I’ve become mercilessly addicted to video poker. I’ve got it on my cellphone (Hard Rock Casino, great multi-hand blackjack, great video poker, awful slotmachine), and I picked up a dedicated game for $6 at Albertsons.
Starting with $2000 on each device, I’m now at $47k on the cellphone, and $38k on the handheld.
Tell me you lose more in real video poker so I don’t sell everything, move to Sin City, and lose all my money in Video Poker games.
I’m addicted to Blackjack. However, I am also addicted to Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas, a game which features a thinly-veiled copy of Las Vegas as one of its major cities. In this city, you can play video poker, roulette, and yes, Blackjack. I can win and lose pretend money all day (at least until I have to go to class). Its a lot cheaper than going to the casino, where I usually lose. Of course, I keep telling myself that I’m practicing for the real thing, and I will become Powerful, and go and win big at the nearest Indian casino. :rolleyes:
You lose more in real video poker. Don’t sell everything, don’t move to any of the various sin cities, don’t lose all your money in video poker games.
Actually I’ve never played video poker for real money, but I have played blackjack online for play and real money. Now I’m not saying the site I played it on is rigged, but whereas I would win consistently for play money, when I played for real money winning hands showered down on the dealer like little drops of rain. I never played for more than maybe 25 cents a hand because I haven’t played any serious blackjack and my knowledge of book play is incomplete, so I never lost too much. But after losing more hands than I care to remember with 19s going down to miracle 20s and the like, I quit.
There are two possibilities. The first is that the electronic games you own tweak your expected win rate to make it more fun. The second is that you’re just running good.
I assure you, in the long run, you will lose money playing video poker at a casino.
I suspected this was the case. On the handheld, you’re playing with a 1 deck shoe, I can’t tell what the cellphone is using as I can never see it shuffle, but you do seem to get more than 4 kings in 3 hands every once in awhile.
It’s also good to get confirmation, every body wants to be Lance Armstrong, but really, I bike more like Louis Armstrong.
Just to confirm, video poker is fun but it is merely a different version of slot machines. It is impossible for anyone to win at the pay video poker machines in the long term. Even those poker guys you see on TV couldn’t do it. You have a little control but the deck is still stacked against you even if you play perfectly. I used to play video poker when I live in New Orleans. I hit $50 “jackpots” a few times but I supsect all the little $5 and $10 dollar losses easily offset that. I didn’t keep good track just like most people don’t. That’s one way they trap people into believing they are doing well.
Well, here’s my video poker experience: months before I went to Vegas last year, I got a video poker training program for my Palm device so that I could learn proper strategy (I should mention that I’m strictly into “Jacks or Better”). I trained and trained. The program promises that, if you follow their keep-draw strategies on a machine with optimal payout schedule, you’ll recover about 99.34% of what you bet. That’s better than most slot machines, and since video poker (for me at least) goes a lot faster than slots and I feel more in control, I preferred it. When you play with a player’s card, you can rack up comp points pretty quickly, too.
So, I went to Vegas. I was there to get married, so I didn’t really get to gamble much. On the last night we were there, we finally had some free time before we went to see Penn & Teller at the Rio. I sat down at a quarter machine and put in $20. In about 15 minutes, I was up to $70, and figured that was fine for now. After the show, we took a taxi to the Bellagio, where I sidled up to a 50 cent machine. I put in $50 and worked it quickly up to $150. I cashed out, and we went back to Paris to sleep. The following morning, while waiting for our taxi to the airport, I put $100 into a $1 machine and broke even. So, my net for the trip was $150 won, in maybe 45 minutes of gambling. But I’ve done much better than that on my Palm device.
The hard part is finding a machine with a halfway-decent payout table. You probably won’t find one with a payout table as good as the one you have on your handheld devices. My poker program pays 45 for a full house, and I never saw a real machine that paid better than 40. Avoid Jacks-or-better machines that don’t pay enough for the small hands, the two-pair and the three of a kinds. Hunt for the best machine you can; if you choose one with a sub-par payout, you’ve lost before you’ve begun.
Consider also that, while it’s easy to throw away play money on your cell phone, it’s a lot harder to watch real money tick off the video screen. Psychologically, the game is different when something real is on the line.
On average, perfect play will get you a royal flush about once every 40,000 hands. You’ll need a bankroll that’ll get you through those 40,000 hands if you expect to get real winnings.
Actually I’ve been reading up on this since I was planning on going to Atlantic City with some friends. You can actually come out ahead in video poker if you choose the right machines, based on pay-out and not on a whim. Though the payout percentage is small, something like 100.2% or so. So basically you’d have to play a lot and play well in order to get a good pay out.
I stopped reading the book since we decided not to go, plus I didn’t get a whole lot out out it. I’d go looking for places on the web, but the firewalls at work don’t let us look for gambling things.
I’ve seen math that says that if you play perfect strategy (not that easy) on a game like Dueces Wild video poker, you can actually get a slightly higher than 100% payout.
That said, the first time I ever played video poker for real money (Jacks or Better) I hit a royal flush about fifteen minutes in. I’ve never played video poker for real money since.
Here’s the deal. Occasionally there will be machines that pay back a little more than 100%. Usually, but not always, this is because they are progressive machines and the jackpot has gotten very high. Other times it is because there are player comps that you get for playing a lot of hands. In either case for this to work for your advantage you have to play perfectly and you have to play a shitload of hands. Just a couple of statistical mistakes an hour will take you below 100%. Some of those statistical choices are very subtle too.
Very, very rarely, a someone will fuck up and a bank of machines will have a positive expectation. When that happens, the professional video poker community will find out way before you will and those machines will be occupied 24/7.
Well, the Wizard of Odds is the guy I trust for my gambling info. (Link goes directly to video poker site.) He claims that playing perfect strategy on a full pay dueces wild machine will have a return of 100.71%. What’s nice is that he provides all his calculations and tables, so if you understand statistics (which I don’t, at least not what I need beyond small-sample stats) you can do the same analysis and compare data.
Cool site. I wonder how many of those types of machines are out there. A friend of mine is a successful professional gambler and as luck (heh) would have it, we’re meeting for dinner tonight. I’ll ask him about this.
I live in Las Vegas and if you go into any local’s casinos (the Stations chain for instance) you will find about 80% of all the machines are video poker…it is sort of crack cocaine for the locals.
The reason it is the locals favorite is that you can actually do fairly well - sometimes. My SO won $12,500 on a reversible royal (exact order of 10,J,Q,K,A from left to right, or right to left) last February and we hit a normal royal about once a month on average.
The game of choice here is Double Double Video Poker. It is the same as other poker but if you get 4 Aces with a 2,3 or 4, you get at least $500 on a quarter machine, playing max. Also, if you get four 2’s or 3’s or 4’s with an Ace or one of the other (2,3,4) as a “kicker”, you get $200 instead of $100.
The trick is to play what you can afford. Even if you are just playing nickel for max (total 25 cents) you can still win $200 on a royal flush and you can play a lot longer.
Quarter machines are most popular and the dollar machine ($5 per hand max) can get a bit pricey pretty fast, unless your budget is much larger than mine.
There are, of course, video poker machines where you can play $125 per hand and more…but with my budget, I could probably play one hand per month.
It helps if you go with someone else who is also playing video poker and agree from the beginning to always split the winnings. That way, while one of you is getting a lot of low paying 4 of a kinds (9’s, Kings, 8’s) you both still have play money to try and get something bigger. My SO and I do that…and on the day he won the $12,500 he didn’t get a single four of a kind for about an hour and I kept splitting my little wins with him. It wound up to be a very lucrative deal for us both when he finally hit.