From: mannys@thebookstore.Eng.Sun.COM (Manuel 'Manny' Raposa)
Newsgroups: rec.gambling
Subject: Software review: Stanford Wong's Video Poker
Date: 14 Dec 92 19:16:22 GMT
Reply-To: mannys@thebookstore.Eng.Sun.COM
Organization: Sun Microsystems
NNTP-Posting-Host: thebookstore


	I've been playing with Stanford Wong's Video Poker for about two
weeks now and feel qualified to offer a bit of a review.  The software
is from Villa Crespo.  The manual is better than many software manuals
I've seen, but gets a bit redundant because many of the menu choices are
available from every screen and they explain them over and over and over.

	The software is billed as a simulator/analysis/practice program.
It does perform all three functions as described, but probably not in the
depth that a die hard player might want.  My plan for the program was 
mainly centered around the simulation / analysis portions, yet I found
myself spending quite a bit of time simply playing dueces wild VP for the
practice.

	One of the functions I found most helpful was the VP tournament.
You have a choice of playing a two person tournament (haven't tried it),
or a one person tournament practice session.  You are allowed to set the
goal of the session in terms of minutes, # of hands, or $$$.  I typically
set it to run for 15 minutes.  Upon reaching the pre-set goal, the system
responds by telling you the number of hands you played, the number of hands
per hour that comes out to, the amount won, and your cumulative skill level
This skill level percentage is an average of expected value based on the 
decision you made for each hand.  During the session the expected value of
each hand you play flashes on the screen, but since this is a tournament
type practice, I didn't spend a lot of time looking at anything other than
the cards.  After a couple of hours practice, my average comes out to
~1100 hands per hour with a 96% cumulative skill level.

	In any of the modes of play, the software allows you to choose amongst
5 different types of machines:  Jacks or better
				Dueces wild
				Joker wild, Kings or better
				Joker wild, two pair or better
				Dueces and Joker wild, 3/kind or better

	You may set up the pay schedule any way you want, including allowing
special payouts for such things as left to right royal flushes or four 7s or
four Kings or whatever you choose.  One thing it either doesn't do or I haven't
figured out is setting up a progressive meter.  As far as I can tell you simply set 
the max coin payout for RF at a single number.  This makes it difficult
in trying to glean a strategy as you have to do something of a binary search
on this payout looking at the various expected values to see when one passes
the other.

	Under the analysis portion, you are allowed to choose a game, set the
payout, then tell it how many hands to run in determining the expected return
for that given game.  With the method they use, changing the number of hands
run over 1000 or so has no appreacable effect on the numbers.  This analysis
portion does nothing to provide you with a strategy, but simply gives you an
expected return for the game.

	Also under the analysis mode, you may define a hand and analyze the
expected returns for each of the 32 ways of playing that hand.

	In the play mode, again you choose the game and payouts, then go for it.
There is an advice function which you can set at one of three levels, ask, show,
and warn.  In the ask level, you may ask the system to evaluate any given hand
or set of holds.  It will actually provide you with the expected return for all
32 possibilities of hold/draw situations, highlighting the one with the greatest
expected return.  In the warn mode, the system will alert you if you choose a 
hold/draw combination which is greater than your tolerance level away from the
optimum play.  You can set this tolerance level, as in if my choice is less than
10% away from the maximum expected return for optimum play, don't warn me.
It is a useful tool for finding out which hands you tend to misplay often, and
I was surprised at some of the results of my own play.

However, setting the tolerance level too low led to confusion on my part.
I tend to think in terms of what I keep, not what I throw out.  Yet I found that
I couldn't always do this.  For example, from a junk hand I would keep two cards
to a RF and it would be the correct play, yet on the next junk hand I would keep
same two cards to a RF and it would be wrong.  I finally discovered the difference
was that in the second hand I was discarding one card of the same suit
as the two I kept which changed the expected return (due to fewer remaining
cards which might result in a flush).  Too deep for my feeble mind, and
the difference was out at the second or third decimal point.

	Setting the advice mode on warn results in the system selecting the
hold cards for you.  You may change them if you wish.  This also allows you
to cycle through a series of hands just to see if your decisions would have
been different from optimum.


	Overall, the software seems well written with quite a few options
available.  What I was originally after was a method to determine which
flavor of machine had the highest expected return, and a method to develop
the optimum playing strategy for dueces wild machines.  This software will
give me the expected returns, but I will have to work at coming up with
the strategy by defining possible hands and manually recording the expected
return of each in order to rank them.

	The software is available from RGE, Chuck Weinstock, and Egghead
Software.  I have no interest in any of these except as a prior, satisified
customer.

	I understand there is also a "Dr. Wongs Video Poker" which is a
subset of this program.  It is also from Villa Crespo Software and is
cheaper due to the fewer functions.  

	By the way, there is a picture of
Stanford Wong in the manual, and I know I've seen that face before!  And
Dr. Wongs participation in the whole deal seems to be less than I had
imagined.  He is listed in the credits for "logic and concept", with 6
or 7 other people listed as the programmers and graphic artists.  I don't
know why, but I thought this was his program lock, stock and barrel.


	Manny Raposa


---
* Manuel J. Raposa         |  I've been to two zoos,                    *
* manuel.raposa@Eng.Sun.Com|                and a county fair,          * 
* Sun Microsystems, Inc.   |  and I ain't NEVER seen nothing like this! * 
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Newsgroups: rec.gambling