Playing Trends in Video Poker

 The following is taken from Power Video Poker, the Only Video Poker Book You'll Ever Need!

Trends are a fact of life in gambling.  They occur in virtually every gambling game ever devised.

Blackjack dealers go on streaks and win nearly every hand.  At other times, the dealers bust hand after hand.

Roulette wheels repeat some numbers with much greater frequency than expected and other numbers are not hit at all.

And video poker machines will go into a streak mode where a large number of higher paying hands are made in a short time period.  At other times, the machines have periods of almost no winning hands.

When all of the favorable, neutral and unfavorable streaks are added together over an extremely long period of play, the results will approximate the mathematical expectations of the game.  In other words, if you play at a game with positive expectations, and play every hand and do not vary the size of your wagers, then over a long period of continuous play, certainly for at least a month and more likely for three to six months, your results will start to resemble the long-term expectations of the game you are playing.  This result is the basis of long-term or professional video poker play.  If you have a mathematical edge over a game and you play the game long enough, then your winnings should approximate the long-term expected value of the amount of your advantage.

With short-term play, our expectations will be different.  For one thing, we will not play any single game or machine long enough for the mathematical expectations to have much bearing.  In addition, we will vary the size or our wagers dependent upon how well we are faring on a particular machine.

Let me rephrase this last thought.  When you are a weekend video poker player, you will adjust your wagers based on how the machine is trending.

We have already discussed the most basic adjustments to machine trending.  You will divide your gambling bankroll into smaller bankrolls for session play.  A round of play consists of playing all of your coins in your Session (Game) Bankroll through a machine.  With a loss hitting or exceeding your Loss Limit, you will quit playing on this machine.  If you hit your Profit Goal, you will modify your play and lock up some profits.

If you think about it, when you quit playing because of losses or go into your profit-taking mode playing with your excess winnings or Protected Profits you are adjusting your play to the machine’s trends.  The ultimate goal of changing your style of play is to follow favorable trends and avoid unfavorable ones. 

There is yet another way you will react to trends.  You will change the size of your bets as you play.   Let’s take a look at a hypothetical coin toss game.  There are three players in the game and each player bets only tails.  When tails shows, the players’ have a win, when heads show, they all lose.

Table 26 compares the results of the three coin players’ betting styles.

Player A wagers $10 on each coin toss. He does not modify his bet size regardless of whether he is losing or winning.  His style of betting is the way most players gamble  -whether the game is a coin toss, blackjack or video poker.  In eight coin tosses, consisting or four heads and four tails, Player A breaks even, ending the contest with exactly the same amount of money as when he started.

Player B decides to double his bet following a loss and to continue doubling losing bets until he has a win.  His strategy shows a profit of $30 in eight coin tosses. 

Player C uses $10 as his neutral bet.  If he has a win, he increases his next wager to $15, and if this bet also wins, he reduces his next wager to $5.  If his bet loses, he continues to wager $10 on the next bet.  Using this strategy he wins a total of $20 in eight coin tosses.

Player A’s betting, where he never varies the size of his wager, requires that the wager he is making must win a majority of the decisions in order for him to win.  He is betting that there will be a dominance of either heads or tails in a few decisions and that his wager on tails will dominate.  Because neither heads nor tails dominates, he breaks even.

Player B wagered that any short-term losing streak would be broken by a winning wager in a few decisions.  This strategy gave him the largest win of the three players.  However, his largest bet was $80, and, if he had lost this bet he may have been in too deep to double his wager again.  Even though his strategy had the highest win, it may be too risky for practical use.

Player C’s strategy won $20, with a high wager of only $15.  He raised his wagers moderately after a win and then immediately reduced the size of his wager following a second win. 

This example is better suited to betting even chance wagers at table games.  There are virtually no video poker games which allow you to raise your wager from $10 to $80, or from one coin to eight coins, so we really can’t duplicate this strategy at video poker.

Table 26. Wagering Styles in a Coin Toss Contest

(Players bet on tails (t))

Let’s try a different set of strategies designed especially for video poker.  Table 27 shows the results of ten plays of video poker.  The top portion of the table recaps a Neutral Strategy of betting one coin per play.  This strategy wins a total of 7 coins, shown as the Total Win in the last column under Play #10.

The results are very typical of Jacks or Better video poker. Let’s follow the action playing this Neutral Strategy. 

 In this first play, we insert one coin and lose it.  Our payoff is –1, indicating the loss of our coin and our Total Win is –1 after this play.  On the second play, we win a 1 for 1 payoff with a High Pair (HP).  The payoff is shown as –0-, as we really don’t gain from the payoff, we just receive our money back.  Our Total Win is still –1 after this play.

We lose on play 3, and our total loss (shown in the Total Win row) is now –2.  On the fourth play, we hit another High Pair (HP) and maintain our total loss of –2.  The fifth play is another loss, increasing our total loss to –3.  On play 6 we hit a Flush (FL) and add a net 5 to 1 (the flush pays 6 for 1, which the same as 5 to 1) to our winnings.  Our total win is now positive with a +2.

Plays 7 and 8 are both losses, bringing our net win down to zero.  On play 9 we hit a Full House (FH) and add a net 8 to 1 (the full house pays 9 for 1, which is the same as 8 to 1) to our winnings for a total net of +8.  We lose the last play and end up the series with a net win of +7, representing 7 coins.

With our Neutral Strategy, betting one coin per play, we wagered at total of 10 coins and won 7 coins.  Our win rate was 70% computed by dividing the amount won by the amount wagers (7/10 = 0.70).  This is a very good win rate.  Let’s see how some different betting strategies fared. 

Table 27.  Comparison of Wagering Styles at Video Poker

 
Player A bets 2 coins per play and doesn’t adjust his play.  His only decision is to insert 2 coins and then play the hands.  He wins a total of 14 coins, with a total investment of 20 coins, for a win rate of 70%.

Once we decide to play the same number of coins each play, or win rate will remain constant, whether we insert one, two, three, four or five coins per play.  This is why Player A has the same win rate as the Neutral Strategy.  Wagering the same amount (also called “flat betting”) may not be the best strategy as we have seen in our earlier coin toss example.  Let’s look at some different strategies devised specifically for video poker.

Player B varies the size of his wager dependent on the outcome of the previous play.  He starts with a two-coin bet and raises his wager by one coin after a losing bet and bets the same after a “break-even” bet.

For play 1, he wagers two coins and loses.  Because this was a losing bet, on play 2 he wagers 3 coins and breaks even with a High Pair.  Play 3 following a break-even play is also for 3 coins.  He loses play 3 and raises his bet to 4 coins for play 4, which also loses.   Play 5 is a 5-coin bet.  If he had lost this bet, he would have starting reducing his wagers.  Fortunately, this wager wins and his next wager is reduced to 2 coins following a win.  Play 7 loses and Player B raises his wager to 3 coins for play 8.  Play 8 loses and 4 coins are wagered for play 9 which wins.  Following this win, the wager for play 10 is reduced to 2 coins.

Player B wagered a total of 32 coins and won 41 coins for a Win Rate of 128% (41/32 = 1.28).  We can see that this wagering style is more efficient than the style used by Player A as the Win Rate is better.

Player C decided to start his wagering at two coins.  He decided to raise his wager only after winning bets in contrast to Player B who raised his wagers after losing bets.  Player C used this formula:

Bet the same amount (starting with 2 coins) until there is a net win.  If the wager is a break-even one, ignore it and wager the same amount on the next play.   Following a net win (not a break-even), raise the next wager to 4 coins and keep it at this level until a bet wins or for three losing plays.  If there are no wins in three plays, drop the wager back down to 2 coins.

Using this betting pattern, Player C made two-coin bets for plays 1 through 5 as there was no net win until play 5.  Following the win on play 5 he raised his wager to 4 coins.  He had a net win on play 9 and continued with his 4 coin wager on play 10.

Player C wagered a total of 28 coins and won 24 coins for a win rate of 85% (24/28 = .85).

Player D’s betting pattern was a fixed one as follows:  1 2 2 3 3 4 4 5 5 1, with each number representing the number of coins on the play.  He inserted a total of 30 coins with a net win of 34 coins, for a Win Rate of 113% (34/30 = 1.13). 

I don’t want you to try to pick a preferred wagering method at this time.  So long as you exclude wagering the same amount over and over as your preferred strategy, you can be successful with increasing your wagers after losses, like Player B or only increasing your wagers after you have a net win, like Player C.  Or, you may prefer to use a fixed betting pattern like Player D.

As we shall see in the next few chapters, there are many ways to devise betting strategies, including mixing the concepts of increasing wagers after losses and increasing wagers after wins.

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