Here in the Midwest, we have the dubious distinction of being the home of what's frequently called "Illinois Deuces", a game of Deuces Wild Video Poker that has a long-term return of less than 99%. Because the Deuces games here have such low returns I have never bothered with them, especially since full-pay All American (100.7%), full-pay Double Bonus (100.15%) and other games with good progressives were readily available. Don't get me wrong: if full-pay Deuces Wild (FPDW) were available here, it would be my game of choice because it has a long-term return of 100.76% for perfect play and, because of the wild cards, the bankroll fluctuations (variance) of the game is pretty reasonable.

But probably 99% of all the FPDW games in the world are located in Nevada and I just don't get out there often enough to justify learning another game. While there are some Deuces Wild machines available locally with progressives that can raise the total return to over 100%, I think it's fair to say that Deuces Wild games here have been a "sideshow" for most serious Video Poker players. But that may be changing.

Several years ago, a Deuces Wild game called "Loose Deuces" came on the scene and it had a total return even higher than FPDW. Because the hand of four Deuces paid 2500 for 5, the return was 100.97% in what I now call the full-pay version of the game, so it really had a lot of appeal: the wild card aspect, a "mini-jackpot" and a return of well over 100%, especially when combined with some sort of cash rebate from a slot club. In an area like Las Vegas, such a return is going to attract a lot of play from professional players, so the game didn't exactly proliferate, but it did survive. Somewhere along the way, the casinos realized that they weren't going to make a large profit from this game, so the pay schedule began getting trimmed and the total return was lowered. The "15/10" format (I'll explain that in a minute) was altered to a 15/8 pay schedule and now there is even a 12/8 format, usually found in lower denominations. Here's a comparison of the pay schedules (for 5 coins bet) that I've seen:

As many of you know, when we refer to a game like 9/6 Jacks or Better, we're referring to the one-coin payout on the Full House/Flush, which is usually the areas that are changed to alter the long-term return of the game. For the Loose Deuces game, the pay items changed are the 5K and the Straight Flush, so this is something you need to get used to, if you haven't played it.

When this game first came out, Loose Deuces had a pay schedule of 17/10 that offered a return of 101.60%, but I have never seen one and if any still exist, they're most certainly in Nevada. What can be termed as "full-pay" today is the 15/10 game (100.97%) and it's hard to find anywhere, let alone in the Midwest, so you probably don't have any in your backyard, but it's worth a look. What you'll most likely find is the 15/8 version, but even that has a long-term return of over 100%, in fact, it's very close to the return of full-pay Double Bonus Poker, one of my favorite games. And the short-pay 12/8 version is still better than the 98.91% return offered by "Illinois Deuces", but all of this comes at a price.

Over 10% of the total return from this game is tied up in the 4 Deuces, so if "the ducks" don't come, your $$$ disappear at a rapid clip. But that's also true of many Video Poker games that offer big bonus-type hands, so how does a 15/8 game of Loose Deuces stack up against, say, 10/7 Double Bonus Poker, which has a long-term return of 100.17% for perfect play?

The primary way we compare games that have similar long-term returns is through a measurement called "variance". Without getting too technical, variance tells us what kind of ups and downs we can expect in our bankroll as we're playing the game. For example, if you bet $10 on a hand of Blackjack, you either win or lose $10 in about 90% of the hands you play. Sometimes you'll win $15 and at other times you may double your bet and win or lose $20, but most of the time, your bankroll will go up or down by $10, so we say that Blackjack has a low variance, which is about 1.15 bets per hand. In the case of Video Poker, you might bet $1.25 and most of the time you'll lose $1.25.

If you don't lose, there are a wide range of possibilities for what may happen, such as winning $2.50 or $10 or maybe even $1000 or more. That translates into a lot of swings in your bankroll and the measurement of that is variance. For Blackjack, it's about 1.1 and for most Video Poker games, it's 20 or more, expressed on a per-coin basis.

We can use variance to tell us what might happen in a playing session for one game and compare that to a similar game. Now remember that the long-term return for Double Bonus Poker is 100.17% and the 15/8 version of Loose Deuces has a long-term return of 100.15%. But (and here's the bad news), Double Bonus Poker has a variance of 28.26 and 15/8 Loose Deuces has a variance of 70.70. If we were to play 10,000 hands of each game, betting $5 per hand, we'd expect to make about $85 at the Double Bonus and about $75 at the Loose Deuces. But, because of the huge difference in variance, our playing session could have results like this:

It's easy to see that, when you're having a good day at Loose Deuces, it's a very good day, but if you're having a bad day, it's terrible. A lot of that is, of course, due to the 2500 for 5 pay on the 4 Deuces. Naturally, you can divide these numbers by 4 if you play quarter games and a nice bonus that comes with Loose Deuces is that the 4 Deuces pay 500 for 1 if you play less than the maximum coins. There aren't a whole lot of opportunities in casinos where you can turn $.25 into $125.00 in one hand of cards. It sure is tempting, isn't it?

I'll see you here next time.