Video Poker VP Newb

So I decided that I wanted to try VP on my upcoming trip to vegas. I knew that I would need some practice in getting my play perfect. I played on a trainer online but it gets boring quickly playing with no money. I decided to head to the local casino to try it out. I was looking at playing Jack or Better. They had 7/4 at a 25c machine and 9/5 at a dollar machine.

My question is, would you rather play at a 7/5 25c machine with 5 credits, or a 9/5 $1 machine with 1 credit?

I decided to play the 9/5 machine because the chances of me hitting the lower 9/5 payouts are more than me hitting the royal flush, so in the end I would probably win more out of the 9/5 machine.

What would you do?

 

Similar question in this thread. good info here too

https://www.vegasmessageboard.com/forums/showthread.php?t=105025

 

woah, sorry for missing such a recent thread!!

 

No worries.

First thing you wanna do is master the strategy...I know its boring not playing for real money, but if you dont play correct strategy then it doesnt really matter what paytable you play...since you're basically playing via pure luck.

There is a really good trainer app that tells you when you made a strategy error...it also tracks your errors and tells you what % accuracy you play at. It will also show you the different EVs for each possible decision...

 

No big deal. The question in that other thread was a bit confusing anyway. From a return perspective, you would rather play 1 dollar of 9/5 vs 5 quarters of 7/5 (or 7/4 but I've never seen that paytable). As long as you don't mind not having a nice royal payout, I'd definitely pick 9/5. If the payouts of the full house/flush are 2 or more units higher for the same game at the higher denomination, then it's better to short coin the higher denomination if you can't afford to Max bet it.

Now if you could find 6/5 bonus or 7/5 bonus for quarters that would be better than 7/5 JoB and then you could Max bet without sacrificing as much. The only time JoB game is better than a Bonus game is when the JoB game is a full 2 units ahead of the bonus full house/flush payouts.

7/5 bonus > 8/5 JoB for example.

It's somewhat rare when JoB is better than Bonus on the strip at the quarter level, fwiw. I can't recall the last time I played JoB on the strip, but I play bonus a lot when on the strip. I typically try to play the best available variant wherever I am.

 

I will have to try and master the bonus strategy as well now. Thanks guys!

 

Actually, the strategies for BP and JOB are virtually identical, to the point where you can use JOB strategy on BP without giving up any meaningful expected return. Here's a helpful chart re: using "wrong" strategies:

http://www.videopokerhelp.net/wrong_strat.html