(Video Poker continued)

Video Poker Simulation

     

• See Instructions Below
• Pay Tables
• License and Source
• Notes

Play Instructions

• Only run one instance of the applet at a time. Otherwise, the applet will fail.
• All games start with 20 credits and play 5 credits per hand.
• Select the cards you would like to hold and click draw.
• To play a new hand, click deal.
• To reset the game click switch game.
• To change games, select a different game from the drop down menu and then click switch game.
• In order to determine the best discard, click run analysis after selecting the hands you would like to keep. The higher the result of the payout/ number of hands figure, the better.

Simulation Instructions

• In order to run a simulation, select the denomination of coins you would like to play. If you do not select anything, $1 denomination is used.
• Enter the number of hands you think you can play in a minute. If you do not enter anything, 3 is used.
• Select how long you would like to run the simulation by either choosing a hand to play to or by entering a number of hands to play.
• Select start button
• To stop a simulation in progress, select the stop button.

Make Hand Instructions

• The make hand feature allows the player to analyze a specific hand and perform odds analysis.
• First, choose the game.
• Then click new game.
• Click the checkbox in the Make-A-Hand box.
• Use the buttons in the Make-A-Hand box to make the hand you want.
• Make sure you do not have two of the same card in the hand.
• Select the cards you would like to hold.
• Click odds analysis.
• You can then hold different combinations of cards and determine the best play.
• To stop, uncheck the checkbox.
• ( The higher the Payout/Number of Hands figure, the better.)

Text boxes\drop down boxes on simulation panel:
    Coin- Select denomination of coins to play.
    Run till- Select a hand to play to (alternately, enter a number of hands in the # Hands box).
    HPM- Hands per Minute, enter the number of hands you can play in a minute.
   # Hands- Enter the number of hands you would like the simulation to play (alternately, choose Run till).
    HC- Hand Count, the number of hands played.
    LBR- Lowest Bankroll, the lowest dip of the bankroll during the simulation.
    HBR- Highest Bankroll, the highest amount of the bankroll during the simulation.
    CTK- Casino Take, the rate at which the casino is taking your money. A negative number means you are winning.
    EPT- Estimated Play Time, the time it would have taken to play this many hands in a casino.
    SMT- Simulation Time, the time the simulation has taken.

Pay Tables

License and Source

This applet is made avaiable for your use and redistribution under the terms of the GPL version 2 or later. This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public License for more details. The source for this program can be downlaoded in jar format by clicking here.

Notes

Simulations may take a long time. Especially if you choose to play until you hit a royal flush.

For any draw poker hand their are 32 possible ways to discard and draw. A human being looking at a poker hand can easily and quickly eliminated most of the possible discards and choose between a couple of obvious options. A computer on the other hand, must examine all 32 possibilities mathematically. For example, one of the 32 options is to select the first two cards and discard the last three. For this option, the computer looks at all combinations of the remaining 47 cards for the last three slots (16,215), measuring the return for this choice. The program must do this for every 32 possible discards.

The calculations that take the most time are those for discarding 4 cards and throwing away all cards. These alone amount to 2,425,764 combinations to analyze. However, these are also the easiest to predict in terms of the return. In order to save time, a shortcut has been made involving these six possible discards. In separate simulations, an average return was determined for these 6 possibilities and here is how it works: 

When considering throwing away four cards (in jacks-or-better), there must be a J,Q,K, or A. If not, all the cards are discarded. If one of the cards are present, the highest payback from all the other possible combinations will be compared with .46. If .46 is a higher payback, then this is the option the simulation will go with. 

When considering throwing all the cards back, the figure of .34 is used (for jorb). If .34 is the highest payback, all the cards will be discarded. This shortcut drastically increases the speed of the simulation without compromising perfect play much. For all of the other 26 possible discards, every combination is measured.

There may be a slight pause after clicking the stop button before the simulation stops.

When choosing an option in  the "run till" box, the game will be played until a natural hand is made even when playing a game like deuces wild. So, AAA2K will not stop the simulation when "4 of a kind" is picked. It will have to be AAAAK. If choosing royal flush, the simulation will stop at AKQJ10 and not at A22QK.