Page 14 - March 2009 • Southern California Gaming Guide

Bob Dancer: Video Poker
Understanding Momentum
During April, May, and June, I usually watch the playo s of the National Basketball Association. I don’t bet the games. I watch the games merely for entertainment. One of the things that every fan notices is that when one team scores several baskets in a row, the coach of the other team calls a time out. Time to regroup. Try to stop the other team’s momentum. e same thing happens when a team misses several shots in a row. e coach calls
than when they aren’t. e machine isn’t “behaving” or “misbehaving.” It’s just shu ing cards and dealing whatever comes up.
So changing machines won’t change anything relevant. You’re still going to get a fair shu e where sometimes
the results come and sometimes they don’t.
Changing games, though, will make a di erence,
whether it is on the same multi-game machine or a di erent machine altogether. Each game has an optimal result, discounted by your skill level in that particular game. It is very common to nd a 99.5% game, a 99.0% game, a 98.5% game, a 97.8% game, and a 95% game all on the same physical machine.
Players who are gambling intelligently and playing to win, will always be playing the 99.5% game on this machine, if they’re playing at all. Changing games will change things for the worse. (Players who don’t know what the di erent games are worth, or who are playing for enjoyment purposes other than for winning purposes may be on any of the games.) In addition, players who change games frequently, generally speaking, do not playanyofthegameswell.Forsuretheydon’tplayall of them well.
Consider a hand like A♥ K♠ Q♦ T♦ 8♦ and you’re switching back and forth between 9/6 Jacks or Better (99.5%),8/5BonusPoker(99.2%),9/7DoubleBonus (99.1%), and 9/5 Double Double Bonus (97.9%). Do you know when it’s right to hold ‘QT8’ and when it’s right to hold AKQT? (For the record, go for the straight ush in 9/6 Jacks and go for the inside straight in the other three.) If not, why are you switching games back and forth? Wouldn’t you be better o concentrating on learning the best game well than in playing all games poorly?
Bob Dancer is America’s best-known video poker writer and teacher. He has a variety of “how to play better video poker” products, including his new book, Video Poker for Intelligent Beginners, Winner’s Guides, strategy cards, his autobiography Million Dollar Video Poker, and his two novels, including Sex, Lies, and Video Poker. Dancer’s products, may be ordered at www.bobdancer.com or at 1-800-244-2224 Monday through Friday, 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Paci c Time.
time out to switch things up.
Many players carry this philosophy over to gambling.
If they’ve been running bad, they change machines or change games. If you’ve watched enough sporting events, this seems to be a perfectly natural response. After all, if the smartest coaches of professional teams do it, how wrong can it be?
Except it doesn’t work in gambling. What is so di erent between playing
of-a-kind every 23.5 times on average—and one or the other every 9.7 times.
But sometimes you’ll hit three in a row, and sometimes you’re going to draw to trips 30 or more times in a row without improving them. Not because there is anything right or wrong with your technique, your frame of mind, or whether the machine is in a
video poker and playing basketball that making these changes works so poorly in the one game and so well in the other?
e di erence is in how muchskillisrelatedtothe immediate results. In the game of basketball, a player who misses ten shots in a rowhassomethingwrong with his technique, and a player who hits ten shots in a row is “in the zone.”
ere are physical and psychological explanations for these results.
In video poker, if you are dealt A♥ A♣ A♦ 8♣ 5♦, the correct play is to hold the three aces and draw. Good players make this play. Bad players make this play. But what happens next is up to the random
“Any individual session depends largely on dealt hands. Dealt four-
of-a-kinds show up every 4,165 hands on average in every game withfifty-twocardswithoutwild cards. That might be once every five totenhours,dependingonhowfast you play. But all of us remember times when we had two or three
of these within the same hour. (Those times were winners for us, generally). We also remember when
we didn’t get any of these nice hands for days at a time. (Those
times were not winners, generally).”
“hot mode” or a “cold mode.” It’s just part of the normal swings in the game.
Any individual session depends largely on dealt hands. Dealt four-of-a-kinds show up every 4,165 hands on average in every game with fty-two cards without wild cards. at might be once every ve to ten hours, depending on how fast you play. But all of us remember times when we had two or three of these within the same hour. ( ose times were winners for us, generally). We also remember when we didn’t get any of these nice hands for days at a time. ( ose times
number generator. You’re going to make a full house every 16.4 times on average and going to make four-
were not winners, generally). But we aren’t playing any better when the dealt four-of-a-kinds are coming
Page 14
SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA GAMING GUIDE
March 2009
Video Poker with Bob Dancer