Cryptologic video poker autohold

Sunday, April 25, 2010

Cryptologic video poker autohold

The Cryptologic video poker autohold function does not produce optimal results. I ran a test of a hundred hands or so at Intercasino, and made the following findings:

Correct holds

Paying hands are correctly auto-held. Here, a queen pair:

High pair

A flush:

Also correctly auto-held are low pairs:

Four cards to both flush and "open" straight are correctly held:

Four to a flush

Three to a royal flush is correctly held:

Incorrect holds

On the negative side, the problem centres primarily around the treatment of high cards, where they do not represent a paying hand but should be held according to optimal strategy.

Both two and three unsuited high cards should be held, but are not:

Two unsuited high cards

Suited high cards are also not held:

Two suited high cards

Two suited high cards plus three to a flush with one gap, both holdable hands in their own right, are ignored by the autohold:

Two suited high / three flush

In addition to that, where there is choice between a low pair and four to a straight, the the four straight is held, which is incorrect:

Two suited high / three flush

Finally, high card plus suited ten:

High plus suited ten

The video poker help section has the following to say on the matter:

Auto-Hold

The auto-hold feature allows you to let the game suggest which cards to hold after the initial deal. You may toggle the system on or off at will. Additionally, you are not forced to accept the recommendation of the system; you may manually change any of the suggestions prior to clicking on 'draw' to continue the hand.

Please note that the strategy suggestions are an accurate representation of simple strategy for each variant but there are highly advanced exceptions that are not incorporated into the feature.

Additionally, the system will not select any card(s) to hold for hands without a pair and without a strategically correct draw. For more information on intermediate and optimal strategy in video poker, we recommend the website of a highly regarded gaming math expert at WizardOfOdds video poker

It's an exaggeration to say that that holding one, two or three high cards is "highly advanced" strategy. These are fundamental plays.

My advice: leave the autoplay function switched on, as it will save clicking. However, there is absolutely no substitute for knowing correct strategy yourself. The casino suggests Michael Shakleford's VP page, which is a good recommendation.

You can also see my video poker page, which contains the hand-rank chart and recommendations for practice software.

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2 Previous Comments

Have you checked the cryptologic VP autohold recently? I think it works correctly now. Can you confirm?

By Anonymous, at 1:29 pm

I haven't, and I don't have a copy of the download software I got this from. I'll try and check.

By 100% Gambler, at 11:31 pm

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