Video Poker Forum

     Recently I have strayed from my usual strategy due in part to boredom and paid the price accordingly. Last night was a little different. I was able to late at night at Mohegan Sun get on my favorite Double Down Stud machine and play regular quarter deuces wild. I know that most people don't have access to these older machines at their casino, but it is a great game and requires very little thinking and strategy. The paytable is less than 98% but I have almost always been able to overcome that with a very very mild Martingale Strategy. Also I can easily play a thousand hands an hour if not more and wait out the cold spells that way most times. What I do as posted other times is pick a small premium hand to hit and make that my goal. In other words, when I hit it I want to have enough coins in to be even or better for the session. In this case, I zero in on a dealt Wild Royal Flush that pays 100 for 1, but you automatically double when you see your shot at hitting this so really you are always going to get paid 200 to 1 which is the same as hitting quad deuces in deuces wild draw poker. Anyway, the session started with its usual downward spiral, but I had a 1,000 bankroll with me and into it for around half so at the point of the first hit, I wasn't too too worried.
     The way I usually do well with this method as you will see below is to hit a premium hand that pays better than the one you are trying to get. In this case, that would be a hit on the dealt quad deuces at over 50k to 1 against hitting it, or getting a dealt royal which is nearly 700k to one against.
     Actually, I was getting a bit nervous for the bankroll and my quarter bets were up to 13 quarters. That meant I needed to hit a wild royal that paid 2600 quarters to be a bit better than even. I didn't expect it all, but I was dealt 3 deuces and after doubling, saw the 4th deuce on the last card which was good for a beautiful 2,600 dollar hand pay. I decided to put away that entire amount and thought about quitting, but I didn't have a room due to a sold out condition. I decided to play with the rest of my original bankroll I brought with me but no more. An hour or so later, I hit a wild royal which returned all of my original bankroll back to a thousand dollars. I took a nice walk, had a capuccino, watched the drunks getting out of the clubs for a few minutes and hoped they weren't driving, then wandered back to the same machine. I was amazed it was still open, but after all it was going on 3 in the morning.
     This time I decided it was really pushing it to risk a thousand dollars again this late, so I opted to risk 500 and if I lost that, call it a night and get some rest in the car. I would still have been up over 2 grand.
     I followed my same rules, my bets were up to 9 quarters meaning I would have to hit another wild royal at bet 9 to be roughly even on the 500 bankroll which was getting low now. To my amazement, I was dealt 4 deuces on the first 4 cards. I of course doubled my bet and had another hand pay of 1800 bucks. This time I really did pack it in. Saw a beautiful sunrise, got some much needed rest in the car and unfortunately not in one of their beautiful rooms and headed home mid morning. Anyway, that is the rest of the story which is not likely to ever be repeated again. I will be headed up again tomorrow evening determined to follow the same rules no matter which game I play. One thing I have found over the years. If you get bored a little and say lemme try this or try that, I always lose. Stick to your guns and hopefully in the long run, you won't lose more than the percentage built into whatever paytable you are playing. Good luck all and stay well....Olds.....

Sounds great no matter how you get there. I miss those crazy nights and winning.

Congrats to you Olds, gotta love those dealt hands. Other hand pays that come as a result of having to work a little aren't so bad either, lol...

Nice!   What I like about you is that you're playing your own way and it's working.   Your strategy is similar to CS in many ways.  Regardless of what some forum members say, consistently going for jackpots at a higher denomination than the majority of your play works.  I still have the $4K royal I hit a few months ago and am going strong.  The only time I lose is when I go back to grinding it out flat betting.   If it works, don't change it... 

Consistently going for jackpots at a higher denomination than the majority of your play works.
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Congratulations Olds. I'm a believer. You guys are cashing in left and right! I'm stuck on stupid with all this quarter play. Never going above my comfort level on either JOB or DW. Of course the give back cycle is never absent from my sessions anyway. Zero addtl reward for my trouble!
Grind it out flat
Lose your hat,
Upgrade your play,
Cash in big some day.

[quote]Consistently going for jackpots at a higher denomination than the majority of your play works.
[/quote]Bob Dancer's strategy of playing only when you have the advantage,
playing computer perfect and having a bankroll big enough to last
through all down turns works exactly as defined.   If you lack one or
all of those factors, you need to think outside the math or accept
losing as a normal part of the game.There are many ways to accomplish this, none are guaranteed.  The idea is to play 90% of your hands small and 10% bigger.  Olds uses a system where he bets increasingly bigger on each loss.  I choose to switch to dollar play on a run up.  Taking an occasional pot shot at timed intervals does the same thing.   How you accomplish this is up to you.    Unless you have access to 100% games and can play computer perfect, it's the only way to get up on a negative game and even then it takes luck to do it consistently.  When flat betting a 96-98% game, you are guaranteed to lose money over time.  For example, when playing DW quarters at the Beau Rivage you are virtually guaranteed to lose at least $25 an hour at max coins over time and the longer you play, the more you lose.  However, if you played quarters most of the time and $20 at max coin dollars once an hour, you could possibly hit a quad deuce for $1,000 or a royal for $4K.  Your loses are kept to a minimum because most of your play is at quarters.   The worse that can happen is you lose another $20 once an hour.  The best could be wonderful.  No math can tell you if or when a big jackpot is going to happen, but it does happen.Bob Dancer has posted many times on this forum that you can't base your strategy on luck.  I would reply by saying all video poker wins have some element of luck involved.  Playing 10% of your hands above your bankroll is not going to change you luck, but it gives you a chance to benefit if luck works in your favor.  Of course this assumes you keep your wins and not feed them back into the machine.

FAA...that poem is cool. I would just say this. No matter how small your bankroll is, keep a little aside for those pot shots. It keeps you from getting down on a down day in that you have something exciting to look forward to. How about mentally keep track of every 9/6 full house you get in the session. Assign each one a value of a quarter. Reserve those quarters for the pot shots no matter what happens in the rest of the game. My guess is you will get at least 4 or more full houses in an hour. Of course there are those days on job when quads and full houses are absent. In that case, grab a beer and take a nice walk outside on the boardwalk. Grab a Philly Steak or Sausage and pepper hero cause almost nothing can turn around those days when both hands are absent.
    Phil...I have found the only way we can win or break even most times over time is to win those occasional big hands. Most of my bets are small or on the small side. In fact, often times on DDS I start with just a quarter, because I am only giving up a quarter of a percent on a dealt royal. As the session drags on and the inevitable downward spiral however slow or fast proceeds, I have come to realize I can only get where I want to be by winning a few hands at a higher level to offset the many many smaller bet losing hands. You are correct in that the way I play is similar to CS in that we make a few bets at higher denominations to offset the hard to overcome losses at the lower betting levels. Just so the novices know....Does it always work? NO of course not or we would be super rich and drive the casinos out of business or get banned for winning. It is fun however which for me and you is still the name of the game. That is why I pretty much gave up golf. I love getting outside, walking, playing, etc. but when you are halfway through a round and completely disgusted with your play, it is time to find something else to do. Now for my next invention....I am going to make a treakmill with a vp screen instead of all those medical monitors. I just have to find a way to still do the exercise and deal and hold the cards. I know telepathy should work just fine.

When flat betting a 99.5% game, guaranteed to lose money over time. Hopefully $50 an hour on a lucky day. Amidst all that misery, why not go away for four max dollar hands to possibly breathe life back into the day? If you can't figure that flat betting is losing betting after two years, I don't know what to tell you. Again, definition of insanity. Set your phone alarm at max volume for a max bet reminder. That will shake you out of your slumber. Visions of slot attendant visitation. It's almost worth it just for the fantasy.

Glad to see you have better luck at deuces than me olds. Your system would cost you dearly if you had my quarter deuces record. Big hands when your bets are high makes it much easier to win.   

Last night was a bust, but that almost always happens after a big win. I don't know why, it just does. Stuck to my guns, but without quad deuces, a royal, or a wild royal on DDS, your goose is cooked. Uncommon, but does happen not getting the wild royal dealt in a long session. Anyway, kiss that one grand goodbye until hopefully next time.