Strictly Slots August 2022

PLAYER’S EDGE BY JOHN GROCHOWSKI

WHAT IF I… Video Poker and the RNG

I n the course of a year, I answer more than 100 questions from readers.Mul tiply that by more than 20 years of writing about gaming,and I’ve seen a pretty good sample of what readers are thinking about. Naturally, there are repeat questions, including some that get asked over and over again. One of those has to do with video poker and whether results would be the same if you were playing a different coin denomination, such as quarters vs. dollars. I’ve seen that question enough that I as sume the reader is asking if a change from quarters to dollars on the same multi-de nominational machine would yield the same results. But when I was asked that question recently, my assumption was in correct. Let’s tackle the question both ways

here,first answering the question I thought the reader was asking, then giving the in formation she really wanted. Here’s the question the reader asked in her first email: “ If I receive a royal flush playing nickel video poker, would I have gotten it if I was playing quarter or dollar poker on the same machine? My interpretation was that she was playing nickel video poker, and wanted to know if she still would have drawn the royal had she changed to quarters or dollars sometime before she got the big hand. It’s a question lots of players ask themselves,or to anyone around them.A woman playing next to me once drew a quarter royal and said to those around her,“I should have been playing dollars! You heard me say I was thinking about playing dollars.” But the results probably would not have been the same.The ran dom number generator that determines the cards you see runs con stantly, and very fast.Any disruption in timing could mean an extra few dozen random numbers have been generated and disappeared. The time it would take her to touch the screen to switch to a quarter or dollar game would mean the specific random numbers that gave her the royal would be gone. If she paused to order a drink, say hello to a neighbor,stretch her legs or scratch her ear,the RNG would

have moved on. If her actions or timing varied in any way, no matter how small, her results probably would have been different. I emailed the reader an answer, but less than an hour later, she wrote to tell me she had a different question in mind. “I meant, are the odds the same on video poker playing nickels, quarters or dollars? It seems I get more royal flushes on nickels,which I assumed the casino doesn’t have to pay out as much that way.” That’s an entirely different matter. I explained to her that the odds of drawing royal flushes change only with your strategy,not with the coin denomination. Nickel games do not deal more royals than quarter games. Random number generators are programmed the same way for video poker games, regardless of whether you’re playing for nickels, quarters,dollars or any other denomination.In fact,on many multi-de nominational machines, the same RNG is used regardless of which coin denomination you’re playing. All the RNG does is generate numbers that correspond with cards.Those numbers are applied in such a way that every card has an equal chance of appearing on every hand.Odds of drawing any given hand are the same as if a physical deck were in play. That’s why we can calculate payback percentages on video poker games.Given a specific strategy,we know how often each hand will occur over a very long time.

26 AUGUST 2022 ■ STRICTLY SLOTS ■ www.casinocenter.com