A Triple Double Video Poker player used the final hour of St. Patrick’s Day to find gold.
The player won a $101,375 jackpot at 11 p.m. Friday at Caesars Palace, according to a Caesars Entertainment spokesperson. We snagged a photo of the big jackpot.
You need to have strong stomach to play Triple Double Bonus Poker. You also need a large bank roll. Your strong stomach will let you handle the extreme ups and downs of this game and a large bank roll will allow you to wait for the clime out of the steep downturns. It’s called volatility and this game has it in spades, so to speak.
The programmers who create video poker are unable to change the likelihood of getting certain hands. They are only able to change which hands pay out and how much each hand is worth. (The hold and draw decisions that a player takes does have some bearing on the frequency with which certain hands are successful.)
I went to the website of the Wizard of Odds and looked up the probabilities of getting a high pair and two pairs for the game 9/6 Jacks and the Triple Double Bonus Poker. There is not much of a difference between the two probabilities; approximately 0.21 for a high pair and approximately 0.12 for two pairs. The Triple Double Bonus Poker (TDB) compensates for the premiums on the quads by lowering the payout for two pairs rather than by reducing the frequency with which players hit two pairs. This is how the Triple Double Bonus Poker game pays for itself.
On TDB, you still get two pairs about as frequently as you do on 9/6 Jacks, but because they pay half as much, they do not add to your bankroll when you win them. It’s likely that you’ll have to keep putting money into the machine if you don’t win a portion of the premium quads that are being funded by the reduced payout for two pairs.
I’ve used the analogy of a roller coaster to describe both video poker and slot machines. In the real world, the first hill of a roller coaster is climbed very slowly, and then after reaching the top, riders are dropped dramatically.
On the roller coaster that takes you through the Bizarro world, you first go down slowly and then shoot up quickly.
Because you can never lose more than you wager on a single play, your bankroll will gradually decrease over time. On the other hand, you run the risk of winning a substantial jackpot, which would cause your bankroll to immediately increase significantly.
TDB receives the highest volatility rating possible, $$$$, in Jean Scott’s book, The Frugal Video Poker Scouting Guide, which she co-authored with Viktor Nacht. NSU, on the other hand, only costs $$, and 9/6 Jacks costs.
When I asked Jean why she prefers Deuces Wild over 9/6 Jacks, she told me that one of the reasons is because hitting four deuces can lessen the sting of an extremely bad session, or even put you into the black, whereas 9/6 Jacks does not offer anything comparable. It is just not likely that you will hit enough quads and straight flushes to save a really bad session when you are playing poker.
You need to have plenty of patience as well as money in your bankroll if you want to play TDB. You need to have enough money in your bankroll to get you through the dry spells when you aren’t getting your fair share of quads. (In a similar manner, there have been plenty of occasions when I have deposited $100 into NSU, played 20–25 hands, and then been required to do so once more!)
Patience is also required because the high volatility of the game means that it will typically take a greater number of hands before you can zero in on the pay table’s long-term payback.
Some people will try to gain an advantage by taking advantage of the high volatility. Imagine there are two different pay tables in a casino, but they both offer roughly the same return over the long run. The volatility of one machine is significantly higher than that of the other.
If it were up to me, I’d go with the pay table with the lower volatility, but they could choose the higher one instead. They would rather have many losing months and a few big months in which they win big than have fewer losing months and more winning months in which they win less than some casinos will suspend your mailer after a winning month. This means that they would rather have many losing months. They are working to pack as many victories as possible into a shorter amount of time.
But if you insist, I would suggest that you learn, practice and play Triple Double Bonus Poker for free, on your computer – before you go to the casino.
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