Poker Bad Boys Take VegasThe Hendon Mob are taking no prisoners at the first stop on their Prima Poker World Poker Tour. Team members Ram ‘CrazyHorse’ Vaswani, Joe ‘The Elegance’ Beevers and Barmy Barny Boatman came in 1st, 4th and 5th respectively on Sunday’s $500 Pot Limit Omaha at the Four Queens Poker Classic in Las Vegas.
“It was a short field today but probably the toughest so far. The big boys have arrived. Scotty Nguyen, Mike Sexton and An Tran to name but a few. They were all at Barny’s table but that didn’t hinder my big brother who turned $1,000 into $11,000 in the first hour and a half. He clashed with Scotty in a huge pot. They both had aces and all the chips went in on the flop when Scotty check raised Barny. Barny flopped the nut flush draw and paired one of his other cards. Free-rolling with 14 outs Barny was unlucky to split the pot,” according to Mobster Ross Boatman.
But more important than the money was the affirmation that The Mob are as furiously competitive amongst themselves as they are against ‘civilian’ players. “Ram knocked out Barny and then Joe,” commented Ross. ” Three left Scotty, ‘Walking’ Bob and Ram ‘CrazyHorse’ Vaswani. “We couldn’t expect Ram to do all the work and after delivering Scotty a fatal blow Bob finished him off.
The final two played cat and mouse for what seemed like an age but Bob was no match for the Horse. Ram found aces double suited re-raising Bob before the flop and when they both flopped a flush draw the mouse was caught in the trap.” The final result, a combined $26,480 win for the bad boys.
Tournament Results – Sunday September 28th:
1st Ram ‘CrazyHorse’ Vaswani (Hendon) $19,860
2nd Bob Walker (Las Vegas) $11,035
3rd Scotty Nguyen (Henderson, Nevada) $6.620
4th Joe The Elegance’ Beevers (Hendon) $4,415
5th Barmy Barny Boatman (Hendon) $2,205
6th Paul Sherr (Phoenix, Arizona) Bubble
A few words on video poker strategy…
STRATEGY…A few words about playing casino en ligne francais strategy: My Video Poker Home Page lists a variety of places on the Internet where books, newsletters, magazines, laminated cards and software that will help you to learn a good, playable strategy for virtually any game you wish. I will offer some brief strategy hints here, but for serious strategy training you should access any or all of these resources or wait for my book “How to Leave Las Vegas with your shorts intact” (or something like that.) Also, REC.GAMBLING’S VIDEO POKER FAQ has the strategy for 8/5 jacks or better progressive and Deuces Wild (or Wild Ducks, as I like to call them..”I wanna go where the Wild Ducks go and…”) as well as other useful info.
A brief preface then:
Some elementary concepts: Some of the strategies are relatively Simple and involve little consideration of what is commonly known as PENALTY CARDS. Penalty cards are discards that can affect the value of the cards you hold. For instance, if you hold jack-10 unsuited any discard that falls in the range of 7 thru ace negatively affects the number of possible straights you can draw. Likewise, if you hold jack-10 suited not only does the former apply but also any discards of the same suit will reduce the total possible flushes. Cards that fit both categories (e.g. a suited 7) would also reduce the number of straight flushes. Games that pay more for straights and flushes (10/7 double bonus and All American Poker) are affected more by penalty catds than other games and therefore have more complicated strategies.
Many of these games have an unusually large great percentage of the return concentrated in big jackpots and compensate by reducing the payout on the much more common hands such as full houses and flushes (or in Deuces Wild, straight flushes and QUADS (four of a kinds.) This reduction in the most often occurring hands increases the DRAIN, that is the percentage you can expect to be losing until you hit the big quads and/or the royal flush.
Many (it seems like most) of the Professional Video Poker players and writers are also mathematicians who often seem to spend most of the time in the land far to the right of the decimal point. Much of the discussion involves the RISK OF RUIN which is the chance you run of running out of money before the odds comes around to save you (assuming you are playing a game with a positive expectation.) The basic measure all of these discussions seem to begin with is the Standard Deviation per bet. This is a mathematical way of expressing the idea I was discussing in the previous paragraph. One of the writers on Video Poker (Dan Paymar) calls this number the VOLATILITY INDEX. The method for calculating it is not complicated, even for a math simpleton like myself. I have a spreadsheet template I will make available if anyone is interested. The point I want to make (and am FINALLY getting around to) is that it’s not necessary for the non-professional to have to deal with all this. When I refer to VOLATILITY in these writing, I am using the judgement and common sense that tells you when a game is likely to make more serious demands on your bankroll than others. The bigger the jackpots (and the more the payouts on lesser hands are reduced to pay for them) the bigger the bankroll you need.
