Arieh and Video Poker

Josh Arieh won $100k at video poker? Did I hear that right or did I mis-hear Norman Chad? That's got to be the $25 machines at $125 per bet with the worst of it. That can't be "playing for fun" if you have less than $5 million to your name.

[rheaume]

dude its fun when you want to catch a "free" buzz

ive heard some people who are serious about video poker work in teams, all playing the max bet to hit that progressive jackpot

[midget23]

I'm fairly certain that with the right payout structure video poker is a +EV game

[dibbs]

There was a really interesting post about video poker a while back that discussed some guy who did it for a living and racked his brain to beat the house, I think he wrote a book and the thread was discussing the relation of VP to table poker or something. It feels like it was a post by Homer but I forget. Anyone have the link and know what I'm talking about?

[sammysusar]

There may exist a few machines where the payout can be greater than 100%. But the majority of most machines payout is something around 98 played optimally. I did not think it was possible for slots or video poker to be +EV but when the progressives reach a certain level is + EV to get a team and play every machine.

[KingMedicine]

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There may exist a few machines where the payout can be greater than 100%. But the majority of most machines payout is something around 98 played optimally. I did not think it was possible for slots or video poker to be +EV but when the progressives reach a certain level is + EV to get a team and play every machine.

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before poker, i played VP for a living for about a year -
there are PLENTY of EV+ VP games out there, but they are drying up. Many games, played perfectly, with a "full pay" schedule, come very close to 100% - a few are slightly over 100%. when you mix this with a generous slot club (the little tracking card you stick in the machine), you can get 101%+ back from your plays.

For a very fast PERFECT dollar player, you can get in 1000 hands an hour on a fast machine. that's 5000$ of coin-in. 1% profit on that is 50$/hr. if you make even 1 significant mistake per hour, however, youll become a EV- player. the swings are pretty intense because once you start you're pretty much down money until you hit a royal. then you drop back down until you hit the next royal. if you do several cycles without a royal, you can be down a lot.

also, as someone else mentioned, when the progressive (typically for the royal) get very high, the games, of course, move up in expected % returned. i've hit royal on dollar machines that have paid 4k and ive hit royals on dollar machines that have paid 12.5K.

in general, a person who can master the math (or memorization) of video poker can make MUCH more money playing regular poker against donks. the 100%+ opportunities in VP are drying up and have been for the past few years since it became widely known that players can beat the game.

still, when i go to a casino and want a break from the poker room, ill plug 100$ or so into a video poker game that has the right pay table and if its a game i can play computer perfect. its high variance, but im EV+ (even if only very minorly).

bob dancer is generally known as the sklansky of vp. check out his website if you want more info and/or feel free to PM me.

[Jaquen H'gar]

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... I did not think it was possible for slots or video poker to be +EV but when the progressives reach a certain level is + EV to get a team and play every machine.

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Video poker is one of the weapons in the armament of an advantage player, along with card counting, 1 and 3 card poker, etc. Video poker (VP) is considered the "loss leader" of advantage play, except it isn't negative EV, only a small + EV. However, what is gained is often worth making only a small amount per hour.

Example - $5 game, play max 5 coins per spin. That's $25 per spin, 1000 spins per hour, $25,000 wagered per hour. With casino slot payback, the EV is around +0.1% or $25/hr. BUT, that's just where it starts. At most casinos, the red carpet gets rolled out when you hit $1 million coin in, i.e. you've wagered $1 MILLION dollars. At $25k per hour, it actually doesn't take that long to hit this level - 40 hours. Once this is achieved, your rooms are comped for the next several trips, your food is comped, your airline tickets are comped, you get cash coupons up to $600 per month, and you get invited to participate in high roller freeroll tournaments where you can get lucky and win $50k+ or Rollexes or some such prizes.

Progressives are +EV even if you don't play as a team and tie up all the machines. A progressive is +EV when the payout is higher than the expected loss to achieve the royal flush. For example, a VP game where payback is 99% and the jackpot is $10,000 and should pay off every 20,000 hands. At $25 wagered per hand, you should wager $500,000 over 20 hours on average before it pays off. You expect to lose 1% of this or $5000 in order to win a $10,000 jackpot. Of course, taxes must be taken into consideration when determining the EV of playing for a jackpot.

As another post said, playing for progressives is like small losses adding up while you wait for your ship to come in. What's frustrating is to rack these losses up only to see someone at another machine hit the progressive, or to rack up the losses so that they exceed the progressive payout before you even hit it. You have to keep playing to recover some of your money but you know you are going to leave a loser. On the other hand, it's nice to hit many small payouts and then hit the big progressive. Recently a casino had a deal where high rollers were invited to play VP and so many coin-in resulted in a "free" rolex. Many advantage players were there to play a basically break even game EV-wise just to win a diamond rolex or two. One of them "accidently" hit a longshot progressive to pull down $50k+ in addition to his receiving the rolex.

Bottom line, are you going to get rich playing VP? No. You can make the same money per hour (not counting the bonuses)with lower variance in the poker room. But it's a nice thing to add to your repertoire to provide free airfare, hotel rooms, and food on a vacation.

[Easy E]

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... I did not think it was possible for slots or video poker to be +EV but when the progressives reach a certain level is + EV to get a team and play every machine.

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Video poker is one of the weapons in the armament of an advantage player, along with card counting, 1 and 3 card poker, etc.

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Can you clarify this a bit for those games? Are you just referring to small -EV vs. comp gains?

[stinkypete]

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For a very fast PERFECT dollar player, you can get in 1000 hands an hour on a fast machine. that's 5000$ of coin-in. 1% profit on that is 50$/hr. if you make even 1 significant mistake per hour, however, youll become a EV- player.

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uhhh... no. do you have any idea how HUGE a mistake would have to be to cost you more than $50 on a $1 machine? you'd have to do something completely retarded like breaking up quads.

[KingMedicine]

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For a very fast PERFECT dollar player, you can get in 1000 hands an hour on a fast machine. that's 5000$ of coin-in. 1% profit on that is 50$/hr. if you make even 1 significant mistake per hour, however, youll become a EV- player.

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uhhh... no. do you have any idea how HUGE a mistake would have to be to cost you more than $50 on a $1 machine? you'd have to do something completely retarded like breaking up quads.

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thanks for the great insight there.

my point was that youd need to play the game perfectly - or very very near perfectly - to have any reason to even bother.
if you simply learn the basics of the game and think that you'd be an advantage player, youre wrong. VP is not a game like BJ where you can learn perfect strategy in an hour.
while my estimate of losing any EV+ ranking as a game on the whole is over-estimated when i said making a mistake an hour would stop certain versions of the game being EV+ was a little dramatic, its not that far off. if you want me to give you examples of likely common mistakes people that dont know the game perfectly make and show you how these seemingly minor errors can make a EV+ game an EV- game, i can, but this isnt a VP forum and i think ive written enough about it today.

but, again, thanks for your insight.