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Video Poker Archive The Sim Series Part 2: Full-Pay Jacks or Better Because most of our readers are "recreational" players and not full-time professionals, I thought it would be interesting to run a series of simulations on various Video Poker games to give you an idea of what may happen in a relatively small amount of play. For each game covered, I ran 50 simulations of 7200 hands each with the idea that this might represent a year's worth of play for someone who plays eight to fourteen hours each week. If you play at a rate of 600 hands per hour, then this works out to be twelve hours of time on the machine, so one simulation may represent the total play on a weekend visit to Las Vegas, Biloxi, Atlantic City, etc. Obviously, 50 simulations represent 360,000 hands of play and, if you are betting five quarters at a time, it amounts to $450,000 of total bets. If you're a dollar player, this would be an astonishing $1,800,000 of "action" which should qualify you for a lot of good comps at all but the stingiest of casinos. As you'll see, a lot can happen to your bankroll in 7200 hands of play. Wild swings can and do occur but knowing that helps, I think, especially if you have any doubts about the "randomness" of a machine, be it in a brick-and-mortar casino, or in a cyber-casino. The Methodology All of these simulations were run in the Autoplay mode of WinPoker, version 6.0. The program does not keep track of the highs and lows reached during a simulation, so I had to "eyeball" that as it was running. But, for our purposes here, I believe the accuracy achieved is adequate. All I basically did was to run one 7200-hand simulation after another, record the highs, lows and final result and then compile them into the table you'll see below. I then extracted certain averages, streaks, etc. which I though might be helpful. Several points to remember about these sims: First, WinPoker plays each hand 'perfectly' and we humans probably don't, so the results here are undoubtedly better than the average player will receive. Secondly, a total simulation of 360,000 hands at any Video Poker game is nowhere near "the long run". It's actually about 10% of "the long run" so it will be surprising to find that the total return for a simulation matches that of the paytable for the game covered. B>ut, all-in-all, I think these sims have considerable practical use because they represent what may happen to any of us in a given number of hands at our favorite Video Poker game. Just remember: your mileage may vary. The Games This series will eventually cover the majority of all Video Poker games out there, such as Jacks or Better, Deuces Wild, Joker Poker, etc. which means this may go on for a long time. We'll cover "full-pay" versions, games with progressives and weird variations, if possible, so if there's a game which interests you, please e-mail me at aceten@stlnet.com and I'll try to do a sim on it. Part 2: Full-Pay Jacks or Better For many of us Video Poker fanatics, this was the first game we played. In its "full-pay" version, Jacks or Better offers the player a long-term return of 99.54% if the proper playing strategy is used. That obviously isn't 100% so a slot club cash rebate or other comps are needed to make this into a long-term winner. Fotunately, good Jacks games are fairly common both in brick-and-mortar casino as well as on the Internet and some have progressive Royals which add to the return. The only problem is that the returns are never all that big with a Jacks game. For most of the time, you're losing and if you have a big gap between Royals, your pockets can get pretty empty. But, this is an easy game to learn and if you play the dollar versions at brick-and-mortar casinos, you'll get treated like royalty when it comes to comps. A good player can attack this game with extreme accuracy at a rate of 750 hands an hour which, at a dollar game, amounts to $3750 an hour of 'action'. That's easily the equivalent of a Blackjack player betting $50 a hand. So, if you're at that level of play and aren't eating for free, have a serious talk with the nearest slot host.
Comments: The final result was a return of 99.67%, remarkably close to expectation. That underscores just how important the slot club cash rebate is to players of this game. The biggest win in any one session was 4525 credits or $1131.25 at a quarter game and the biggest session loss was over $600 which implies that a "trip" bankroll of about $1000 is needed if you'll be playing about 7200 hands of Jacks on that trip. The bankroll needed to seriously go after this game is relatively large, because it's basically a long-term loser. With a 0.67% cash rebate, a bankroll of $16,715 is required in order to keep your "risk of ruin" at the 5% level and that's at a quarter game! (Thanks to TomSki for that calculation.) The only time most pros play this game is when there is a large progressive Royal available and that's probably a good strategy for you as well.
See you here next time. ©copyright, 2000 The GameMaster Online, Inc. |
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