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A shuffle through the gaming mailbag26 January 2012
A. There are several different pay tables on the three-card bonus bet. The most common brings you even money on a pair, 3-1 on a flush, 6-1 on a straight, 30-1 on three of a kind, 40-1 on a straight flush and 50-1 on a mini royal consisting of A-K-Q of the same suit. At that pay table, the house edge is 7.1%, making it a bet I'd avoid. On his wizardofodds.com site, Michael Shackelford lists five pay tables for the game, giving the house edge for each. The best one has the same paybacks listed above except on flushes where it pays 4-1 instead of 3-1. That reduces the house edge to 2.14%, making it a playable option. That might be of particular interest for you as an Atlantic City player, since Shackelford says the only place he has seen that pay table is the Borgata.
A. This e-mail came in January from a long-time reader who has written to me often, almost from the beginning of this column in 1994. His mention of the variance in video poker came at an interesting time, since I'd just had an online discussion with a blackjack/craps player who had read something on house edges on video poker. He said he had just dismissed the game out of hand, figuring it was a machine game that would rob him blind, but needed to take a fresh look since he learned there are positive games. I warned that while a 99.5% payback in video poker is the same as a half-percent house edge in a six-deck blackjack game with ordinary rules, the route we take to get there is much different. Roughly 2% of our long-term payback in video poker is tied up in those rare royals, leaving a game with many more losing sessions than winners. Blackjack is closer to being an even-keel game, while video poker is a wild ride of big wins and fast losses. That's something every video poker player needs to understand before committing to any serious play. You're going to lose more often than you win. Even for a frequent player, there can be entire years with no royals. And there can be years in which you hit several more royals than the average. Big wins balance frequent losses, but as this e-mailer found, it can take a LONG time with wild bankroll swings to reach that balance. This article is provided by the Frank Scoblete Network. Melissa A. Kaplan is the network's managing editor. If you would like to use this article on your website, please contact Casino City Press, the exclusive web syndication outlet for the Frank Scoblete Network. To contact Frank, please e-mail him at fscobe@optonline.net.
A shuffle through the gaming mailbag
is republished from iGamingAffiliatePrograms.com.
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