Okay. Let's clear the air about this one.
The 'someone', I guess would be me, Elliot Frome. As a family, we
made a conscious decision 6 years ago to hold on to my dad's
business (we had several people offer to 'buy' it). Even back then
I had hoped to someday follow in his footsteps. That 'someday'
arrived several months ago, when I started writing for Gaming
Today. All the articles I write are based predominantly on my own
research and reflect my own opinions. Thanks to genetics, they
probably won't vary much from my Dad's.
As the new kid on the block, I am always in search of new places to
have my articles published. I contacted Casino City and they agreed
to make me one of the Contributing Authors. They also asked to set
up one for my Dad by using old articles. While these articles were
all in print SOMEWHERE over the past 15 years, they were not
inherited by CC Times based on a previous site. My Dad did
occassionally write for RGT Online which seems to have a
relationship with CC Times.
So, the person(s) 'profiting' from my Dad's articles are only the
rightful owners of said articles.
Now, onto the specifics of the article.
First of all, I realize that different people choose to calculate
payback slightly differently. My Dad used to (and I agree) believe
the most accurate way is coins returned divided by coins wagered.
For a Double-Up option which is a true 100% payback (no house
advantage), playing it intermingled with Video Poker (the roughly
45% of winning hands, or more realistically the 35-40% of non Major
winning hands (I personally wouldn't double down after hitting a
SFL!), does affect the payback of your entire gambling experience by
increasing coins returned and coins wagered. Given that Double-Up
can be a 100% payback, the result should be an identical increase in
both values, which will impact the payback. If you're playing a sub
100% game, the effect will be to increase the payback. If you're
playing a 100+% game, the effect will actually be to lower the
payback. Obviously, the payback of JUST the video poker is not
affected.
Example.
If you're playing JOB 9/6 and you play 1000 hands, you'll wager 5000
coins in an hour. With a 99.6% payback, you would expect to have
4980 coins when you are done. Making my life easy for a second,
let's assume you choose to only Double-Up on your High Pair hands.
About 215 hands will be Double Up, putting at risk an additional
1175 coins. With a 100% Payback, you would expect to have those
coins returned. You've now had 6155 coins returned having wagered
6175, raising your payback to 99.676.
You've still lost 20 coins. But, technically, you've wagered 1215
hands. If you constrained this to time instead of 1000 hands of VP,
you would actually cut your loss because the number of VP hands
played would decrease and that's where all the 'loss' is.
I'm sure over his many years writing, my Dad made a few mistakes
(who hasn't??). Having watched him Ace my Physics Exam at the
dinner table without the use of a calculator, I assure you the
mistakes were few and far between. What many called 'errors' were
purposeful decisions to keep strategy tables simple so that they
could be accurately followed by the masses. This was a choice he
made. Not everyone needs to agree with it.
Have a good day everybody!
Elliot Frome
Compu-Flyers
P.S. For simplicity sake www.vpheaven.com is probably the best way
to reach our website, for those that are interested.
--- In vpFREE@yahoogroups.com, "Jean Scott" <QueenofComps@f...>
wrote:
>Double-up Option
>
>http://tinyurl.com/3atad
Dan Paymar wrote: <<"So now someone is making money by re-
publishing Lenny Frome's old
articles? Of course on that site, accuracy isn't important. For
example, Lenny wrote (snip):
>To illustrate, in a 98.5 percent payback Joker Wild session, the
>players would average 15 bets lost in 1,000 games. These same 15
>bets will now be lost 1n 1,900 games. This, in effect raises the
>payback to 99.2 percent. But, for a 97 percent Video Poker
machine,
>the double-up feature increases the payback to 98.4 percent which
>suggests we can do much better on other types of machines.
Actually, the Double Up does not change the game's expected return
(payback), but it does increase the variance significantly.
In spite of many errors, Lenny contributed a lot to video poker
players. Let's let him rest in peace.">>
The above article is found on http://www.casinocitytimes.com/
which is a Web site that used to be owned by someone else, and when
it was sold or transferred, all the old articles stayed with the
Site. For example, I have some very old articles on it. I do not
write there any more. There are many good authors on that site -
but some stuff is not as accurate as one would like.
Elliot Frome, Lenny's son, has taken over his father's business,
and is now writing some new articles, i.e., in Gaming Today. He is
rebuilding his dad's old Web site, www.vpheaven.com. (Not to be
confused with the formerly troublesome and now defunct yahoo group
called vpheaven.) It is now found at
http://pages.prodigy.net/kilroydq/. You can go there and learn
more about Elliot's plan to continue where his dad left off.
···
________________________________________
Jean $¢ott - Go to http://www.FrugalGambler.biz
for VP software and strategy cards; "frugal" books;
and the NEW "Tax Help for the Frugal Gambler."
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