Why not the ace?

[b74]

I play DB mainly. The question that I have among others is " Why does my software tell me to keep Q,J off suit when I have Q,J, and a ace off suit? Why would I not keep the ace also? ...........One of the "problems" I have with these strategy. THX

[Tedlark]

  If you keep the A you only are able to draw for an A high straight. If you do not hold the A you will be able to draw to a Q high straight as well as an A high straight.

[New2vp]

Hey b74,When holding AQJ, you have a slightly better chance (6%) of getting a paying pair and a 36% better chance of getting a straight than if you hold QJ.But holding QJ only gives you a 75% better chance at 2 Pair, and more than double the shot at trips.  And with QJ, you have a slight chance at a full house and maybe even quads, which are both impossible with AQJ.Both holds give you a 37-38% chance of a paying final hand, with QJ having a slight edge.Add that all up and most players after being informed will go with QJ.  Not all of them.  I'll bet there are some who like to play the lone ace here and try at that remote chance of hitting quad aces.  With the DB pay schedule, this is a worse play than either QJ or AQJ.It may not be intuitive that QJ gives you the best score on average, but as a teacher of mine said long ago, it can become intuitive if you update your intuition.  Of course, if you find some software that you trust, you don't even have to depend on intuition.Or alternatively, you can just ignore the advice in this instance, and play how you feel.  You always have that option. That would likely hurt more than help over your playing career, but, hey, it's your money!  Or just your points, if you limit your play to free sites like this one.

[Tedlark]

  This site is free? What's all this nonsense about being "gold"? Kidding, kidding, I don't want to open freshly healed wounds.

[New2vp]

Ted,Good point.  I tend to forget about paying for gold membership when people aren't complaining about being "disrespected" during the contests or, on the other hand, others are wanting to exclude non-golds because they think they are not getting their money's worth.  I'm relatively insensitive to the concept of worrying about $5 or $6 per month one way or the other in exchange for a little fun.  (And I'm not mocking anyone; I just don't have much interest in either side of that argument.)Nevertheless, your post got me to thinking about my originally intended point.  What I really meant was "free" in the sense that you don't lose any money here when one makes plays that "feel" better even if those plays do not maximize EV.

[shadowman]

Once again I will make the point about owning a good software tutor or using vpgenius.com. For example, you can find the answer to the above question here.
 
http://www.vpgenius.com/video-poker/dou ... poker.aspx
 
What these tools allow a person is the ability to analyze any hand and see exactly what the differences are.


 
You simply select the cards that you're interested in and it will tell you all the winning combinations. You can see for yourself the points made above by new2vp. It also tells you the *cost* of making a different choice. In this case the average cost would be just over .12 credits each time a wrong choice is selected.

[BillyJoe]

I play TDB mostly, so I am a fan of holding an Ace. If I have a K/Q/J suited with the Ace, I will hold that. I never hold two or three K/Q/J with the Ace unless they are suited. Probably explains why I lose so much money.  

[b74]

THX for the comments. You guys made some sense out of it . I wish that I would only play for free. It was an interesting scenario to me, so I figured Id ask. I have a good software program but Im sure theres better out there. Now back to my enemies..............the inside straights with no face cards, UGH!

[New2vp]

Well, b74, some dealt hands are just plain bad AND there are no good options. However, there is generally one option that is better than the others that you should take...sort of like elections sometimes...but that's even be more controversial even if there were a software election tutor that could help you with the "math" behind choosing candidates.Another thought about AQJ.  It's hard for me to recall when I was really "new to video poker," but then my intuition would have liked tossing the ace even less.  My experience had been with other games like regular draw poker, where a pair of aces was more valuable than a pair of jacks and a single ace was more valuable than a single queen, a single jack or even queen-jack together.  It was really hard to fathom and accept that a Jack was better than an Ace, due to its ability to make more straights.  You never gave much thought to making a straight when you held one card!  Heck, even in the simple card game of WAR, aces are what it was all about (unless you kept the jokers in the stack).And I agree with Billyjoe, something in me likes when you get to keep a pair of aces over a couple pair or Ace over QJ.  So, b74, maybe you should stick with games where the Ace is the better play and you won't have that conflicted feeling as often.  Don't know what you're going to do about inside straights, though.  Generally, unless 2 pair pays 10 credits, you should hold your nose, keep the low cards and hope that you beat those nearly 12-1 odds.

[b74]

Ok gotcha. The only thing that I was thinking was that with a hand such as said earlier, I would just have been happy with jacks or better to push the hand. The straight thing makes sense. Anyhow, Im usually agressive with the aces. I also toss the A,A,A,5,5 Fullhouse on DB $.25. If I was playing 1$ then I would keep the house. Thats mostly due to bankroll. I play DB mainly but played regular Bonus poker the other day at Blue Chip and I think I like that game too. I ran that mach for 3 hours on $20.