Hi all,
Reading through the recreational forum I came across a post by New2vp.
http://forum.videopoker.com/forum/forum ... p?TID=9482
On the first page, he lists a bell curve for expected win/loss for .25 cent JOB for 1000 hands. Really good stuff.
My wife and I typically play single line $1 9/6 JOB, or several different variations of 3 line .25 cent STP. To calculate for 1$ JOB in the same format was simple enough. Multiplied the numbers in the table by 4.
Calculating the math is way beyond me, but I'm interested in the same bell curve application for these games:
1000 hands of 3 line STP totaling $4.50 per spin. $4500 coin in total.
.25 cent 3 line 9/5 JOB STP
.25 cent 3 line 9/5 DDB STP
.25 cent 3 line 9/6 DDB STP
Again, this is way beyond my computation skill, but this would really help in understanding small sample expected W/L and help to understand the variance to an extent.
Any assistance would be greatly appreciated. Great forum here, lots of good info!!
Hey Voodoo, the distribution that you referred to as a bell curve was if I recall 1000 hands of single line 9/6 Jacks of Better. To do this requires what mathematicians call "convolving" the possible outcomes and their probabilities 1000 times. With most Jacks or Better games that have the same payout for quads regardless of their rank, there are only 10 outcomes to "convolve." We have the 9 payouts from a paying pair, two pairs, trips, on up to the royal flush and then one more outcome that is "no win" with 0 coins returned.When you go to Triple Play, now there are 10 x 10 x 10 = 1000 possible outcomes since theoretically each of the 3 lines could have any of the 10 outcomes that you see in single line. For the calculations that you have in mind, it would not matter what order the outcomes appear, so that reduces down to 220 possible combinations. For example, we don't need to account for any difference between an outcome that is [Quads on Line 1, Full House on Line 2, and Trips on Line 3] vs. an outcome that is [Full House on Line 1, Quads on Line 2, and Trips on Line 3]. I know I didn't explain how the answer is 220 but there is one more step anyway to pare these outcomes down to 114 in the case of 9/5 Jacks or Better. The number ends up being lower than 220 because of examples that have equivalent payoffs for the sum of all 3 lines, like an outcome of [1 straight, 1 flush, and 1 no win] pays the same as an outcome of [1 full house and 2 no wins]. Both payments are 45 coins.If that were all, we would then need to convolve 114 outcomes through the 1000 hands, quite a bit more work without specialized software than doing this for only 10 outcomes. But you also requested Super Times Pay which has 6 possible multipliers (2x, 3x, 4x, 5x, 8x, and 10x) plus the default no multiplier, which is essentially 1x. So that means we now have a possible 7 x 114 = 798 possible outcomes. These can also be pared down to consolidate those outcomes like 5 x 15 and 3 x 25, which both yield the same number. But I think that is still 554 outcomes for 9/5 Jacks or Better, 993 possible outcomes for 9/5 DDB, and 970 for 9/6 DDB.All this is to say that this is a lot of calculating. The software available at this website (VPFW) does most of the heavy lifting and actually works well for triple play, 5-play, and 10-play. It also works with STP and MultiStrike combined with multiplay. But it doesn't work for example with Double Super Times Pay or something like Quick Quads. So if you are (or anyone else is) interested in looking at distributions or figuring out how much you need to be safe for a given amount of play, it may be worth your investment.Following is what I did for you based on the games that you chose. Rather than try and show all the humps, bumps, and positions of the distributions (or series of exponentially decaying bell curves), I've taken a chance that showing you how much money you should take if you want to play 1000 hands and finish all 1000 hands before busting 95% of the time is the most helpful information for you..25 cent 3 line 9/5 JOB STP: $576.50
.25 cent 3 line 9/5 DDB STP: $932.75
.25 cent 3 line 9/6 DDB STP: $889.00For my own memory, I gave the software a parameter that I was going to quit if at anytime I reached $1000 above my starting bankroll, but I don't think that could affect the answers by even as much as a $1.There really is no easy out-of-the-box formula to do these calculations. I've heard of something called Dunbar's Risk Analyzer but I have never seen it in action, so I don't know if it works on STP. I presume it will do calculations like this with minimal user intervention for the games that it does have. I had to do a lot of trial and error to get the numbers above with VPFW, so while it's not rocket science it does take some time to do anything like this.As I close, I'll suggest what many might see intuitively but at least some might not. These numbers are not linear. That is to say, if you wanted to see how much you would need to play 2000 hands instead of 1000 hands it would be a mistake to simply double the amount. You would actually need a lot less than double. If you wanted to see how much you would need to play 500 hands, it would be an even bigger mistake (if you were most concerned about running out of money too soon). For 500 hands, you will need more than 1/2 the amounts suggested above.Below is an illustration of what I'm saying for the .25 cent 3 line 9/6 DDB STP game you asked about. The amounts are what would be necessary to assure play through the end of the given number of hands at least 95% of the time: 500 hands $ 554.501000 hands $ 889.002000 hands $1,407.753000 hands $1,831.50So for 50% fewer hands than 1000, you will require 62% of the bankroll necessary for 1000 hands. For 100% more hands than 1000, you only need 58% more bankroll.Hope this helps. For more, you might want to invest in some software. That would be much more efficient in getting you the answers that are most helpful to you.
