Dancer wrote: "I am somebody who accepts that for most players most of the time, choosing the play with maximum expected value is the way to go. Virtually all long-term successful players use these strategies. There are theoreticians who devise special strategies which have different goals than max-EV, but I've never used such a strategy and do not intend to."
MaxEV is the basis, it's easy to calculate, and it is hard to find an example where it's way off base. It is optimal for maximum EV per hand, but there are other cases where it is less than optimal. Sometimes it makes sense to look at more than just a hand and to look instead at a bigger picture. The classic problem in video poker is the royal flush. A lot of people might think the royal flush is "just another hand", but if you play in real world casinos for a while, you soon learn that it is not, it triggers other events, most of them not helpful, some requiring that you hire a lawyer. Now you could just say "screw it" and go ahead anyway and deal with the royal problems when you get them, but you could also be proactive and make some strategy changes that can reduce the negative aspects of hitting a royal. The classic example is min-cost-royal strategy which minimizes the cost of hitting a royal, commonly used on progressives but it finds use on non-progressives as well. If you want the dirt on min-cost-royal strategy see Kneeland's "Secret World of Video Poker". Another example, if you're not sure of the impact of hitting a royal, is to maximize the return of the non-royal hands, max-non-royal-strategy. And of course, if you're using the Kelly system, there is a Kelly optimal strategy. Classic Kelly examples would be to hold 22233 rather than draw to the deuces as in maxEV for FPDW, another would be to hold Aces Full (ex. AAA33) rather than draw to aces as in maxEV for FPDB.
Posted by: nightoftheiguana2000@yahoo.com
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