Normally 8/6 Jacks, 7/5 Bonus, and 9/6/5 DB are full-pay for Ultimate.
The multipliers have been dropped a little to keep the percentages under 100%.
Only time I've seen variants on the Ultimate multipliers.
Has anyone else seen this before?
Mitchell
Hey mitch
the multipliers are always best on 10 play, worst on 3 play.
I have never seen those super full pay versions of ULT-X.
----- Original Message ----- From: "Mitchell" <tsai@cs.ucla.edu>
To: <vpFREE@yahoogroups.com>
Sent: Thursday, August 25, 2011 5:02 PM
Subject: [vpFREE] Ultimate X: Has anyone else seen 9/6 Jacks, 8/5 Bonus, and 10/6/5 DB?
Normally 8/6 Jacks, 7/5 Bonus, and 9/6/5 DB are full-pay for Ultimate.
The multipliers have been dropped a little to keep the percentages under 100%.Only time I've seen variants on the Ultimate multipliers.
Has anyone else seen this before?
Gather round children, and let me lay a little science on this game we call
"Ultimate X." Specifically, regarding why the 4 of a kind multipliers are
different for 3 play, 5 play and 10 play.
In case you haven't heard, Ultimate X is ungodly difficult to calculate.
There's a lot of fancy schmancy clever tricks used to explicitly calculate
the payback.
The math behind Ultimate X can't be calculated on a hand-by-hand basis. The
vast majority of other games, this is no problem. 3 play 9/6 jacks can be
analyzed as a single hand. Since each hand is independent, it doesn't matter
if you are playing 3 play or if you are playing 100 play.
Ultimate X is different. On a given hand, your strategy for optimal play
depends on (1) the cards you are dealt and (2) the multipliers you have.
This is where hands lose their independence from each other.
Now, there's a little mathematical oddity that arises. The more hands you
play, given the same paytable, your payback percentage actually goes down
(slightly). Why? It has to do with the number of different multiplier
states, and the possible ways you get into other multiplier states.
Obviously 10 play has more multiplier states than 5 play, and 5 play has
more than 3 play, and 3 play has more than single line. As it turns out,
it's "easier" to get into a state with a slightly less average or sum
multiplier in 10 play than on 3 play.
So now we have a game where 10 play pays back less than 3 play. Is there
anything wrong with that? No, there's not. But if someone is playing 100
credits, it seems like bad form to gyp them slightly compared to someone who
is only playing 30 credits. So IGT must have taken an improbable hand or
hands, and slightly increased the multiplier to prevent the descending
payback.
On Thu, Aug 25, 2011 at 8:23 PM, tomflush <tomflush@nyc.rr.com> wrote:
**
Hey mitch
the multipliers are always best on 10 play, worst on 3 play.
I have never seen those super full pay versions of ULT-X.----- Original Message -----
From: "Mitchell" <tsai@cs.ucla.edu>
To: <vpFREE@yahoogroups.com>
Sent: Thursday, August 25, 2011 5:02 PM
Subject: [vpFREE] Ultimate X: Has anyone else seen 9/6 Jacks, 8/5 Bonus,
and
10/6/5 DB?> Normally 8/6 Jacks, 7/5 Bonus, and 9/6/5 DB are full-pay for Ultimate.
> The multipliers have been dropped a little to keep the percentages under
> 100%.
>
> Only time I've seen variants on the Ultimate multipliers.
> Has anyone else seen this before?
>
[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
Jason Pawloski wrote:
So now we have a game where 10 play pays back less than 3 play. Is
there anything wrong with that? No, there's not. But if someone
is playing 100 credits, it seems like bad form to gyp them slightly
compared to someone who is only playing 30 credits. So IGT must
have taken an improbable hand or hands, and slightly increased the
multiplier to prevent the descending payback.
Very fine discussion up to this point ... but, honestly, when was the last time you saw anyone on the casino side of things who was disturbed by a "slight" (or even "major") player gyp? 
The driving force between this mechanism in order to avoid a payback deterioration is that regulations in some jurisdictions stipulate that a player's expected return cannot be diminished solely as a consequence of an increase in wager on a given game.
Such regs also come into play with MultiStrike, where the mechanism used to preserve return as you increase number of levels in play is tweaking of Free Ride frequencies.
- H.
I believe this is essentially correct.
If we were starting with multipliers of 1, 1, and 12, the
resulting hand may easily leave us wishing we could play
the first two lines differently than the one with a 12x
multiplier.
This means we are "forced" to misplay one or two hands
(or all three if we simply have no clue to begin with).
This situation is going to happen more often with more
lines.
But the difference is really small.
"In case you haven't heard, Ultimate X is ungodly difficult to calculate. There's a lot of fancy schmancy clever tricks used to explicitly calculate the payback."
As for solving the game....
It's not easy, but its not quite so hard as Mr W.O.O. would
have you believe as long as you are willing to have a good
but not perfect solution. (within 0.1%).
QZ