4/4/2022

Advanced Poker Tips

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Poker Tip 4: Play for the Long Term. As a novice player, you’re going to lose some of the time. At some point, you'll go all-in with a pair of Aces, then lose to another player holding a pair of 9s who catches a third 9 on the river. Jeffrey Coolidge/Getty Images. Probably the number one mistake beginning poker players make is that they play far too many hands. When you're just starting out playing poker, you want to play poker, and that means staying in hands that aren't very good just to be part of the action.

Video poker is a game of skill that offers a small house edge, however if you’re not playing the game ‘perfectly’ the house edge will grow, meaning your bankroll will suffer. This means, of course, that you should endeavor to play the game perfectly at all times – luckily there are ways to achieve this.

In this article I look behind the maths of Video Poker and explain how you can make a calculation to ascertain the right way of playing. I do this by showing a particular hand and a payout chart, and use the two to make a decision on the ‘prefect’ play. I finish with an overview of advanced play.

The Mathematics behind Video Poker

You decide to play a game of ‘Jacks or Better’ video poker and you are dealt the following hand:

At first glance the hand looks pretty good, however you do have a decision to make – do you go for the straight or do you stick with the pair of Kings? To make this decision, you need to look at the payout chart and do some calculations.

Here is the payout chart:

As you may have read in the ‘Basic Video Poker Strategy’ article, we should always play the 5 coin version of the game as this is where the house edge is greatest, so here we’ll use the gold column on the payout chart.

Playing the Straight

Now first, let’s consider what our expected return is if we play the straight draw. So here we’ll hold 10-J-Q-K and ditch one of the Kings (it doesn’t actually matter which one). There are 47 other cards in the pack, so now we can work out the chances of hitting that straight.

Of the 47 cards, eight of them will improve our hand to a straight, which will return 20 coins. This means our expectancy on the straight is as follows:

8 (number of winning cards)/47 (total amount of cards)*20 (winning amount) = 3.40 coins

However, this is not quite the end of the story, as there are three Queens, three Jacks and also two Kings remaining in the pack, which will also improve our hands to a ‘Jacks or Better’ hand, which will return 5 coins. So we can add on the expectancy of this happening using the same calculation.

8 (number of winning cards)/47 (total amount of cards) * 5 (winning amount) = 0.85 coins

If we now add the two amounts together, we can see that the total expected winning return on this hand is 4.25 coins.

Playing the Pair of Kings

Knowing that the expected return is 4.25 if playing the straight, this is actually a very easy decision. One look at the payout chart shows you already that your worst case scenario here is already 5 coins, but it can get much better than this. Here is a run-down of your potential wins herein percentage terms.

Remain with KK – 71.29% of the time (5 coins)

Improve to two pairs – 15.98% of the time (10 coins)

Improve to three of a kind – 11.43% of the time (15 coins)

Hit a full house – 1.02% of the time (45 coins)

Hit 4 of a kind – 0.28% of the time (125 coins)

Another calculation will tell you exactly what your expected return will be:

0.7129*5=3.56

0.1598*10=1.60

0.1143*15=1.71

0.0102*45=0.459

0.0028*125=0.35

If you add all of these together, you’ll see that the expected return when playing the pair of Kings is actually 7.68 coins – much, much better than the 4.25 coins you’ll receive on average when playing the straight draw.

Advanced Strategy

Now obviously, this is a long winded method and whilst sat in a casino or playing the game at home you’ll not want to spend this amount of time on each hand – fortunately there are strategy guides to the most popular games on this site here:

However, it does pay to have an understanding of how you’ll work out the correct strategy, as you’ll now have a fuller understanding of the game, and knowledge of exactly how the strategy charts are formulated.

Non-Optimal Situations

There are situations where you might not want to play the way that will bring you the best EV. For example, you might have three hands to a royal flush, like the 10, Jack, Queen of Hearts – alongside a pair of 2’s. The optimum strategy here will be to discard the 10, Jack and Queen and keep the pair of 2’s. Here you should ask yourself why you are actually playing the game.

If you are playing for long time enjoyment with exactly the right strategy – keep the 2’s.

However, if you are on holiday in Vegas, and want to give yourself a chance of the big one, with no thoughts of bankroll management – go ahead and go for the Royal Flush.

Advanced Video Poker Strategy – Overview

Video Poker is a fascinating game, and nothing beats the thrill of having that big hand and waiting for the right cards to fall and potentially give you that jackpot payout. However, there are times when you can actually minimize the house edge by playing the ‘less exciting’ hand. By playing this way you’re actually giving yourself a better chance of hitting the huge hand in the future, as your bankroll will last much longer. Play smart!

Biggest Choice of Video Poker Games Online

Where you play Video Poker online depends on whether you are US based or International.

Advanced Blackjack Tips

Bovada only accept players from the US, this is part of the global Bodog-brand. You'll find the full range of Real Time Gaming Video Poker titles here (worth a look alone!) + some BetSoft games too. Bovada are top-rated for payment processing and customer service - and always have innovative and entertaining promos running too. Check out the Video Poker selection over at www.bovada.lv for yourself!

International players have a lot of choices when it comes to software and the individual casinos which run the games. My rec for Video Poker are the MicroGaming titles, these include some unique and innovative games, alongside the old favourites. UK-licensed 32Red are my top MicroGaming choice, check them out at www.32red.com now.

Blind Stealing

Blind stealing is a strategy used by a player in late position to steal the chips in the blinds. This is done by making a raise to put pressure on the blinds to fold. To use this strategy everyone else must have folded their hands before you.

The theory behind this move is that as the blinds are forced to put chips into the pot via the big and small blind, the likelihood is that they are holding weak cards that they don’t really want to play, and hence they would not be prepared to commit any more chips to the pot.

The strength of your hand doesn’t matter too much, but a half decent hand is a benefit for this move, just in case you get called.

Blind stealing can be risky, but is important when you start to play on the higher stakes tables, and in tournament play. It works best against Tight players who are more likely to fold against your bet. Against a loose player you should limit the use of this strategy to when you have a strong hand.

Every time the dealer button passes around the table and we don’t win a pot it costs us a minimum of 1x big blind and 1x small blind. If we steal the blinds once per round then that covers that cost and allows us to wait for better hands to play the more significant pots. I’m not saying that you should steal the blind every round, as that would become obvious very quickly, but just using it as an illustration.

Isolation Raise

This is a good tactic to use in the situation where a short stack has gone all in and you are considering playing, but there are still other players involved in the pot who could also call.

An Isolation Raise is made to encourage opponents to fold and leave us playing versus just one opponent, usually a short stack who is all in.

Now when we play a big pot / big hand we always want to limit the field to protect our hand, so we want the other players to fold and only play against the short stack. By playing against less opponents, the odds of us winning the hand increases significantly.

So the option we have here is to Re-raise to put pressure on the other players not to play and hence isolate the short stack. Remember if no one else calls your raise, then you have only committed the original short stacks raise into the pot.

Example

Everyone folds round to you in the dealer button and you put in a standard raise of 3x the big blind. The small blind calls and then the big blind, who is the short stack, goes all in. The action is back on you, and you don’t know whether or not the small blind is getting ready to call the small stacks all in raise.

If you were just to call, then the small blind would be getting good pot odds to also call assuming he has a decent hand (and he has already called one raise) so we need to put pressure on him to fold by reducing those pot odds.

So by raising we lengthen the pot odds as he is going to have to put more money into the pot to call, and hopefully pressurise him to fold leaving us to fight the hand out with the short stack.

This is certainly a very useful tactic in Tournament play, but it can also be used in Cash Ring games also.

Semi Bluff

Throughout the course we have talked about the importance of varying your betting patterns to ensure that opponents don’t get a read on you.

Because of this you can’t afford to simply employ the strategy of betting your good hands and checking your weaker hands. We need to mix it up a little. A good way to do this is by a bet known as the semi bluff which is made after the flop or turn card.

A Semi Bluff is a bet made with a hand that isn’t likely to be the best hand at the moment, but has the chance to make the best hand on the turn or river.

A Semi bluff increases our chances of winning the pot as it gives us two ways to win :

Making the best hand on the river
Forcing our opponent to fold (even if he has the better hand)

This is in addition to the benefit of adding variety to our betting pattern. It forces our opponent to make a decision and as always we are hopeful they will make an incorrect decision.

Example

We hold Q J and the flop has come down A 6 J. The turn card is 2 Here we are holding 2nd pair and a high flush draw.

We suspect our opponent is holding an ace, so we don’t think we have the best hand right now, but we have a number of outs.

Our outs are

Any diamond to make a flush (9 outs)
Any Q to make two pair (3 outs)
Any J to make 3 of a kind (2 outs).

That’s a total of 14 outs, which gives about a 32% chance of making the best hand on the river.

Semi-Bluff Considerations

The size of a semi-bluff should be around the same amount of a value bet so about ½ the size of the pot.

When considering a semi bluff you should consider the following factors:

The Turn card has given me additional outs
Opponent has shown a weakness after the flop or turn
The turn card could have helped me from my opponents point of view (even if it hasn’t) the card has to fit in with the story we are presenting to our opponent.
Opponent hasn’t shown previous evidence of check raising
Opponent is not pot committed
I haven’t been seen to bluff in recent hands

Advanced Online Poker Tips

Poker Bankroll Challenge: Stage 10

Stakes: $0.10/$0.20
Buy In: $20 (100 x BB)
Starting Bankroll: $303
Target: $100 (5 x Buy In)
Finishing Bankroll: $403
Estimated Sessions: 5