Video Poker - How To Calculate Perfect Startegy

By:Boris Sandberg

Video Poker is one of the most popular slot versions of playing poker. In video poker you are playing against the machine, not other players, like in traditional poker. Your goal in this game is to get the highest ranking five card hand possible.

How to play

First you place a bet and receive five cards. Then you decide which cards to hold and which to discard. You may draw up to five new cards to improve your hand. Finally you obtain replacement cards in exchange for the cards you have discarded. All cards are dealt randomly from one card deck.

Perfect Play

Video Poker is a game where skill is important. With enough practice, you can learn how to play video poker like a professional. Video Poker can be one of the few potentially profitable casino games. Some video poker games are positive expectation games. It means that if you play properly, some Video Poker machines actually offer over 100% payback for perfect play over the long run.

You have the best chance of winning (losing less money) at video poker over the long run if select the holding with the highest Expected Value. Expected Value (mathematical expectation) is the statistically projected average of all possible outcomes for a particular play or game. In other words, EV is the amount one would expect to win or lose if this decision were to be repeated millions of times.

There are 32 ways to hold cards for any dealt five-card hand. For each of these holdings you have to calculate the expected value (EV) of the result and draw to the combination which has the highest EV.

The math used to calculate the Expected Value is not very complicated at all. To compute the EV for the particular draw, you have to multiply the probability of each possible outcome by its value and sum up the results.

The following example explains the above definition.

The dealt hand is 8c 9d 4h 9s 8s in the Jacks or Better (8/5) video poker machine. In this simple example the holding with the highest EV is 89_98. There are 47 cards remaining in the deck. 4 cards would make Full House and 43 others would make Two Pairs. We have a payoff value of 8 for a full house and 2 for a Two Pairs.

EV= 4*8/47+43*2/47=2.51064

Calculating EV is straightforward. But it is a tedious task for a human. Luckily, there are several computer programs designed to evaluate the optimal strategy for each hand as it is encountered. They can catch your mistakes and warn you about them, showing you the difference in EV between your play and the best play. You can use your computer to master your video poker skills at no cost.

Digg del.icio.us Blink Stumble Spurl Reddit Netscape Furl

Article keywords: video, poker, slot, casino, machine, odds, strategy, gamble, gambling

Article Source: http://www.articles2k.com

Boris Sandberg is a developer of the BVS Video Poker, a full featured video poker simulator that trains you to use the best long - term strategies when playing video poker. All the most popular video poker machines are included.

Top Gambling Articles
1). Baseball Betting: bet on Phillies & Dodgers to continue streak! By : Bob Acton The good thing about wagering on sports this time of year is that with a plethora of activity, you may fine a soft line here or there if you probe hard enough. Two teams who are beginning to get healthy and make some noise are the Philadelphia Phillies and the Los Angeles Dodgers. The Philadelphia Phillies seek to push their winning streak to 10 games for the first time in nearly 15 years when they wrap up a three-game series against resurgent Tom Glavine and the New York Mets at Citizens Bank Park on Wednesday.
2). Learn Caribbean Stud Poker Rules By : Pokkercards All the games we have looked so far involved betting against other players. But this game is different; here everyone plays against the casino or room which acts as a bank (dealer), paying out all winning bets. To win you have to beat the dealer’s hand, other player’s hands don’t make a difference. First each player makes an ante (initial blind bet) and is dealt 5 cards face down.
3). Top Online Casino Payout Rates By : Sage Kalmus Most all top online casinos voluntarily subject themselves to regular audits (usually monthly) by a qualified and reputable third party firm, such as Pricewaterhouse Coopers (PwC). These audits generally focus on two aspects of the online casino’s operations: their random number generator and their payout rates. The latter -- payout rates -- is the subject of this article.
4). Which games to play at online casinos? By : Michael Heighen Copyright 2006 Michael Heighen Online casinos, also known as virtual casinos, are online versions of traditional ("brick and mortar") casinos. Online casinos enable gamblers to play and wager on casino games through the Internet. Online casinos generally offer odds and payback percentages that are comparable to land-based casinos. Some online casinos claim higher payback percentages for slot machine games, and some publish payout percentage audits on their websites.
5). Premiership Season Preview 2006/07 - Charlton Athletic By : David Walker Charlton Athletic Odds: 1500/1 Last Five Seasons 2005/06 - 13 (Premiership), 2004/05 - 11 (Premiership), 2003/04 - 7 (Premiership), 2002/03 - 12 (Premiership), 2001/02 - 14 (Premiership). 2005/06 Cup Progress FA Cup Sixth Round (replay) vs Middlesbrough (a) - lost 4-2. Carling Cup Fourth Round vs Blackburn Rovers (h) - lost 3-2. Top Goal Scorer 2005/06: Darren Bent (striker) - 22 goals.
6). Cheating at Roulette - Can You Do It? By : Stephen Todd If you are searching on the net, you will find many authors who claim "cheating at roulette" is possible and by doing it you can win consistent profits.
7). Poker Money Management - Don't Make These Two Common Mistakes! By : Stephen Todd Here we will give you some general guidelines on poker money management and the two most common errors that players make, that increase the odds of losing dramatically.
8). Are You Interested In Playing Poker? By : Roger Wembley Maybe you recently caught a glimpse of the show Celebrity Poker and all it took was one episode and you found yourself hooked. Or maybe, all your friends have been raving about how addictive the game is and how much money they’ve won. Now you know you're getting a little bit interested, no matter even if you think taht curiosity has indeed started to kill the cat.
9). What Are The Odds – Big Slick Suited By : R Mongoose Every list of texas holdem starting hands has Big Slick suited (AKs in poker shorthand) near the top. It is a very powerful starting hand, and one that shows a profit over time if played well. But, it is not a made hand by itself, and cannot be treated like one. Lets look at some of the odds involving AKs before the flop. Against any pair, even a lowly pair of twos, Big Slick at best a coin flip.
10). Online Casino Bonus Is Hard To Choose, Even Harder To Profit From By : Ralf Vinogradov All online casinos offer a tremendous variety of bonuses to their players. Some of these bonuses are so huge that we have to raise our eyebrows and ask: Is it really possible to give away thousands of dollars and stay in profit at the same time? The answer is simple - yes it is. Although some very skilled Danish players (or if I may - bonus abusers) made constantly big profits and financially devastated some smaller online casinos who had to stop giving bonuses to Danish players.

New Gambling Articles
1). General Tips To Improve Your Poker Game By : Bob Bastian Poker is a game of chance. You play the hand you are dealt and the highest wins. So how can you improve your odds in such a game where your hand depends on the cards you hold?
2). Poker Tips: Understanding Good Hands From Bad Hands By : Bob Bastian Though poker is predominantly a game of chance, there is quite a bit of skill that is associated with your becoming a good player. Knowing what action to take and precisely when to take it can be crucial to your winning or losing the game.
3). Poker Chip Set And The Concept Of By : David Mclauchlan When we say, "poker chip set" we are basically referring to the whole package of poker chips. This is the common concept that most of the
4). Poker - The Card Game By : David Mclauchlan We all know that the poker card game is played from every part of the world today, but outside from this fact, the poker card game is widely
5). Five Tips For Improving Your Low-Limit Game By : Bob Bastian Poker is a game of chance. Your winning the game depends very heavily on the hand you have, but there is a certain amount of strategy that you can incorporate into your game that can, help you overcome that hand when used correctly.
6). Poker Tips: Watching Other Players To Improve Your Game By : Bob Bastian The more you know about the game of poker, and more specifically, the particular poker variant you are playing, the more you will understand about the other players. This is key to your game, and can even sometimes make the difference between winning or losing it.
7). Baseball Betting: number’s don’t lie! By : Bob Acton When betting major league baseball it is very wise to pay attention to the numbers, as teams and players seem to own certain pitchers or clubs, but also struggled mightily against others. We warned you at the start of the year about Johnson for the Yankees. Randy Johnson is 5-2 through seven starts. But that's not as good as it looks. Facing a Tampa.
8). A Friendly Game Of Texas Holdem? By : Warren Kuhl When playing online Texas holdem there is rarely such thing as a friendly game of poker. If you want to be a winning player at Texas hold em you cannot afford to keep the game friendly. Now you do not have to belittle players and talk trash to win, doing that is simply poor manners and being rude, but you do need to be aggressive in your Texas hold em playing strategy.
9). How To Choose Online Casino By : Ralf Vinogradov * Understand the BONUS This is always hard to understand for newbies - "$1000 bonus? Just for nothing?! Yay!..." - hoo-ooold it right there. There's lots of casino money given away in the industry, but no operator is such a fool to give it away for nothing. Come on, they want something back. They want your money! The calculations have been made which say that the average value of the depositing player is $600-$700.
10). A Thorn on Their Side By : Jonathan Wachs Once upon time, the Nets wasted draft picks on stiffs like Yinka Dare. Players with modest talent such as Chris Morris had the gall to write “trade me” on their sneakers. Players with more talent but not nearly as much as they thought, like Stephon Marbury, wrote “All Alone” on their ankle tape. And throughout all this, fans and New York media alike responded with Derrick Coleman-like enthusiasm: whoop-de-damn doo.