<picking up on a similar winpoker group post>
hedonist144 wrote:
Hi, I am fairly new to video poker and have learned JoB. I am now
looking for another game or two to learn. I'd appreciate several
opinions on the difficulty in learning the following games (please
rate them on a scale of easy being a 1 and very difficult being a
10).
I'll take a stab at this. I'm going to weigh a couple of factors
affecting game return in the casino that go beyond simply learning
strategy.
Ratings:
2.0 ... JoB
3.0 ... pick 'em
3.5 ... deuces wild
4.0 ... NSUD
6.5 ... joker's wild
8.0 ... double bonus
8.5 ... double double bonus
10.0 .. all american
Rationale:
-- Jacks or Better (2.0): It's the elementary building block upon
which most games might best be learned. For the newcomer, there
simply is no game that is easier to learn and that can be played with
strong accuracy in short order.
-- Pick'em (3.0): Has an easier strategy than Jacks. However, it's
more challenging for a player to master casino play that involves
nominal error cost.
Play consists of simply picking between two cards to determine which
will likely best complete the partially dealt hand. Play is very
repetitive, "Pick, Deal, Pick, Deal ...". The frequency with which
both cards are equally strong hand candidates begins to dull the mind
when the pick doesn't matter for several hands in a row. Watching
paint peel can take on appeal. The likelihood of failing to
concentrate when a significant difference presents itself is much
higher in this game than others. And because of the fairly high hand
payouts, errors are very expensive.
-- FP Deuces Wild (3.5): The core difficulty of Deuces isn't much
different that Jacks. However, there's a moderately greater
accounting for gaps in straights the requires a bit more
concentration. Also, there are sufficiently strong strategy
similarities between the deals with and without a Deuce that it takes
a longer time to get the respective strategies straight. Finally,
within the likely range of strategy hold there's a greater cost to the
wrong error in the one deuce holds that is present in the JOB Strategy.
-- NSUD (4.0): In truth, I'd weigh this close to FPDW, but I'm loathe
to make less than a .5 differentiation between games. However, NSUD
straegy is barely more complex than FPDW. Only a handful of strategy
changes will get you from one to the other. But I'd name NSUD as
being the more difficult of the two.
-- Joker's Wild, 2 Pair(6.5): I'm inclined to take a hefty jump in
the rating here simply because it's not an extension of Jacks or
Better and the hand considerations are more complex than in Deuces.
In it's favor, however, is that there is only a moderate number of
holds to distinguish once to determine if there's a Joker present.
There's a lot of accounting for the number of gaps in straight holds
that's necessary and yields a greater likelihood in a complex deal
that it'll be improperly weighed (or potentially overlooked entirely).
-- Double Bonus (8.0): A difficult game to get your hands around.
There are a large number of holds in the strategy and it takes a lot
of practice to get your hands around them. Simply acclimating
yourself to holding 3 card flushes and grabbing a 4 card open striaght
over a pair can take some time.
Jacks or Better provides a jumping off spot from which to learn the
game, but when unaltered JOB strategy is used with this game you
suffer a .54 ER penalty.
-- Double Double Bonus (8.5): In my assessment only modestly more
difficult to learn than DB. And I see it a very close call. There
are simply a limited number of strategy variations. Interestingly,
playing the game with 9/6 JOB strategy involves a slightly reduced ER
penalty, .47.
-- All American (10.0): A real mind bender of a game. While the
strategy is perhaps just moderately more difficult in theory than
Double Bonus, it takes far greater disclipline in maintaining your
attention and focus on the game in the casino.
There's a high incidence of hands where only very modest differences
can affect whether a straight, flush, SF, or pair hold is superior.
It's also much more frequent where there are 3 fairly high EV holds
present in the same dealt hand. Rapt attention is required to play
this game accurately and because of the very high SF payout, strategy
errors can be dearly costly.
Jacks or Better strategy makes for a poor start in playing the game,
with a full 3.38% return penalty. I find that mastering Double Bonus
is a wise move before tackling this game. Using DB strategy, the ER
penalty is a much more comfortable .63%.
The saving grace to this game is an ER comparable to FPDW. However,
if you have both games available for play, FPDW can easily be superior.
- Harry