Optimal Strategy Hand-Rank Table for Jacks Or Better, Double Bonus, and Joker Wild Video Poker
Optimal Strategy Hand-rank Table for Jacks or Better, Double Bonus, and Joker Wild Video Poker By John Jungtae Kim A Thesis Submitted to the School of Graduate Studies in Partial Fulfilment of the Requirements for the Degree Master of Science McMaster University c Copyright by John Jungtae Kim, January 2012 MASTER OF SCIENCE (2012) McMaster University (Statistics) Hamilton, Ontario TITLE: The Optimal Strategy Hand-rank Table for Jacks or Better, Double Bonus, and Joker Wild Video Poker AUTHOR: John Jungtae Kim (McMaster University, Canada) SUPERVISOR: Dr. Fred M. Hoppe NUMBER OF PAGES: viii, 76 i Abstract Video poker is a casino game based on five-card draw poker played on a computerized console. Video poker allows players an opportunity for some control of the random events that determine whether they win or lose. This means that making the right play can increase a player's return in the long run. For that reason, optimal strategy hand-rank tables for various types of video poker games have been recently published and established to help players improve their return (Ethier, 2010). Ethier posed a number of open problems in his recent book, The Doctrine of Chances: Probabilitistic Aspects of Gambling among which were some in video poker. In this thesis we consider the most popular video poker games: Jacks or Better, Double Bonus, and Joker Wild. Ethier produced an optimal strategy hand-rank table for Jacks or Better. We expand on his method to produce optimal hand-rank tables for Double Bonus,and Joker Wild. The method involves enumerating all possible discards, computing the expected returns, and then finding a way to rank them according to optimal discard based on the payoffs.
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