GRAYTLEEGRAY wrote:
Greektown actually has something on their website under
promotions ...
Their is an "official rules" PDF file in the upper right corner of
the page.
Thanks for the clarification. I overlooked the rules link when I
breezed through the tournament page. FWIW, here's a rough take on the
tournament. I'm assuming that a standard 9/6 JB paytable is in use --
something not explicitly spelled out, but I gather is a safe bet.
···
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It's a no-brainer that there's no greater short-term play than a
tournament. Luck rules the day, especially in a 3-min session that is
likely to consist of no more than 50 or so hands.
A 1 in 7 odds quad hit (or a good run of FH/F/S) is what's going to
separate the grown-ups from the kiddies here (decent non-sexist
allusion, no?). I challenge someone to come up with a strategy
modification for JB that's going to make a big difference in expected
outcome.
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The best strategy by which to strengthen your odds is the play like
the wind and leave careful strategy decisions behind. Go with first
call. If you can increase your hand total by 10% (say, from 18 to
20), you push your expected finish up considerably. Top scores are
likely going to be very close and an extra 10 hands could notch you up
a couple of places, perhaps out of the money to in.
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Strategy does matter and getting any changes down cold so speed isn't
impaired is critical. There's key strategy move to be decided --
whether to push for a royal or not. The proportion of the field that
can be expected to finish in the money with a RF hit is the initial
variable on which to focus. The more likely, the more you want to
push for a hit to finish high. On the other hand, if only one or two
royals can be expected in the tournament, then squeezing out an extra
quad or some intermediate strong hits to get an edge over the next guy
is your objective, leaving the RF pretty much to luck (which is where
it's going to lie, no matter what you do).
Say the average player runs through 50 hands. Assuming my quick read
of the rules is accurlate, initially, there's 3 machines in play every
day of the month, but they reserve the right to accomodate demand by
switching over to a bank of 10. Play is available for 12 hours each
day (10 on Sundays). The promotion runs 28 days.
I'll allow for an average of 4 machines in play at a time, and 15
sessions an hour. (You can adjust as you see fit) and an hour out of
commission each day for each machine. 50x(11x4x15)x28. That's a total
of 924K hands. Assuming that players go reasonably hard for a RF in
general out of human nature, I'll call the RF cycle at 35K hands. No
matter how you adjust these numbers, it's a no brainer that all the
finishers will have hit a RF.
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Here's the minimum strategy changes I'd made to go for a royal:
-- 3RF over high pair
-- single high card over 2 non-suited high.
-- hold AT over just the A
-- forget going for SF, other than a 4SF deal (reward vs. odds payouts
are very poor)
--- not much to change on S and F holds since only 4 card holds apply
(different story vs. games where 3 card holds are standard strategy)
There are other changes to consider (I'd need to look at ER impact
more closely for some to make a call). Since S/F changes won't buy
you much, quads are the place to look for a score push. However,
potential strategy moves are limited.
The key consideration is one pair over two. There's a huge ER
sacrifice (something like 8%) on this one. Bear in mind that 2 pair
accounts for 4x the return in the game vs. quads. I wouldn't do it,
since if you hit the RF, you'll be in the money and you'll want the
surer thing to give you a stronger chance of moving up in the top
finishers. Likewise, I wouldn't hold just a trip of a full house.
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That's all I come up with on a quick run at strategy. I may have
missed something else that's basic, but the nice thing about JB is
that the strategy is simple. I expect I've got this one pretty close.
Gotta go make some coffee for Bev ...
- Harry