Vp Tourny in the bag?

Playing in a video poker tournament. Set up is 1200 credits and you got 12 minutes to play. Once time is up your session is done. There is going to be 3 sessions. 2 one day and 1 the next day. All 3 round totals will be totaled up and then one with the most credits at the end wins 1st place. they pay 15 places

So I believe going for the royal is best. Example... Jh Qh Ah Js 2c. Here i would go for the royal because if all 3 rounds are all totaled up to determine the winner I feel going for the royal in this fashion is best. What you think?

What about this example Jh Kh 2c 2s 10d....Should i go for the royal or go for the 2's and hope for 3k or 4k? I believe going for the 2's is best because if i am always gunning for the royal then most likely i am going to lose out. However, if going for a royal is logical given the circumstances of this tournament. Such as 3 to a royal then i bellieve i should go for it.

WHat you guys think?

any other input be most appreciated.

As a side note i checked out the website for past winners on this tournament pays up to 15 places and it looks like everyone is in there 50 to 60. Im 24 years old. So my logical mind tells me i can pull out ALOT more hands than granny sitting next to me making me more likely to win this thing or atleast place high.

Any comments?

Do you happen to know how many credits the top 15 people have ended up with, on average?

I wonder if the old folks benefit by not playing as many games. If it's a standard video poker machine, and not altered to pay high for the tournament, then you might be best off by sitting out and having 1200 credits at the end. Of course, if there are a lot of people in the tournament, then the players who were on the good side of the variance will win.

I believe actually the tournament will be played that when you win a hand you will the bottom left of the machine saying winner paid so as that go's up the 1200 will go down. How much you have in this winner paid area dictates your score. So old peole can sit all day long, but there score will not get bigger by hoping

Quote: saginaw10

WHat you guys think?

any other input be most appreciated.

As a side note i checked out the website for past winners on this tournament pays up to 15 places and it looks like everyone is in there 50 to 60. Im 24 years old. So my logical mind tells me i can pull out ALOT more hands than granny sitting next to me making me more likely to win this thing or atleast place high.

Any comments?

Here is other input: I think that a person who cannot even spell the title of his thread on a board which consists of many if not most of whom you call granny, whom you assume to be mentally inferior to you solely based on age does not deserve to have his questions discussed by the grannies you have such disdain for.

Think you need to lighten up matilda, but first off I could care less if i missed a letter to spell a word correctly big deal. I never said people around the age of 50 were mentally inferior. I was pointing out a logical scientific fact that someone who is 50 to 60 has a slower reaction time than myself and i use myself as an example because some people my age are slower than someone older. But for this argument i will use myself as the example because i am able to make quicker decisions and press buttons faster than a 60 year old. That has nothing to do with or me ever saying people 50 to 60 are mentally inferior i am only saying people my age are quicker at thinking and split second decisions than people of an older age. This isnt me talking this is scientific data talking for me.


Next time read my post correctly and stop jumping to conclusions that arent even there.

Quote: saginaw10

Think you need to lighten up matilda, but first off I could care less if i missed a letter to spell a word correctly big deal. I never said people around the age of 50 were mentally inferior. I was pointing out a logical scientific fact that someone who is 50 to 60 has a slower reaction time than myself and i use myself as an example because some people my age are slower than someone older. But for this argument i will use myself as the example because i am able to make quicker decisions and press buttons faster than a 60 year old. That has nothing to do with or me ever saying people 50 to 60 are mentally inferior i am only saying people my age are quicker at thinking and split second decisions than people of an older age. This isnt me talking this is scientific data talking for me.


Next time read my post correctly and stop jumping to conclusions that arent even there.

You're missing a pretty obvious possibility. Just like you're faster than the average young person, a 50 year old could be much faster than the average old person - so much so that they could beat you. For example, I'd be willing to bet quite a bit of money that Matilda could beat you in speed and strategic accuracy in video poker...;-)

Quote: rdw4potus

You're missing a pretty obvious possibility. Just like you're faster than the average young person, a 50 year old could be much faster than the average old person - so much so that they could beat you. For example, I'd be willing to bet quite a bit of money that Matilda could beat you in speed and strategic accuracy in video poker...;-)

Thanks for the confidence, but why not get get Jean Scott and Brad and clean him out. Brad is pushing 80.

OK, let's assume that all players play the same number of games, same wager, and play perfect strategy. What is the best strategy to win a VP tournament? Is it always shooting for a royal? Maybe shooting always for four of a kind? It seems to me that you may need to make higher variance moves rather than perfect play in order to get a higher rank in the tournament. Of course, this way, you increase your chances of losing by a big margin also.

It kind of reminds me of Guaranteed Play Poker (I hate that game), where you can get to your last few hands and the only thing that can help you is a royal (this refers to the original Guaranteed Play where the player's balance could go negative).

Don't VP tournament normally give you 1200 credits to play with but winnings go into a seperate bucket? So most you can gamble is 1200 credits, and thus speed is not to much of a key (240 hands in however long you have might be relatively fast I guess!).

Quote: CrystalMath

OK, let's assume that all players play the same number of games, same wager, and play perfect strategy. What is the best strategy to win a VP tournament? Is it always shooting for a royal? Maybe shooting always for four of a kind? It seems to me that you may need to make higher variance moves rather than perfect play in order to get a higher rank in the tournament. Of course, this way, you increase your chances of losing by a big margin also

The OP did not give enough information to be exact. What game and pay schedule of instance. But, in general, a royal in 12 minutes is not likely to occur. So I say that Crystal is correct.

Usually, the "correct" play is derived my maximizing the players EV, i.e. maximize the probability of success given the cards dealt. EV is a long run concept. 12 minutes is not the long run so why use a long run strategy in the short run. You use it probably because you have no short run strategy which you actually
should use to maximize a short run objective function for a given pay schedule.

So the short run problem is then the selection of a target variable to maximize which has a "reasonable" probability of occurance and a long shot like a royal to me is not a good choice. If the tournament is playing a bonus game that has increased returns on four of kinds ,for example, then most likely you should maximize the probability of hitting a four of a kind. If you are playing jacks or better, I have no idea what to maximize, but I would research it. I think variances are a good place to start.

In the mean time, keeping your original stake and not playing a hand might be optimum.

Whether you're playing in a tournament or playing for cash, you should play the same way just about all the time. The one exception I can think of is that you're in the middle of the tournament and somehow find out that you're well behind and that you need a Royal to advance/cash. Extreme example would be that you're on the last hand, everyone else is already done playing, you were dealt a four kings, and the payout for the four kings isn't enough for you to cash/advance. In this case, you'd have to swing for the fences and discard three of the kings and hope to hit the royal.

When you don't know where you stand, you should stick to the standard strategy for playing for cash on that game/paytable. If you don't, you'll be playing less then optimally, which will have a lower EV than if you played "by the book".

speed is of the utmost importance if u have to get in 240 hands in only 12 minutes. dont overanalyze hands like choosing to keep two high cards to a royal or a lowpair. pick either one and go with it so you can get onto the next hand.

" my logical mind tells me i can pull out ALOT more hands than granny sitting next to me making me more likely to win this thing or at least place high. " Try playing 32 bingo cards and keeping up with "granny" .

I'll give you some advice, because, I am like you.
I play in vP tournaments at my favorite casino...every other player is a senior citizen (99% at least) and I'm in my 20's...
Our setup is on OOOOLD gamemaker's and it's 5000 credits (20 credit bet per hand) with 15 minutes to play.
I usually run out of credits LOONG before time (I usually will have 2-3 minutes left)
I've never WON before, because honestly, luck has a lot to do with it, but I have placed in the top 10 quite a few times
(They actually started doing a double-your-score thing in the vP tournament because everyone's scores suck so bad; unlucky for everyone else, I got a doubler-bonus one time and it happened to be the time I hit quad aces! hahaha; Game is played on 9/7 DB)

if you 1200 credits and 12 minutes, that's 100 credits a minute or max bet (if it's 5) every 3 seconds. So yeah, you'll be pressed to finish those credits in time.

50 something year old VPers are pretty fast.

Anyway, I plugged in a pay table into the Wizard's poker analyzer. if you do nothing but go for royals and discard everything (everything else pays nothing), the odds of drawing into a Royal is 23,080.75 to 1. So over 240 hands, you have a little better than 1% chance of hitting the royal.

Whereas with JoB (6/9), using optimal strategy, you hit the royal once in 40,390.55 to 1.

However, to win the tournament, you pretty much have to get the Royal to have a shot of winning.

Depending on the size of the tournament, you need to figure out what the expected value of an optimal person is of getting the Royal. For example, if there are 1,000 entrants in the tournament, you would figure about 240,000 hands played and about 6 Royals. Those 6 people who get the royals will be in the top and their final results will be based on everything else that they got.

i would definitely modify my strategy to always try to draw to a Royal with the exception perhaps of 3 of a K, 4 to a SF, or a dealt full house. i would be taking 1, 2, 3 cards to a royal over a pair or two pair. Because the only way you're going to win is if you hit the Royal and you want to maximize the chances of getting that.

Once you get the Royal, you would switch the strategy to Optimal in order to get your high score.

That's my two cents.

Double post?

So the information on the whole tournament is there is around 60 people signed up so far for the tournament. 18 get payed and its off jacks or better. 20 coins per deal and 1200 credits loaded onto machine with 12 minutes. Credits won are put in a winner paid category and the 1200 credits are not combined with credits won. So as the 1200 goes down hopefully winner paid category goes up. They will record winner paid for every player after every round there is 3 rounds that EVERYONE will play and the one with the most credits after the 3 rounds is the winner.

Most people who are signed up for the tournment will go through those 60 hands. So i believe basic strategy would be best and hope you get some good hands to put you up the leader board.



Anyone have any reason or suggestions for deviating from basic strategy. Possibly if you were given Ah 10h 10c Jh 2c then go for the royal?

or just play the first round and then see where i stand and alter strategy based on that?

180 hands of JOB is basically what you have to play with. With 100 people signed up, you're looking at 18,000 hands. There's a good possibility that there will be ONE royal drawn in the entire tournament, and that person will be the winner without a doubt. Without the Royal hitting, then the winner will be by basic strategy with the person with a couple of 4 of a Ks or a SF mixed with everything else being a winner. It's not inconceivable that a player might hit 2 four of a kinds in 180 hands and end up close to top.

There's no way in 180 hands that you're going to be able to bend the strategy in any direction, and you're at the will of pretty much pure luck. I'd suggest bending your strategy a bit towards 4 of a kinds if possible, perhaps by discarding the paid to the boat and going for the quad and perhaps keeping a pair rather than 4 to a flush. Still, you're at the will of pure luck in this sample size. I might have had something better to say if you had 720 deals as you suggested.

The pay table for this jacks or better isnt the best either Of course the machine pays out 20 credits for Job But with everyone playing the same game it dont matter if it was 5 or 20. Scores will still be the same they will just look higher because 20 is payed for JoB and so on.


4000 royal
250 SF
125 4oK
30 FH
25 FL
20 S
15 3oK
10 2p
5 JoB

so as you see full house is only 30 and flush is 25......

so based on the pay table what you guys suggest?

I'm thinking basic strategy first round and seeing what the scores are after and then see if i need to perhaps only hold 3 of kind on a dealt full house and go for the four of a kind.

Also if i win that be awesome...but 2nd 3rd or 4th place be sweet to. Really im just looking to place in this tournament and since there is around 60 entering in this tournament as of right now. That means 30% of contestance will place in this tournament and 70% will not

any other suggestions?