Video Poker Forum

Hey everybody, first post here....love the Recreational Play forum ! I am a novice recreational player, although I would say I am a serious one. I want to keep improving ! I was hoping someone could comment on the VPW software. Specifically, the training style available. You can choose to play either strategy or perfect play. I just can't figure out why these 2 options are available and which one I should be using. It seems to me the perfect strategy would be to play perfectly ! I did read and re-read several times the help section for this feature and there is really not a clear answer there , except for the analyze hand feature . 8/5 Bonus Poker is the best game at my home casino, so that's what I play. Any comments greatly appreciated, even if its to tell me I am too overly concerned about nothing ! Thanks !

I use the perfect play setting.I also use the warn setting. Its really helped me be able to play more thn one game well. Have you learned how to change the pay table to resemble your home casiono's offerings? You'll be surprised how much strategy changes for a specific game with different paytables. Enjoy!

Forgot to say welcome to the forum!

Welcome to the forum.  I've been using VPW for a couple of years now.  I used Dancer's previous software before that.  I'm not sure what perfect vs. strategy play is either.  Bob drops by this forum once in a while; maybe he can answer that question.  I duplicate the pay schedules of my local casino on my PC and use mixed play and the warn mode to train.  Changing the pay tables does change the strategy quite a bit.  I love the way VPW allows me to change the denomination on the fly and keep track of the balance in money instead of coins.  This feature allows me to play around with the denomination as I play, just like I do at the casino.  Recreational players usually have different motivations than perfect strategy players.  We make our decisions on what's the most fun, not necessarily the best play by the numbers.   Everyone wants to win, but playing negative expectation games is always a long term loser.   Knowing perfect hand strategy allows you to play a lot longer than just guessing what’s right.

I'm not familiar with VPW but I'd guess the "strategy" setting would prompt you to play according to an "expert" strategy while the "perfect play" setting would prompt you to play the absolute best hold for each hand. Since most "expert" strategies leave out some penalty card situations (in order not to make the strategy chart too complicated), my guess is that the "expert" hold is not the same as the "perfect" hold for some initial hands.

Be that as it may, the expected return for an "expert" strategy is usually not more than a few hundredths of a percent off the "perfect" strategy. I usually want to know the "perfect" hold for any given hand, but it can be confusing to get errors when you hold what your "expert" strategy says you should hold because it's not "perfect."

Hope that's "perfect"-ly clear...

^^^

"Expert" strategy is likely perfect strategy without penalty cards. For most games, this will get you within 0.01%. Which helps me reiterate, the basic strategy is much more important than penalty exceptions.

Thanks for the replies and the welcomes guys. I have had my software set for perfect play with the warn mode on for a while now, but have used the strategy setting some too. I was experimenting and I seemed to get quite a lot of "minor error" warnings with strategy play setting and was getting confused so I changed it. They pretty much are eliminated with perfect play, so that's where I leave it...lol. I haven't had to change pay tables yet because I am only playing BP for now, and the pay tables are the same....but I am glad you guys mentioned being able to do that.....could come in handy in the future..

My wife and I like to take frequent VP road trips.  I have VPW on my laptop and refer to it whenever I see a pay schedule that I don't recognize.  I write down the pay schedule and run them through the laptop back in the room.  I have found some interesting opportunities this way and have uncovered some games that you never want to play.  For example, the difference between the quarter Deuces game and the dollar game at some casinos is nearly 2%.  This is a big difference and is the reason why I play a lot of single coin dollar DW.  Even with the $200 Royal, the games are almost even and I can always go max coins if the machine goes crazy on me.  It's a hoot to hit a $1,000 quad deuce when you’re used to playing quarter games. 

Linda Boyd's Video Poker Edge book has a lot of useful paytable info in it as well. I take it with me when I have plans to visit a strange casino.