Albert Pearson writes:
<< My own strategy is to be as close to perfect as I can be on the game that I play the most 9/6 JoB and play very solid basic strategy on all the other games that I dabble in. I'm one of those players that does not play for a living. My objective is to go to a casino, have fun, get all my rooms and meals picked up by the casino, the odd bit of entertainment, and with free play and cash back go home with the money I came with. I've been accomplishing this for a lot of years. >>
Although my objective is different--I AM mainly looking for profitable opportunities--my approach is similar. Not being a VP specialist, I can't justify putting in the time to learn every game perfectly. As a general rule, I have no interest in grinding out a profit from long hours of play. It's quite rare these days for a grind to be a significantly profitable play, even taking into account points into play. Either the stakes are too small to interest me, or the edge is so small that the wisdom of playing for higher stakes is questionable, given the bankroll that I'm willing to risk. Like most APs, I'm more interested in generating a profit from relatively short hit and run plays, aimed at producing bounceback or other benefits. And since the edge on such plays is pretty large and the total coin in required is limited, there's frankly not a lot of value to playing every game perfectly. A good enough strategy is, well, good enough.
Jacks or Better being the most common game, and being a sort of baseline for a lot of other games, it's the one game that I've tried to learn to play absolutely perfectly, and fast. (Fast according to my personal definition, while remaining accurate; I don't want to get into a contest with any of the true speed demons.) Fortunately, Jacks or Better has probably the simplest strategy of any game.
The software and publications out there, including Bob Dancer's, typically present a range of strategies for a game, from simpler to more complex, and show the expectation for each. The simplest or close to the simplest is nearly always just fine for my purposes. It's rare (though there are exceptions for more exotic games) for further refinements to improve expectation by more than a couple of hundredths of a percent.
Having Jacks or Better strategy down cold, all I need to study for most other games are the differences from JOB strategy. JOB strategy without changes actually suffices for several other games. Then there's NSUD, for which the strategy is totally unrelated, of course. And pseudo-NSUD or Illinois-Airport Deuces, for which NSUD strategy is very close. I essentially never find other deuces games that interest me. There are a couple of places where I'll play Joker Poker 2 Pair, which again is a totally unrelated strategy. But that's about it!
What's important to me is to be fast and accurate, not to be perfect.
