It’s all very interesting, and sparks some obvious questions and things you need to know about the coming online poker market in Pennsylvania. What will PA’s online poker market look like on day 1? According to the PGCB, July 15, 2019 is the official launch date of.
- When you’re playing any kind of Internet gambling game, the outcome is determined by a random number generator program. This isn’t unusual, by the way. All the gambling machines (slots and video poker) that you see in a traditional land-based casino use the same kind of software to determine their outcomes, too.
- But that's OK, because basically every hotel lobby is amazing and full of things to look at. Bellagio Hotel and Casino (you may know it best from the end of Ocean's 11) currently greets you with a mosaic glass horse beneath a ceiling installation of colorful glass blossoms by renowned artist Dale Chihuly.
When I write about slot machines, I almost always suggest switching to video poker. Strategy matters in video poker more than almost any other casino game.
In fact, video poker has much in common with blackjack, which is the first post I wrote in this “10 basics of casino strategy” series. Not only does it offer some of the best odds in the house, but the decisions you make have a direct effect on your bottom line.
But the role of skill in a gambling game is a two-edged sword. If you make mistakes, those mistakes will cost you money.
I like that, though. I want my decisions to matter.
Here’s how to get the most out of your video poker bankroll and maximize your chances of walking away a winner.
1- Understand and Acknowledge the Differences between Video Poker and Slot Machines
A slot machine gives the house a mathematical edge by paying out prizes at odds lower than the odds of winning. In fact, this is how all casino games work. If you have 5 to 1 odds of winning, the casino is probably going to pay you 4 to 1 or 3 to 1 for winnings.
It’s easy to see how the casino makes money doing that.
The problem with slot machines is that you have no way of calculating how big or small that house edge is. That’s because you have no way of knowing what the probability of getting each of the symbols is.
To my way of thinking, this makes slot machines relatively dishonest when compared with other casino games. With roulette, I know that the odds of winning a single number bet are 37 to 1. And I know that the payoff is 35 to 1. So I can calculate how big an edge the house has.
But the way slot machine random number generators are programmed, you don’t know the probability of getting a particular symbol on a reel stop. Some of the symbols might be programmed to come up 1.8 of the time, while others might come up 1/16 of the time.
To make things even more abstruse, slot machines can look identical on the outside but have different odds on the inside. You could be playing a Wheel of Fortune slot machine where the Wheel of Fortune symbol is programmed to come up 1/16 of the time. The Wheel of Fortune machine immediately next to it might have programmed that symbol to only come up 1/24 of the time.
A video poker symbol, on the other hand, corresponds to a playing card. And the random number generator is programmed to duplicate the probability of a deck of cards. The probability of getting any specific card in a deck is 1/52.
With that information, you can compare the probabilities of winning with the payouts to determine the payback percentage for the machine.
The other major difference is that you have decisions to make in video poker that affect this payback percentage. Make good decisions, and the payback percentage goes up and the house edge goes down. Make bad decisions, and the opposite happens.
Most slot machines have a house edge of at least 8%. Most video poker games have a house edge of less than 5%, and some of them even get under 1%.
And if you’re skilled enough at playing and finding the right pay tables, you can play video poker games where you have an edge over the casino.
Understanding all this is the 1st step to becoming a winner.
A video poker pay table lists the possible hands along with the payout for each hand. These payouts are done as a “x for 1” rather than as an “x to 1” payout. You lose the amount of money you put into the hand instead of getting it back.
Here’s the difference:
If a bet pays off at 5 to 1, you get to keep your 1 unit that you bet, so your net profit is 5 units.
On a video poker pay table, there’s a column on left listing the possible hands. These are based on the stand poker hand rankings, but there are some differences. Usually, this list will look like this:
- Royal flush
- Straight flush
- 4 of a kind
- Full house
- Flush
- Straight
- 3 of a kind
- 2 pair
- A pair of jacks or higher
Then you have columns based on the number of coins you bet: 1, 2, 3, 4, or 5. The payoffs for each of those are listed.
On every video poker machine I’ve ever seen, you get a bonus payoff for the royal flush if you’re playing for 5 coins per hand. The payoff, if you’re putting 4 coins or less, is usually 200 for 1 or 250 for 1, but when you’re betting 5 coins, you get 800 for 1 instead.
That’s one of the first tenets of video poker strategy, by the way—always bet 5 coins.
You don’t have to be able to calculate the probability of getting each hand. Other people smarter than you and I have already done the work for us.
Just understand that when you multiply the probability of getting that hand by the payout for that hand, you get the expected value for that hand. Add all those together, and you have the payback percentage for the game.
The probability of getting a pair of jacks or higher is about 21.5%. The payoff is 1 unit, so the expected value for that hand is 0.215. The probability of getting 2 pairs is 12.9%, but the payoff is 2 units, so the expected value for that hand is .258.
In some games, the pay tables only change on 1 or 2 hands, so you can differentiate the better games from the worse games.
The best example of this is Jacks or Better, which I cover in detail in the next post.
3- Start by Specializing in Jacks or Better
Jacks or Better is the most basic video poker game. It pays off at 800 for 1 for a royal flush, and you get even money if you get a pair of jacks or better.
The 2 critical hands on a Jacks or Better pay table are the full house and the flush. They pay off at 9 for 1 and 6 for 1 respectively on a full pay game.
If you play a full pay Jacks or Better game with perfect strategy, the payback percentage is 99.54%. This means the house edge is 0.46%, which is better than most modern blackjack games.
But not all Jacks or Better games offer this pay table. In fact, it’s unusual. You’re more likely to find a game with an 8/6 or and 8/5 payout for those hands. In those cases, the payback percentage drops to 98.39% or 97.3% respectively.
That might not sound like much of a difference, but let’s look at it in terms of how much you can expect to lose per hour of play.
To calculate that, you multiply the house edge of the game by the total amount of money you put into action each hour. If you’re playing for $5 per hand on a Jacks or Better game, you’re probably putting $3000 into action per hour.
With a house edge of 0.46%, you’re only expected to lose $13.80 per hour.
But with a house edge of 2.70% (which is what you face with an 8/5 machine), you’re expected to lose a whopping $81 per hour.
See what a difference a small change in a pay table makes?
But you should start by learning to find full pay Jacks or Better games and play them with perfect strategy.
4- Learn How to Find the Best Games with the Best Pay Tables
Where can you find such games?
You could just go to a random casino and look at the individual machines there. That could take a lot of time, but it might be fun wandering through there.
You could also find a website that lists what games and pay tables are available at specific casinos in specific cities. The most comprehensive directory for that information I can find is at vpFREE, which used to be a Yahoo discussion group.
Just keep in mind that these listings are current when the site publishes them, but they’re user-generated, so they could include mistakes. Casinos also change what machines they have on the floor, too.
But vpFREE is your best starting point.
Your goal when playing video poker is to get a royal flush. That’s 4000-unit payout, and it’s a surprisingly large part of your of payback percentage.
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But you’ll only see a royal flush once every 40,000 hands.
Most video poker players get in about 500 hands per hour, so you’re looking at maybe 80 hours of play before hitting your royal flush. It might even be longer than that—or you might hit it early.
But if you don’t have enough money in your bankroll to avoid going broke first, you won’t ever hit that jackpot.
That you have at least $600 or $700 in your bankroll if you’re playing the quarter machines at $1.25 per hand. If you’re playing for $5 per hand, you should have between $2000 and $3000.
You still risk going broke, but you have a lower percentage of it.
This is true whether you have an edge against the casino or not. If you’re confused about that, think about it this way:
You have $5. You play one hand of video poker with that. You have a 54.54% chance of seeing a hand that doesn’t pay out. If that happens, you go broke.
Naturally, if you had $10, you’d get 2 shots at it. You’d be less likely to go broke.
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6- Maximize the Effects of the Players’ Club Card
Almost no video poker game offers a payback percentage of over 100%. Some get so close that you can combine the game with the rewards from a players’ club card to get a positive expectation.
Most people already know how the players’ club card works. It tracks the amount of money you’re running through the slot machines and video poker machines. Based on that, they then give you back 0.2% or so in the form of rebates and free stuff (comps).
If you’re playing a video poker game with a payback percentage of 99.95%, and you get 0.2% back in comps, the effective payback percentage for the game goes up to 100.15%.
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How does that translate to dollars?
Find out in #7.
7- Be Satisfied with a Small Edge and Small Winnings
With an edge of just 0.15%, it’s hard to make a significant amount of money playing video poker. You can multiply your hourly action by 0.15% to get your expected profit per hour.
If you’re an average low roller playing for $1.25 per hand, you’re looking at $750 in action (600 hands per hour at $1.25 per hand.)
That’s 90 cents per hour.
If you’re playing for $5/hand instead, you’re looking at $3.60 per hour in earnings.
That’s not even minimum wage.
But I never promised you that you’d be able to earn a living from video poker, either.
When you compare the idea of losing money on a gambling game with the idea of winning money, the difference becomes more significant.
It’s not unusual to have an expected loss of $13/hour for a gambling game. Compared to earning 90 cents per hour, that’s a difference of $13.90.
And, truth be told, most of the casinos offering such generous pay tables limit them to the lower stakes machines. They don’t want you to earn a living from their video poker games.
You can also add the value of your free cocktails to your hourly expectation if that makes you feel better, too.
Once you’ve mastered full pay Jacks or Better, it’s time to start looking at other video poker games. The most appropriate of these to start with are the Bonus Poker family of games. Double Bonus, for example, has a payback percentage of 100.15% when you play with perfect strategy.
The Bonus Poker games offer larger payouts for 4 of a kind hands. The amount of that additional payout is based on the ranking of the cards making up the 4 of a kind.
The main similarity Bonus Poker has with Jacks or Better is the lack of wild cards.
But if you like wild cards, you should also learn to play Joker Poker, which has an additional wild card in the deck. Deuces Wild is also popular, although the wide variation in pay tables for that one is confusing.
9- Be Careful of Online Video Poker Games and Games at Native American Casinos
Most online video poker games are just as legit as their land casino counterparts in terms of their random number generator.
But not all of them.
I remember one specific online casino that offered a couple of different video poker games that were actually just slot machines that looked like video poker. The random number generator did NOT emulate a deck of cards, and your decisions made no difference to your final result.
And some online casinos are just flat-out cheaters. I read about one customer who played several hundred hands of video poker without winning anything on even a single hand. That’s almost impossible—less likely than winning the lottery, in fact.
Worst of all, in those situations, you have no way of knowing what kind of payback percentage you can expect.
The correct strategy for each video poker variation is different. It can, in fact, vary based on the pay table.
But one thing they all have in common is that most of the time, if you’re dealt a winning hand, you’ll be reluctant to try to improve it. A bird in the hand is worth 2 in the bush.
This is true for most games and most situations, but the big exception is when you have 4 cards to a royal flush. If you have the choice of drawing to that hand while breaking up a hand that’s a sure winner, you should go for it.
The potential return is big enough in that case to make up for giving up on the sure thing.
Memorizing the exceptions to this rule is one of the key aspects to mastering video poker strategy.
The best place to learn video poker strategy is via Bob Dancer’s excellent series of video poker strategy guides.
Conclusion
Video poker might be my favorite game in the casino. I enjoy the mental challenge of making the right decisions on each hand. I like being the master of my own fate.
But winning at video poker isn’t something anyone can do just walking off the street and using some card sense. You need a big enough bankroll to avoid going broke, for one thing. You also need to understand the strategy well enough to get an edge (or at least minimize the house edge.)
This requires study and practice.
But even casual gamblers can enjoy video poker and face a lower house edge than they’d see at almost any other casino game.
They’re always a better deal than the slot machines.
Known all over the world as one of the most successful poker players of all time, Daniel Negreanu’s life is an open book. While many celebrities guard their privacy, Negreanu puts his everyday thoughts and experiences on his blog and he has for years.
He’s got a crazy sense of humor, a lot of money, and a deep appreciation for family. Negreanu also loves to gamble and he’s not afraid to talk about his losses.
Fans know him as Dnegs, but his first big nickname was Kid Poker. He even used “kidpoker” as an email address for years.
He is funny and sometimes controversial. Whether it’s questioning socially sensitive topics like the name of the Black Entertainment Television or dressing up as Scotty Nguyen while playing against him in a tournament, Negreanu dances to his own beat in life.
Dnegs has fans and critics like all celebrities. His life has been documented a thousand ways over. But it’s always fun to learn something new about someone who has been around so long. See how many of these details about Daniel Negreanu are new to you.
1 – He Passed on Joining PokerStars
Fans know Daniel Negreanu and PokerStars go way back. But he could have been there from the beginning and chose not to be.
Writing on his own blog, Steve Badger states that, in 2001, Daniel Negreanu put him in touch with “a Canadian acquaintance” about a business proposition. Isai Scheinberg was looking for investors in the company that became PokerStars. Badger signed on but Negreanu passed.
To be fair, Dnegs was not the only person to pass on PokerStars as Badger’s article explains. It was a decision he later had a chance to reverse.
2 – He Fell in Love With Hearthstone Right Away
He’s neither the first nor the last poker player to download the app. But the way Negreanu tells it, he was about to go to a party when he began playing the app. Nearly six hours later, he realized he had missed the party.
Hearthstone is a deceptively simple game. Players use cards to fight matches between heroes and minions. Who goes first and which character is played weighs heavily on the outcome of the game.
There are costs to every decision and rewards for completing daily quests. The strategic components of the game obviously appeal to people like Negreanu. The player-vs-player action is another factor that poker players appreciate.
3 – Losing His Dog Taught Him Something Profound
The Negreanu family had a dog named Lucky. Early in Daniel’s poker career, he was still living with his family. According to a blog post he wrote years later, he was taking a shower when his father cried out, “Lucky’s dead! Lucky’s dead!”
The family was distraught over their loss, but Daniel couldn’t allow himself to cry. He felt the grief, but his feelings wouldn’t show. In his own words, Dnegs analyzed what happened.
“By that time, I’d already been playing poker on a daily basis and I was getting better and better. My knowledge base was steadily growing, my reading ability was improving, and MOST importantly, my emotional control was becoming more stable. So, as I was getting better and better at hiding my emotions, I think that ability spilled over to my personal life and had a negative effect on me. It basically numbed my heart, and that’s not something I wanted as a by-product of being a good poker player.”
The life lesson he learned from this introspection was to not be afraid to show your feelings outside the game. “Don’t numb your heart.”
4 – He Paid a Backer 50% of His Winnings in the 1990s
Everyone knows that it’s easier to stake a good player for a piece of their action than to master the game and go up against thousands of other good or great players.
Daniel Negreanu began staking himself in poker tournaments in 2000, according to this New York Times Magazine profile. Until then, he needed a backer who took a 50% cut from everything he won in the tournaments.
Being able to cover his own entry fees allowed Negreanu to grow his wealth that much faster. And his independence has transferred into other financial areas of his life.
He’s not afraid to lose $100,000 of his own money on a single bet.
5 – He Has Lost Millions Playing Golf
In July 2019, Negreanu shared some of his golf stories with the No Laying Up podcast.
He’s lost about $3 million on golf bets, including a $1.2 million loss to poker rival and friend Phil Ivey. But he claims to have won it back over the years.
With a little more than a week to spare, he played his final round to win the bet. On the last shot, he needed to sink a six-foot putt. His knees gave out on the shot, but he sank the ball.
6 – He Shared His Conversion to Veganism on His Blog
You must use the Wayback Machine to read the post now, but in November 2002, in November 2002 Daniel told his readersDaniel told his readers about when and why he decided to stop eating meat.
His Romanian mother loves to cook and she raised her family on hearty meaty dishes. Although skeptical of her son’s new diet, she bought vegan cookbooks and learned to prepare wholesome meals for him.
Food is an important part of the Negreanu family life. In interviews like the New York Times article above, Dnegs shares how his mother constantly uses food to entice him away from poker.
If he’s winning, he’s won enough and should come eat. If he’s losing, it’s not his day, so he ought to come back and eat. If he’s breaking even, well, that’s a good time to take a break and eat.
Going full vegan in 2006, Negreanu doesn’t push his beliefs on others. But when people talk to him about why he doesn’t eat meat, he asks them probing questions that challenge their comfort.
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He credits his change in diet with improving his poker game, too. He sometimes felt lethargic after eating a heavy meal. After switching to a vegan lifestyle, he had more energy, his game improved, and he manages his weight well.
7 – His Advice on Poker Tells Goes Against Conventional Wisdom
In the early 2000s, Dnegs wrote an article for CardPlayer Magazine that he republished on his blog, the legendary “The Truth About Tells.” The article was republished many times on amateur poker blogs for years and cited in books and magazines.
Negreanu challenges the conventional wisdom of watching players’ body language. His philosophy is that the tells are in the action, not in subtle hand movements and nervous tics.
To this day, gambling bloggers dwell on body language stereotypes when discussing tells.
Holding nothing in your hand, you can drag out a decision for minutes before folding, and the other player may be so relieved he won that he won’t challenge you again.
Maybe this advice has been lost on bloggers who don’t dig deep enough in Bing and Google’s search results for their “10 tips” articles, but experienced players still know that half the other player’s bluffing is in his silence.
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Conclusion
Love him or hate, Daniel Negreanu helped change the game of poker. He was among the first generation of young superstars to take the game away from the older players.
He has been more open with his followers about his private life than many a celebrity, and he’s honest about his mistakes. He seems to take life in stride.
Doyle Brunson said at one time that Negreanu may be the best poker player ever. It doesn’t really matter who agrees with that judgment. As long as Dnegs keeps playing the game, people will have interesting things to share about him.
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Daniel Negreanu isn’t afraid to live life the way he wants.