NOTI, you repeatedly stress the adverse attention attracted by hitting RF’s as a reason to pursue min-cost RF strategy as a means to reduce RF frequency.
This overlooks another factor, that would be exacerbated by min-cost, that can also bring unwanted attention …
First, let me state at the outset that I predominantly play $1/$2 single line games. As such, I seldom rack up the $20k+ H/L jackpots that can single out higher stakes players for attention. That said, what has brought the greater heat to my play is the problem of being a consistent winner, year to year, at some casinos. Ultimately, this has a tendency to kill discretionary comps (travel, etc) that factor in significantly in my overall EV, and/or may actually reduce standard monthly offers.
I welcome added variance to the extent that I can stomach it. While I don’t savor a significant losing year at a casino, it’s inevitable at some place, at some time. It’s merely the function of variance, and such a year tends to cement in place a favorable reception to somewhat “extraordinary” requests that a “winning” player may not otherwise be favored with.
min-cost RF strategy brings with it a lower variance that will smooth out sessions and potentially see consistently positive results in any given year, with related adverse attention (assuming an appreciably attractive play edge). On the other hand, I’m not sold that the incremental impact of min-cost RF strategy on reducing jackpots will avert adverse attention sufficiently to offset this former factor.
—In vpF…@…com, <nightoftheiguana2000@…> wrote :
MaxEV is the basis, it’s easy to calculate, and it is hard to find an example where it’s way off base. It is optimal for maximum EV per hand, but there are other cases where it is less than optimal. Sometimes it makes sense to look at more than just a hand and to look instead at a bigger picture. The classic problem in video poker is the royal flush. A lot of people might think the royal flush is “just another hand”, but if you play in real world casinos for a while, you soon learn that it is not, it triggers other events, most of them not helpful, some requiring that you hire a lawyer. Now you could just say “screw it” and go ahead anyway and deal with the royal problems when you get them, but you could also be proactive and make some strategy changes that can reduce the negative aspects of hitting a royal. The classic example is min-cost-royal strategy which minimizes the cost of hitting a royal, commonly used on progressives but it finds use on non-progressives as well. If you want the dirt on min-cost-royal strategy see Kneeland’s “Secret World of Video Poker”.