If, bare with me, there are 16 rounds (number of peolpe per round
unknow)and we have 10 minutes to play as many hands as we can and
perfect play generates the best return overall, shouldn't we play that
way? The 1st 20 places win from $1500 down to $50.
If I assume (I know!?)say 20 people per round ... that's 320 chairs
filled. Further assume 150 hands on avg. gives 48000 hands played.
Based on WinPoker's analysts of 9/6 BD with 4500 coin RF a Royal would
occur every 37118 hands and Aces every 4463 hands on Avg. That would
mean 1 to 2 RF's and 10 plus sets of Aces, give or take for the
Tournament. Those that had the good luck to hit these would most
probably be in the money, somewhere. Now, if no one had the good
fortune to hit a Royal( what kind of high scores can we expect?) and
perfect play make the most point(return) most of the time(can that be
said for the short term, we're talking 20 minute here?)shouldn't we
play as perfect as possible. Or, do we go for the luck factor? Play a
Super Ace type of Strategy and go for the Quad Aces? I mean, if Luck
is the only way to win 1st place going for(just play for the big
hands) it seem like the best way overall!
Oh Well, if nothing else this may stir the pot, so to speak!
Tournament Play
You've hit on the very reason that I dislike the term "perfect play".
The strategy that many VP experts describe as "perfect" is only
perfect for one very specific objective -- maximizing EV. If your
true objective is to win a tournament, or to place in the money,
then the max-EV strategy is no longer "perfect" for your objective.
A better strategy for tournament play would try harder to hit large
payoffs, and would have higher variance than given by max-EV
strategy. Unfortunately, I can't really pin this down to a specific
strategy unless the objective can be expressed in precise terms.
You have good instincts!
···
On Tuesday 15 November 2005 05:47 am, annajam935 wrote:
If, bare with me, there are 16 rounds (number of peolpe per round
unknow)and we have 10 minutes to play as many hands as we can and
perfect play generates the best return overall, shouldn't we play that
way? The 1st 20 places win from $1500 down to $50.
If I assume (I know!?)say 20 people per round ... that's 320 chairs
filled. Further assume 150 hands on avg. gives 48000 hands played.
Based on WinPoker's analysts of 9/6 BD with 4500 coin RF a Royal would
occur every 37118 hands and Aces every 4463 hands on Avg. That would
mean 1 to 2 RF's and 10 plus sets of Aces, give or take for the
Tournament. Those that had the good luck to hit these would most
probably be in the money, somewhere. Now, if no one had the good
fortune to hit a Royal( what kind of high scores can we expect?) and
perfect play make the most point(return) most of the time(can that be
said for the short term, we're talking 20 minute here?)shouldn't we
play as perfect as possible. Or, do we go for the luck factor? Play a
Super Ace type of Strategy and go for the Quad Aces? I mean, if Luck
is the only way to win 1st place going for(just play for the big
hands) it seem like the best way overall!
Oh Well, if nothing else this may stir the pot, so to speak!
annajam935 wrote:
If, bare with me, there are 16 rounds (number of peolpe per round
unknow)and we have 10 minutes to play as many hands as we can and
perfect play generates the best return overall, shouldn't we play
that way? ... Now, if no one had the good fortune to hit a Royal(
what kind of high scores can we expect?) and
perfect play make the most point(return) most of the time(can that
be said for the short term, we're talking 20 minute here?)shouldn't
we play as perfect as possible. Or, do we go for the luck factor?
I'll pick up where Steve left off ...
When you perform a standard "max EV" game analysis with any software,
an ending win of 1000 credits after a given number of hands is treated
as being worth exactly half of an ending win of 2000 credits. When
playing a tournament, that's hardly true. If it turns out that you
need a minimum of 1400 credits to finish in the money, than ending
with 1000 credits is of no greater value than 500.
Speaking generally, it's not only important to maximize expected score
but also to maximize the likelihood that you'll come out on top of the
pack. The strongest tournament strategy will vary depending upon
format but it will likely reflect a tradeoff between these two goals.
It sounds like you're looking for some advice on the "V P Shootout"
tournament you describe, involving a 9/6 DB paytable. I'll comment
that later, but to outline the approach I take in a tournament I want
to use the Millionaire Maker as my example, where the game is DDB.
You recall a post I'd written on vpmail a couple of years ago. I'm a
little wiser now and therefore will remark that Skip and Dancer, as
well as others, are likely to have stronger insight. Nonetheless,
here's what I have to offer up, likely improved by better available
tools (notably, Frugal VP software):
···
------
Variance is the tournament player's ally. It has the quality of
increasing the odds that you'll finish higher than others ... but,
mind you, also the odds that you'll finish lower. On the downside, if
you're faring poorly in any case you're unlikely to worry about coming
in rock bottom rather than 5th from the bottom. But on a strong
finish, a modest nudge up can make the difference between being in the
money and not ... and if you're finishing near the top, advancing just
one place can mean several hundred dollars improvement in win ... or more.
At the same time, you don't want to go for the big wins to the
exclusion of all else. When it comes down to it, if you and another
player have performed equally well on quad hits (something that luck
has more to do with in the course of 10 or 20 minutes than any
strategy), the player who betters the other is the one who has
successfully scored stronger on the basic hands that comprise 75%+ of
the return in most games.
So, in forming a modified tournament strategy, you want to take more
shots at hands such as quads, but at the same time not terribly impair
your overall expected return.
------
In striving for a decent tournament strategy for DDB, I used Frugal
Video Poker to weed out those holds that impaired my chances for a big
hit while at the same time didn't make a strong EV contribution. You
can, of course, wing this without a tool such as Frugal but it's a
beautiful software program for this application.
I loaded DDB and went into the feature to "Tweak Strategy Charts".
For each strategy hold, the EV and % contribution to game EV are
shown. From this, I selectively weeded out hands I indicated and
resequenced holds that had similar EV's in order to favor those that
yielded large pays.
Deletions:
-- I quickly opted to dump any SF hold other than a pat hand and a 4
card SF. In general, a 250 pay for a SF is very poor relative to the
probability of a hit and the chart numbers confirmed this. I did opt
to keep any 3-card open and 1 gap SF with no highs over a full redraw.
There's enough value difference here. But, if any high cards were
involved, I favor keeping just the high cards.
-- I got rid of any 4cd ins S (I kept JQKA). The relatively low S pay
doesn't warrant going for this infrequent win, even if the alternative
is to toss the hand.
-- The other deletion was unsuited JQK (I prefer to leave open chances
for a quad or FH),
Resequences:
-- 3K (2-4) over FH (exc. w/ pair A)
-- 3RF A-hi over 4F
-- pair (2-4) over 4S open
-- Ace over unsuited QJ
------------
These changes are entirely subjective but I found them to be those
that improved the chance of high paying hands without overly impairing
ER. Because I understand only the winner often advances in a
"qualifier", one might choose to go for more aggressive changes ...
but I'd choose to stick with these. The same would go for a
tournament in which only a very small handful of players finish in the
money.
The ER consequence of these strategy changes is a reduction of 0.3%.
I also considered holding just the high pair of 2 pair (a novice
mistake in standard play), however this alone had an ER cost of .4%
and was a poor choice.
------------
The Harrah's vp Millionaire Maker tournament is, as I understand the
format, fairly attractive to the skilled player. Some tournaments
allow a very large number of hands to be played, if you're fast enough
... sometimes allowing as many as 20 or more hands a minute. The
Harrah's tournament allows bets totally 1000 credits, or 200 hands,
over the course of 15 minutes -- a max speed of 800 hands/hr. For the
player who has a a hundred thousand hands or so under their belt, that
may be a very comfortable speed at which to make careful strategy
consideration when a strategy with which they're adept is applied.
But, no doubt, taking a wing at modified strategy after only a couple
hours of practice is going to risk more than any likely gained value.
Stick w/ standard DDB strategy unless you get the modified strategy
down COLD (and then, beware when you play for real money in the casino!)
On the other hand, when the tournament is a (forgive the expression)
"balls to the wall" competition, it's time to risk glaring errors in
favor of additional hands. Most likely errors will cost less than the
EV of each additional hand played (unless you REALLY get sloppy).
-------------
Ok ... concerning your questions on the "Shootout" tournament.
Because flushes and straights pay more strongly in DB than DDB, this
strategy is likely very ill-suited for a DB based tournament. I'd
advise using the method I've outlined to arrive at a strong modified
strategy.
I definitely would avoid using a 10/7 Strategy and, since you're
suggesting you would instead learn the strategy changes for 9/6, you
might as well go whole hog and strive for a strong tournament strategy
and get it down pat.
When it comes to "Crunch Time", say 10 minutes into a 15 minute
tournament, it's certainly time to glance around quickly and guage
where you stand. No doubt, if you're well out of the money (say, in
the bottom half), you may choose to begin taking pot shots and Royals
and Aces. But if it's the case that a single set of quad Aces would
put you in good stead for a qualifying finish, you may want to leave
the Aces to luck and focus on strategy. When you hit the wire, often
the differences between players in what happens on the intermediate
hands can be the critical differentiator.
- Harry
(written with my usual flurry of fingers and limited time so I'll
apologize in advance for evidence of poor <no> editing 
Yup. max-EV strategies are only good for infinitely long play, where
each hand has exactly the same value.
In tournament, the parameter to optimize for is how much money you're
trying to win, not the final score.
In an extreme situation where each player receives exactly the same
amount, the strategy obviously doesn't matter at all.
In another extreme situation where the winner takes all, you want to
try to get a big hand almost as hard as possible.
Certainly the strategy throughout a tournament isn't constant. If e.g.
you play toward the end of the tournament and you know the scores of
players "in the money", as long as you're below those scores it
doesn't matter how much lower you go, so taking risks to try to haul
your score up is totally justified. On the other hand if you play
toward the end of the tournament and you hit a big hand half-way
through your play that set your score just above that of another
player who has already finished and is currently in second place, it
probably makes sense to stop playing altogether: you're more likely to
fall to 3rd place than to catch up with the 1st place.
I will not attempt to actually provide a clean and full mathematical
solution, but it's not a very hard problem:
-you need to estimate the payout value for each final score. With no
knowledge of other players' scores, a reasonable way is probably to
assume a blend of common strategies, to compute an "average" PDF for
all those strategies for the number of hands expected to be played, to
distribute the payout value against the final scores according to the
PDF.
-for each strategy that you're considering, you need to compute the
PDF of that strategy and evaluate the average payout that you expect
for that strategy according to the distribution of expected payouts -
that's the actual EV of the strategy.
-a reasonable approach (assuming that you're in for the long term) is
to pick the strategy according to its EV.
-there are two bits of dynamic information that can influence the model:
1) if you know the scores of the players currently in the money, you
can tweak the first half of the model accordingly. That's especially
true toward the end of the tournament (if the players play one at a
time, and you are the last player with perfect knowledge about other
player's scores, you have a strong advantage)
2) you can also adapt your strategy throughout your play based on your score.
Of course you need to remain practical in how many different
strategies you want to play in a tournament, and in how many
parameters you want to look at "in real time" to decide which strategy
to use.
JBQ
···
On 11/15/05, Steve Jacobs <jacobs@xmission.com> wrote:
You've hit on the very reason that I dislike the term "perfect play".
An excellent analysis and method using an excellent tool. Most of the tournaments I have played in have been at the V, which uses a proprietary paytable that limits the value of the royal and other top hands and increases the value of the other hands. I have a max EV strategy for that game but have never used FVP to analyze it in this way. FVP really gives the player to much to work with, it's incredible. How about an article on it Howard?
In big tournaments with regular paytables, modifying your play to increase your shot a royal is usually the correct play. It depends on the size of the tournament. If the sixteen sessions of ten minutes (say 125- 150 hands - it depends on the speed of the machines of course) , there would be about 2,000-2400 hands played times the number of people in a session. If that's 50 players a session (800 people and 100,000+ hands total), there's likely to be one or more royals. If you fall behind and require a royal to advance, your strategy should get more agressive to where it can get down to throwing away pat hands, even quads, to draw to one high card.
That's really alien to most VP players, but it's also kind of liberating and fun. After all, it's not your money on the line. All this makes VP tournaments more fun that slot tournaments - even though it's mostly luck, you do have some kind of control.
Harry Porter wrote:
···
annajam935 wrote:
If, bare with me, there are 16 rounds (number of peolpe per round unknow)and we have 10 minutes to play as many hands as we can and perfect play generates the best return overall, shouldn't we play that way? ... Now, if no one had the good fortune to hit a Royal( what kind of high scores can we expect?) and perfect play make the most point(return) most of the time(can that be said for the short term, we're talking 20 minute here?)shouldn't we play as perfect as possible. Or, do we go for the luck factor?
I'll pick up where Steve left off ...When you perform a standard "max EV" game analysis with any software,
an ending win of 1000 credits after a given number of hands is treated
as being worth exactly half of an ending win of 2000 credits. When
playing a tournament, that's hardly true. If it turns out that you
need a minimum of 1400 credits to finish in the money, than ending
with 1000 credits is of no greater value than 500.Speaking generally, it's not only important to maximize expected score
but also to maximize the likelihood that you'll come out on top of the
pack. The strongest tournament strategy will vary depending upon
format but it will likely reflect a tradeoff between these two goals.It sounds like you're looking for some advice on the "V P Shootout"
tournament you describe, involving a 9/6 DB paytable. I'll comment
that later, but to outline the approach I take in a tournament I want
to use the Millionaire Maker as my example, where the game is DDB.You recall a post I'd written on vpmail a couple of years ago. I'm a
little wiser now and therefore will remark that Skip and Dancer, as
well as others, are likely to have stronger insight. Nonetheless,
here's what I have to offer up, likely improved by better available
tools (notably, Frugal VP software):------
Variance is the tournament player's ally. It has the quality of
increasing the odds that you'll finish higher than others ... but,
mind you, also the odds that you'll finish lower. On the downside, if
you're faring poorly in any case you're unlikely to worry about coming
in rock bottom rather than 5th from the bottom. But on a strong
finish, a modest nudge up can make the difference between being in the
money and not ... and if you're finishing near the top, advancing just
one place can mean several hundred dollars improvement in win ... or more.At the same time, you don't want to go for the big wins to the
exclusion of all else. When it comes down to it, if you and another
player have performed equally well on quad hits (something that luck
has more to do with in the course of 10 or 20 minutes than any
strategy), the player who betters the other is the one who has
successfully scored stronger on the basic hands that comprise 75%+ of
the return in most games.So, in forming a modified tournament strategy, you want to take more
shots at hands such as quads, but at the same time not terribly impair
your overall expected return.------
In striving for a decent tournament strategy for DDB, I used Frugal
Video Poker to weed out those holds that impaired my chances for a big
hit while at the same time didn't make a strong EV contribution. You
can, of course, wing this without a tool such as Frugal but it's a
beautiful software program for this application.I loaded DDB and went into the feature to "Tweak Strategy Charts". For each strategy hold, the EV and % contribution to game EV are
shown. From this, I selectively weeded out hands I indicated and
resequenced holds that had similar EV's in order to favor those that
yielded large pays.Deletions:
-- I quickly opted to dump any SF hold other than a pat hand and a 4
card SF. In general, a 250 pay for a SF is very poor relative to the
probability of a hit and the chart numbers confirmed this. I did opt
to keep any 3-card open and 1 gap SF with no highs over a full redraw.
There's enough value difference here. But, if any high cards were
involved, I favor keeping just the high cards.-- I got rid of any 4cd ins S (I kept JQKA). The relatively low S pay
doesn't warrant going for this infrequent win, even if the alternative
is to toss the hand.-- The other deletion was unsuited JQK (I prefer to leave open chances
for a quad or FH),Resequences:
-- 3K (2-4) over FH (exc. w/ pair A)
-- 3RF A-hi over 4F
-- pair (2-4) over 4S open -- Ace over unsuited QJ------------
These changes are entirely subjective but I found them to be those
that improved the chance of high paying hands without overly impairing
ER. Because I understand only the winner often advances in a
"qualifier", one might choose to go for more aggressive changes ...
but I'd choose to stick with these. The same would go for a
tournament in which only a very small handful of players finish in the
money.The ER consequence of these strategy changes is a reduction of 0.3%.
I also considered holding just the high pair of 2 pair (a novice
mistake in standard play), however this alone had an ER cost of .4%
and was a poor choice.------------
The Harrah's vp Millionaire Maker tournament is, as I understand the
format, fairly attractive to the skilled player. Some tournaments
allow a very large number of hands to be played, if you're fast enough
... sometimes allowing as many as 20 or more hands a minute. The
Harrah's tournament allows bets totally 1000 credits, or 200 hands,
over the course of 15 minutes -- a max speed of 800 hands/hr. For the
player who has a a hundred thousand hands or so under their belt, that
may be a very comfortable speed at which to make careful strategy
consideration when a strategy with which they're adept is applied.But, no doubt, taking a wing at modified strategy after only a couple
hours of practice is going to risk more than any likely gained value.
Stick w/ standard DDB strategy unless you get the modified strategy
down COLD (and then, beware when you play for real money in the casino!)On the other hand, when the tournament is a (forgive the expression)
"balls to the wall" competition, it's time to risk glaring errors in
favor of additional hands. Most likely errors will cost less than the
EV of each additional hand played (unless you REALLY get sloppy).-------------
Ok ... concerning your questions on the "Shootout" tournament. Because flushes and straights pay more strongly in DB than DDB, this
strategy is likely very ill-suited for a DB based tournament. I'd
advise using the method I've outlined to arrive at a strong modified
strategy.I definitely would avoid using a 10/7 Strategy and, since you're
suggesting you would instead learn the strategy changes for 9/6, you
might as well go whole hog and strive for a strong tournament strategy
and get it down pat.When it comes to "Crunch Time", say 10 minutes into a 15 minute
tournament, it's certainly time to glance around quickly and guage
where you stand. No doubt, if you're well out of the money (say, in
the bottom half), you may choose to begin taking pot shots and Royals
and Aces. But if it's the case that a single set of quad Aces would
put you in good stead for a qualifying finish, you may want to leave
the Aces to luck and focus on strategy. When you hit the wire, often
the differences between players in what happens on the intermediate
hands can be the critical differentiator.- Harry
(written with my usual flurry of fingers and limited time so I'll
apologize in advance for evidence of poor <no> editingvpFREE Links: http://members.cox.net/vpfree/Links.htm
Yahoo! Groups Links
--
Thanks!
Skip
http://www.vpinsider.com
Yup. max-EV strategies are only good for infinitely long play, where
each hand has exactly the same value.
I disagree. Infinitely long play is not required in order to justify max-EV
strategies. Max-EV is "best" if one wishes to maximize dollars returned
per game played. The same optimal strategies applies whether you
limit play to one round, 1000 rounds, or allow play to continue indefinitely.
Other things that a player might want to maximize (or minimize) include
* maximize probability of surviving to play forever (min-RoR)
* maximize dollars returned per dollar consumed in losses (min-cost)
* minimize average loss between royals (min-cost-of-royal)
* maximize probability of surviving to hit a royal (min RoR before Royal)
* maximize probability of winning tournament
* maximize average dollars returned per tournament
* maximize average dollars returned per dollar spent on tournament entry fee
* maximize probability of surviving to reach a fixed dollar goal $G
* maximize geometric growth rate of bankroll (Log optimal)
Each of these objectives calls for a different optimal strategy
In tournament, the parameter to optimize for is how much money you're
trying to win, not the final score.In an extreme situation where each player receives exactly the same
amount, the strategy obviously doesn't matter at all.In another extreme situation where the winner takes all, you want to
try to get a big hand almost as hard as possible.Certainly the strategy throughout a tournament isn't constant. If e.g.
you play toward the end of the tournament and you know the scores of
players "in the money", as long as you're below those scores it
doesn't matter how much lower you go, so taking risks to try to haul
your score up is totally justified. On the other hand if you play
toward the end of the tournament and you hit a big hand half-way
through your play that set your score just above that of another
player who has already finished and is currently in second place, it
probably makes sense to stop playing altogether: you're more likely to
fall to 3rd place than to catch up with the 1st place.
That depends on how the tournament is designed. Some tournaments
start with a fixed number of credits which don't count as part of your
score, so that winnings only cause your score to increase. Such a
tournament may call for a radically different playing strategy.
I will not attempt to actually provide a clean and full mathematical
solution, but it's not a very hard problem:
I disagree. A very crude approximation may be easy, but a clean and
full mathematical solution is probably beyond the reach of any VP expert.
Optimization is a very broad field, but most VP experts have confined their
study to a rather small corner of the field that is marked "EV". To provide
a "clean and full mathematical solution" will require knowledge of how
to optimize many things that have nothing to do with EV.
···
On Tuesday 15 November 2005 09:24 am, Jean-Baptiste Queru wrote:
What about a choice of a 3-card open SF or a pair? There are
3/1081=.28% ways to complete the SF and 45/16215=.28% ways to complete
the quad. Your goal is to complete the big hands. Something like
5RF>4K>5SF>4RF>3K>4SF>3RF>2K>3SFO>2-1RF>2SFO. Frugal VP says that's
about er=90% on a 9/6 DDB paytable, var=48. You should estimate how
many points you need to win or place in the money, at some point if
you're not making your goal switch to royal only strategy, on the
other hand if you hit your goal early revert to max-er strategy, in
other words your strategy should be a function of your current score.
···
--- In vpFREE@yahoogroups.com, "Harry Porter" <harry.porter@v...> wrote:
-- I quickly opted to dump any SF hold other than a pat hand and a 4
card SF. In general, a 250 pay for a SF is very poor relative to the
probability of a hit and the chart numbers confirmed this. I did opt
to keep any 3-card open and 1 gap SF with no highs over a full redraw.
There's enough value difference here. But, if any high cards were
involved, I favor keeping just the high cards.
slight change in strategy:
5-4RF>4K>5SF>3K>4SF>3RF>2K>3SFo-i>2RF>A>T>J>Q>K>3SFdi>2SFo
Frugal still says ER ~90%, if you want you can get perfect strategy
and/or practice with winpoker by setting all pays for full house and
less to zero.
Maybe one of the pdf gurus will jump in and generate a plot of that
strategy versus max-er strategy for say 500 hands?
--- In vpFREE@yahoogroups.com, "nightoftheiguana2000"
<nightoftheiguana2000@y...> wrote:
···
--- In vpFREE@yahoogroups.com, "Harry Porter" <harry.porter@v...> wrote:
> -- I quickly opted to dump any SF hold other than a pat hand and a 4
> card SF. In general, a 250 pay for a SF is very poor relative to the
> probability of a hit and the chart numbers confirmed this. I did opt
> to keep any 3-card open and 1 gap SF with no highs over a full redraw.
> There's enough value difference here. But, if any high cards were
> involved, I favor keeping just the high cards.What about a choice of a 3-card open SF or a pair? There are
3/1081=.28% ways to complete the SF and 45/16215=.28% ways to complete
the quad. Your goal is to complete the big hands. Something like
5RF>4K>5SF>4RF>3K>4SF>3RF>2K>3SFO>2-1RF>2SFO. Frugal VP says that's
about er=90% on a 9/6 DDB paytable, var=48. You should estimate how
many points you need to win or place in the money, at some point if
you're not making your goal switch to royal only strategy, on the
other hand if you hit your goal early revert to max-er strategy, in
other words your strategy should be a function of your current score.
--- In vpFREE@yahoogroups.com, "nightoftheiguana2000"
<nightoftheiguana2000@y...> wrote:
What about a choice of a 3-card open SF or a pair? There are
3/1081=.28% ways to complete the SF and 45/16215=.28% ways to complete
the quad.
Sometimes you have to ask yourself "Do you feel lucky, punk?"
As my mother-in-law used to tell me, "Let your pocketbook be your
guide."
T - 3 and counting.
Tom
Go Fleas
Thanks for help, everyone!
So, my friend came in 10th in the Rio tournament for a $500 prize.
(Everyone down to 20th got $500.) I was surprised because all he had
in the 2 10-minute sessions was one regular 4-of-a-kind plus 4 2s
with a kicker, total points won 2470. The overall winner had 5800 and
was the only one to get a royal in the 2 days. He did not get a sense
of the overall spread because the results were posted
alphabetically. People did comment that the points seemed to be low
overall for this tournament. All told, it sounds like this free
tournament was a nice promotion and better than others we have
attended where we have realized our low level of play made it nearly
impossible for us to win cars they were raffling off and stuff like
that. In this tournament, everyone had a decent shot.
Right before starting the tournament, he got a royal on a quarter
machine. Nice win, but he should have saved it for the tournament!
I got Stanford Wong's CASINO TOURNAMENT STRATEGY per someone's
recommendation on this thread, and I have to say we looked through
the whole book and didn't see anything that would be remotely useful
for a video poker tournament. If we ever play in a blackjack or craps
tourney I guess it will come in handy but I am kind of at a loss as
to why this $30 book was recommended.
Darvel wrote: I got Stanford Wong's CASINO TOURNAMENT STRATEGY per
someone's
recommendation on this thread, and I have to say we looked through
the whole book and didn't see anything that would be remotely useful
for a video poker tournament. If we ever play in a blackjack or craps
tourney I guess it will come in handy but I am kind of at a loss as
to why this $30 book was recommended.
I regularly recommend Wong's book, while stating that he doesn't address
video poker specifically. Here's why:
1. A key factor in tournaments is keeping in mind how deep
the payout schedule goes. If you estimate, for example, that prize money
will go down to 1500 points and you have 800 points with 10 hands left,
you need to go for a royal or the appropriate quads ON EVERY HAND. That
is, in this sort of circumstance, being dealt JJJJT, it's probably right
to just hold the suited JT, partly because he's lonely and would really
enjoy the attention, but mainly because hitting a royal is your only
chance to win. Wong's book stresses this kind of logic over and over
again. It's basically found nowhere else in print.
2. Another key factor in Wong's book is how rule changes
affect what you play.
Perhaps you already knew these things. There have been a lot of
posts on this forum asking really basic questions about tournaments
indicating that many people here don't. There have been posts worrying
about the pay schedule in tournaments when that is the least important
variable. A study of Wong's book will give you considerable depth
concerning tournaments.
I have an article on playing at a Harrah's Millionaire Maker
tournament in Laughlin that is supposed to run in either Casino Player
or Strictly Slots this month (December) (depending on where they have
room). A lot of other hints about playing in tournaments are found
there.
Bob Dancer
For the best in video poker information, visit www.bobdancer.com
or call 1-800-244-2224 M-F 9-5 Pacific Time.
[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
Thanks for your thoughtful answer, Bob. I still don't think it was
worth reading that entire book to come away with those points. I
think that either one has some idea of them already, or one is
clueless enough that they are not going to digest a fairly dense 340+
page book well enough to extract those things and apply them.
We did go in with the idea that you need to pursue royals and indeed
bonus 4 of a kinds aggressively; as it turned out, there weren't
really any of those dilemmas in the 20 minutes of play. (No idea how
common that is.)
I'm not trying to pick nits with you personally, just wanted to
caution people not to run right out and buy the book because they are
under the impression that it will have a lot of relevant material.
I've enjoyed your books a lot and no reading about gambling is a dead
loss to me.
I'll look forward to your article. Tournament play turns out to be
fun and it's one of the few Harrah's promotions that I think is a
good deal for us at our level of play.
Thanks!
Darvel wrote: I got Stanford Wong's CASINO TOURNAMENT STRATEGY per
someone's
recommendation on this thread, and I have to say we looked through
the whole book and didn't see anything that would be remotely
useful
for a video poker tournament. If we ever play in a blackjack or
craps
tourney I guess it will come in handy but I am kind of at a loss as
to why this $30 book was recommended.I regularly recommend Wong's book, while stating that he doesn't
address
video poker specifically. Here's why:
1. A key factor in tournaments is keeping in mind how
deep
the payout schedule goes. If you estimate, for example, that prize
money
will go down to 1500 points and you have 800 points with 10 hands
left,
you need to go for a royal or the appropriate quads ON EVERY HAND.
That
is, in this sort of circumstance, being dealt JJJJT, it's probably
right
to just hold the suited JT, partly because he's lonely and would
really
enjoy the attention, but mainly because hitting a royal is your only
chance to win. Wong's book stresses this kind of logic over and over
again. It's basically found nowhere else in print.2. Another key factor in Wong's book is how rule changes
affect what you play.
Perhaps you already knew these things. There have been a
lot of
posts on this forum asking really basic questions about tournaments
indicating that many people here don't. There have been posts
worrying
about the pay schedule in tournaments when that is the least
important
variable. A study of Wong's book will give you considerable depth
concerning tournaments.I have an article on playing at a Harrah's Millionaire Maker
tournament in Laughlin that is supposed to run in either Casino
Player
or Strictly Slots this month (December) (depending on where they
have
···
--- In vpFREE@yahoogroups.com, "Bob Dancer" <bob.dancer@c...> wrote:
room). A lot of other hints about playing in tournaments are found
there.Bob Dancer
For the best in video poker information, visit www.bobdancer.com
or call 1-800-244-2224 M-F 9-5 Pacific Time.[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
Here's another reason: If you play a lot of video poker on the strip, sooner or later you probably will get invited to a blackjack tournament.
Skip
Bob Dancer wrote:
···
I regularly recommend Wong's book, while stating that he doesn't address
video poker specifically. Here's why:1. A key factor in tournaments is keeping in mind how deep
the payout schedule goes. If you estimate, for example, that prize money
will go down to 1500 points and you have 800 points with 10 hands left,
you need to go for a royal or the appropriate quads ON EVERY HAND. That
is, in this sort of circumstance, being dealt JJJJT, it's probably right
to just hold the suited JT, partly because he's lonely and would really
enjoy the attention, but mainly because hitting a royal is your only
chance to win. Wong's book stresses this kind of logic over and over
again. It's basically found nowhere else in print.2. Another key factor in Wong's book is how rule changes
affect what you play.
Perhaps you already knew these things. There have been a lot of
posts on this forum asking really basic questions about tournaments
indicating that many people here don't. There have been posts worrying
about the pay schedule in tournaments when that is the least important
variable. A study of Wong's book will give you considerable depth
concerning tournaments.I have an article on playing at a Harrah's Millionaire Maker
tournament in Laughlin that is supposed to run in either Casino Player
or Strictly Slots this month (December) (depending on where they have
room). A lot of other hints about playing in tournaments are found
there.Bob Dancer
For the best in video poker information, visit www.bobdancer.com
or call 1-800-244-2224 M-F 9-5 Pacific Time.[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
vpFREE Links: http://members.cox.net/vpfree/Links.htm
Yahoo! Groups Links
--
Thanks!
Skip
http://www.vpinsider.com
Here's another reason: If you play a lot of video poker on the
strip,
sooner or later you probably will get invited to a blackjack
tournament.
Skip
Yeah. I am in fact trying to shift us over from video poker to more
craps and blackjack. We play all of those and I think we've kind of
burned out on video poker. I do enjoy the game, but I won a lot of
money (for me) on a double pay machine-- one of those ones where the
first hand is a stud game-- and I sort of feel I'm not going to win at
that level again; it's time to move on. (Anyone else get that feeling?)
Plus, I sort of got addicted to double pay and other fancy games, and
now regular vp doesn't seem exciting or busy enough. But my friend
likes video poker partly because it is relatively easy for him to get
up to diamond status at Harrah's on machines as opposed to trying to do
that with table games. So we'll always be doing some vp.
It is admittedly nice having diamond status when you are at Harrah's
properties, many of the diamond lounges are very comfortable. When we
go to Joliet, I spend very little time gambling and much more in the
lounge, watching TV and swapping tips with other gamblers. In fact, I
don't think I would go to Joliet but for the lounge and a really nice
Mexican restaurant, Amanecer Tapatio, that's nearby.
···
--- In vpFREE@yahoogroups.com, Skip Hughes <skiphughes@e...> wrote:
I don't own Wong's book (though I have it on good authority that Santa will
be bringing it), but from my very limited tournament experience there are
some key differences from, say, a blackjack tournament and a VP tournament.
Differences like position and adjusting bet size, which aren't relevant to
vp tournaments but are extremely important to blackjack. A couple of
tournament issues that are relevant to both are determining your relative
chip (credit) stack and making strategy adjustments based on that
information. In blackjack it might be the best play to make all sorts of
strange plays that don't maximize the EV of that bet because the ev of that
particular bet is not of primary concern. Placing in the money/winning more
than your tablemates is of primary concern. Adjustments in vp tournament
play might similarly be useful.
A few days ago someone posted that the double up feature might be turned on
during a tournament and, like Bob, I recognized that this could be
beneficial to the cognizant gambler. This would essentially give one the
option of changing bet size on a coin flip. Anyway, you can see that while
ones' options may be more limited in vp than in some other tournaments, many
of the same priciples still are applicable.
Chandler
···
-----Original Message-----
From: vpFREE@yahoogroups.com [mailto:vpF…@…com]On Behalf Of
Bob Dancer
Sent: Thursday, December 01, 2005 2:44 PM
To: vpFREE@yahoogroups.com
Subject: RE: [vpFREE] Re: Tournament Play
Darvel wrote: I got Stanford Wong's CASINO TOURNAMENT STRATEGY per
someone's
recommendation on this thread, and I have to say we looked through
the whole book and didn't see anything that would be remotely useful
for a video poker tournament. If we ever play in a blackjack or craps
tourney I guess it will come in handy but I am kind of at a loss as
to why this $30 book was recommended.
I regularly recommend Wong's book, while stating that he doesn't address
video poker specifically. Here's why:
1. A key factor in tournaments is keeping in mind how deep
the payout schedule goes. If you estimate, for example, that prize money
will go down to 1500 points and you have 800 points with 10 hands left,
you need to go for a royal or the appropriate quads ON EVERY HAND. That
is, in this sort of circumstance, being dealt JJJJT, it's probably right
to just hold the suited JT, partly because he's lonely and would really
enjoy the attention, but mainly because hitting a royal is your only
chance to win. Wong's book stresses this kind of logic over and over
again. It's basically found nowhere else in print.
2. Another key factor in Wong's book is how rule changes
affect what you play.
Perhaps you already knew these things. There have been a lot of
posts on this forum asking really basic questions about tournaments
indicating that many people here don't. There have been posts worrying
about the pay schedule in tournaments when that is the least important
variable. A study of Wong's book will give you considerable depth
concerning tournaments.
I have an article on playing at a Harrah's Millionaire Maker
tournament in Laughlin that is supposed to run in either Casino Player
or Strictly Slots this month (December) (depending on where they have
room). A lot of other hints about playing in tournaments are found
there.
Bob Dancer
For the best in video poker information, visit www.bobdancer.com
or call 1-800-244-2224 M-F 9-5 Pacific Time.
[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
vpFREE Links: http://members.cox.net/vpfree/Links.htm
Yahoo! Groups Links