Chris wrote:
Could you explain how the optimal strategy is calculated in your example below? How about an example that is likely to be encountered in 2012. I play progressives without the benefit of a team. How does that alter the strategy?
Thanks,
One game frequently played for a progressive royal is 5-coin $1.00 8/5 Jacks or Better (JoB) with a single meter on the royal flush, so I'll use that game as an example. With the flat top $4,000 royal, the Cost of a Royal (CoR) computes to $9,456, suggesting that we should not play the game until the royal meter exceeds that amount. That assumes, however, that we are following the strategy for a $4,000 royal.
Wouldn't it make sense to adjust our playing strategy for the higher royal? Of course it would, but if we enter 9456 as the royal payoff and analyze the game, the CoR then computes to $8,669. If you now change the royal payoff to 8669, a game analysis shows 99.9996% expected return (ER). One more iteration shows that 1734-for-1 ($8,670 on a 5-coin $1 machine) is the smallest per-coin royal payoff that yields an ER exceeding 100%.
It may sound unintuitive, but it turns out that a strategy generated for that break-even meter will yield the lowest expected cost of a royal, regardless of the actual meter rise. That is why you might see a pro banging away on a progressive when that original CoR calculation suggests that the meter is not high enough for positive expectation. Optimum Video Poker 3 will do all those calculations and generate an optimum strategy with just a couple mouse clicks.
Dan
ยทยทยท
--
Dan Paymar, Author of "Video Poker - Optimum Play"
Visit my web site at http://www.OptimumPlay.com
"Chance favors the prepared mind" ~ Louis Pasteur