Deuces Wild Video Poker can be a very good game (it is, for the most part, the # 1 game of choice for most Las Vegas pros) or it can be terrible (just ask any player in the Midwest). Most of that has to do with the pay schedule of the particular variation and it's not within the scope of this article to cover that in detail, but I've written a piece on it and you can find it in the archives of "The GameMaster's Video Poker Bible" under the title "Pick a Game - Part 2".

Like all other VP games, the pay schedule dictates the strategy, so what I want to do here is discuss some fundamental errors of a fairly common Deuces Wild game. One of the biggest differences between "Midwest Deuces" and many other Deuces games has to do with the pay out on a Full House. In what is commonly called the 'Full-pay' Deuces Wild (FPDW) game, the Full House pays 15 for 5, but many of the more common games have a payout of 20 for 5 for the Full House. That brings us to what is probably the most common mistake made by players:

In the full-pay game (15 for 5 for a Full House), a dealt two-pair looks like this:

6h, 6s, 10d, Jd, Jh
Hold Two-pair: 2.5532
Hold J, J: 2.8067
Hold 6, 6: 2.8067

Notice that it makes no difference which pair is held, because the lowest pay in this game is for three-of-a-kind so the 'high' cards carry no extra value. But the real point here is that the two-pair must be broken in order to get the best return; the low payout on the Full House causes that.

As I mentioned earlier, most Midwestern games pay 20 for 5 on the Full House, so here's the same hand when calculated with the "Deuces Deluxe" pay schedule, a game which returns 100.3% in its full-pay version

6h, 6s, 10d, Jd, Jh
Hold Two-pair: 3.4043
Hold J, J: 2.8116
Hold 6, 6: 2.8116

You can easily see that there's quite a penalty if one makes a mistake on this hand.

The biggest problem I had with this article was to decide which Deuces Wild game to discuss. The traditional, "full-pay" game is usually found only in Las Vegas and while I know we have quite a few readers who either live there or go there quite often, I've decided to cover a game which is much more common. The game I'll discuss only gets to the 100+% return level with a progressive Royal. Its pay schedule is as follows:

The theoretical return for this game is 98.91% when the Royal's at 4000 coins. It gets to 100% when the Royal's about 6400 coins ($1600 on a quarter machine). Yeah, sad. But that's how it is in the other 49 states.

But let's look at some of the fundamental errors people make at this game. One change here: I've set the Royal at 6400 coins because you shouldn't be playing it otherwise. Whenever you see a "W", that's a deuce. Here we go:

This one is tough, but now you'll know the correct play whether you do it or not:

Ad, Kd, Qd, Jd, W
Hold Wild Royal: 125.0000
Hold J,Q,K,A: 147.0213

Remember, the Royal's at 6400 on this game; if it was at 4000 the Wild Royal would be the correct play. (But you're not going to be playing then, are you?)

Here's another tough call:

W, W, W, 7s, 7d
Hold 3 Deuces: 71.4940
Hold 5K: 75.0000

So, don't draw for the 'ducks' but stick with the 'Big K'.

Here's an interesting hand:

W, 5s, 6s, 10d, Ac
Hold W only: 4.9846
Hold W, 5, 6: 5.2590

In a lot of Deuces games, any straight flush draw which is held should be at least 7-high so that the 2 (as opposed to the "W") doesn't make up part of the hand. But here it works.

Here's a similar hand:

W, 5s, 8s, 10d, Ac
Hold W, 5, 8: 4.8011
Hold W only: 4.9692

With the 'gap' in the potential Straight Flush, the better play is to just hold the deuce.

Having one or more wild cards in the hand sure simplifies things, so let's look at a few without any:

Ac, 3c, 4d, 5d, 6h
Hold none: 1.6472
Hold 3, 4, 5, 6: 1.7021

You can see that this straight draw, a good hand in most other games, barely qualifies in this one, but it's still a keeper.

But don't let that fool you:

8c, 9h, 10d, Jh, 3c
Hold none: 1.5837
Hold 8, 9, 10, J: 2.5532

Four-card Straights do have a lot of value in this game; it's just those that need 2s which are worth less.

Here's a real tough hand to remeber:

Jh, Jc, Jd, Qd, 10d
Hold the trips: 9.3941
Hold the 3-card Royal: 9.7086

Remember that Trips in this game only gets your bet back and, with all those wild cards floating around, the Wild Royal is a good shot.

The only advice I can give you regarding Deuces Wild games is to check the pay schedule before you play and, if it's a good game, be sure you're using the proper strategy for it. Two software programs have been indispensable in the production of this series; TomSki's "Video Poker Strategy Master" and Dean Zamzow's "Bob Dancer presents WinPoker" (version 6.0).

See you here next time, when we'll look at Joker games.