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The GameMaster's Secrets
Recreational Video Poker - Part 1

Playing Video Poker isn't always fun. Because so much of the player's return is tied up in rare hands like Royal Flushes, most of us lose our $$$ trip after trip to the casino and that really sucks. Unfortunately, it's the nature of the beast, but if you're playing good games that offer a long-term return over 100% and you have enough patience, you'll eventually show a profit, assuming you're playing the game properly.

I can't change the underlying mathematics of Video Poker, so if you play "bad" games improperly, you're going to eventually lose. But, if you can accept a (hopefully) small loss and write it off as an "entertainment" expense, I can probably show you a way to have more fun by making more of your casino visits winning sessions.

Now understand that I'm not suggesting that you quit playing as soon as you get $50 ahead, because I know that you're at the casino to play, to gamble and you're not likely to get back on the plane or back in your car twenty minutes after you arrived. That being the case, what we want to accomplish are as many of the following as possible:

1. Make your gambling budget, whatever its size, last as long as possible.
2. Play enough Video Poker to perhaps get some freebies from the casino, be it rooms or food or maybe just a hat or fanny pack.
3. Enjoy the excitement of gambling, especially if you're with friends.
4. Have fun.
5. Win some $$$.

You might have other goals to add to the list, but I think you'll agree that all of them would be easy to do if you could hit a Royal Flush in your first hour of play on every trip. I can assure you I don't know how to do that, but I'll tell you about some techniques and tips that just might work for you.

There are basically two approaches I'm going to take with this: one for those of you who live near some casinos and go to them on a fairly regular basis, and one for those of you who travel, perhaps four or five times a year, to some place like Las Vegas or Tunica, etc. I'll cover this in two parts and in this one, I'll tell you what I do because I live close to casinos. In part 2, I'll outline a strategy for those of you who visit a casino center several times a year. I'm also aware a few of you live close to casinos that have lousy Video Poker (like my readers in Connecticut) and to you guys, I recommend taking up Blackjack. Sorry.

Those of you who live near casinos should be intimately familiar with the games that are available and should feel confident about playing any of them with a high degree of accuracy. Don't get me wrong; I'm not suggesting that you should become an expert at playing some game with a 95% long-term return, but accurate play always has been and always will be the key to keeping your losses at a minimum, which in turn will maximize your chances of accomplishing the items on our list. Simply put, the better player you are, the less $$$ you will lose. Also, if you're familiar with what's available, you can check progressives regularly to see if any have pushed the return on the games to over 100%. A lot of $$$ can be made "hawking" progressives, if you have a big bankroll. If you don't have a big BR, try thinking "outside the box." That doesn't mean do something stupid, but it can mean taking some risk.

As most of you know, I live close to the five casinos in the St. Louis market, so rather than produce some sort of list of do's and don'ts let me tell you about some recent experiences I had that will show you how I think. About 95% of all my play is at All American Video Poker and that game has a long-term return of 100.7%, so I'm one of the lucky ones. As my schedule permits, I take advantage of slot club bonus days (Triple Point Tuesday and so forth), cash in my bounce-back coupons, and do anything else that adds to my return. Since I make, maybe, $6 or $8 an hour at my All American play, I think it's safe to say that I'm not in it for the paycheck.

However, playing VP on a regular basis keeps me in touch with what's happening in the casinos and it's what a lot of our readers like you do, so I can relate to your experiences. It also provides good "cover" for my Blackjack play, gives me story ideas and, quite frankly, it gets me out of the house, because all my other work is done at home. I also like to win. No, let me rephrase that: I love to win. And I love to get creative at my VP play if there's a reasonable chance of making $300 or $400 in a few hours.

Although I never play Deuces Wild VP (all the games here have terrible pay schedules), I do have some good Double Bonus Poker available to me and I dearly love to play that game. In a recent article entitled "Bargain Shopping", I wrote about how I check out the 9/7/5 Double Bonus game here that has progressives for all the Four-of-a-Kind hands, the Straight Flush and the Royal, so I won't go over that again. But this game can often be at a point where the long-term return is over 100% and I know how to play it very well, so when I get bored with All American, I usually play that.

Let me tell you about something that happened recently. If you play a lot of VP, you'll eventually develop some instinct for the game, so I often am aware that I've played for 4 or 5 hours without hitting a 4K and, since I know that I will eventually hit one, I use that to my advantage. Well, I had gone for thousands of hands without getting 4 Aces (in fact, I hit 2 Royals without ever getting 4 Aces) and, while I'm very reluctant to say something like being "due" to hit them, I knew it would eventually happen. That being the case, am I better off hitting them at an All American game where they pay 200 coins, or hitting them at Double Bonus Poker where they pay 800+ coins?

If everything else is equal, it's obvious that I'm better off getting paid at least 800 coins for them (usually it's more because of the progressives), but things aren't exactly equal when you compare All American to 9/7 Double Bonus. Yet, when you figure in the cash rebates of the casinos with Double Bonus games, it comes close. All American returns 100.7% for perfect play and the casino offers only about 0.20% in cash rebates, so my overall return is roughly 100.9%. The casino that offers the 9/7 Double Bonus game with the progressives offers 2x points Monday through Thursday, so that adds 0.50% to the basic 99.1% return of the game. But, as I mentioned earlier, the progressives also add to the return, so the total averages somewhere around 100.5%. Another casino has 9/7/5 Double Bonus without any progressives, but they offer 7x slot club points on Mondays. Their cash-back rate is 0.20%, so you can see that their game has a total return of 100.5% on Mondays, which is the only day I play there.

Okay, back to my story. After the 4 Aces "drought" had gone on for a while, I started playing more Double Bonus, looking to eventually hit them for 800 coins, instead of 200 coins. Yes, I fully realize that there is no law out there called the "Maturity of Chances", ("Red hasn't come up for the last 12 spins of the Roulette wheel, so now I'll wager on Red" is a fool's bet) but the overall return of AllAm and DB, as I described in the games available to me, are similar so I'm not giving up a lot by switching whilst waiting for the quad bullets to show, which, of course, they did. While playing DB, I hit a Straight Flush for 250 coins (it pays 1000 coins on AllAm), so maybe I screwed myself, but I hit a Royal on DB for $1150 and that pays only $1000 on AllAm, so it probably came out even. But at least I felt like I was being "proactive" in my play. There is little, if any mathematical justification for my play but it's fun to do and it gives me a break from AllAm, which is a tough game to play and it makes me feel smart when it works. Again, I want to stress that I don't pay my rent with my earnings from VP, so it's not a big deal if it doesn't work.

Another good example is what happened just this week. I had played over 12 hours of quarter AllAm (about 9000 hands) and never hit quad Jacks, Kings or Queens. The casino where I was playing the AllAm has an 8/5 version of Double Double Jackpot Poker, on which all the various quads and the Royal have progressives and I saw the Royal was at $6000. That's not a bad shot in itself, but the overall payout is still pretty low, so I was as nervous as a cat in a roomful of rocking chairs when I sat down at the game.

I had won about $300 that day, so I figured I'd risk it all and see if I could hit a set of faces, which pays $400+ (it's a progressive) at Double Double Jackpot. As I was feeding my last $100 into the machine, contemplating the fact that I had just turned a decent winning day into a total waste of time; 5 hours of play and no profit, darned if I didn't hit 4 Aces, which paid $880. Now I knew I'd get the 4 faces. You do need a certain amount of confidence to be successful at this game and positive thinking never hurt anyone, so long as you don't let it cause you to put more $$$ in the machine than you should. In all humility, I don't lack for confidence or discipline, which is probably why I'm not living on the streets somewhere. But enough about me and on with the story.

Well, not only did I get 4 faces, they came in the most spectacular way imaginable. I swear this is true. I held only a Queen and drew 4 Jacks! Because of the doubling feature (4 faces with another face or Ace kicker pays double), the hand paid $820. All in all, a good day, worth about $1300 net. What now, you ask? Well, I'll go back to quarter All American and see what tomorrow brings.

Next time, I'll give you some ideas for winning at VP if you go to Las Vegas or Tunica or A.C.

See you then.