A brief interlude in the on-going 7-dog sports book trial turns our attention to a game experts say is a guaranteed long-term loser: Video poker.

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For as long as I have frequented casinos (46 years so far!), slot machines have been pretty much a no-fly zone for me.

There have been only two exceptions: dollar reels, back in the good old Vegas days when they were calibrated so generously that a $100 "investment" almost always saw a profit, and video poker machines, as long as I had blackjack winnings in my back pocket to assuage feelings of guilt.

With all casino games I have ever tackled (especially including blackjack and baccarat) my primary assumption has been that whatever the house encourages you to do, you'd be better off doing the opposite.

Video poker - "pokies" to readers in Australia and in that beautiful, even more English country I was taught in school to think of as "the antipodes" - is a case in point.

"Hold, hold, hold" is the rule most people follow.

So, naturally, I hold as few "cards" as possible.

I hit 10,000 units on the iPod video poker game today after testing yet another of my casino game theories for more hours than I like to admit to.

The essence of this idea (based upon my old habit of only risking cash on VP machines when blackjack has handed me a large win) is that players consistently sabotage themselves, and that the machines are designed to encourage and exploit that human weakness.

Generally, players hold far too many cards too often, preventing the machine from doing what it does best and delivering high-value pat hands from full sets of five.

I have not hit that many royal flushes over the years, four at most since we moved to Nevada in 1987.

But then again, my play on these machines has been a fraction of the time that fanatics (like the leading lady of local realtors here in rural northern Nevada!) put in.

I would not have got into this again if my local casino had not shut down its table games for more than two months for major renovations!

My multi-part VP rule is to hold all pairs, hold only same-suited high cards, hold four cards for a flush even if it means breaking up a "money pair" (Jacks or better), and to avoid all busted or one-ended 4-card straight possibilities like the plague.

The only time I will hold four cards for a straight is if the odds are 6-1 rather than 12-1, as in 2,3,4,5 which would be completed by either 6 or A, and K,Q,J,10, which also has two chances in 12.

Given K,Q,J,9,5 or similar with the high cards of mixed suits, I throw away all five cards and start over, doing the same with A,K,Q,J,? or A,2,3,4,?.

What's the sense in bucking odds of 12-1 for a payout of 3-1?

Breaking up a money-back pair (J,J or better) in pursuit of a 5-1 payout on a flush does make sense, however, keeping in mind that a 30u return on a 5u bet is 6 FOR 1, not 6 TO 1.

You don't actually win anything with a high pair.

You get your money back, which is a push, which is a waste of your time and talent.

Ah, say those who do a happy dance whenever they break even on a hand, it's better than losing, and you get another grab at the brass ring.

The method I have been following is actually quite a departure from the widely-published "optimum strategy" which in my view greatly limits the win potential.

I have saved dozens of screens from my iPod and at some point will gather them all together and post them on the blog with appropriate explanations.

In the meantime, words will have to paint the pictures.

Hard as it may be to throw away a K,Q,A of mixed suits, it is the right thing to do.

Sure, you have a slight (less than 50-50) chance of pulling a matching high card and "winning" your bet back - but did you sit down at the machine just to break even?

If you did, you won't, in the end.

But if you let the beast deal five new cards all at once, you may actually see a serious return on your money.

That's why holding even one high card before drawing is a bad plan: If it's an A of diamonds, you will need four diamonds for a flush, 2,3,4,5 or K,Q,J,10 for a straight, and another A for an even-money pair.

Think how you will feel if you draw four cards from a different suit (than diamonds), or a four-card straight flush that gives you a five-card winner but falls far short of really big money because the card you kept is a mis-match.

Throw the bum out and start over, as we all should with most of our politicians!

Of those Royals I mentioned, all but one of them came at me in a five-card deal, and as I recall, the exception was a four-flush that happened also to be a busted straight.

I have talked about this to other players, all of them far more experienced than I am, and they say the same thing.

The big money payouts usually come in a no-brainer package, requiring you to either hold all five cards, or to do nothing but say thank you very much after throwing away your first hand and starting over.

The closer you follow the advice of "experts" the more likely you are to lose your money.

Yes, odds are you will stay in the game for longer if your bankroll is limited to fewer than 100 rounds.

But if you keep on holding mixed-suit cards or prioritizing "money pairs" at the expense of potential flushes and straights, you are much less likely to see a long-term profit.

I think a 10,000-unit win (worth $2,500 on a quarter VP machine) says a lot in support of my ideas, although I am sure skeptics will claim that the "app" does not accurately mimic real play.

The sim allows a starting bankroll of 100 points, or 20 rounds at 5 points each, and until I adopted the new strategy, I blew away several 100-point startups and kept succumbing to the 10% house edge for the game.

I should add that I did not pull a single "Royal" to hit that five-figure iPod milestone (now 10,200 as I type this) and landed only two straight flushes paying 49-1 in all that time.

How hard can it be for the simulation to get it right?

It's easy enough to create your own, slower, "sim" by using a single deck of cards, dealing out first five cards face down, then below or on top of them, five cards face up.

Discarded cards from the second row are replaced with those from the first, but the rule is that a discarded #2 can only be replaced with the #2 above it and so on.

That's how it is with a "pokie" which hides another "card" behind each opening up card and simply flips it over after you have chosen your holds and hit the draw button.

Playing a manual version, the deck must be shuffled before each round, as it is on a machine.

It's a pain, but necessary, because otherwise the odds against you, bad as they are, will get worse as the deck diminishes.

I don't have time to mess with all that shuffling, so I use the iPod app and am grateful for it!

The Wizard of Odds touts a VP strategy that he says returns 99.46%.

Mine has returned more than 100x that amount. So far...

Which is better, do you think?

An important reminder: The only person likely to make money out of this blog is you, Dear Reader. There's nothing to buy, ever, and your soul is safe (from me, at least). Test my ideas and use them or don't. It's up to you.
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