If you’re playing quarter video poker machines with an 8-5 progressive jackpot, you’ll need a minimum jackpot for a royal of $2,200 to break even using the proper strategy. Once the jackpot goes up from that minimum, your edge’s improving with every $1,000 added. Why play progressive machines? ’Cause the maximum ain’t preset. On a flat-top, like the name tells ya, the jackpot never changes.

Then look at the returns on a full house and a flush. The best machines pay 9 for a full house and 6 for a flush. When you see 8-5, that gives the House an extra 2.2% edge. Both machines are identical. All that changes is the pay table. Now look at the jackpot for the royal. On Tens or Better slot machines like you’ll find at http://www.goldenpalace.com/, you’ll see payoffs that vary with the number of coins bet. So on a 9-6 machine look for:

1 coin — 250

2 coins — 500

3 coins — 750

4 coins — 1,000

5 coins — 4,000

See the hike between four and five coins. Don’t play the maximum number of coins, and you’ll get cents back. My father never said, “Speculate to accumulate,” ’cause that’s not how an actuary thinks. But even he would see that adding one more coin every time buys you the chance of a fourfold return. That’s calculate to accumulate the chance to win enough to cover your losses an’ better.

Now comes the big choice. If you play to get royals only, the great math god says you’ll get one every 21,745 hands. If you play an optimizing strategy, the probability is you’ll hit a royal roughly every 40,000 hands. This is the headline news. If you wanna make this a paying game, you hafta play for royals. I’m gonna say that again. There ain’t no strategy in the world can give you any profit unless you hit royals. And while you’re waiting for those royals to come along, expect to lose. How much you lose depends on how many hands you play before you hit the next royal. So, ’cause probabilities work over the long term, you might hit two royals on the same day. Or you might play a hundred and more hours, and not hit one at all.

So let’s say you’re playing flat-top quarter video poker machines. You’re in the groove and managing to play 400 hands an hour (a devilish 6.66 hands per minute which is why I put it in here — doncha just love those superstitions). That means you’re potentially losing $500 per hour. If you’re playing a dollar machine, that’s a potential $2,000 per hour loss. That’s right. You pays to play for the royals. You expect to lose and keep on losing between royals. If you’re getting average luck, you’ll get some winnings while you’re waiting, and your wins on royals should cover all your losses while waiting. Assuming, of course, you’ve been following the proper strategy.

Obviously, I’m gonna tell you how to keep those losses down. But ain’t no-one can play video poker and not lose money steadily until the next royal comes along. The rate at which you lose depends on how often you hit straights and four-of-a-kind. But you’re talking about starting off with a bankroll. Like one of those capitalist fellahs, you’re looking for a return on money invested. Don’t have that bankroll, don’t even think about starting this strategy. Just play for fun.

Right. That’s me done for now. Catch ya ’round.

But, after the third screwdriver, he did get me to thinking. When I lost the third pot in a row to river cards against the odds, I confess to thinking I was caught in a skin game. Just a moment of anger. Ain’t no-one with the cojones to try anything against me for real — not with my connections. But there’s lots of folk get it into their heads that online video poker sites are cheating them. So I s’pose I’d better say a few words of reassurance — not that it’ll actually boost your confidence. The truth ain’t designed to do that.

So, let me sit you down in front of a video poker machine playing Jacks or Better on a pay table that’s offering 9-6-250 like online at goldencasino.com. For those who’ve not boned up on the jargon, that’s a machine paying 250 per coin on a Royal Flush, 9 on a Full House and 6 on a Flush. That machine’s set up to pay back only a fraction over 98% of what it takes. Even if you play a perfect strategy on this machine, the theoretical return never gets above 100%. It bears saying again. No matter which lucky rabbit’s foot you got in your pants, the very best you can hope to do is to almost break even.

’Cause most folk can’t play the perfect strategy, the House edge on every video poker machine keeps the funds rolling in. That’s why you gotta pass the carousels of slot machines before you get to the tables. They’re the bread-an-butter earners for every casino.

If I stopped there, there’s no sense in any casino cheating on the slot machines. But there’s no denying you’re right ’bout one thing. Greed’s the worm in the gambling apple. Don’t matter which side of the fence you’re on, there’s always some as thinks they’re gonna hit it big. So I’ve seen pit bosses and managers decide the Vig’s not enough and rig the games. I’ve seen a few do it to put the money in their own pockets — most of them got decent burials, too. Yeh, there’s some cheating going on, but most of it’s on your side and it’s not very subtle.

So why do some folk get so all-fired sure they’ve been cheated by slot machines? In a word: frustration. They were hot, certain their luck was in, but had a long bad session. That always makes the loss harder to bear — when your emotion gets in the way of your judgement. Gambling’s got streaks of luck both ways. On one hot August night in 1913, the roulette wheel in Monte Carlo came up black a record-breaking twenty-six times in a row. The House took millions of extra profit. Half the room got to playing the Martingdale System. They were doubling their bets after every loss. But they tapped out of money before the streak ended. Was there anything wrong with the wheel? Nope! The math god smiled and it was true.

Just ’cause you come up empty on one or two sessions don’t mean nothing ’cept your wins and losses’re averaging out over time. To make any kinda case against the casino, you’d need evidence. How you gonna that that evidence? Well, you gotta test their slot machines. Pick one of their video poker games. Say before you start how many times you’re gonna play and what you hafta see to prove the machine’s rigged. S’pose you think a video poker game don’t have all the faces in the deck — you’ve to track the frequency of the faces as they show in the count of all non-face cards. Tracking how many hands you played and how many you won or lost ain’t no proof at all. You need a test that’s statistically significant to prove cheating. So how many thousand hands of data you gonna pay to collect to test your hypothesis? It’s put up or shut up. No-one likes a sore loser unless they got the evidence to prove otherwise.

One last thought before the thinking’s done: some of you load up your own software to run alongside video poker machines — kinda like a coach. Me, I don’t have no problem with that, but some online casinos’re uploading Dynamic Link Library subroutines to identify the applications you’re running at the same time as the casino package. They might not like some of the things they find — not within the spirit of the game from their point of view. Remember the old Chinese saying, “Big fish eat small fish.”

Catch ya ’round.

Anyways, the young fellah just called. Caught me in a mellow mood for once. He thinks — well, we can suspend judgement on that for so long as he keeps paying me — he thinks I should explain myself. In one piece I’m saying there’s, “a proper mathematical playing strategy for video poker.” In the next, I’m saying there’s a gambler’s fallacy and you can’t predict the cards. He thinks they doesn’t fit right together.

So here’s a few words to make it all crystal.

Did you ever see Ocean’s 11 — don’t matter whether it was the original Rat Pack version or the new ones with George Clooney and his pals? Did you notice how they always robbed the casinos. There was never a hint of walking through the door with a system for winning at the tables or on the slot machines. Hollywood got it right for once. The only way you guarantee a big score at a casino is as a thief — and you’ve to be lucky to enjoy your “takings” and avoid the hail of bullets if you get caught by wrong people.

Look around online. You’ll see a small army of people touting their systems for beating all casino games with a house advantage. Play slot machines, win big. Win at blackjack without counting. When I was growing up, my mother used to play 78s all the time. She loved the musicals of the 1920s. She’d never been on the chorus line, but she’d a hankering for it. Her parents disapproved of theatrical folk and that was an end of that. Anyways, one of my favorites was Banana Oil — kinda like snake oil but always applied to lounge-lizard lines. “When he tells you, ‘I adore you,’ that’s banana oil.” In other words, everything he said to get his mark into bed was bullshit.

Well, the same goes for all these salesmen pushing betting systems for slot machines. They’re trying to scam you outa your money. Take it from me. There ain’t no system around that even dents the House edge on games where the probabilities are set in the House’s favor. Math is math. Mind you. It’s not my money — you wanna fool yourself you can shade the odds in your favor on video poker, then feel free.

So, how do these systems work? You’re supposed to base your bets on the most recent outcomes. Take roulette as an example. Wait for a run of blacks, then bet on red — the longer the run, the bigger the bets on red. If you see a pattern emerging, you’re supposed to think that the probabilities of the game itself have changed. When I worked for casinos, we always nodded wisely when someone cautiously asked if they could play a system. Another little chicken ripe for the plucking.

My father was counting deaths by the million over decades for the life companies. Probabilities and statistics only make sense in the long view. Short-term, you’ll find anomalies in all slot machines but, over time, the basic patterns are set in stone and in the House’s favor. You’ll see lucky streaks that look like they’re never going to end. But, so long as the House keeps its nerve, the winner will lose it all back again.

It’s the same with the so-called systems. They aim to build up the small wins to offset the big losses. If you’ve the bankroll, you can often win over a session. But you’re obsessional kind, ain’t ya? You’ve invested that money in a system. You’re not going to quit while you’re ahead, are you? Which means that any small winnings you picked up on the good days will all get given back to the casinos on the bad days. It’s just the way the House edge works. Like I say, you can’t beat the math.

Which leaves me with my strategy, which I’ll get back to when I’m good and ready.

Now, if it’s one thing my father taught me that’s become a kinda guiding principle, it’s that people without math live their lives in a fog. They’ve got no idea what they’re doing. An’ you never see this more often than in a casino watching how people play the slot machines. So, just for a moment, I’m going to slip into their mindset — give you a quick tour of how a gambler can fall into a trap. Need a drink first, though, to dull the pain.

So, here I am, playing video poker. I’m feeding the machine and keeping count of the number of times I do and don’t get winning combinations in the pay table. Got me some serious scientific study going on here! My video poker strategy is down pat! You see, to my way of thinking, there’s no such thing as a random sequence. The probability of any one thing happening is set by what went before. So, if I got me a winning hand, the law of averages says the odds of that happening again is poorer for the hands that come just after it. An’ that’s true for the reverse as well. The longer I go without a winning hand, the more likely a big hand gets.

These folk live in a dream world. You ever watch a Poker Dealer wash and shuffle a deck of 52 cards fairly. Then the Dealer deals five cards to each player from that shuffled deck. The first card dealt comes with a 1 in 52 chance, the second with a 1 in 51 chance, and so on as the cards are dealt in turn. All the countries licensing video versions of card and dice games have laws. No country wants to kill the golden goose that’s laying all them tax eggs so they all want to see fair games. Players vote with their feet if they think a game’s crooked. That’s in no-one’s interest. So all casinos gotta match the odds of a real card game with a human dealer. You might be thinking these casinos’ll still be out to cheat you in some way — after all, wouldn’t nothing be easier than to tweak the software — and those countries’re probably corrupt, take a backhander and look the other way. But there’s no need to cheat. No matter how you cut it, the games make more’n enough money when played fairly. Even when serious professionals come out to play, the House has an edge.

So, on a video poker machine, the Random Number Generator (RNG for short) shuffles that virtual deck of 52 cards and pulls out your first five. Now sometimes, the slot machines sit with that randomized deck and deal the next cards off the top when you press draw. In others, that ol’ RNG don’t know when to quit. It keeps on notionally shuffling the deck while you’re busy trying to decide what to do with your hand. The longer you take, the more times the RNG has cycled. Finally, you decide what you’re holding and hit the draw button. You get whatever’s on top of the deck at that precise moment. Wait a fraction of a second longer, and you get different cards. It don’t matter which wy the machines’re set up. The deck has a random distribution of cards.

What these dreamers in a fog never see clearly is the principle of statistical independence. This a fancy way of saying that events are unrelated — when the first occurrence has no effect on the second. When events are random. So when is a sequence of cards random? When the odds of you predicting the next card are no better than chance. It’s like tossing a coin. Every time you toss a coin, the chances of getting one of two sides is always 1 in 2. It never changes from one toss to the next.

So don’t you never fall into no gambler’s fallacy. There ain’t no deck of cards or dice that got a memory. They’re just the tools we use to gamble with. Sure these new video poker machines can have big memories but there ain’t no point to that. So long as they all got a RNG, all they’re doing is remembering the longest string of random numbers anyone’s ever bothered to collect.

So I’ll be getting back to the free online video poker — I’m looking over a new game. Ain’t no reason to pay to play. Just browsing for now.

Anyways, I’m not feeling enlightened, so don’t have the strength to tell the young fellah, “no”. Don’t play the video slots as much as I usta, but still carry my little strategy cards around with me. Looks kinda professional. Not like me at all, what with me being so frayed round the edges. But even I got a little mortified by the looks I got when I pulled out those pieces of paper, all scruffy and dog-eared. So I draws up another set and Jack here got it laminated for me — he’s real versatile when he’s a mind. It sits in my pocket, and if ever I see a machine with good-looking prospects, I can spend an hour or so getting better acquainted with it. No-one should ever pass up the chance when it comes knocking on your door.

Just one problem for me these days. Video poker strategy isn’t just about accuracy. Speed also is important. You gotta play fast enough to make your money per hour. I’m not fast enough no more. I need my thinking time and the reflexes have slowed. I can’t play enough hands per hour to make it really worth my while.

Some of you probably asking why play video poker at all. Well, it’s kinda second nature to me ’cause I live in one casino or another, so I pass the slots every time on my way to the tables. I create two-way traffic. Folks see me coming to the table, they feel the intimidation factor. Skill with the cards is one thing, but face-to-face is another thing. Guess the ones as knows me don’t want to make the wrong play and look more than a mite foolish so, as soon as they decently can, they’re on their way back to the video poker slots where they feel more comfortable on their ownsome. Fortunately there’s always more than a few newcomers and a few of the old hands as fancy their chances to keep me interested in the real thing.

But sticking with video poker, the most common machines simulate draw poker using one 52-card deck with a virtual shuffle after every hand. First off, you ante up — that’s coins in the slots or your credit balance taking a hit. Five random cards hit the virtual felt. You weigh up how many of the five you’re discarding, and random replacements are dealt from the remaining 47 cards. For those of you as likes hard numbers, there’s 2,598,960 possible hands as can be produced with a 52-card deck.

Now that is the kind of information that intimidates!

Playing video poker online, the virtual shuffle or random number generator (RNG) in the machine simulates the probabilities of drawing any one of the combinations of hands. The House edge comes from adjusting the pay tables in line with the probability set. And ’cause the House always does its sums right, that edge is clearly set and damned hard to beat.

Perhaps, you’ve been thinking that there’s no skill in this game. Well, you’re the one making the decision which cards to keep out of your first five. But that’s where we part company with the real world. In a regular poker game, you’re playing whoever’s sitting round that table. In video poker, all you’re trying to do is get one of the winning card combinations listed in the pay table. The game isn’t to beat anyone else’s hand.

That means there’s a proper mathematical playing strategy for video poker. For any five card deal, what you hold or discard can be calculated to give you the best outcome against the pay table for the machine you’re playing. Change the pay table and your proper playing strategy gotta change too. As the size of that old jackpot changes, your strategy’s changing right alongside.

So, that’s my jug empty and my hangover gone. Time for me to go earn my living. Catch ya ’round. Hey, look. This is me with my nice big smile coming right atcha.