Play Perfect Video Poker

Gamblers are always dreaming about hitting it big. My version of that dream came true during a six-month period between September 2000 and March 2001. It was that to-die-for time where all lights are green, chocolate doesn’t have calories, and there are never lines at the supermarket.

It was a wonderful six months, but the real story is how I got ready for that period. Seven years earlier I had a very small bankroll and knew nothing about video poker. This book is about the seven-year journey to achieve the six-month dream come true.

The Easy Part of Video Poker

What’s hard and what’s easy is a matter of perspective. For example, if you ask Los Angeles Laker star Shaquille O’Neal whether it’s hard or easy to dunk a basketball, his answer would be different from mine. For me, there was a brief period 40 years ago when I could jump high enough to touch the basketball rim, but I could never get any higher. Shaq can dunk the ball flat-footed.

Even with such an obvious comparison, some people will take issue with the proposition I am about to advance. From my perspective, the easy part about playing successful video poker is learning to play the hands essentially perfectly.
Knowing enough to distinguish in 9/6 Jacks or Better between
K♠J♥T♥7♠5♣ and K♠J♥T♥6♠5♥ is the easy part of the game.
And I say this knowing full well that probably 95% of all players
2 Million Dollar Video Poker play these two hands identically, even though JT is the proper play in the first case and KJ is the proper play in the second.

So how can that be the easy part if so few people can do it?
Because the information on how to play video poker without
error is widely available, and computer programs will correct
you whenever you’re wrong, so most people willing to put in the
hours can learn this game perfectly. It may take you 10 hours,
100 hours, or 1,000 hours, but it can be done. The reason why
most people don’t play that hand correctly is because they simply
haven’t put in those hours—or they have put them in, but they
studied material from authors who do not believe that the difference
between these hands is important. For whatever reason,
these players don’t see the value of learning the game perfectly.
The players who really want to succeed, however, do the work
that has to be done. For them, these hands, and most others as
well, are not particularly difficult.
So if that’s the easy part of the game, what’s the hard part?
Let me suggest some of the things that are difficult.
The Hard Part of Video Poker
Sometimes while playing quarter video poker, you’ll lose $500
a day for three days straight. Or when playing for dollars, you’ll
lose $2,000 a day for three days straight. How does that affect
your well being? And if you’re married, how do you convince
your wife that it’s just a normal swing of the game and that she
doesn’t have to worry about it?
Some people are always in debt. These people, for whatever
reason, can’t get a bankroll to gamble with. And even if they somehow
did, they couldn’t hang onto it. Are you one of these people?
A casino is full of distractions. Every casino has an advantage
on perhaps 99% of all bets available. Do you have the discipline
to limit yourself completely to the remaining 1%?
The casino will ply you with free booze served by attractive
provocatively dressed young ladies. The casino doesn’t care
whether it’s the liquor or the ladies that ruins your concentration.
Either way you fail is fine with them. Can you run that gauntlet
and still concentrate on the game?
The casinos hire talented marketing people who dream up
incentives for you to come and visit. Some incentives are extremely
valuable and some are not. Can you distinguish between them?
On those rare nights when you win win win, can you keep
your perspective and not go out and blow it? On those not-sorare
nights when you lose lose lose, can you deal with the actual
loss of your bankroll, plus that ugly sickening feeling too? When
it takes three years to build a bankroll and you lose half of it in a
week, can you still function?
Playing in smoky casinos, sitting under air-conditioning
vents on uncomfortable stools, and using the same muscles over
and over and over again lead to a variety of ailments. Eating free
food in a casino night after night has caused many of us to gain
far more weight than is desirable. But to play the game you have
to survive all of this. Can you?
Is it a problem when people look down on you, because they
feel that being a gambler is an unproductive way to lead a life?
And if you become real good, can you keep that fact a secret from
the casinos so you can continue to play?
If you believe that telling the truth is always the best policy,
then you probably don’t have sufficient guile to succeed at this
sport. Things are not always black and white here. Sometimes
the pressures to push the envelope are enormous. The low road
is sometimes more lucrative than the high road, but the risks are
enormous if you don’t succeed. Do you look good in stripes?
Can you deal with the repetition? Video poker is a very boring
game when you play it 40 hours a week. Playing perfectly at
home for 10 minutes at a time is a lot different from playing hour
after hour after hour in a casino. Jeffrey Compton, my friend and
business partner, has learned Jacks or Better perfectly and can
play it well for an hour or two at a time. But if he has to sit at a
machine for longer than that, he starts to make a large number
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of errors. So even though he has learned the game perfectly, he’s
unlikely ever to become a successful professional player.
Slot clubs provide lots of benefits to players. The most successful
players study these slot clubs two ways from Tuesday until
they know exactly how to extract the most from them. Can you
do this?
The game is getting more difficult. When I started my video
poker career in 1994, players told me about the “good old days”
five years earlier when full-pay dollar Deuces Wild could be found
all over town. Today, the games are not nearly as lucrative as they
were when I started. It’s reasonable to assume that in two years
there will be fewer profitable opportunities yet. Can you keep
current enough to stay ahead of the game?
You get my point. Mastering the correct way to play the hands
just gets you to first base. This is absolutely necessary for success,
but you still have a lot of work to do once you reach that point.
Playing the hands is definitely a worthy subject for a book on
video poker; indeed, the Winner’s Guide series that I’ve co-written
with Liam W. Daily deals with this subject, but this book doesn’t.
Thousands of people have reached first base in video poker,
but haven’t done so well after getting there. This book briefly
describes how I did it, but mostly dwells on how I hit subsequent
doubles and triples, then finally my million-dollar home run.
Many of the specifics I write about here are one-of-a-kind
and probably won’t come around again in exactly the same way.
But the same types of choices will arise and the tools I used to
deal with them in the past will be the same ones I’ll use in the
future. Whether these are useful tools for you to use, you’ll have
to decide for yourself.
A large part of my success was a winning attitude—knowing
when to hold ’em and when to fold ’em, as it were. This I can
share with you, but my philosophy won’t work for you until you
modify it to fit your own strengths and weaknesses.
A lot of luck was involved in the million-dollar success that
my wife Shirley and I achieved, especially one extremely lucky
half-hour period where we earned a half-million in two big jackpots.
That may or may not ever happen again for us—or for you.
But having the bankroll, skill, and courage to even be in position
to recognize the opportunity, and receive that good fortune,
required a lot more than luck. It took years of study and play. It
took surviving some very long and ugly losing streaks. To stay
in the game, you must learn to cope with terrible losses. I’ll tell
you about all of that.
And there were benefits along the way. We stayed in gorgeous
hotel suites and ate in the fanciest restaurants in Las Vegas. We
could get up to eight free tickets to any event in town. And there
are a lot of events in Las Vegas that will satisfy virtually anyone’s
taste. I’ll tell you about that too.
It was an extremely stimulating and professionally gratifying,
albeit bumpy, ride. I’ll recreate it for you in the pages that follow.
So fasten your seatbelt and let’s get started.
How Good Am I?
I’m a solid professional player and I limit myself to the few
games that I know well. There are probably 50 other pros that play
every bit as well as I do. Maybe more. There are far better video
poker mathematicians and theoreticians than I. Many are quite
a bit smarter. I’m not a computer programmer, even though the
top-selling video poker computer trainer, Video Poker for Winners!,
has my name attached to it.
My claim to fame, I suppose, is that I’m the top professional
player that writes about the game. My columns in Casino Player,
Strictly Slots, Jackpot, and other periodicals have made me the
best-known professional video poker player ever. A major reason
for this is that most of the other top players shy away from the
spotlight. It’s not such a hard task, perhaps, to be the best-known
if you’re standing up and announcing yourself, while everyone
else is ducking down!
That said, a “solid professional” is head and shoulders above
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the general public in terms of ability. To use an analogy from baseball,
I would be a typical major league player—only occasionally
making the all-star team. But even getting to the major leagues
is more difficult than most people could manage. I get e-mails
all the time from readers saying things like, “After a lot of work
practicing Double Bonus on Video Poker for Winners!, I can now
usually play at the 98% level. Is that good enough?”
My answer is always something like, “If you’re interested in
playing at a competent recreational level and want to enjoy casino
vacations less expensively than most people can, you’re doing just
fine. Keep up the good work! If you want to be a net winner at
the game, you’re not even close.”
Many people reading this book are doing so because they’d
like to win a million dollars, too. Who wouldn’t? But as I’ve
mentioned, a professional gambler is worlds apart from the minor
leaguers. By describing myself here, you’ll have some familiarity
with my background. Although no two professionals have the
identical resumé, we all have certain things in common. This will
give you an idea of what it takes.
First of all, every successful professional player I know is
quite bright. Some of us are very nerdy and social misfits, but
the brainpower is there.
Second, I’ve been playing games at a pretty high level all my
life. As a boy I could beat everyone at Scrabble, chess, checkers,
and other games. In college I learned poker, bridge, and pinochle.
In the mid-’70s, I learned backgammon; I played it for money for
almost 20 years. In the mid-’80s I taught myself to count cards at
blackjack and became reasonably good at that game. By the time
I came to video poker in 1994, I was highly experienced both
game-wise and gambling-wise.
Third, strategic thinking dominates most of what I do. In
college, my bachelors, masters, and Ph.D. work was in economics,
which is basically applied logic. When I read novels, they’re frequently
about lawyers or politicians or spies. Most of these books
present problems that are solved only through logical thinking.
Even though I haven’t played bridge or live poker for more than
20 years, I still read the bridge column in the newspaper and the
poker magazines regularly. Why? Because every now and then I
learn another key to strategic thinking. And sometimes I can use
that key to unlock a secret to winning at video poker.
Fourth, I’m someone who can accumulate and keep a bankroll.
I’m a good “saver,” and the fact that Shirley is too was an
important decision variable (among many others) that led to our
marriage in 1997.
Fifth, I can maintain concentration on one task for a long
time. One difference between Shirley and me is that she can do
17 things at once, all of them at a fairly high level. I can do one
thing at a time at a very high level. In life as a whole, Shirley’s way
is better. In playing professional video poker, my way is better.
Sixth, I can deal with bankroll ups and downs. For whatever
reason, losing bothers me less than most other people. By the
same token, winning excites me less than most others too. This
allows me to stay focused on the goals at hand without the big
emotional swings that some other people go through. Trust me,
bankroll swings happen to every player. Guaranteed!
Seventh, I’m willing and able to practice long hours on a
computer until I have a game mastered. I don’t need to venture
into the casino until I’m at my best. Thirty-some years ago my
memory was considerably better than it is today. (I’d tell you exactly
when that was, but I can’t remember!) I have to work longer
than I used to in order to retain things, but I’m willing to do that.
Eighth, solving puzzles is fun for me and I’m good at it.
If it’s a crossword puzzle, I go for the ones marked “Expert” or
“Challenger.” If it’s a cryptogram, I skip the first three-fourths
of them as being too easy. Remember, every video poker hand
presents a puzzle. There are 32 different ways to solve each puzzle
and, almost always, only one of those ways is the best.
Ninth, I’m pretty good at math, at least through high school
algebra and college probability and statistics. It’s easy for me to
add 348 and 793 in my head. This is a very useful skill if you want
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to calculate what double points would be worth on a particular
machine at a particular casino.
Tenth, in recent years anyway, I’ve had friends around me
to turn to when I didn’t know which way to go. Most recently,
these have included Shirley, Jeffrey Compton, and Liam W. Daily.
Anthony Curtis has thrown some valuable tips my way, too, as
have numerous other people.
Eleventh, for reasons I discuss later in the book, I’ve been
a video poker writer and teacher since 1997. In these capacities,
people ask me all sorts of questions, so I’m forced to keep doing
research and making sure I know the subject inside and out. As
Dr. William Allen, a professor of economics I greatly admired
when I was a graduate student at UCLA, said, “Research is to
teaching as sin is to confession. Without the first, you have nothing
to say in the second.”
Twelfth, I’m a pretty good negotiator. This might not seem
to fit into the skills necessary to be a successful gambler, but it
does. All kinds of situations, some dealing with lots of money,
arise in which you and someone else have to decide on how to
handle them. You’ll see several stories in this book about how I
was able to talk someone into something that was good for me.
There’s an art to that, and being good at it pays dividends.
Those are the dozen skills that I bring to every video poker
machine in every casino. Now, no other pro has quite the same
mix of skills that I have. Some are better at math or are proficient at
more video poker games. Others are weaker at some of the things
where I excel. No matter what skills any of us have, the test as to
whether someone is a top pro or not is simple: If you can make
considerable money at this game year in and year out, you’re a top
pro. If you can’t, you’re not. How much is “considerable money?”
That’s debatable. And many pros have had losing years now and
then. But overall, this test is fairly straightforward.
So if I’m not head and shoulders above the other pros, how
did I happen to win a million dollars while no one else did? For
one thing, other pros did too. I know five different players who’ve
had $500,000+ years, and there are likely more that I don’t know
about. And as I’ve said, a large part of it is that we just got plain
lucky. Shirley hit a $400,000 royal flush after only 6,000 or so
hands on a $100 machine. On average, royals come every 40,000
hands, so it could be said that we got the royal 34,000 hands early.
Another reason is that when the “casino opportunity to die
for” came along, we had the bankroll, knowledge, and willingness
to go for it with considerably more gusto than anyone else. For
whatever reason, during this special six-month period, the video
poker gods smiled on us and granted us royals every 25,000-
30,000 hands on average, instead of the usual 40,000. And all
100 or so royals that we hit during that period were for $20,000
or more. Who knows why? Skill was a factor, to be sure, but
other factors were just as important. It happened, nonetheless.
And someday it will happen to someone else.
How Much in This Book is True?
Most of it, actually, but not all. Most of my professionallevel
colleagues would be horror-stricken at the thought of being
identified in a book. So whenever I felt the need to speak about
them, I changed their names and some of their characteristics.
But the gist of who they are and what happened is factual.
The numbers I cite as to how much I won or lost at a particular
time are reasonably accurate. But some of these events
took place seven years ago and I just don’t remember completely.
The names of the following people are real (or in many cases
are the pseudonyms these people use). They’re all described fairly,
if at times flatteringly: Jeffrey Compton, Anthony Curtis, Liam
W. and Katherine Daily, Tom and Margaret Elardi, Adam Fine,
Glenn Fine, Lenny Frome, Paul Henderson, Skip Hughes, Dan
Paymar, Lawrence Revere, Jean Scott, Shirley and her family,
Arnold Snyder, TomSki, Stanford Wong, Dean and Sara Zamzow.
All other names in the book are fictitious and are used to
represent people I’ve known.
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Of necessity, a lot of what happened to me over the past seven
years has been omitted. Some of it is repetitious, some has little to
do with video poker, and some secrets are better left untold. The
central story of the book, however—that I started with a $6,000
bankroll in 1994 and my wife Shirley and I together netted more
than $1 million by playing video poker between September 1,
2000, and March 15, 2001—is absolutely true.
What You Need to Know About Video Poker
to Understand this Book
Video poker is, at its core, an easy game to understand. You
bet your coins and the machine deals five cards. You select the
cards you want to keep, if any, and the machine replaces the cards
you didn’t keep, if any. If you make a winning hand on the play,
you’re paid according to a pay schedule usually displayed on the
front of the machine. And then the game is over. The average
video poker hand lasts about six seconds for a moderately fast
player. If you want to play again, you can. If not, you don’t have
to. That’s video poker in a nutshell.
For knowledgeable players, however, there are a lot of combinations,
permutations, and related considerations involved.
To aid in discussions and analyses, video poker regulars have
developed a shorthand terminology to refer to different machines.
The remainder of this section explains much of that terminology.
Winning players must first select the type of game to play. In
this book, I concentrate on only a few games—Jacks or Better,
Deuces Wild, Double Bonus, and Joker Poker. Dozens of other
video poker games are found in casinos, but there’s no reason to
list them here, because they’re barely mentioned in this book.
Even among the good games, there are lots of variations in pay
schedules. I pay close attention to the numbers on a pay schedule,
because even a 1-unit reduction in the return for a full house or
flush lowers the return by 1%, in addition to often making considerable
differences in the correct strategy. How much is 1%? On
a dollar machine, a 1% reduction costs $30 per hour, and during
this time I was playing 60 or more hours per weeks. Giving up
an unnecessary $1,800 per week is no way to build a bankroll!
Jacks or Better is the game of choice for high-stakes players
in Las Vegas. The best commonly found schedule returns 9 times
your bet for a full house and 6 times your bet for a flush (there
are some rare games with better pays). This schedule is referred to
simply as 9/6 Jacks or Better, or sometimes 9/6 Jacks. The game
returns 99.5439% with perfect play, which means that for every
$1 million you play perfectly, the machine pays you $995,439
and keeps $4,561 for itself. Players with a drive to succeed never
make a bet unless it returns more than 100%, so this game is
avoided by smart players unless the slot club or one or more casino
promotions kick in enough to make the game positive (i.e., raise
the return to more than $1 million for each $1 million played).
Deuces Wild is the most popular game for quarter players
in Las Vegas. The full-pay version pays 15 for 5-of-a-kind and 5
for 4-of-a-kind. Playing it well yields a return of 100.76%. This
game does not exist for dollars in Vegas today, although it did
until 1999 or so. The NSU version (which stands for “not so
ugly”) returns 16 for 5-of-a-kind and 10 for a straight flush. It
returns only 99.73% when played perfectly, but can be a good
game with the right slot club.
A version of Deuces Wild called Loose Deuces reduces the
pay for 4-of-a-kind from 5 to 4 and increases the pay for 4 deuces
from 200 to 500. There are several Loose Deuces pay schedules
out there, but the one discussed in this book pays 15 for 5-of-akind
and 10 for a straight flush for a return percentage of 101%.
Double Bonus is a game similar to Jacks or Better, only 4-ofa-
kinds pay a lot more in Double Bonus (and full houses, flushes,
and straights pay a little more). The downside to Double Bonus
is that two pair returns even money, whereas you get double your
money back in Jacks or Better. The best version of the game pays
10 for a full house and 7 for a flush. It’s called, not surprisingly,
10/7 Double Bonus, and returns 100.17%. It’s also very difficult
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12 Million Dollar Video Poker
to play well.
International Game Technology (IGT) is the world’s largest
manufacturer of video poker and slot machines. Its 10/7 Double
Bonus games pay 250 for a 5-coin straight flush and yield the
100.17% return referenced above. In the 10/7 Double Bonus
games found in the GameMaker machines manufactured by Bally
Gaming Systems, a 5-coin straight flush pays 400 coins, which
raises the return to 100.53%. Correct strategy is very similar for
the two games, but not identical. When knowledgeable players
want to distinguish between the games, they usually talk about
10/7/50 for the IGT version and 10/7/80 for the Bally version,
as 50 and 80 are the 1-coin values that correspond to the 5-coin
payouts for 250 and 400, respectively.
Several versions of Joker Poker are found throughout the
country. The game found in Nevada returns even money for a
pair of kings or aces, so it’s usually called Kings or Better Joker
Poker, or Kings or Better Joker Wild. The best version pays 20 for
4-of-a-kind and 7 for a full house. When it pays 4,000 coins for a
royal flush, the game is worth 100.65% and when it pays 4,700
coins for a royal flush, the game is worth an even 101%. This is
a very different game from any version of Joker Poker in which
the lowest payout is for two pair—either game can be better than
the other, depending on how much is returned for a flush, full
house, and other hands. The Joker Wild game found in Atlantic
City is a Two Pair or Better version. But in this game, 5-of-a-kind
has a 4,000-coin payout, while a royal flush is considered to be
merely a type of straight flush and is paid accordingly. This game
has a different strategy from either of the previously mentioned
Joker games.
Once you’ve determined which game you want to play, the
next thing to consider is the slot club. Slot clubs are set up by
the casinos to encourage player loyalty. They often reward players
with cash and/or comps (“complimentaries”)—such as rooms,
meals, and shows—according to various formulas. These formulas
often award points faster to slot players than video poker players,
because slot players tend to lose considerably more money
to the casinos. Frequently, employees who work in a slot club
booth, and even casino hosts, neither know nor care about the
fine points of their club. A successful video poker player learns
the ins and outs of slot clubs so he knows them even better than
the casino employees do.
“Cashback” is important for successful video poker players.
When I talk about, say, .67% cashback, I mean that for every $3 a
player puts through a machine, he gets 2¢ back—the cashback—
from the casino (3 x .0067 = .02). But casinos rarely define it so
simply. One casino might tell you that every $15 you play gives
you a point and that 100 points can be redeemed for $10 cashback.
Another might say that every $75 of play gives you a point and
that 100 points can be redeemed for $50 in cashback. These are
equivalent systems. The best introduction to slot clubs—including
how they differ and how to choose the best one for you—can be
found in the book The Las Vegas Advisor Guide to Slot Clubs by
Jeffrey Compton. An updated edition of the book, with the new
title Slot Club Nation, is due out in 2003.
Intelligent players add slot club cashback to the return on
the game to determine how much it’s worth. So a “1% slot club”
added on to a 99.54% game results in a 100.54% return. To know
what that figure means in terms of profit potential, you need to
know how much money you can run through the machines in an
hour. I use 600 hands per hour as an approximation. So quarter
players, betting five coins for $1.25 per hand times 600 hands
per hour, put $750 per hour in action. With a .54% advantage
(the amount exceeding the 100% breakeven point), this is worth
a whopping $4.05 per hour. Under this scenario, dollar players put
$3,000 per hour into action, so the same game is worth $16.20
hourly. And five-dollar players can run $15,000 of action through
a machine. For them, a .54% advantage is worth $81 per hour.
Now we’re talking! Playing faster increases the return. Making
mistakes decreases the return.
Casino promotions also add value to a game. Double or triple
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14 Million Dollar Video Poker
slot club points is a common type of promotion. Double pay for
a particular 4-of-a-kind (perhaps 7777) is another. Paying double
for the second royal hit within 24 hours is another. Sometimes
you get drawing tickets for various hands. Sometimes the drawing
tickets are almost worthless (as when 100,000 tickets are in the
drum for one $1,000 prize) and sometimes they’re worth a lot
(as when 100 tickets are in the drum for $100,000). Evaluating
the value of the tickets is part of the game.
For the most part, that’s all you need to know to understand
what I’ll be talking about in the many real-life situations you’ll
read about in this book. Certainly, players who’ve been-there and
done-that will get more out of the stories than those who haven’t.
But I’ve written so that anyone, no matter how much or how little
he or she knows about video poker and casino life, will learn quite
a bit more—and get a vicarious million-dollar thrill at no extra
charge!—from the stories included in Million Dollar Video Poker.

What is the Big Blind

In Texas Holdem players are not obligated to bet their hands so in an effort to force players to play you have what are called the blinds. Blinds are forced bets posted by players to the left of the dealer button. In tournaments blinds typically increase as the tournament continues to force people to play poker v. only betting when they have a good hand.

The diagram below shows who is has to ante up the blind. After each hand the dealer button moves one player to the left and keeps moving so each player at the table will always have to be a Big Blind and Small Blind at some point.

The Small Blind is typically half of what the Big Blind bet it. For example if the Big Blind is $10 then the Small Blind bet will be $5.