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Jan

23

2017

Is Your Deal in Video Poker Random or is There a Pattern?

 Is Your Deal in Video Poker Random or is There a Pattern?

Video poker deals are as random as humans can program a computer to be, but one player thought he saw a pattern developing that could have worked in his favor if only there was a way to let it play out.

Playing Double Double Bonus Poker, I held 2-2, discarded a king, and the draw brought A-A-A. Boom! Boom! Boom!,” he wrote.

“I was happy with the full house, of course, but it got me wondering what would have happened if I had held just the king instead. The way those aces popped up so fast, was the game ready to deal me a fourth ace if I only left it enough room to deal four cards?”

As sweet as extending the run by one more Boom! would have been, the game was not necessarily ready to deal a fourth Ace. All we know is that the three cards at the top of the deck when the player hit the draw button were Aces. We know nothing about card order after that.

Let’s say the player had held only one card, leaving a four-card draw and room enough to go Boom! Boom! Boom! Boom! instead of only three booms. Subtracting the cards from your initial deal, there would have been 47 cards available for your draw. After the three Aces popped up, there would have been 44 cards remaining in the deck. The chances of your next card being the fourth Ace would have been 1 in 44.

If he’d discarded all five cards and the first three cards of your draw were Aces, the chances of drawing the fourth would have been 2 in 44, or 1 in 22. That would be broken down into 1 in 44 on the fourth card of the draw, and if it didn’t come up there, 1 in 43 in the fifth card.

That all assumes Aces on the first three cards. Before the start of the draw, you chances of drawing four Aces are 1 in 178,365 with a four-card draw and 1 in 35,673 with a five-card draw,

So it’s possible a fourth card after the three Aces would have completed the big quads, but the player still was an underdog.

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