Page 24 - March 2014 • Southern California Gaming Guide

Bob Dancer: Video Poker
UAsing 9/6 Jacks or Better Strategy to Play 8/5 Bonus Poker
friend of mine, Terry, usually plays 9/6 Jacks or Better ( JoB). ere is one casino, however,
where 8/5 Bonus Poker (BP) is the best game. He wants to know what changes he should are more complicated, although, again, some may nd
make to his JoB strategy in order to play BP.
First of all, Terry doesn’t have to make any changes. JoB strategy works pretty well on BP. Rounding
o to three decimal places, perfect BP returns 99.167% and BP using JoB strategy returns 99.158%. Is that di erence big enough to make strategic adjustments? You’ll have to answer that for yourself. To me, the answer is a resounding Yes. Others feel that the two numbers are close enough so that the extra bene t from learning correct BP strategy isn’t worth the mental e ort required to do so.
the cost of making the wrong choice insigni cant. For example, in both games JT usually > KJ, but the list of exceptions for JoB is not the same as the list of exceptions for BP—although there is considerable overlap.
Employing the term “usually” makes things somewhat more complicated than some players wish. e reason I use it is because some readers will practice these hands on a computer. If I say that usually in JoB, QT
> AQ, then when they come across a hand where AQ > QT, the player can say, “Okay, this must be one of the exceptions.” If I don’t include the “usually” caveat, then when players come across one of the exceptions they might well wonder what they are doing wrong.
If you wish to go deeper into this and learn the exceptions, there are two excellent sources for the information. In Video Poker for Winners, if you’re in 8/5 Bonus Poker and click on analyze and then strategy and then show report, you will get a list ofeveryexceptiontothebasicstrategy.Tobesure,these exceptions are to the basic 8/5 Bonus Poker strategy rather than to the basic 9/6 Jacks or Better strategy. Still, the strategies are similar so the list of exceptions will be useful to you.
Second, the Dancer/Daily Winners Guide: Volume 1 Jacks or Better includes a strategy on 8/5 Bonus Poker. It covers the di erences in the two games at the basic level and it also covers the di erences in the two games at the advanced level.
Professional video poker player Bob Dancer’s radio show Gambling With An Edge, is on Thursday evenings 7 p.m. to 8 p.m. Paci c Time on radio station 1230 AM in Las Vegas online at klav1230am.com. Dancer’s products may be ordered at bobdancer.com or at 1-800-244-2224 Monday through Friday from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Paci c Time.
Another question is: How involved do you want to make the strategies? Both games have penalty cards. e penalty cards in JoB are fairly rare and uncomplicated.
e penalty cards in BP are more numerous and much more complicated. For this list, I’m going to avoid most penalty cards — but I won’t avoid them completely.
Notation-wise, I’m going to use bold italics to indicate suited cards — so QT would indicate a queen and ten of the same suit. If I refer to AKQJ (which is not in bold italics), this indicates an ace, king, queen, and jack of at least two suits, but possibly three or four suits.
I’m also going to use an x, as in KTx, to indicate in bold italics a card of the same suit as the other cards, but not close enough to them to be part of a royal ush or straight ush combination. In other words, the x would represent any of the third cards in: KT2, KT3, KT4, KT5, KT6, KT7, and KT8.
I’m also going to use the words “always” and “usually.” You know what “always” means. I’m going to use the term “usually” in an unusual way. e way the word is most often used, it refers to frequency. If an event happens
more than 50% of the time, we say it usually happens. When I employ “usually” in this article, I’m referring to the strategy that will result in the greater Expected
Return for the player.
For example, compare AKQT8 and AJQT8 in JoB.
Both hands include a 3-card straight ush which has one high card and two inside gaps (1h2i) with a 4-card inside straight which has three high cards. As it happens, there
are 12 di erent hands where these two combinations both appear in the same ve cards. In exactly half of them, including the rst one, holding the straight ush draw is correct by 2.8 cents if you’re a 5-coin $1 player. In the other half, including the second example, holding the 4-card inside straight is correct by 4.6 cents. erefore, I will conclude it’s usually correct to go for the 4-card inside straight.
Case 1: JoB: BP:
Case 2: JoB:
BP: Case 3:
JoB: BP:
Case 4: JoB: BP:
Case 5: JoB: BP:
KQ9, KJ9, QJ8 > AKQJ always QJ8 > AKQJ > KQ9, KJ9 always
SF3 2h2i; SF3 1h1i; SF3 0h0i >
KQ, KJ, QJ always
KQ, KJ, QJ > SF3 1h1i; SF3 0h0i usually
SF3 1h2i; SF3 0h1i > JT always JT > SF3 1h2i; SF3 0h1 usually
QT > AQ usually AQ > QT always
KTx, hold KT usually KTx, hold K by itself always
ere are numerous other subtle di erences that
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PAGE 24
SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA GAMING GUIDE
MARCH 2014