Kings Or Better strategy questions

#1 What exactly does "Joker + Least Pen Card 6 to 8" mean? I would assume it means that you should hold the joker and 6, 7, or 8, whichever has the least penalties associated with it. Well out of the 2 times I've gotten this so far, WinPoker says to hold another card besides those, which I think was a 5 both times. For instance, with W 10d 8c Qs 5h, WinPoker says to hold the 5 with the joker, when the strategy below says to hold the 8, if I'm reading it right.

#2 Doesn't "Joker + Jack, 4 different suits" mean that every card in the hand is a different suit, simple as that? Well I had W 2h 4c Js Qd, and the correct play according to below would be WJ, since there are 4 different suits there, right? Well WinPoker said to hold W4. I don't even see W + 4 anywhere on there. And to make it even worse, the 2nd best play wasn't even WJ, it was just W. So the correct play according to this advanced strategy (78 hands) ends up being the 3rd? Explain.

Here is the portion of the strategy in question:

7.4760 Joker + Least Pen Card 6 to 8
7.4662 Joker + Ten, 0 Pen
7.4630 Joker + 5 or 9, 0 Pen
7.3598 Joker + Ten, 1 Pen
7.3474 Joker + 5 or 9, 1 Pen
7.2917 Joker + 9TJ
7.2569 Joker + Ten, 2+ Pen
7.2364 Joker + 5 or 9, 2+ Pen
7.1846 Joker + Jack,4 different suits
7.1799 Joker Only

OK, I just played this game for hours and hours (5Dimes was supposed to close it at 7 CT, and it's still open, even as I edit this at 2 a.m. over a day later), and I have to say that the variance being 1 higher than FPDW is BS. Not only due to my ~8 hours of play, but looking at the pay table, this game is much worse than FPDW. You lose a crapload, and every once in a while get a flush or full house or something, but look at the top hands of natural royal, 5oak, jokers royal, and straight flush. These are rare to very rare hands, so you're pretty screwed until you hit them. And look at the pay for 5oak, you'll see it's the same as what 4 deuces pays, but 4 deuces is much more common than 5oak.

With FPDW, you lose slower until you hit your 4 deuces. I know this is all probably just my bad luck or it's in my head or whatever, but KBJW sucks. No wonder somebody said it's an acquired taste. Either that or Deuces Wild is just that great and it's spoiled me.

Eight hours of play is a very short sample. It takes a couple million hands for things to average out in the long run. One nice feature of Wolf Video Poker, is it allows you run those million hand simulations in just a few minutes. Or you can run multiple daily charts. Say, if you played 5,000 hands a day for 10 days, you could see how it breaks down each day.

On FPDW (Full Pay Deuces Wild) you should hit 4 deuces about once every 4,909.10 hands (that's about 8 hours of play). I've gone 16 hours without hitting them, and I have had times when I've hit two of them within 30 minutes. I've had days where I've deposited several hundred dollars in a couple hours, and days where I've played for 10-12 hours on $40 bucks. Unfortunately you just don't know what kind of day it's going to be when you start playing.

Full pay Joker Poker and Deuces Wild are very similar in return percentage and variance. The "4 Deuces", in Deuces Wild will occur about twice as often as "5 of a KIND", in Joker Poker. One particular hand doesn't mater as much as the overall return percentage of the game. If you play positive VP for the rest of your life, it will all average out in the long run. If you play positive VP properly, a loss is not really a loss (compared to most casino games)...it's just money that is on deposit for a little while.

If you don't like high variance, stay away from Loose Deuces Wild (see chart below)

Variance / RF Occurs / Return / Game
15.0056 / 351,817.7 / 99.953% / Pick'em Poker
19.5147 / 40,390.55 / 99.544% / Jacks or Better (9/6)
20.9041 / 40,233.13 / 99.166% / Bonus Poker (8/5)
25.7803 / 43,456.27 / 99.728% / Deuces Wild Not So Ugly Ducks (16/10/4/4/3)
25.8346 / 45,281.93 / 100.762% / Deuces Wild (15/9/5)
26.2450 / 41,213.81 / 100.646% / Joker Poker (20/7/5)
28.2555 / 48,048.04 / 100.173% / Double Bonus (10/7/5)
42.1765 / 40,781.70 / 100.067% / Double Double Bonus (10/6/4)
70.6963 / 44,890.49 / 100.150% / Loose Deuces Wild (15/8)

Ya I overreacted and now like JW. I think I just went on an unlucky streak. Just that when a streak happens your first 8 hours of playing a game, you tend to not think of it as a streak and more of how the game is. I actually like this game more than DW, because DW only has 3 hands that pay 100+, whereas JW has 5. Slowly creeping around break even until you hit a jackpot isn't as fun as being able to hit mini jackpots.