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Dancer's Answers We publish a brand-new video poker article from Bob Dancer every Thursday in this section. These columns are called "Dancer's Answers". Click on any of the links below for more Dancer's Answers: Bob Dancer Articles - Main Page Vicksburg Video Poker - May 8, 2008 Vicksburg, MS Video Poker - Part 2 - May 15, 2008 Vicksburg Casino Video Poker - Part 3 - May 22, 2008 Common Deuces Wild Mistakes – Juan or the Other – May 29, 2008 Figuring Out Quick Quads - June 5, 2008 Breaking Full Houses in Quick Quads - June 12, 2008 A Quick Quads Puzzler - June 19, 2008 Let’s Go Scouting - June 26, 2008 When You're Not Sure of the Game - July 3, 2008 Can it be Right to Play Hunches - July 10, 2008 Good Hearted Woman in Love With a Good Timin’ Man - July 17, 2008 One-Way Versus Two-Way Straight Penalties - July 24, 2008 Effectual versus Ineffectual Straight Penalties - July 31, 2008 Unusual Dealt Royals - August 7, 2008 Learning from a Horse Handicapper - August 14, 2008 When Bad Is Good - August 21, 2008 I Live For These Moments - August 28, 2008 Next Dancer's Answers column coming on September 4, 2008! |
Author's Note: This article was originally published in Casino Player, January 1998. Video Poker vs. BlackjackThe personality skills of successful blackjack players and successful video poker players are quite similar. Good players in both games are bright, have excellent memories, and can sit and play for hours. Each player is playing a winning game, although certainly not every session. Memorizing the strategy for 9-6 Jacks or Better is approximately as easy (as difficult?) as learning basic strategy in blackjack. Memorizing how to play 10-7 Double Bonus Poker is as difficult (as easy?) as all the matrix numbers in a 3-level blackjack count system. In each case, the game that is more difficult is more lucrative. In blackjack, the strategy changes as you go through the deck. In video poker this is generally not true. Each hand is independent of the last one. Getting four aces in a video poker hand does not affect your chances of getting them again the following hand. Video poker is always played off the top of a single deck. "Penalty cards" in video poker have similarities to top-of-deck plays made in blackjack. For example, a good blackjack player, at the start of single deck, would hit a 16 against a K if the 16 consisted of a 9 and a 7, but not if it consisted of 3,3,5,5. In jacks or better, with Kh Jd Td 5s 3c a good player plays JT. But with Kh Jd Td 5s 3d, that same player would play KJ. The blackjack player varied his play because there were fewer low cards remaining in the deck. The video poker player varied his play because there were fewer diamonds left in the deck. Break points for video poker progressives are analogous to matrix numbers in blackjack. That is, you play more aggressively for a royal flush as the progressive increases just as you double more frequently in blackjack as the true count rises. You can stop and talk to someone while playing video poker without losing your place. Whenever you get back to the game, it will be ready. In blackjack, this distraction would likely cause you to lose the count. In winning blackjack, the bet size varies with the count. That is, as the player’s advantage increases, so does the amount of the bet. In video poker, the bet- size is constant at “Max Coins” every time. The only way to increase your bet is to change to a higher-denominated machine. In blackjack, expert players are watched a lot more closely than they are in video poker. As Stanford Wong points out in his Professional Video Poker, this is because blackjack players can vary their bets a lot more and cheat a lot easier. Skilled, or lucky, blackjack players are frequently barred from playing. This rarely happens at video poker, even when players consistently win. Why? I think the reason is that the general public thinks that card counting at blackjack is a form of cheating, so a counter being barred is just what he deserves. The general public does not, I believe, differentiate between slot machines and video poker, and they believe that winning is largely a matter of luck, not skill. A casino barring people who are lucky is not considered sporting. Unfortunately, in recent months, barrings of successful video poker players in Las Vegas is becoming more frequent. The Griffin Detective Agency publishes records of blackjack players who count or cheat --- which are not at all the same thing. Once a player is “in the book”, rightly or wrongly, his playing days are limited at many, many casinos. Although Griffin does publish a list of various kinds of slot cheats, it doesn’t list players merely because they win. Therefore, successful players often play unimpeded for years. The danger of being barred at blackjack is very real. To avoid being barred, many players resort to a variety of disguises and other special moves in order to increase their longevity. So in addition to being good at the mechanics of the game, successful blackjack players need to be competent actors as well. Video poker players, for the most part, do not have to consider these factors, although it’s a foolish player who goes around bragging about how good he is. You can use “cheat sheets” at video poker. The best ones of these accurately tell you how to play every possible hand --- including the special cases. If you want to study your sheet for ten minutes before you play a particular hand, nobody will come around and tell you to speed things up. At blackjack, you can get “basic strategy” cards, which tell you how to play every hand, but not taking card counting into consideration. At most casinos you may use these cards if you do so quickly. But if you take more than a second or two to consult the card, the pit boss will come by and tell you to put it away. In both games, the conditions vary widely from casino to casino. And many casinos frequently change blackjack rules or video poker machines. They sometimes do this because they are not making enough, or they need to compete with the casino next door. In both games, the closer the casino is to other casinos, the more competitive the games are. That is, do not expect good conditions for either game on a cruise ship, which effectively has no competition while the cruise is taking place. In blackjack, most games in a given casino are identical to most other games. You may have some 2-deckers and some 6-deckers, but the variation within a casino is limited. With video poker, you may find dozens of different types of games within the same casino. You may find different schedules side by side. In blackjack, the amount you win or lose on each hand is similar. The bonus for naturals only goes one way, and insurance has odds associated with it, but for all other bets you can only win the same amount as you can lose. In video poker, this is not true at all. For a $1.25 bet (at quarters), you can win up to $1,000 or more. This makes video poker much more volatile. Assume a blackjack player and a video poker each won $1,000 over five sessions. The scores for the blackjack player might be +230, +400, +120, +300, -50. In video poker, a more likely stream of scores would be: -70, -140, -60, +1230, +40. Notice that for these two equally successful players, the blackjack player usually wins, and the video player usually loses. Being rated while playing blackjack is analogous to using a slot club card. In both cases, players receive various forms of casino complementaries for playing. Slot clubs frequently pay cash back to the players, so most players use them. You need to show ID to collect the cash back, and you need to show ID when you hit a jackpot of $1,200 or more, so most video poker players use their real name. In blackjack, players use a variety of names. Blackjack players frequently "rat-hole" chips to disguise their results. For similar reasons, video poker players frequently remove their slot club card so jackpots not registered. Surveillance is more automated in video poker. The machine itself accurately registers the amount of the bet, whether or not a payoff is earned, and the amount of the payoff. Floor-people are there primarily to service the machine --- i.e. fill the machines when needed, fix the machine for various malfunctions, and hand-pay larger jackpots. In blackjack, most of the game monitoring is done manually. Dealers determine who wins a hand, and the amount of the payoff. Floor-people (and the eye-in-the-sky) keep a watch on the dealers, and further watch the players to determine if the player is “too good to let continue playing”. There are various technological advances in blackjack to monitor the size of the bet, or even whether a player is counting, but so far these advances are not widely used. The literature on blackjack is vast, and much is very accurate. Several people (e.g. Dalton, Schlessinger, Snyder and Wong, to name just a few) publish highly respected journals. These authors, generally speaking, admire each other and agree with each other’s conclusions. In video poker, we have a very different situation. Information to be trusted is very limited, and for the most part, video poker authors do not speak highly of others in the same field. Blackjack games are very similar from place to place. Game variations (number of decks, doubling after splitting, stand or hit on soft seventeen, surrender, and some others) are relatively unimportant. Although good players certainly make adjustments to their game depending upon exactly which rules are in effect, usually the play of a particular hand is identical no matter what the rules are. A game returning 100% is considered excellent. A game returning “only” 99% is considered terrible In video poker, the rules vary widely. Frequently in the same casinos you’ll see deuces wild games returning 100.76% and some double double bonus games returning less than 96%. The strategy rules for deuces wild are totally different from those at jacks or better, or double bonus, or joker wild, or . . . Nobody is an expert at all video poker games. There are hundreds and hundreds of different variations. Even the most knowledgeable players only know a relative few of these. Bob Dancer is America's best-known video poker writer and teacher. He has a variety of "how to play better video poker" products, including the software "Video Poker for Winners," Winner's Guides, strategy cards, his autobiography Million Dollar Video Poker, and his two novels, including Sex, Lies, and Video Poker. Dancer's products may be ordered at www.bobdancer.com or by telephone at 1-800-244-2224 M-F 9-5 Pacific Time.
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Classic Dancer We republish a classic Bob Dancer article every Sunday - often these articles are updated with new insights from Bob Dancer, the master of video poker writing. Video Poker Questions and Answers - May 4, 2008 More Answers to Questions About Video Poker Machines - May 11, 2008 Losing is a Major Part of Winning at Video Poker - May 18, 2008 Video Poker VS Blackjack - May 25, 2008 The Art of Tipping Slot Personnel - Part 1 - June 1, 2008 The Art of Tipping Slot Personnel - Part 2 - June 8, 2008 Putting Your Ducks In a Row - June 15, 2008 Luck and Skill in Video Poker - June 22, 2008 Strategy Adjustments in Video Poker - June 29, 2008 One Coin vs Five Coin - July 6, 2008 Video Poker Progressives - July 13, 2008 High Pairs versus Three Cards to a Rolal in Kings or Better Joker Wild - July 20, 2008 The Double Up Feature -- Does It Ever Make Sense? - Part 1 - July 27, 2008 Doubling Up -- Does it Ever Make Sense? - Part 2 - August 3, 2008 Did I Quit at the Right Time? - August 10, 2008 Money Management: What Does and Doesn't Work - August 17, 2008 "I'm Playing The Wrong Game" and Other Video Poker Fallacies - August 24, 2008 More Classic Dancer coming Sunday August 31, 2008. |
