Then I checked probably the most popular video poker game: Double Double Bonus Poker. With a 9-6 pay table, it’s a 98.98 percent return, $12.75 average loss in two hours on a quarter machine, with a $300 bankroll for a 5 percent risk of ruin and a 35.46 percent chance of a winning session. Bankroll Management Explained. In the simplest terms, your poker bankroll is the amount of money you have set aside for poker. This doesn't include. Video poker bankroll discussions assume you play perfectly. Almost nobody does. Which is how casinos can offer games that theoretically return over 100%. Just realize that you need to be very close to perfect to still maintain any advantage at all, and then only on a very few games. Re: Video Poker Bankroll I've used Bob Dancer's Video Poker for Winners software to simulate the results given a specified number of hands, slot club percentage cashback, etc. I would expect about a result of -10% of your coin in happening quite often, so for 2000 hands of $1.25 VP I think you're not very likely to bust with $500.
Video Poker Bankroll
By Henry Tamburin
![Bankroll Bankroll](https://www.lasvegasadvisor.com/shop/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/1716.png)
When I first started teaching video poker a few years ago, astudent asked me this question: “How muchbankroll do I need?” I suggested that a lifetime bankroll equal to 3 to 4 times the amount of the royal flush shouldsuffice. But he wasn’t interested in a long-term bankroll that would last himforever. He wanted to know how much he needed for a short-term, 2-hour session sohe wouldn’t run out of money and have his session come to a screeching halt. Itwas a good question and to come up with an answer I had to do some research.
It turns out there are ways to estimate session bankroll forvideo poker using mathematical equations and customized computer simulations.But I decided to use a commercial software program instead because, a) it wasmore fun to do, and b) it was something I could show students during class tohelp them understand session bankroll requirements (and also volatility).
I used the Frugal Video Poker (FVP) software to conduct mystudy because it draws a graph showing the peaks and valleys of your bankrollduring a playing session and more importantly it calculates the player’s lowpoint. The latter is the greatest amount of money that you were down during asession. It’s an important number because if you don’t have at least that muchmoney, you will tap out and not be able to complete the session.
To conduct the study I assumed that the average player plays500 hands per hour over 2 hours or a total of 1,000 hands. The game I decidedto simulate was 9/6 Jacks-or-Better because it is readily available in mostgaming jurisdictions and it has a relatively low volatility compared to othervideo poker games (more about volatility in a moment).
Using the FVP software’s “computer play” function, I set thecomputer to play a short session of 1000 hands on a 9/6 Jacks-or-Better machineusing the Strategy Play mode with the maximum of five coins bet per hand. Within a second the computer plays the 1,000hands and shows the results of the session. Although I was mainly interested inthe low point, I also recorded the high point and how much money was won or lost after the 1000 hands were played. To getenough data for my study, I simulated 30 two-hour playing sessions, or about ayears worth of play for a typical quarter video poker player that plays 2 to 3times per month. I recorded the results of each 2 hour session in sequence (seeTable 1 below).
The results of the study were dramatic. Take a look at the first row in Table 1representing the first 2 hour session. Overall the player won $150 (lastcolumn) after playing 1,000 hands. Not a bad start. But notice that at onepoint the player was down $48.75, his low point during the session. At anotherpoint he was up $156.25, his high point ,which is a swing in bankroll of $205. The player ended the 2 hour session ahead$150.00. But the key figure for estimating bankroll requirements is the lowpoint. If the player didn’t have at least a $48.75 bankroll he would havetapped out and not been able to complete this 2 hour session.
If you glance at the figures in Table 1 you’ll get anappreciation at what we mean by video poker volatility. Your bankroll willoften take a wild ride because so many of the big payouts occur with hands thatdon’t appear very frequently. The result is that we need a big bankroll orcushion to sustain us between those rare jackpot hands otherwise our sessionwill be cut short.
So what’s an acceptable cushion? Let’s suppose you broughtalong $100 to play a 2-hr session. The data in Table 2 are the low points foreach of the 30 computer generated sessions (listed in Table 1) that I sortedfrom lowest to highest. With a $100 session bankroll, Table 2 shows that youwould have run out of money in 9 of the 30 sessions.However, if you would have brought at least$170, you would have had enough money to survive all 30 sessions.
Keep in mind that the $170 is a rough estimate of sessionbankroll because I only ran 30 computer sessions (which is a relatively smallsampling of data) and most players don’t play as accurately as a computer does.So I throw in a fudge factor and advise students to bring $200 with them. This shouldprovide them with a comfortable cushion to sustain them during a 2 hoursession. Of course this assumes that they are not making any major playingstrategy mistakes (if they are, they’ll need an even larger bankroll).
The $200 seems like a lot of money to play a full pay,quarter, 9/6 Jacks-or-Better machine for 2 hours. But that’s the reality ofvideo poker. It’s a volatile game and if you have less bankroll, you run a greaterrisk of tapping out in the middle of your session.
The results of my study agree closely with a similar studydone by Viktor Nacht that appears in Jean Scott’s upcoming book, “The Frugal Video Poker Handbook.” Jean’sbook goes into much more detail on how to use the FVP software to estimatesession bankroll for all the popular video poker games, and also includescharts with exact session bankrolls for many popular games.
You might be wondering about the big win in session #28(Figure #1). Fortunately, the player hit a royal flush in that computergenerated session for a $1,000 payoff. This is not a frequent event and thefact it occurred during one of my 30 computer generated trials was just luck(you can expect a royal flush about once in every 40,000 hands, a major reasonfor the volatility in Jacks-or-Better).
Keep in mind that your session bankroll will depend upon thegame you play, the number of hands played, and of course the denomination thatyou are playing. For example the volatility and bankroll requirement for DeucesWild are greater than Jacks-or-Better. Likewise playing multi-lines (3/5/10 play) vs. a single line for thesame length of time also requires more bankroll (which you can test out withFVP). And if you play dollar machines, your session bankroll requirements willbe much greater.
The bottom line is that if you want to avoid thedemoralizing experience of prematurely running out of money in the middle ofyour session, figure out beforehand how much cash to bring for the game youintend you play. That’s the smart way to play video poker.
Session # | Low Point ($) | Session W/L($) | |
1 | -48.75 | +156.25 | +150.00 |
2 | -168.75 | 0 | -163.75 |
3 | -82.50 | +2.50 | -51.25 |
4 | -127.50 | 0 | -125.00 |
5 | -38.75 | +53.70 | -20.00 |
6 | -16.25 | +103.70 | +35.00 |
7 | -10.00 | +77.50 | +25.00 |
8 | -7.50 | +125.00 | +40.00 |
9 | -88.00 | +11.25 | -96.25 |
10 | -103.75 | +46.25 | +11.25 |
11 | -97.50 | +73.75 | -87.50 |
12 | -55.00 | +43.75 | -76.25 |
13 | -28.75 | +42.50 | +42.50 |
14 | -95.00 | +20.00 | -90.00 |
15 | -35.00 | +108.75 | +100.00 |
16 | -26.50 | +33.75 | -16.25 |
17 | -113.75 | +17.50 | -100.00 |
18 | -141.25 | +5.00 | -122.50 |
19 | -27.50 | +65.00 | +38.75 |
20 | -41.25 | +132.50 | +116.25 |
21 | -61.25 | +26.25 | +3.75 |
22 | -140.00 | +36.25 | -157.50 |
23 | -6.25 | +118.75 | +60.00 |
24 | -90.00 | 0 | -113.75 |
25 | -150.00 | 0 | -140.00 |
26 | -133.75 | +42.50 | -132.50 |
27 | -162.50 | +43.75 | -115.00 |
28 | -8.75 | +1048.75 | +987.50 |
29 | -75.00 | +30.00 | -71.25 |
30 | -92.50 | +1.25 | -50.00 |
Low Points Sorted ($)
(negativesign omitted)
6.25 | 82.50 |
7.50 | 88.00 |
8.75 | 90.00 |
10.00 | 92.50 |
16.25 | 95.00 |
26.50 | 97.50 |
27.50 | 103.75 |
28.75 | 113.75 |
35.00 | 127.50 |
38.75 | 133.75 |
41.25 | 140.00 |
48.75 | 141.25 |
55.00 | 150.00 |
61.25 | 162.50 |
75.00 | 168.75 |
Table Of Contents
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Video Poker Bankroll
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