I take it that on this progressive you have a choice between 9/6 Jacks, 9/6 Bonus Poker Deluxe, and NSUD. In making my choice I would just pull up the software and take a look at the stats. In this case for a 5700 coin royal.
9/6 Jacks
Payback: 100.47%
Royal odds: 33,661
Royal Payback Percentage: 3.39%
Drain Between Royals: 2.92%
9/6 Bonus Poker Deluxe
Payback: 100.558%
Royal odds: 33,703
Royal Payback Percentage: 3.38%
Drain Between Royals: 2.82%
NSUD
Payback: 100.54%
Royal odds: 39,659
Royal Payback Percentage: 2.87%
Drain Between Royals: 2.33%
My choice would be BPD. There are a couple of reasons for the difference in royal odds between the Jacks games and the Deuce game. In Deuces you almost never throw away a deuce. And for the Jacks games, at 5700 coins, all the 3-card royals have a higher ER than the high pairs. Playing the 3-card royals over the high pairs has the single most dramatic effect on royal odds in the Jacks games. After that there is not a whole lot you can do to improve the odds. So to keep it simple I would go with the strategy for a 5700 coin royal and forget about breakpoints on 2-card royals as the meter climbs. It just doesn't effect the odds all that much.
---In vpFREE@yahoogroups.com, <savorvpx@...> wrote :
JD, I could take a stab at answering your puzzle, but instead I hope that Bob Dancer turns this into one of his weekly LVA articles.
From: john.douglass@... mailto:john.douglass@...
Thanks, VVPP! You are right about non wild card games surpassing wildcard games on progressives; thanks for pointing that out. I was not aware of that, and it wasn't initially intuitive to me - I figured the rise in EV was the same for all games. Buzzz, wrong! Lol
But looking at the royal cycles as the meter rises, it becomes apparent that a wildcard game like deuces wild has a longer royal cycle than a non wildcard game. This must be due to holding the deuces and holding for wild royals etc rather than just natural royals.
For bonus deluxe, the crossover point is 5,488 coins, and the royal cycle is only about 34,347 hands, while for NSU it is about 39,952 hands.
For the machines in question, the royal does get above 5,488 at times, in fact it was at over 5,700 last week when someone hit it (not sure which game they were playing at the time). So bonus deluxe is a possibility at times, although somewhat rarely.
For jacks or better, the crossover point is almost 1,000 higher at 6,461 coins, with a royal cycle at about 33,134 hands, while for NSU it is about 38,706 hands. I heard from a slot person that the highest he's ever seen the royal is 7,000 coins, so it would be rare that the EV for 9/6 jacks surpasses NSU, and it still wouldn't be a higher EV than bonus deluxe.
Advanced Puzzle: why does the EV for 9/6 jacks or better rise faster than 9/6 bonus deluxe for the same increase in the royal flush?
For example, at 6,000 coins, the EV of 9/6 jacks is 100.6513%, an increase of 1.1074% from the reset at 4,000 coins and 99.5439%. For bonus deluxe, at 4,000 coins reset the EV is 99.6417%, while at 6,000 coins the EV is 100.7374%, an increase of 1.0957%.
[Hint/Part 2: why is the royal cycle lower for jacks or better than bonus deluxe, when the only difference is the payout on quads and two pair?]
[Hint hint/part 3: do strategy differences perhaps affect the royal cycle?]
JD
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