I doubt many video poker players even consider this question. They head to the casino (or play online) hoping their luck will bring them riches – or at least buy them some decent time playing their favorite video poker game.
Serious video poker players – those who learn and practice perfect video poker playing strategy for the specific game and pay table they will play are betting on the game being random. Each line of playing strategy assumes that video poker games are random. If the game is not random, the strategy is flawed and perhaps worthless.
So, what is the truth? Are video poker machines actually random? Will playing strategy based on a random game have the desired results? This article addresses these topics.
Contents
- How video poker machines work – the RNG
- What is random when it comes to video poker machine certification?
- Do video poker strategies work on today’s video poker games?
- Summary
How do video poker games work – the RNG
The engine producing “randomness” in video poker is called a Random Number Generator or RNG. It is a routine that generates a series of numbers very quickly based on some starting “seed” number. Given the same seed number, the RNG will produce the same sequence of numbers.
That does not sound very random, does it? Technically it is not random. Because of this, RNG’s are said to produce “pseudo-random” numbers.
Here is how the RNG works in a video poker machine. When the machine is first powered up the RNG begins generating numbers. It continuously generates thousands of numbers a second in the background whether the machine is being played or not.
Whenever a player hits either the deal or draw button, a series of numbers produced at that instant is captured. These numbers are then translated into the recognizable cards with a suit and rank based on the captured numbers.
Previous versions of video poker machines (they are now antiques), would capture and translate 10 numbers into cards. The first five would be the initial deal and the second five would replace any of the original cards that were discarded.
Current versions capture only the initial five numbers for translation into the original hand. When the player hits the draw button, additional numbers are captured and translated into the positions of the discards.
Keep in mind that the RNG is constantly working, generating thousands of numbers every second.
What is random when it comes to video poker machine certification?
The gaming control boards or commissions of each gaming jurisdiction certify video poker machines. They are responsible for certifying the “fairness” (randomness) of each game that is installed on a casino gaming floor.
They are well aware that these casino games could be rigged to unlawfully skew the results and therefore give the house an unlawful advantage.
Rigorous tests are performed to determine that over time, the results are well within the expectations. The results must match the mathematically produced frequencies dictated by a random game.
The results may not exactly match the mathematical results, but they must be very, very close. If they are not, the approval is rejected.
Do video poker strategies work on today’s video poker games?
The short answer is yes – as long as the game is certified. Keep in mind that video poker strategy is based an infinite number of hands. Certified games will necessarily be based on a finite, though very large Sampling.
The machine may be off by a very tiny amount. A certified game is only certified to be close enough to random to be considered random.
As a side note, there have been some strong doubters that video poker games are random.
In an effort to prove that games were not random, one such individual took data during actual play. The number of hands played and the number of selected winning hands such as full house, and/or flush were noted. The “proof” was the number of these select winning hands did not match the frequency from a random game. This could be anecdotal proof, but from the numbers I saw, there were nowhere near enough hands in the sampling to make the results meaningful.
I decided to do my own test. For seven years, with a total of over 450,000 hands, I tracked the number of full houses, straight flushes, four of a kinds, royal flushes and number of hands containing four of a flush that became a flush.
During those years I played exclusively at one casino. As far as I know, I played perfect or very nearly perfect strategy as witnessed by my practice sessions at home.
I kept track of the information by machine number and game. There were 12 different machines. The frequencies initially were all over the place. As more hands were added, however, the frequencies settled into something very near that of random.
Even though each of these machines had a computer generated RNG, the results appeared to mimic those of a random game.
Summary
- Video poker games are powered by a computer routine called a random number generator (RNG).
- Because it is a programmed routine, by definition, it cannot be called random. Instead, it is called a pseudo random game.
- RNGs generate many thousands of numbers every second.
- Capturing some of these generated numbers at the instant the player presses a button adds a random variable to the cards these captured numbers are translated into.
- This combination of circumstances makes video poker games close enough to random to be considered random.
