vpFREE2 Forums

Dream Card variance PSA

#1

as most of us know, for a given amount of coin-in, variance on
multi-line machines at a given denomination is only a little higher
than on single-line machines of that denomination, and far far less
than single-line machines of the same amount-per-pull.

for example: if you want to play $10000 coinin at bonus poker, doing
so on a 10x$1 machine is slightly higher variance than doing so on a
single-line $1 machine. it is far less than doing so on a single-line
$10 machine, and in fact it's significantly less than doing so on
single-line $2, even though that's $10 per play while the 10x$1 is $50
per play. it'd be closest to the variance of playing single-line $1.40
denomination, if such a thing existed.

Dream Card is a new multi-line VP game which has been popping up in a
number of LV casinos recently, and it's gotten some attention with
articles by Dancer and Shackleford.

if you are considering playing it, it is worth noting that the above
variance properties do NOT apply to Dream Card.

10x$1 Dream Card does not play like a $1 machine, or even a $2
machine. it plays like a $10 machine. likewise, 10x$0.10 Dream Card
does not play like dimes or quarters, it plays like dollars. if you go
up to these machines expecting the variance to be similar to any
multiline machine you've ever played before, you are in for a very,
very bumpy ride.

the reason is the dealt royal. normally a 10-play machine means that
every time you have a draw to the royal, you get to draw 10 times.
this does not change your variance much. yes, there's occasionally a
superjackpot of 40000 coins when you get dealt the royal, but that
happens so rarely (every 650000 hands) that you can mostly ignore it.
the dealt royal contributes about 0.12% of your total return. you can
write that off and not really miss it.

in Dream Card, you cannot ignore the dealt royal. the cycle on a dealt
royal on Dream Card BP is a little over 28000 hands, about *23 times*
as frequent as in other games. it is shorter than the cycle for a
drawn royal at single-line. while it's lovely to have a realistic
chance at this superjackpot, when you don't hit it, you will pay
dearly. a full 1.4% of total return is tied up in that dealt royal.

play 10 hours of 10x$0.25 Dream Card BP at 600 hands per hour and you
can expect to be stuck over $3000 if you don't get dealt a royal. (of
course, you could be stuck a lot more if you happen to run bad on
other hands as well, like dealt aces or drawn royals - that's just an
average.) this is not what most of us would expect from playing a 99%+
game at quarters. even multiline quarters.

anyway, none of the articles i saw mentioned the variance
implications, so i figured it was worth tossing this info out there.
have fun chasing your dream if you want, but be sure you know what
you're getting into.

cheers,

five

#2

fivespot, the variance of 10-play bonus poker is 1.91 times the variance of single line, for the same denomination and same amount of coin-in. So, you would have to find the very rare single line $1.91 game to emulate the variance of a $1 10-play. But a $2 single line comes fairly close.

Your comments about Dream Card are very pertinent.

--Dunbar

···

--- In vpFREE@yahoogroups.com, fivespot <fivespot55@...> wrote:

as most of us know, for a given amount of coin-in, variance on
multi-line machines at a given denomination is only a little higher
than on single-line machines of that denomination, and far far less
than single-line machines of the same amount-per-pull.

for example: if you want to play $10000 coinin at bonus poker, doing
so on a 10x$1 machine is slightly higher variance than doing so on a
single-line $1 machine. it is far less than doing so on a single-line
$10 machine, and in fact it's significantly less than doing so on
single-line $2, even though that's $10 per play while the 10x$1 is $50
per play. it'd be closest to the variance of playing single-line $1.40
denomination, if such a thing existed.

#3

fivespot, the variance of 10-play bonus poker is 1.91 times the variance of single line, for the same denomination and same amount of coin-in. So, you would have to find the very rare single line $1.91 game to emulate the variance of a $1 10-play. But a $2 single line comes fairly close.

you're right, of course - i took a square root where i shouldn't have.
thanks for the correction.

Your comments about Dream Card are very pertinent.

i'm glad to hear that someone with a clue thinks so. :slight_smile:

···

On Mon, Dec 21, 2009 at 4:03 PM, dunbar_dra <h_dunbar@hotmail.com> wrote:

#4

Very few people here have the math skills of you or Dunbar. That being said, you can probably figure out exactly the covar for each of the games, right?

···

--- In vpFREE@yahoogroups.com, fivespot <fivespot55@...> wrote:

On Mon, Dec 21, 2009 at 4:03 PM, dunbar_dra <h_dunbar@...> wrote:
> fivespot, the variance of 10-play bonus poker is 1.91 times the variance of single line, for the same denomination and same amount of coin-in. So, you would have to find the very rare single line $1.91 game to emulate the variance of a $1 10-play. But a $2 single line comes fairly close.

you're right, of course - i took a square root where i shouldn't have.
thanks for the correction.

> Your comments about Dream Card are very pertinent.

i'm glad to hear that someone with a clue thinks so. :slight_smile:

#5

fivespot wrote:

in Dream Card, you cannot ignore the dealt royal. the cycle on a dealt
royal on Dream Card BP is a little over 28000 hands, about *23 times*
as frequent as in other games. it is shorter than the cycle for a
drawn royal at single-line. while it's lovely to have a realistic
chance at this superjackpot, when you don't hit it, you will pay
dearly. a full 1.4% of total return is tied up in that dealt royal

I just realized the dealt RF cycle is different for each game type on
Dream card

because the frequency of the Dream card is not the same for all games.
In my

work below, I have assumed Jacks or Better as the base game.

In my attempt to calculate the dealt RF cycle I got a somewhat lower
number.

I used: 20/52 X 4/51 X 3/50 X 2/49 as the frequency of getting
suited RF

cards in the first four cards. This yields a cycle length of 13,536.25.
Since the

dream card frequency is 50.5% I then multiplied the above cycle by
100/50.5.

The resultant dealt RF cycle is 26804.46 (for Jacks or Better). This
number

must then be reduced because there is a small chance you will get a
dealt RF

on a non-Dream card hand.

Comments/corrections?

G'luck all,

Gamb00ler

#6

Ok, I've put in a good bit of play on the 5play double bonus (9/7) version of this game on the VideoPoker.com website and I believe this might be the most voracious money sucker I have every come across. People contemplating this game are going to need extraordinary patience, a lot of time, and an infinite bankroll.

···

________________________________
From: dunbar_dra <h_dunbar@hotmail.com>
To: vpFREE@yahoogroups.com
Sent: Mon, December 21, 2009 6:03:08 PM
Subject: [vpFREE] Re: Dream Card variance PSA

--- In vpFREE@yahoogroups.com, fivespot <fivespot55@...> wrote:

as most of us know, for a given amount of coin-in, variance on
multi-line machines at a given denomination is only a little higher
than on single-line machines of that denomination, and far far less
than single-line machines of the same amount-per-pull.

for example: if you want to play $10000 coinin at bonus poker, doing
so on a 10x$1 machine is slightly higher variance than doing so on a
single-line $1 machine. it is far less than doing so on a single-line
$10 machine, and in fact it's significantly less than doing so on
single-line $2, even though that's $10 per play while the 10x$1 is $50
per play. it'd be closest to the variance of playing single-line $1.40
denomination, if such a thing existed.

fivespot, the variance of 10-play bonus poker is 1.91 times the variance of single line, for the same denomination and same amount of coin-in. So, you would have to find the very rare single line $1.91 game to emulate the variance of a $1 10-play. But a $2 single line comes fairly close.

Your comments about Dream Card are very pertinent.

--Dunbar

------------------------------------

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#7

I played it for the 1st time at the Orleans on November 8th. I was sitting next to a lady playing quarters who seemed to know what she was doing. She recommended Bonus rather than DDB because the Dream Card popped up more. I played a little 3-play Spin Poker nickels to see what it was like. Ended up breaking even since I hit 4 Ks and 4 As.

Each time you are dealt a pair & a dream card, you have trips, drawing for 4-of-a-kind. If you miss, you get 135+ credits for a bet of 90 (on Spin Poker - 9 lines).

The cool hits were getting dealt trips with a dream card, instant dealt quads.

Three days later (11/11), I tried SpinPoker dream card again & $100 disappeared really fast. I don't like Deuces dream card. The dream cards don't seem to help as much in a game with 4 wild already. Although...royal with a dream card counts as a natural royal. I saw a diamond one (but it wasn't mine :frowning:

The order I saw casinos install Dream Card was Orleans, Imperial Palace, Harrah's, South Point, Cannery. I haven't paid attention to the pay tables, but a friend says South Point has the best...

···

--- In vpFREE@yahoogroups.com, Rob Reid <rreid0859@...> wrote:

Ok, I've put in a good bit of play on the 5play double bonus (9/7) version of this game on the VideoPoker.com website and I believe this might be the most voracious money sucker I have every come across. People contemplating this game are going to need extraordinary patience, a lot of time, and an infinite bankroll.

#8

yes. to get a dealt royal in DC, you need RF4 in the first four cards,
and then you need either the DC feature to activate, or you need to
spike that fifth card to the royal without it.

odds of RF4 in the first four cards is 20/combin(52,4) = 1/13536.25,
as you correctly computed.

odds of getting the dealt royal given the RF4 in the first four cards
depends on the DC frequency, which we'll call X. if DC activates, with
X probability, you're done. if DC doesn't activate, with probability
1-X, then you need the fifth card to be one specific card out of 48
for the royal. so the total is X + (1-X)/48.

odds of the dealt royal is the product of these two, and the cycle is
the inverse of the odds, so combin(52,4)/(20*(X + (1-X)/48)). for
various games, using the DC frequency given by Shackleford, we get:

DW 59.0% 22615
JoB 50.5% 26268
BP 46.7% 28312
DB 33.7% 38585
BDlx 31.3% 41356
DDB 31.0% 41730
TDB 26.7% 47955

i wonder if the variance on DC DDB might actually be *lower* than the
variance on DC JoB, because the dealt-royal cycle is so much longer.
that would be amusing. i don't really care enough to compute it
myself, though.

cheers,

five

···

On Tue, Dec 22, 2009 at 12:07 PM, gamb00ler <gamb00ler@yahoo.com> wrote:

I just realized the dealt RF cycle is different for each game type on
Dream card because the frequency of the Dream card is not the same for all games.

#9

that's more a matter of coding skills than math skills. computing the
variance contribution of the dealt royal (and dealt RF4 and dealt
quads) by hand is simple enough, but computing the overall variance by
hand is... masochism. :slight_smile:

really, i just scribbled out enough numbers to convince myself i don't
want to go anywhere near this game, and after that i'm done with it.

i've never programmed a general VP analysis framework, and while it
wouldn't be impossible for me to do so, it would be a lot of work
that's never gotten to the top of my to-do list. tweaking it for
something like Dream Card is easy, it's the fundamental work like
handling symmetries and caching and so forth that's difficult.

if anyone on this list has code they could be convinced or bribed into
sharing, they should let me know. :slight_smile:

cheers,

five

···

On Tue, Dec 22, 2009 at 8:16 AM, WP SF <paladingamingllc@yahoo.com> wrote:

Very few people here have the math skills of you or Dunbar. That being said, you can probably figure out exactly the covar for each of the games, right?

#10

I think it's not that hard to estimate, using the wizard's numbers for the dream card state, and dividing the wins by 2 (since you have to bet double to get the state), I get a variance of about 40. Average that with the variance of the state without the dream card (about 5) and you get a total variance of about 23. Variance is not the same thing as short term volatility however. For a breakeven game, on average you expect to pay a royal to "win a royal" (net breakeven, casino marketing hopes you get so excited about the "win" that you forget the cost), and in this game the royal cycles simply happen sooner.

#11

Actually you can use the wizard's combined table and get the exact answer of 22.54446

#12

You can compare the cycle times of dream card to the base game (of course the catch is you have to double your bet to play dream card):

hand--dream card cycle=-base game cycle--ratio
rf 8105 40000 4.9
sf 1614 9174 5.7
4k 76 429 5.6
fh 43 87 2
fl 76 91 1.2
st 39 89 2.3
3k 4.8 13.4 2.8
2p 8.9 7.7 0.87
hp 3.4 4.7 1.4
00 3.2 1.8 0.56

#13

nightoftheiguana2000 wrote:

Actually you can use the wizard's combined table and get the exact
answer of 22.54446

Right (although I got a modestly different value than you: 22.79234 ... did you use the truncated W-O-O prob/return stats, or did you start with the precise Comb #'s?

Irrespective, message is the same. Generally speaking, from a bankroll perspective I'd much prefer to play $.50 9/6 Jacks multiplay than the Dream Card $.25 variant, all other things being equal.

Not reflected in the value is the fact that (I suspect) the Dream Card has a co-variance intensifying effect somewhat comparable to a Joker, ensuring multiplay has a much wilder ride than the base variance of 22 would suggest.

#14

My err. 22.54446 is spot on! (started with a variance calc that had base 9/6 JB hardcoded in the variance formula :wink:

- H.

···

--- In vpFREE@yahoogroups.com, "HarryP" <harry.porter@...> wrote:

nightoftheiguana2000 wrote:
> Actually you can use the wizard's combined table and get the exact
> answer of 22.54446

Right (although I got a modestly different value than you: 22.79234 ... did you use the truncated W-O-O prob/return stats, or did you start with the precise Comb #'s?

Irrespective, message is the same. Generally speaking, from a bankroll perspective I'd much prefer to play $.50 9/6 Jacks multiplay than the Dream Card $.25 variant, all other things being equal.

Not reflected in the value is the fact that (I suspect) the Dream Card has a co-variance intensifying effect somewhat comparable to a Joker, ensuring multiplay has a much wilder ride than the base variance of 22 would suggest.

#15

Possibly, but the dream card is 50-50, at least for jacks, whereas the joker is more like 10-90. Dream card significantly increases dealt royals, which will significantly decrease the covariance.

I think the interesting thing about this game is what it will do to floor management. In addition to many gamblers, the floor also does not take into consideration the cost of hitting jackpots, so they're just going to see a lot of taxables/handpays on a video poker game by those who get lucky and either back them off and/or downgrade the paytables till their "perceived problem" (too many jackpots) goes away.

···

--- In vpFREE@yahoogroups.com, "HarryP" <harry.porter@...> wrote:

Not reflected in the value is the fact that (I suspect) the Dream Card has a co-variance intensifying effect somewhat comparable to a Joker, ensuring multiplay has a much wilder ride than the base variance of 22 would suggest.

#16

> Not reflected in the value is the fact that (I suspect) the Dream > > Card has a co-variance intensifying effect somewhat comparable to
> a Joker, ensuring multiplay has a much wilder ride than the base
> variance of 22 would suggest.

nightoftheiguana2000 wrote:

Possibly, but the dream card is 50-50, at least for jacks, whereas
the joker is more like 10-90. Dream card significantly increases
dealt royals, which will significantly decrease the covariance.

That's an interesting point. In fact, it could swing $.25 DC longer-term bankroll swings (100+ play hours) to something much smoother than the equivalent $.50 multiline play. Hour to hour (and most session-to-session) the dips would likely be harsher.

I think the interesting thing about this game is what it will do to
floor management. In addition to many gamblers, the floor also does
not take into consideration the cost of hitting jackpots, so
they're just going to see a lot of taxables/handpays on a video
poker game by those who get lucky and either back them off and/or
downgrade the paytables till their "perceived problem" (too many
jackpots) goes away.

My preception (possibly mistaken) is that managers are more focused on concern over short-term negative payouts from a game due to a run of hits than on the payouts themselves. In other words, it's when they get a surprising run of jackpots that threaten to turn the hold for the bank negative for the month that they get uncomfortable.

Based on your comments, there's a decent indication that such a run is less likely on this game. Yes, there's a higher percent of return paid off in the form of jackpots, but if OVERALL game variance is lower than the equivalent bet multiline play, then there's less likelihood of such a run. It may be that this game offers a better prospect of consistent house profitability than the standard multiline version.

···

--- In vpFREE@yahoogroups.com, "HarryP" <harry.porter@> wrote:

#17

uh, yes, for single-line, Dream Card variance is comparable to the
base game. but there is no such thing as single-line Dream Card. the
unique aspect of Dream Card, variance-wise, is the massive covariance
and in particular the massive dealt royal factor.

ten-play JoB has a variance of 3.72. ten-play Dream Card JoB has a
variance contribution of over 6 from the dealt royal *alone*, and is
probably over 9 overall.

for variance equivalents, $1 10-play JoB and $0.50 10-play DC JoB are
both $50 bets, but normal JoB is going to play like a $2 single-line
game while DC JoB is going to play like a $5 single-line game.

best wishes,

five

···

<nightoftheiguana2000@yahoo.com> wrote:

I think it's not that hard to estimate, using the wizard's numbers for the dream card state, and dividing the wins by 2 (since you have to bet double to get the state), I get a variance of about 40. Average that with the variance of the state without the dream card (about 5) and you get a total variance of about 23.