First of all, I think many people are confusing the game "One Eyed
Jacks" with the game "One Eyed Jacks Wild".
"One Eyed Jacks" is one of Sigma Gaming's many ill-conceived
games. If your final hand contained a one eyed jack (spades or
hearts), you got paid double or triple or whatever. I don't believe
any of those games were over 100%. Tomski would know for sure since
he worked for Sigma before they went out of business. I like to
think their choice of games had something to do with their going out
of business.
"One Eyed Jacks Wild" has been around for a long time. It is made
by PMS Gaming and also IGT. There are at least 3 payscales that have
been good plays either because they're over over 100% or because of
a good promotion. There was one very good promotion for at least
the last 6 years that made it a very good game, and possibly as long
as 20 years. The promo has ended after about 20 years, but I'm not
sure the machines were there that long, although they're very old so
they may have been.
I've worked out the strategys for all 3 games and they're all by
far the hardest strategys I've ever worked out. Also the penalty
situations are just ridiculous.
Some examples: Any royal draw or straight flush draw or flush draw
in diamonds or clubs is better than in spades or hearts, because
basically there's 1 more diamond and club in the deck than spades or
hearts.
T98 suited is not as good as 987 suited because of interference
with the jack.
987 suited is not as good as 876 suited for the same reason.
T9 suited is not as good as 98 suited.
98 suited is not as good as 87 suited.
Any hand's E.V. can change depending on whether one of the
discards is a jack of diamonds or clubs. That could increase full
house and 2 pair possibilities.
Any hand with a jack of diamonds or clubs in it is worse than a
hand without one. For example, AQJ diamonds or clubs is not the
same as AQT diamonds or clubs, because having a jack in your hand
decreases trips and 2 pair possibilities.
As for Steve Jacob's VP Free, I tried using it several years ago,
and I don't think the hand analyzer correctly handled One Eyed Jacks
Wild.
tomskilv@y... wrote:
>
> It is difficult because the strategy changes depending on suits.
I
> tried to make a strategy years ago and gave up.
Tom;
I know you did. When I researched the mailng list archives to
refresh
my memory on this subject I found a lot of notes, including
several
mentions that someone would look into producing a strategy. I
think you
were the first (back around 1998)and Jim Wolf was the last (last
year).
Using Steve Jacob's VP Freebie to practice and slowly develop a
strategy was also suggested (did VP Freebie have a hand analyzer?).There was a lot of discussion with Steve, Jazbo, Effen Dolts*,
Randy
Hudson, Yuri Sorkin, yourself and some others, but the only thing
that
came out of it was that there was a couple of pretty good pay
tables and
that the strategy was very, very complicated.
I think some folks might think that existing vp analyzers could
be
"easily" enhanced to handle this, but since the games they
normally
analyze do not need to deal with suits having different values,
I'm
pretty sure that it adds a whole new level of complexity to the
code -
and for just one game. Which is probably why we haven't seen it.
*The game Effen and Jazbo were looking at in AC was a much
inferior