I doubt that very many of you have established a separate bankroll for your video poker play, even though you should have $$$ set aside for such activities. Undoubtedly, most of you go to the casino with a few hundred dollars which, if lost, will be replaced by your next paycheck. If you're smart, you play the quarter machines, exclusively. But I see you playing at the dollar machines sometimes, particularly those with large progressive royal flushes where you "take a shot". You have got to know that your odds of hitting a royal flush at a dollar machine with just several hundred dollars of risk capital are very small. Remember that a royal will occur, on average, about once in every 40,000 hands and if you're going to play for only three or four hours (assuming your $$$ last that long), you have only about a 5 percent chance of hitting it. I do understand, however; it's a lot like buying a lottery ticket. The odds are astronomical, but the payoff is so large when compared with the risk that it's very appealing. So, if I can't stop you from taking 'shots', let me at least give you some insights on how to give yourself the best chance to win. Just keep in mind that you're playing right into the casino's hands....they love under-financed gamblers.

The idea for this article came to me the other day when I was at the casino with some friends. We were there primarily to play quarter video poker and, while I normally carry a thousand dollars with me, I only had $200. My friend Bill noticed that one of the dollar video poker machines had a progressive royal which was at $7800. This bank of machines shares a common progressive royal, but there are five different games one can play: Double Bonus poker, Bonus Poker Deluxe, Deuces Wild, Bonus Poker and 8/5 Jacks or Better. If you been reading my articles for some time, you're probably familiar with most of these games and I can tell you that the Double Bonus game is in a 9/7 format, and the Bonus Poker is in a 7/5 format. (Just for the record, both the Deuces Wild and the Bonus Poker Deluxe games have horrible pay schedules and don't even figure in this.) Bill wanted to take a shot so we put up $100 each and sat down to play; he started first. He then asked, "Which game?" That was a good question. My 'long-term' instincts told me that the Double Bonus game was the best in overall return, but that return comes at a price. As you may know, a hand of two-pair at Double Bonus pays only five for five. What the game designer did was to move the payback to the 'upper' part of the schedule in the form of enhanced payoffs for the various four-of-a-kind hands, consequently we 'experts' describe such a game as having a higher variance. In plain English, that means someone with just a few hundred dollars to risk is likely going to lose. That's why, in a nutshell, casinos can afford to offer games with a long-term return of over 100 percent; the average player can't really attack the game effectively. On the other hand, both the Jacks game and the Bonus game pay ten for five on two-pair, so less of the payback for those games is at the high end. But just what kind of differences are we talking about here?

As I stated before, the reality is that you will probably not hit the royal flush. You very likely will not hit a straight flush, either. And, in the case of the Double Bonus poker game or the Bonus poker game, you probably won't hit the 4 Aces, simply because that hand appears, on average, only about once every 4500 or 5200 plays. (The lower figure is for the Double Bonus game which places more emphasis upon drawing for four Aces). For a three or four-hour play, it is most likely that you'll hit some 4Ks, but they'll probably be the "little guys". That being the case, let's examine these two games from a short-term point of view. The biggest difference, as I mentioned earlier, lies in how two-pair are paid. In the Double Bonus game, two-pair provide about 12 percent of the total return, but in the Bonus Poker and the Jacks or Better games, two-pair provide over 25 percent of the total return. Since this is a hand which will occur quite frequently, it has a significant impact on your short-term play. That reason alone makes Bonus Poker and/or the Jacks game very attractive for our purposes here. But let's examine this a bit further.

Realistically speaking, in a short-term play, you won't hit anything much over a 'regular' 4K (5-King) so we need to calculate the return on a game up to that point. In the case of the Double Bonus game, the return offered by all hands from the 4K (5-King) down is 88.24 percent. What this means it is that you are bucking a 12 percent casino edge in a short-term play on this game. In the case of the Bonus poker game, the return offered by all hands from the 4K (5-King) down is 89.23 percent; a slight improvement over the Double Bonus game, but with a much higher 'short, short' return (full house and lower). These figures, by the way, come from the excellent software called "Bob Dancer presents WinPoker" and they take into account the strategy changes which one will make with such a high royal flush. (For example, you would break certain high pairs to draw to a 3-card royal, and that naturally lowers the probability of getting a 4K). Let's also take a look at the 8/5 Jack's game to see how that figures in the equation. This may or may not come as a surprise you, but it did to me; the Jacks game has a return from the 4K and lower of 94.16% percent which really isn't that bad for short-term play. My problem here it is that even with a $7800 Progressive royal, the total return offered on the game is still under 100 percent! (99.47 to be exact).

Let me sum up so that you know where I'm going with this. The 9/7 Double Bonus game with a $7800 royal has a long-term return of 101.20%; the 7/5 Bonus Poker game has a long-term return of 100.17% with a $7800 royal, but with lower variance because of the 10 for 5 pay on two-pair. The 8/5 Jacks game has the lowest return, 99.47%, but also has the lowest variance. So, if my only goal is to make a certain amount of $$$ last as long as possible, my choice has to be the Jacks game, even though it has the lowest overall return. Now do you see why the casinos win most of the time? In the situation where the player can profit, the bankroll requirement is enormous (if you consider $30,000 enormous) and, in the case where the player has a modest chance of 'survival', the long-term return guarantees a loss!

"So, which one?", asked Bill.

I'll send him a copy of this article.

See you here next time.