Harry, may I borrow two dollars?.
--- In vpFREE@yahoogroups.com, "Harry Porter" <harry.porter@v...>
wrote:
A word (or two or more, as is my habit 
about alternate
strategies:
For the typical player, at denominations of $1 or less, they are an
academic (and likely fruitless) pursuit.
Tell me that you've honed your play so that in practice your errors
cost you no more than .01% (ok, I'll allow .02%) and I'll concede
that
there's room that such precision play allows for play optimization
toward some goal other than "max ER". But I assert that for at
least
95% of the players here (more likely 99%+), adopting alternate
strategies will frustrate and work counter to all possible play
goals.
Examine the numbers cited for the example in the Alternate Strategy
FAQ discussed elsewhere on the vpFREE website:
http://members.cox.net/vpfree/FAQ_S.htm
------
For a $.25 9/6 Jacks progressive with a RF payout of $1300, the
greatest reduction in expected play cost between royals is from
$984.3
to $976.0, a difference of about $8. Now, under ideal
circumstances,
this is achieved at a nominal ER cost (.05%).
I won't argue whether this may be an efficient tradeoff and in fact
will concede that it may very well be. But, for this example, I
have
my doubts that the average player, if they tackle that royal and
misses after playing a cycle through the machine, is going to go
home
and crow about the $8 they theoretically saved by using alternate
strategy. Ditto in the case of the $1 player who has come home
with
an expected $32 more in their pocket. (If they successfully hit,
they
could give a s*** about the savings -- but that's not the focus of
alternate strategy.)
Admittedly, this example poorly illustrates the potential for
alternate strategy in some of the extreme cases -- which likely
involve pursuing plays that truly stretch the bankroll of a player
and
probably involve either a much higher variance than usual play or a
higher play denomination (or both). Nonetheless, I'll shortly
discuss
why such expected savings are illusory for most players.
------
Let's take a quick look at the bankroll requirement reduction
detailed
first. I'm going to restate these numbers in terms of bets, to get
away from the play denomination distinction. The greatest bankroll
reduction noted is from 4516 bets to 4413 bets. I'm hard pressed
to
believe that a bankroll requirement reduction of 100 bets (an
amount
any Jacks player should be prepared to lose during an unfortunate
hour's play) is sufficient to evoke a huge sigh of relief from most
players.
Again, I won't dispute that under extreme play circumstances the
bankroll considerations involved may be very significant for the
precision player. But the typical player isn't likely to find any
relief here.
------
Why am I so dubious about the benefit that might be derived by the
typical player? Merely because of some of the unwieldy logistics
involved.
From the values just cited, it should be clear that they are likely
very sensitive to changes in ER -- such as would be the case if the
cost of player errors were to increase.
Now, for a precision player (again, defined as a player whose
practice
errors cost .02% at the very most) I'm willing to believe that
they'll
have the discipline and expertise to hone their alternate strategy
play to similar levels. But that's very unlikely to be the case
for a
typical player.
This is particularly the case for the novice who's armed with an
alternate strategy, but doesn't have the understanding with which
to
construct one themself under a given goal. There's no software
that
I'm aware of that will alert the player to practice plays that err
when measured against an alternate strategy.
Certainly WinPoker, which doesn't permit the entry of an
alternative
strategy chart, fails on this count. However, even Frugal VP -
which
is notable in allowing users to tweak strategies and select them
for
practice - won't flag any deviation from the alternate strategy
provided that the play is consistent with standard strategy. (I
apologize if this is a misreprestation.)
But, say a player does grasp how to construct a particular
alternate
strategy and can determine a paytable that's consistent with that
strategy. When scaled where a bet unit is 5 credits, fractional
entries will be required -- something that most software doesn't
permit (neither BDWP nor FVP do). It doesn't take a rocket
scientist
to rescale the chart to integer values (a single bet may
now "return"
28 credits for a high pair and 22,203 credits for a RF). So, I
won't
discount the possibility that a motivated player will surmount this
hurdle.
------
But, setting all this aside, here's my real take on this for the
typical player. A strongly motivated player who's reduced the
cost of
their errors to .05% (a level that still represents recreational
play,
albeit with more precision than most) is unlikely manage such
strong
accuracy when confronted with more the more unwieldy practice just
discussed (and which more than likely applies to a subset of their
overall play). If they possessed that level of discipline, they'd
be
playing standard strategy at the <.02% error cost precision
otherwise
···
discussed (something I expect that a very small -- read as "tiny" -
-
fraction of players here can lay claim to). And I won't even
bother
to touch in any detail on actual casino accuracy, for which all
but a
handful of players are subject to greater error incidence given the
larger distractions to play.
As noted, the sensitivity of the optimized play cost and bankroll
requirements to play errors means that for most players these
advantages are likely to largely evaporate (if not, in truth, be
aggravated to larger values).
------------------------------------------------------------------
--> Bottom line, for the typical player, there's much greater
opportunity to minimize play cost and reduce bankroll requirement
simply by aggressively honing play. For the player that's subject
to
a .25% error cost, simply paring that to a skilled .05% will
achieve
80% of the cost between royals noted in the Jacks progressive
example,
and will increase ER, rather than decrese it, in the process.
Frankly, I question the efficacy of the play of all but the very
most
adept player who opts to "play around with" (I actually have a much
less attractive phrase in mind) alternate strategy concepts.
- Harry