Page 24 - October 2009 • Southern California Gaming Guide

Bob Dancer: Video Poker
SIhirley Plays Suduku
nd it instructive to watch Shirley play Suduku (also spelled Sudoku) puzzles. is is not a normal hobby of hers, and the only time she really tries it is when she is on an airline ight, bored, and is thumbing through the in- ight magazine and nds one.
As most of you know, Suduku is a 27x27 square puzzle, made up of nine individual 9x9 squares. e object is to get the numbers one through nine once per each of the 27 lines, each of the 27 rows, and in each of the 9x9 boxes. ey can be easy or hard for a variety of reasons, but the main determinant is how many boxes are lled in for you ahead of time. If you take a really tough puzzle and ll in four or ve boxes at random, it sometimes becomes rather simple. (It can remain di cult, depending on which boxes are lled in.)
Although she’s asked for and received some instruction on this game from time to time over the years, she is basically a novice without good techniques in solving these puzzles. She is also impatient, so if the solution doesn’t come to
getting frustrated, or both, but basically she’s killing time until the plane lands and we go on to do whatever it is we’re planning to do when we get there. How many Suduku mistakes she made on the ight is of no
If you’re enjoying yourself playing video poker this way and it’s well within your recreational budget, by all means keep at it. Players that want to win need players like you to support the casino so the casino can a ord to support us.
But even recreational video poker players prefer winning to losing. It doesn’t take too much study to at least learn the basics of the games, including, most importantly, which pay schedules to avoid because they give you no realistic chance of winning.
While I don’t care how well Shirley plays Suduku, I care a lot how she plays video poker. Although she essentially has unlimited access to our check book and credit cards, throwing money away isn’t within the acceptable parameters for either one of us.
For health reasons, Shirley has mostly stayed out of casinos for more than a year and so has forgotten much of what she knew about video poker strategy. Even if we decided now that a casino was smoke-free enough for her to play, I’ll have to sit by her and check out her play on every hand. While this is a little tedious for both of us, we both believe her video poker results are much more important than her Suduku results.
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 the Intelligent Beginner, 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.
her fairly quickly, she’ll ip to the answer page and copy down three numbers. If that doesn’t help su ciently, she’ll go back to the answers and get another three numbers. Eventually, one way or the other, she completes the puzzle.
“I’ve watched players play video poker more or less the way Shirley plays Suduku. They’re looking at video poker as a form of amusement. They don’t know how to play (sometimes they know this and sometimes they don’t) and they regularly make guesses at what seems
Sometimes she won’t even
take the time to look at the
answers. She’ll have a particular
square narrowed down to a four
or a seven and she’ll arbitrarily
pick one of them and proceed
from there. Sometimes this
works, but when it’s wrong, it’s
really wrong. Suduku is a game
where you need to use already-
lled-in squares to give you
clues about the not- lled-in-
yet squares. Early mistakes get look at a strategy card and multiplied as you go through
the puzzle until eventually you end up in a corner and have no idea how to x the problem.
Since this is purely recreation for Shirley, however she does it is “no big deal.” She’s enjoying herself, or
importance to anyone and is soon forgotten.
e reason this is instructive is I’ve watched players play video poker more or less the way Shirley plays Suduku. ey’re looking at video poker as a form of amusement. ey don’t know how to play (sometimes they know this and sometimes they don’t) and they regularly make guesses at what seems right. Sometimes they look at a strategy card and sometimes they don’t. Sometimes they have a strategy card, but they don’t know how to read it.
e di erence between Shirley playing Suduku and these people playing video poker is that it is essentially costless for Shirley to work on the
puzzle. Playing video poker without a clue can be very expensive.
right. Sometimes they sometimes they don’t.”
Page 24
SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA GAMING GUIDE
October 2009
Video Poker with Bob Dancer