Karen Beno wrote:
That's when I started to wonder what was best, adapting or not
adapting. When I got home, I searched the net and came across this
Jazbo article http://www.jazbo.com/videopoker/prmeter.html
He draws the conclusion it's better not to adapt your
strategy unless you are playing with a team and are
certain of hitting the royal.
That's a bit of a misreading of Jazbo's article on the subject.
That's ok ... I find he comes at many vp topics from a perspective
that's about 90 degrees different than mine (nonetheless, still an
extraordinarily valid perspective ;), and it takes me more than one or
two readings to entirely get what his articles are about. Let me
start by discussing the article at large:
···
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He's addressing one key aspect of progressive play: How do you weigh
the meter advance while you're playing in evaluating the play ER?
One way to think of that advance is that you're depositing a portion
of each wager to it. If you hit the royal, you're going to get that
money back. So, effectively, it might be reasoned that you're really
only wagering the bet less the portion that goes to the meter, against
winning the starting meter value. The rest is somewhat the equivalent
of temporarily popping change away into a piggy bank.
The effect of that interpretation is that a reduced wager toward a
given jackpot translates to a higher ER. And the increase in ER is
equal to the meter advance % (the % of each wager that's added to the
meter).
I originally maintained that this was accurate reasoning. However,
another player (who perhaps read Jazbo's article) convinced me that
this would only be true if you personally expected to play a machine
from the time you began play until you yourself hit the royal (e.g.
the meter was on a stand alone machine for which you were the only
player) or, alternatively, you shared in the results of a team that
managed to monopolize a progressive bank and played until a hit.
Outside of those conditions, I later reasoned that while it was still
appropriate to perhaps factor in the meter advance rate, you needed to
prorate it for the portion of the royal cycle that you anticipated
playing until the next hit (as a best approximation). For example
given a 1% meter advance, you expect to play 4.5 hours at 800 hph
(3600 hands in total), and on average a RF will be hit on the bank in
36000 hands (reflecting more aggressive play for the royal on
average), you might add 10% of the 1% meter advance to the ER
represented by the starting meter, or .1%.
Bottom line, the meter rate might just as well be ignored -- which is
Jazbo's conclusion in the article.
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When it comes to strategy, Jazbo advises that one should go for a
max-EV strategy that ignores the meter movement unless you've got the
progressive locked up (as noted above). Thus, you would ideally adapt
strategy to factor the current jackpot meter in either case.
This fits with what I expect most of us would intuitively be inclined
to do, provided we were equipped to do so (had a proper adjusted
strategy at hand and felt sufficiently versatile in our play to move
to it without undue speed sacrifice and without an excessive error rete).
He describes two strategies -- an Aggressive (A) that equates to
pushing for a RF hit more strongly, and Passive (P) that can be
interpreted as not factoring in any change in the RF meter and
consequently is more relaxed in shooting for the hit. Under the
scenarios that he outlines (A) is advantageous over (P), unless the
cashback rate is so high that it adds an inducement to delay a RF hit
(i.e. earn higher cb).
(FWIW, he makes assumptions about resulting royal cycles for these
strategies that he notes aren't realistic, but serve to more
dynamically illustrate his point. The (A) strategy changes are only
obtainable if you toss every card except those that can result in a RF
on the draw -- you'd throw dealt quads, for example. He also uses the
alternate assumptions of a meter advance rate or cb of 10%.)
Bottom line, optimally you adjust strategy when playing a progressive
to factor in a higher meter.
- Harry