by Bob DancerFor the past two summers, Shirley and I have spent almost a week in Reno with another couple—a couple fully deserving of the title "best friends." They do not live in Vegas, as Shirley and I do, but we met them here at "high roller" video poker activities. It's not that Reno has better video poker than Vegas. It doesn't. It's not that Reno has better restaurants, sights, or things to do than Vegas. It doesn't have those either.
It’s just cooler in Reno, and if you’ve ever been in Vegas in July, you understand how appealing that can be.
Besides, the gambling opportunities in Reno are sufficient. And sometimes, just plain "different" is refreshing. We aren't going there to bet big money—or at least, what we consider to be "big money." As long as we can find dollar video poker with, say, a third of a percent or higher advantage, we're fine. Our main goal is to get out of town and have an enjoyable time with agreeable friends. We want the theoretical cost of the trip to be negligible. We expect to play enough so that it is likely that we will break even or be ahead. But gambling doesn't always go the way you predict. It may turn out that we drop three or four thousand dollars, but that's about the limit, and that wouldn't be a disaster for either family.
The game of choice in Reno, at least for this foursome, is Kings or Better Joker Wild. This is a devilishly complicated game, but learning it pays dividends. In Las Vegas, it generally only exists for quarters, so we avoid it. But we've heard that there are still some dollar games in Reno, and that's our target. We’ll each take along our laptops (with computer program included) in case we need to work out any special situations.
Before our trip a year ago, Shirley studied for 30 hours, and I studied over twice that. Liam W. Daily and I were working with drafts on the strategy cards for this game that would eventually become published in June of this year. I actually studied considerably more than Shirley because I had to have the intricacies memorized perfectly in order to participate in the strategy card development. At that time, Shirley and I were used to me monitoring her play, i.e. me looking over her shoulder and saying "okay" before she hit the draw button. But this trip, Shirley wanted to have it down reasonably well because, as she likes to remind me, "it’s no fun to be corrected all of the time."
Actually, we were expecting $5 games a year ago, but we arrived a few weeks too late. Other Vegas pros basically played the games to death. This year we’ve heard there are still some $1 games around, but we won't know for sure until we get there. And Shirley wants to have the game mastered more because she has "outgrown" the need for constant monitoring in other video poker games and doesn't want to return to that if she can help it.
So she gets out the strategy cards.
First she goes through the "Information Sheet" that came with it. Eight pages of important information. She'd rather skip it, but she knows I'll ask her questions about it later.
"Level 1: Beginners Strategy" comes next. Shirley scans it. She's used to playing at a much higher level, so she keeps going, but most people don't have near the experience Shirley has with accurate strategies. True newcomers to the game should spend more time here.
Same with "Level 2: Recreational Strategy." Although maybe twice as difficult as the Level 1, it is still not close to being good enough for us. For many once-or-twice-a-year players, this will be as much as they ever learn, and it gets them to within less than a quarter percent of perfection. This isn't bad. It's a very nice return for relatively little effort. Shirley scans it and goes on.
"Level 3: Basic Strategy" is significantly more accurate than any previously published strategy card. This strategy is as accurate as is possible to get without the use of penalty cards. Shirley spends considerable time here. There is a very large amount of information on this one page. Most people, frankly, will find this strategy to be quite enough for their purposes. You can squeeze another tenth of a percent or so by mastering "Level 4: Advanced Strategy", but it's a tough tenth.
But Shirley has the blessing and the curse of being married to Bob Dancer. She knows that if she doesn't learn the strategy by Level 4 standards, I will watch every hand she plays and "politely" mention every misplay. Although there are worse fates in the world, Shirley wants to avoid this one if she can.
She practices an hour or so on the computer. "Bob Dancer Presents WinPoker" corrects her silently. Nobody ever has to know how many mistakes she made while she was learning. Shirley likes this. She crosses her fingers and says, "Okay, give me a test."
I pull out a deck of cards and start dealing hands. And then I'll change one card and ask her again. For example, consider these hands, where you have to choose between three cards to the royal and a high pair. The hand is to the left, and the correct play is to the right.
Ah As Ks Ts 5d AKT
Ah As Qs Ts 5d AA
Ah As Ks Ts Jd AA
Kc Kh Qh Jh 5s KQJ
Kc Kh Qh Jh 5h KK
Kd Ks Qs Js Th KQJ
Shirley gets every one of these correct—when she's looking at the strategy card and playing slowly. As far as I’m concerned, this is perfectly acceptable. Video poker is like an "open book" test. You can take as long as you want to play a hand. Strategy cards buried in your purse or pocket have limited value. Strategy cards being consulted have great value.
Later, we cover hands with a Joker and both an Ace and a King of different suits. Whether you hold Joker A or Joker K or something else depends upon the other two cards in the hand. The rules are not simple. When she misses one, even while looking at the strategy card, she mutters, "Whoever invented this game is a real monster. These rules are so complicated."
She's right about the game being complicated, but probably wrong about the game's inventor. When this game was invented, the tools to analyze the strategy accurately had not been invented yet. The inventor tried several schedules and was happy that he found one where casinos would buy the machine and players liked the game. And since casinos made money on the game, they kept it around. Although knowledgeable players can beat the game, the general public has no chance. Casinos love "seat of the pants" players. Especially on "Kings or Better" games. Most players will treat Jacks and Queens as high cards worthy of being held by themselves. Not in this game.
After awhile she tired of the classroom environment. "Let's go play for real."
The two casinos closest to us with this game are the Reserve and the Fiesta—two casinos that aren't close to each other at all. Not many casinos in Las Vegas have this game. The Fiesta game is for quarters and the Reserve game is for Lucky Draw nickels—i.e. a four-line game where you play four games at once. We head for the Reserve. It's a little closer, and multi-line games are more fun than single line games.
They have two machines there, and they are not side by side. So, for practice purposes, we share the same machine. Here are the rules we made up for when to switch seats while playing the same machine. The first person plays until he/she gets three full houses, or one four of a kind or higher. And a dealt flush or straight counts as half of a full house. These are our current rules. They vary from time to time. When one needs to go the restroom, the other is on the "honor system" to accurately report the number of full houses obtained. We have discovered that Shirley has the honor and I have the system. More of that some other time.
We decide on the hands together. I have the game more mastered than she does, but I need to look at the card periodically too. I knew it perfectly a year ago, but the knowledge doesn't stay with me unless I take a refresher course periodically. We probably played for four or five hours total. We could have done it on the computer (using the "four-ple play" version, which would have been virtually identical to this), but the "gambling" adds some fun. We lost $45 one night and won $85 another, thanks to me being such a good player that I was dealt a straight flush (for 250 nickels times four games equals $50) once, and four of a kind two other times (for $20 each). These stakes are certainly less than we are used to, but the practice was valuable.
There's no cute "punch line" to this story. And what actually happened in Reno is something else that will have to wait until another time. But this is how we practice for a "new" game. We don't do this every time for the games we play every day—but we went through a similar process for as long as it took to play perfectly. Many readers of this magazine are three-times-a-year players. Successful preparation for a trip where you want a serious chance to win should have some similarities to what went on here. It's possible that you remember perfectly from trip to trip, but if you do, your memory is a lot better than mine.
We probably spent more time practicing and playing for nickels than we actually spent gambling for dollars. And a year ago, we studied even more. How much we study depends upon how well we have the strategy mastered, how complicated the game is, and how important the stakes are for us. When we were getting ready to play a $5 machine last year, we were much more concerned than we were preparing for a $1 machine this year.
Is it worth it to study this hard for a trip where you may end up losing anyway? It is for us, but you'll have to answer for yourself. Part of it depends upon how important winning is to you and how much you are willing to work in order to stack the deck in your favor. This varies widely among people, and even within the same person at different points in their life. You certainly don’t have to do it my way. But I can honestly tell you that for me, the way I have described works very well.