I don't have a source to recommend. However, based upon your post
content I think I can offer up some general guidance, and a little
specific info too, that will prove useful.
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A penalty card is any discard which, were it instead present in the
balance of the deck for a draw, could potentially form a winning hand
with the held cards.
For example, if you're dealt (5h 10s 8c Jc Kc) and you hold the Jc,Kc
to take a shot at a RF, the 10s discard is a straight penalty to this
hold. It's unavailability for the draw means that there's are fewer
straight possibilities on the draw. (And you'll note the 8c is a flush
penalty also)
The significance of penalty cards is that they weaken the value of the
held cards for the very reason of fewer chances to form a winning hand
on the draw. That means that if you have two alternate feasible holds
for a hand, the weakening of one hold due to penalty cards might be
sufficient to reverse which hold is the stronger one.
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However, there's no way to evaluate the affect of penalty cards on the
fly during play short of using a tool such as winpoker. That means
that the only way to take them into account in your play is to
memorize the penalty card situations that matter.
There are published strategy cards that incorporate penalty cards in
their hold rules. The software tool, VP Strategy Master, also
determines game strategies with and without penalty card considerations.
But, above all, there's one thing to be stressed: Playing under a
"penalty card" strategy vs. a non-penalty card one only improves your
ER by about .01% in most cases. In my book, that makes the topic the
very last that someone should address in their play. Until the
accuracy of your basic strategy is reasonably refined you're far
better off concentrating on nailing basic strategy. (In my book,
that accuracy hurdle means that the ER hit of basic strategy errors in
your play is less than .05% -- or, as measured in WinPoker, a "Return
%" of at least 99.95% in the Play Analysis "Error Effect" statistics).
It's simply frequenty the case that you're better off eliminating one
basic strategy error in your play rather than handling a dozen or more
strategy error situations correctly.
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That said, there are some games where there are very common penalty
card situations. In these cases it doesn't hurt to address these
limited cases earlier in your play. I don't find Jacks or Better to
be one of these games. However Double Bonus is another matter.
Take the above example hand, (5h 10s 8c Jc Kc). In double bonus there
are two viable holds: the 3F hold, (8c Jc Kc), and the 2RF hold, (Jc
Kc). In absence of any straight penalty cards to the (Jc Kc) hold,
it's the stronger hold, by about .01 coins. Introduce the 10S
straight penalty and it's the weaker by .04 coins.
The much strong advantage to holding the 3 flush cards when a straight
penalty is present is why the non-penalty strategy advises holding the
3 flush cards as the default. (After all, ignoring infrequent
situations where the wrong pick will only cost you .01 coins isn't
that tragic.)
However, this is a penalty card situation (when combined with the
similar Q,K hand) that frequently arises. When that .01 coin hold
difference is aggragated repeated during play each time the penalty
situation presents itself, it becomes valuable enough that it doesn't
hurt to take it into account so long as it doesn't prove to be a
costly distraction in the end. But it's still the case that it's not
going to buy you much in the big picture and most players are entirely
justified in ignoring the topic.
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So, let me address the balance of your comments. Without being unduly
rude about it, they may suggest that you might want to pass up dealing
with penalty cards until a little further down the road:
I am using Winpoker and see my mistakes, make adjustments in my play
and still mess up some hands. My hard hand error factor is set to
.01, and just when I think I got it, I make the same mistakes. I
could learn it by rote and memorize the return numbers (that is what
is happening slowly), but I am trying to learn why they are coming
up that way.
Well, it's the general penalty card situations that you would want to
memorize and, as noted, you want to tap an appropriate strategy card
set for VPSM software to do that.
But let me point out that you are only talking about .01 coins or less
here. When you attempt to tackle penalty cards through the "Hard
Hand" Advanced Training Mode of WinPoker, you're picking up a number
of practice holds that are seldom seen in play. I think the far more
practical means by which to tackle the most frequent and significant
penalty card situations is just to note, in your general practice,
what more frequent penalties tend to arise and concentrate on nailing
those cold. For example, while there are a number of penalty card
situations in double bonus, I take pains in my play to only address a
very limited number.
I have the Bob Dancer strategy cards, and when I have them in from
of me I'm fine (I think) but the theory is still escaping me on some
hands. I am wondering if his "Winning Guides" will do the trick or
someone has other recommendations.
I'm not personally familar with either of these products other than in
passing. But I have little doubt that if you're determined to nail
the subject of penalty cards, Dancer's guides are likely an excellent
place to start, given his 100% accurate play obsession.
One example of what is whacking me::
:1) Jh, 10h, 7h, Ks, 8s. I keep holding the J, 10, 7 (proper play
is Ks, Jh) and realize the 8s is a straight penalty, so that's my
error I think, and then I get
2) Qh, 10h, 6h, 9d, 8s, and the proper play is Q,10, but the 9 and
the 8 are straight penalties and the 6 is a flush penalty as
well.....and I can't get my head around what is happening.....and in
my mind get the rule for why the difference in play. Why keep the
10 is what I am asking myself in english, I can see why by looking
at the numbers??
Guess the numbers rule I understand that but I would love to
understand why better...
Er, I guess I can see where you might be getting "whacked out" here :):
Entering in the hand from 1) above into the "Analyze Any Hand" feature
of WinPoker, and assuming the game is 9/6 JB, (Jh 10h 7h) is the clear
favorate, by a sizable .1 coins. (did you enter a typo here?)
In the case of 2), it's simply the case that there aren't any penalty
card considerations that need to be taken into account here. (Qh 10h)
is always the stronger hand over (Q). As I've noted, short of
evaluating the value and probability of all the potential winning
draws to each hold it's simply not possible to determine the best hold
without consulting a standard penalty card strategy.
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"P.S.", I hope you find the above helpful.
- Harry