Welcome to Part 2 of my review of
The Video Poker Edge by
Linda Boyd.
The Video Poker Edge excels at bootstrapping the beginning video poker player from the ground up. If you are a complete beginner, this book will teach you everything you know to get better results than probably 90% of the casual players out there. There is also information that experienced players (like The Flusher) will find useful.
One of the things that drew me to this book was the fact that the strategy is simplified, and presented in a different way. There are certainly many books on video poker out there, and many of them are very good. And there are even strategy card products that you can buy that will present near-perfect strategies to wring every last micro-sub-thousandth of a percent of EV out of your game. But these strategies often suffer from three problems. One, the wording (Jimmy Poon told me to use the word 'nomenclature' here), anyway, the wording is arcane and difficult to decipher, two, there are too many (some have 80 or more!) complex fiddly rules, and three, I can't fucking remember them in any case.
I was hoping that Linda's more verbal approach would suit me better. And, indeed, with her strong background in math, and consulting with some highly regarded industry professionals (excluding, sadly, me and Jimmy Poon), she cobbled together optimized, compact strategies for key VP games.
So let's look under the cover, as it were, at some of what Linda's book offers.
As mentioned, the book provides a good overview of video poker suitable for the complete beginner and includes chapters describing the game, what the physical characteristics of a VP machine are, and a description of what a strategy is, and why you need one.
The basics of how you find the right games by checking out the paytables, and saddle up to a machine in a casino are covered too. This can be tricky, because, as she says 'you will never find a machine marked "9/6 Jacks or Better"'. I beg to differ, but the point is generally true, except at the Four Queens.