This is a new software package that retails for $29.95 and is shipped to you on a 3.5" floppy. Designed for Windows 95/98 and NT, it's easily installed and doesn't come with a written manual because it's simple and very intuitive to operate. The basic 'game' is the very popular WinPoker 3.0 by Better Bytes, a program I've had on my hard drive for years. It has good graphics, can be played quickly when practicing and covers a lot of game variations. Dancer has added many, many improvements in the form of his training programs, of course, but the basic game is important and it's nice to work with an old friend.

Bob Dancer writes a column for Casino Player magazine, among others, and is the author of three spiral-bound books on video poker, one of which covers the 9/6 Jacks game, the other Deuces Wild and the third, Double Bonus poker. If you've read these books, you know Mr. Dancer is in love with decimal points. Decimal points to the 4th place; this man can split a hair with the best of them. But I understand his point of view - it's basically one of: "if it can be calculated, it can be learned." In all fairness he does admit that certain refinements of the proper playing strategy should be learned only by the most fanatical of players, a distinction that is easy to make in a book, but it does cause some confusion in a simulated game, as I'll later demonstrate. But if you're looking for a precise calculator of return on a game, this is it. Not long ago, Mr. Dancer wrote me, explaining that the 100.7% return for the full-pay Deuces Wild game in one of my articles was incorrect; it was actually 100.84% and therefore I should buy his software, because I was using flawed data from other software programs. Well, It worked, because I bought his software, but whether the Deuces game is 100.7% or 100.84% is unimportant to a guy like me who is trying to switch people from 92% return slot machines to ANY Video Poker game, let alone a full-pay version. But his point is well-taken; it's just as easy to be accurate, and with his program, you can be. (At least I assume so, because the disputed 100.7% came from several other authors who I thought were correct in their analyses; will someone come along in the future to say Dancer is wrong?)

But let's continue. Since I play a lot of Double Bonus Poker, I set that up for a training session, added in some credits and began playing. The player has several tutorial options in the game; you may have the program show you the correct play, or you may have it warn you if you're about to make the wrong play. I set it to 'warn' and began playing. If I was about to make an incorrect play, a little box would pop up and not only tell me of my mistake, but also would advise me of the seriousness of the error: minor, moderate or major and tell me to what degree (on a percentage basis) I was wrong. Thus, a simple error like forgetting about a straight 'penalty' card may show that I was 99.75% correct, and I can call up a 'details' table which showed me the correct play. The program tracks your play for the session and keeps track of these errors, but more importantly it keeps track of the percentage error rate, so after a session, it will tell you that your play enabled you to extract, as an example, 99.93% of the total return of the game. What this means is that, in the case of Double Bonus Poker, which (according to Dancer) returns 100.1725% (he DOES love decimals, doesn't he?), my play during the session would have extracted 99.93% of that or a 100.1023% long term return. I think this feature is excellent, because it shows you precisely what your mistakes cost you in terms of your edge vs. the casino. I think a lot of VP players believe they know proper playing strategy, but most don't. This feature will show you how your play stacks up.

Let's say we're dealt the following hand:

Holding the K,Q alone has an expectation of 2.8252 and holding the K,Q,6 has an expectation of 2.8168, so the K,Q is the correct play.

But, if we're dealt this hand:

the 10 is a penalty card and the numbers look like this:
Hold K, Q 2.7758
Hold K, Q, 6 2.8168

If you elect to hold the K,Q, an error message will appear, since the proper play is the 3-card flush. Unless you understand the effect of penalty cards, this can be confusing, because sometimes the 'general' rule will apply and other times it won't. Good for accuracy, but it slows down the learning process.

But that's a minor beef about a program which delivers so much for such a small price. If you have even the slightest interest in Video Poker, you should own this program. From my own point of view, it has all the tools I need to help me with my day-to-day play and provides a ton of information to use in my weekly articles. You can buy "Bob Dancer presents WinPoker" on the 'Net at Stanford Wong's site (www.bj21.com/) or via snail-mail from Huntington Press. Go get it; it's the best 30 bucks you'll ever spend on VP.