Posts Tagged ‘video poker’
Video Poker Procedures
A slot machine is simple. You place your coins in and either push a button or pull a handle. The reels spin and a decision is rendered. Then you repeat the procedure. However, video poker is somewhat more complicated because the player interacts with the machine and where there's human choice, there can be human mistakes. So a wise player should know the mechanics of play as well as the strategies for play. You want to play in a smooth, swift, yet unhurried and unharried manner. Your mechanics should be perfect because a mistake could cost you money.
Step One: You put your coin or coins in. If you are playing full coin, then the machine will automatically deal you your initial hand. However, if you are playing less than full coin, you must hit the DEAL-DRAW button for the machine to deal the initial hand.
Step Two: You now analyze your hand. You will have to make one of the following choices: A.) Keep all the cards because you have a pat hand, or b.) discard all the cards because you have garbage, or c.) discard some cards and keep others.
To keep all the cards, you press the HOLD button under each card. Then you hit the DEAL-DRAW button. Since nothing is being dealt, the machine will record your win and either pay you or give you CREDITS.
To discard all cards, you simply hit the DEAL-DRAW button and all the cards will be replaced with new cards. If your new hand is a winner, the machine will record your win and either pay you or give you CREDITS.
To discard some cards and keep others, you press the HOLD button under the cards you wish to keep and then press DEAL-DRAW to replace the cards you wish to get rid of. These cards will be replaced and the machine will record your win (if you won) and either pay you or give you CREDITS. The key to success at video poker is to know what cards to hold and what cards to throw away.
Cautions: Make sure that when you hold a card that the word HELD lights up under the card. Sometimes the machine doesn't register your press of the HOLD button—for whatever reason. So you'll just have to press it again. Otherwise you'll discard the card when you hit DEAL-DRAW. If you do get a pat hand, do not think the machine registers it automatically. It doesn't. You must press HOLD for each card. Imagine getting a full house, four of a kind, a straight flush or, God forbid, a royal flush only to forget to hit HOLD for each card… frightening thought. But it does happen. I heard one story where a husband and wife were playing together at the Mirage in Las Vegas. The wife hit a wild-card royal and the husband was so excited that before she could hit the HOLD button under each card, he had reached over and hit DEAL-DRAW. The wild-card royal vanished to be replaced with nothing. The wife paused slightly to digest the happening, turned to her husband, who was described by the security guard as "a big, strapping guy," and slugged him right in the mouth.
So the mechanics of your play must include checking to see if the HELD sign lights up under the cards you are keeping before you hit the DEAL-DRAW button—either that or have a very forgiving wife.
Also, if you are playing coins and saving up credits, make sure you actually cash out your credits before you go. I know of cases where people didn't do this and left the machine thinking they hadn't won anything. This can happen because most video-poker machines automatically record your win as a CREDIT and you must press the CASH OUT button for the money to fall into the tray. I benefited from this recently at the Rio in Las Vegas. I went to a machine and as I was putting my coins in, I noticed that the credit light was flashing. I looked at the screen and there were 20 coins in credit on that machine. The person who had played the machine before me had evidently left, leaving behind a win for me. From my observations, the majority of people who leave their credits in the machine tend to be casual players who have just put a few coins in and then don't realize they have won. Often these people are strollers, ambling through the slot aisles, putting in coins and then not taking their credits. Of course, their loss can be someone else's gain.
In Vegas there's a man known as "Rat Tails," so dubbed because of his greasy hair that hangs, well, like rat tails over his shoulders. He also has a somewhat bug-eyed look. His appearance is rather reminiscent of the Pardoner's from Chaucer's Canterbury Tales. He usually works downtown where his unkempt appearance doesn't look so out of place. Occasionally, he can be found on the Strip. He is not a thief, for what he does is not illegal. He is a roamer. And scavenger. He roams the slot aisles looking for machines whose CREDITS have not been cashed out, or whose trays have a few coins that have been overlooked by patrons. He also checks the floors for coins, "particularly those lush places where the coins blend into the carpeting." This is how he makes his daily bread—or, rather, daily bottle—for he frequents his own version of "lush places" to spend his hard-found coin.
"I find a lot of quarters left behind," he says. "Sometimes you find dollar coins but mostly it's quarters. The quarters sometimes are sitting up against the wall of the tray and the person missed it when he took his coins. I find credits too, usually late at night on the weekends when people have had a little too much to drink. On the floor too. You'd be surprised how much money is just sitting on the casino floor. So I always walk with my head down."
He claims he makes "anywhere from $20 on weekdays to $100 a day on weekends." However, it isn't all fun for Mr. Rat Tails. "I work a full day mostly. I think of it as a job. I can probably tell you what kind of carpet is in what casino.
If they had a game show like Match the Carpet to the Casino, I'd be a winner."
Is the finding of credits or coins in trays or on the floor so unusual? One security guard at Caesars Palace told me that on a weekend night "you could walk from one end of the casino to the other and probably find $50 worth of coins on the carpet. Then come back in a couple of hours and find $50 more."
So keep a close tab on your CREDITS and your coins.
Another caution is in order here as well. Many books and articles on video poker extol the virtue of speed in the playing of video-poker hands—on full-payback machines, that is. Since the player has a long-term edge (or an even game) which will materialize over time, the more hands played, the better the chances for a royal flush and ultimate victory. While this is theoretically true, the old adage that "haste makes waste" applies to video poker. You want to play with speed, certainly. But there's a difference between playing smoothly and with speed and playing hurriedly. The latter will inevitably lead to mistakes that you can ill afford to make; mistakes that will, in the long run, lead to a diminishing of your edge. Just as a good golfer or tennis player concerns himself with the mechanics of his game, so too must a good video-poker player. If a slight reduction in your speed simultaneously reduces your frequency of mistakes, then you are helping yourself in the long run. In video poker speed sometimes kills.
Tags: poker, slot machine, video poker
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Video Poker - The Ranking Of Hands And Types Of Draws
Video-poker hands are ranked the same way as hands in regular poker. The following list of hands is from the highest ranking to the lowest ranking.
Royal Flush: 10, jack, queen, king, ace of the same suit.
Straight Flush: Any five cards of the same suit in sequence. Example: three, four, five, six, and seven of diamonds.
Four of a Kind: Four cards of the same type. Example: four nines.
Full House: Three of a kind and two of a kind. Example: three jacks, two aces.
Flush: Any five cards of the same suit not in sequence. Example: two, four, eight, nine and ace of spades.
Straight: Five cards in sequence not of the same suit. Example: eight of hearts, nine of clubs, ten of diamonds, jack of spades, queen of spades.
Three of a Kind: Three cards of the same rank. Example: three aces.
Two Pair: Two cards of one rank and two cards of another rank. Example: two tens and two queens.
One Pair: Two cards of the same rank. Example: two nines.
High Card: The order of ranking for the cards from highest to lowest is: ace, king, queen, jack, ten, nine, eight, seven, six, five, four, three, two, one.
Once you know the ranking of the hands, you should be familiar with the types of draws you can make. Other than discarding cards in order to draw to a pair, two pairs, three-of-a-kind, or a flush, you will be drawing to various straights and straight flushes. These types of hands come in two categories, those that require an inside draw and those require an outside draw. If you have four cards to the following straight—eight, nine, jack, queen, and two—you would discard the two and draw to the other four, hoping to get the ten. This is an inside draw because the card you need fits inside the sequence.
An outside draw would occur when you have nine, ten, jack, queen and two. You would discard the two and hope for one card to fit either outside end of the sequence. Sometimes this is referred to as an open draw because the ends of the draw are open. (Gambling terminology is nothing if not logical!) Thus, if you have an open-ended straight it means that either end is open for a card. Likewise a double-inside draw would be an attempt to draw two inside cards to make a straight or a straight flush. When you are looking over the strategies in the upcoming chapters be aware that straights and flushes are often divided up based on how many inside draws are needed. If the strategy doesn't specify any particular inside or outside draw, you can assume that either is the preferred strategy. Thus, you would draw to the straight or straight flush whether it's an outside or an inside one.
What every video-poker player hopes for are the "no-brainer" hands that are automatic winners. These are hands that don't require any decision making on the part of the player because they are rarely broken up. The following is a list of such "pat" hands. If you receive them on your first five cards, simply keep all your cards by hitting the HOLD button and then the DEAL-DRAW button.
However, sometimes even pat hands have to be broken in order to go for the money. Thus, in the strategies that follow I will note on what occasions you should break a pat hand. In general such an eventuality occurs when you have four cards to a royal flush with a fifth card of the same suit (a flush) or you have a straight made with a fifth card not of the same suit. Despite the fact that you have a winner, you would discard the "fifth" card and go for the better hand.
But first, the ranking of the "pat hands" is as follows:
Royal Flush Straight Flush Four of a Kind Full House Flush Straight
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Tags: poker, poker hands, video poker