Fairly new to VP, need some help

Hello everyone. I started playing VP last week, because a few casinos are running pretty good promotion for lunar new year. I play 9/6 JoB only. Over the past week I have accumulated 30k hand, and my results are terrible. I begun with a bankroll that is equivalent to 5 royals and I have lost half of it during the week. I have lost about 20x the expected loss.

I play perfect strategy, and on the hands that the written strategy is ambiguous, I took the time to enter the cards into an APP and it calculates the play with best EV. I may have misread a few hands where I held high cards instead of a low pair, but I don't play super fast so I can't imagine it happening more than once every couple thousand hands.

So my question to the more experienced players is that is this normal? JoB is supposed be the game with lowest variance, should I be expecting even bigger swings on other games?

The answer to this is probably a "no", but do I have to worry about rigged machines or VLTs in the vincinity of Las Vegas strip and downtown?

I really want to stay in the game. Thank you all in advance for any advice.

Stick with it 30K hands is way to small of a sample size. The machines are not rigged and if you have 2.5X royal bankroll you will be fine. But really practice and play perfect because the mistakes are gonna hurt big time.

Around 2k hands, a 10% loss (20x EV) happens, not frequently though. But for 32k hands, my gut instinct says -- there's definitely something wrong if you're losing at a rate of 10% (20x EV)!!

What state is this? Some states (like Washington I reckon) have Class II machines (or maybe III, I forget which is which). But those machines basically aren't random like they should be, they are basically a slot machine that predetermines what's going to happen (win X amount or lose), and strategy has no effect on your results.

Purchase video poker for winners. It's like $90-100 and awesome for practicing -- tells you when you make an error, error rate, loss in EV due to errors, and buncha other stuff. It's not one of those crappy apps you'd download on your iPhone or something. It's the real deal.

Quote: RS

Around 2k hands, a 10% loss (20x EV) happens, not frequently though. But for 32k hands, my gut instinct says -- there's definitely something wrong if you're losing at a rate of 10% (20x EV)!!

What state is this? Some states (like Washington I reckon) have Class II machines (or maybe III, I forget which is which). But those machines basically aren't random like they should be, they are basically a slot machine that predetermines what's going to happen (win X amount or lose), and strategy has no effect on your results.

Purchase video poker for winners. It's like $90-100 and awesome for practicing -- tells you when you make an error, error rate, loss in EV due to errors, and buncha other stuff. It's not one of those crappy apps you'd download on your iPhone or something. It's the real deal.

All my plays were on Las Vegas, in casinos not to far front the strip and down town.

Quote: BJ4Profit

All my plays were on Las Vegas, in casinos not to far front the strip and down town.

Ya I run bad at The Tuscany too.

Quote: RogerKint

Ya I run bad at The Tuscany too.

Do you mean you had bad luck there or are they know for rigged machines?

Uh oh I've said too much already. You didn't hear it from me but if you play the "Meet me at the Tuscany" jingle backwards it says "All of our games are rigged".

Quote: RogerKint

Uh oh I've said too much already. You didn't hear it from me but if you play the "Meet me at the Tuscany" jingle backwards it says "All of our games are rigged".

I have been playing at chain casinos, such as stations, Boyd, mgm, so I guess rigged machines is not something I should be worried about.

I am mainly concerned about the variance of the game, I have played at least 3000 hands a day. What should be the normal expected win/loss per day playing the game?

I have had many maNY sessions that $100 barely gets me 700 hands. But I have had sessions like last week where I put in $100 and never once dip below $100, even after 5000 hands. It happens, frustrating when it does but it does. It took me 5 royal cycles before I got my first royal but now I am over Royaled by 2.

You said you are playing JoB. Make sure you are playing a normal JoB where you bet 5 and the 2 pair pays 10. I have seen places call a game JoB but it is really like a variation of bonus poker with 2 pair paying 5

The variance in BJ is 1.1... the variance in 9/6 JoB is 19.5 (for single draw)... big difference. https://wizardofodds.com/games/video-poker/appendix/3/

So if you play $1 machines, and run 32k hands... that's 1x5x32000 = 160,000 in action. If you're playing a 102% advantage for some "promotion" then your ER is $3,200. If you play 800 hands per hour (which I imagine you play a bit slower) that's 40 hours of play for an expected value of $80/hour. This doesn't even begin to get in to your standard deviations though...

AvgBet = $5
AvgAdv = 2%
OriginalSD = 19.5*AvgBet = 19.5 * 5 = 97.50

SD(32000 hands) = Sqrt(32000) * OriginalSD = 178.86 * 97.50 = 17,441.33.

This is just for ONE SD... meaning it comes with 68% confidence that your results will be +$3,200 PLUS or MINUS $17,441.33. So you could be down $14k at this point and that would be the left side of 1 SD.

Have you hit any royals yet? The "expected" royal cycle is about 1 in 40,000 hands... which you're approaching. You could see a big swing with those, of course.

OriginalSD should be 19.5^0.5 * 5 = 22.079

32,000^0.5 * 22.079 = 3,949$.

Results should be EV +/- 1SD 68% (or whatever % it is) of the time. Assuming regular 99.54% return...EV is -$736

-$736 + 3949 = +$3213
-$736 - 3949 = -$4685.


There's no way you should be down $14k after 32k hands at $5/spin.

I did a little accounting last night, and I have played 33.7k hands (judging by combined cash back points), and I am down 1.45k betting units, or 7250 denominations. So if I was on a $1 machine, I would be down $7250. I miscalculated before when I said 2.5 royals, it's actually about 1.8 royals.

And no I haven't hit a royal yet, still waiting. :(