1.4. Re: When positive games don't really help
Date: Fri Apr 25, 2008 7:44 pm ((PDT))Most players are majorly underbankrolled!!!
VERY true. When I read the very old tome, Professional Video Poker (Stanford Wong, the blackjack guru), he made estimates of RF frequency and return without the RF, and about hands per hour, and came up with a figure, on quarter machines, of $35 an hour as the AVERAGE cost of play while waiting for the Royal. And we've all heard stories of how many hours, and sometimes how many months or years, people can go without a royal.
When I played blackjack, varying bets from one to four units and playing 150-200 hands an hour with a 0.5 to 1 percent edge against the house, I averaged about one unit per hour profit - but my "hourly" was plus or minus twenty units from that figure!
The "big bets" were the ones that made your day - one way or the other - the one where you had a large bet because the deck favored you, ended up splitting some hands and perhaps doubling down on one or more of those - and then held your breath to see if you got the hands you were "expecting" to get, and whether the dealer got what you were "expecting" based on the composition of the deck and correct play of the hands. Those big hands were often ones where your expected edge was not that great - maybe 10%, I'm guessing - so that, in the long run, that's a nice edge, but on that particular hand, there's certainly nothing "sure" about what will happen.
VP is not that different - if your dealt hands are composed of a disproportionate amount of junk and/or your draws are disproportionately "unlucky", you'll have a bad day, and if you're turning high cards into quads, your day will be happy.
In either case, you need a lot of money to weather the storms, and it's NOT the "average" amount needed to get there - because many people, and everyone sooner or later, will run worse than average, sometimes much worse.
--BG
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