Super Double Double Bonus kicker question
July 13th, 2022 at 12:35:40 PM
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I recently found that a casino near me has a good Super Double Double Bonus pay table (8/5 = 99.69% return), so I’ve started to study the strategy using the Wizard’s video poker strategy generator.
One thing I find confusing is that the strategy calls for holding a kicker with trip high cards (trip J-Ks + J-A kicker) compared to just the trips otherwise (trip 2-Ts). As an aside, holding just the trips seems to be standard for most DDB games.
Does anyone know why the strategy calls for holding high trips + a kicker but not low trips + a kicker? Both have the same payout of 160 coins. It also seems like the number of combinations should be the same, but for some reason quad 2-4s + A-4 kicker has 2.86M combos compared to quad J-Ks + J-A kicker has 3.85M combos.
I just can’t seem to understand what is different about these two groups of hands and am sure I’m missing something obvious.
One thing I find confusing is that the strategy calls for holding a kicker with trip high cards (trip J-Ks + J-A kicker) compared to just the trips otherwise (trip 2-Ts). As an aside, holding just the trips seems to be standard for most DDB games.
Does anyone know why the strategy calls for holding high trips + a kicker but not low trips + a kicker? Both have the same payout of 160 coins. It also seems like the number of combinations should be the same, but for some reason quad 2-4s + A-4 kicker has 2.86M combos compared to quad J-Ks + J-A kicker has 3.85M combos.
I just can’t seem to understand what is different about these two groups of hands and am sure I’m missing something obvious.
July 13th, 2022 at 3:46:56 PM
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Quote: LandOfConfusion
Does anyone know why the strategy calls for holding high trips + a kicker but not low trips + a kicker? Both have the same payout of 160 coins. It also seems like the number of combinations should be the same, but for some reason quad 2-4s + A-4 kicker has 2.86M combos compared to quad J-Ks + J-A kicker has 3.85M combos.
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It looks like the payout for a quad 2,3,4 without a kicker is noticeably higher than the payout for a quad j,q,k without a kicker.
Not sure on the number of combinations.
Welcome to the forum.
May the cards fall in your favor.
July 13th, 2022 at 7:45:39 PM
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Quote: DieterQuote: LandOfConfusion
Does anyone know why the strategy calls for holding high trips + a kicker but not low trips + a kicker? Both have the same payout of 160 coins. It also seems like the number of combinations should be the same, but for some reason quad 2-4s + A-4 kicker has 2.86M combos compared to quad J-Ks + J-A kicker has 3.85M combos.
link to original post
It looks like the payout for a quad 2,3,4 without a kicker is noticeably higher than the payout for a quad j,q,k without a kicker.
Not sure on the number of combinations.
Welcome to the forum.
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That has to be it.
Suppose you have three Queens, a King, and a 3.
If you keep the King and discard the 3, the expected value, if I crunched these numbers right, is 6.7234; if you keep both, it is 6.4329. Keeping the kicker is the better play here.
On the other hand, suppose you have three 2s, a 3, and a King.
The expected value for keeping the 3 and discarding the King is the same as for keeping one card in the three Queens hand, since a quad plus a kicker pays the same whether it's a (non-Aces) high quad or a low quad.
On the other hand, if you draw 2 cards, of the 1081 pairs of cards you can get, everything is the same as for the three Queens hand except for the 35 draws where one card completes the quad and the other is not a kicker (four each of 5s through Queens, and three of Kings) ; these pay 30 more, so this adds 35 x 30 / 1081 to the expected value, making it about 7.4043, which is higher than keeping the kicker.
