Ask the Wizard #277

I've just finished my latest Ask the Wizard column. Before I announce it on my Odds site, please have a look. I welcome all comments and corrections, as always.

That was the most intense "Ask the Wizard" in a long time. I had to park my brain by the side of the highway to let the transmission cool off....

The only suggestions I have would be to put the title of the magazine article DorthyGale cites in quotes, ("A Favorable Side Bet in Nevada Baccarat") or italics.

The other would be to add column and row "level" headings to the tables in the matrix explanations.

Still smokin...

Shouldn't the first question read, "Why is it that the basic strategy says to HIT on 16 Vs. 10,..."

This may not be relevant, but I noticed the date of the column is in 2010.

Quote:

in his article A Favorable Side Bet in Nevada Baccarat

for titles of articles, put them in quotes, they say

edit: someone else beat me to it. But italics are for the name of the mag, quotes for the articles, that one is fairly easy to remember. Or maybe these days it matters less

You're right, I meant HIT 16 against 10. Doh!

About titling the rows and columns in the matrices -- I thought about that. However, they are matrices, not tables. Math books on matrices never label the rows and columns, so I didn't want to be the first. Besides, I try to explain what each cell is.

25,000,000 hands of video poker!!!! Any Idea of how many hours that dude has spent playing at a machine and what his expected loss would be?

Quote: Scotty71

25,000,000 hands of video poker!!!! Any Idea of how many hours that dude has spent playing at a machine and what his expected loss would be?

I know the person who asked that pretty well. Assuming 1,000 hands an hour, and 40 hours of play per week, one could play 25 million hands in 12 years. I can't reveal who asked the question, but that is quite plausible for this particular individual.

The Wiz posted right before me and made me recheck my work, but he's off by a factor of 7.

Even at a sustained rate of 1200 hands/hour (3 seconds per hand), that's over 20,800 hours or about as much as you work in an entire decade. Put another way, it's equivalent to playing VP for three hours every single day for nineteen years.

Now, I can't conclusively rule that out, but I hope someone isn't devoting that much of their life to playing video poker.

Wiz calculated 625 weeks of play (1000 hands/hour * 40 hours/week) but then divided by days per year (365) to arrive at 1.7 years. If you divide by weeks per year instead (52) then you get 625/52 = 12 years.

Whether it's 10 or 12 years, the point is the same.

Quote: Scotty71

25,000,000 hands of video poker!!!! Any Idea of how many hours that dude has spent playing at a machine and what his expected loss would be?

At 25c VP, that's $31.25 million coin in, and on a 99.5% pay back machine, an expected loss of $156,250.

You'd expect around 625 Royals in that time if playing JoB (or a close variant). How close the player is to the expected loss will be very close to a function of the number of Royals they did hit.

Not read the article, so no doubt there's more details there. You'd get some $156,000 loss in comp dollars and various offers, no doubt. If there's a non-cash aspect, then the value of those offers is in the eye of the reciever (for instance a free room isn't necessarily worth what you would have paid for that room).