Help on Play Perfect Video Poker

Modes of Usage Explained:

This app can be used in three modes:  to give perfect play advice for a given video poker hand, OR to provide practice for video poker games, OR to just play a game. for fun  In the ADVICE mode, one inputs the five cards constituting a hand of interest and is then told the cards to hold.  In the PRACTICE mode, random hands are displayed and the user selects hold cards.  This hold is then scored (correct hold or not) and a tally accumulated until you reset the tallies to zero.  The GAME mode presents a setting reminiscent of a video poker machine.  When you press Deal you are dealt random hands.  After selecting hold cards and pressing the Draw button, your hold hand is filled-in with random cards from the remaining deck.  The perfect hold hand receives the same draw cards.  The amount won by your holds and the perfect play holds are shown and accumulated into win/loss (W/L) totals. Click on the following links for more details.
Card Selection Methods Explained:

To get perfect play hold card advice in the ADVICE mode of usage, one must first select the five cards composing the current hand.  There are three ways to do this (a setting controls this plus there is a quick way to switch methods using the DECKS button). 
Choosing a Game and Pay Table:

The Pro version of this app has over 190 different video poker games in the Pro version (260 in the Pro+ version) and hundreds of related pay tables found in actual casino games.  All modes of usage operate on the selected game and pay table.  The following links explain how to select a game and pay table.
Settings, Tips, Review, WHY? and Quick Switches:

Settings control many features of this app.  Tips provide information on all aspects of the app. Quick Switching gives a fast way to change game mode, card selection methods, game choice and pay table choices.  The WHY? button gives the details behind Perfect Play advice. Use the following links to see details.
Trip Recorder:

The Trip Recorder is used to record data associated with video poker gambling trips or activity.
Money Management:

This feature gives classic probabilities of achieving a specified target win before losing a starting bankroll and the probabilities of hitting desired outcomes (e.g., a Royal Straight Flush).

Perfect Play Advice Mode

The screens for the perfect play advice mode look something like:
The main screen contains several sections: the name of the current game and pay table selected are displayed at the top; in the middle section, a way to select cards is displayed as here with a deck of cards (there are three different ways); the cards selected by the user form the hand to be evaluated; and an assortment of buttons at the bottom.
At the top is the name of the current selected game and the chosen pay table for that game. Here we see it is a Jacks or Better game designated as 800-50-9-6. This uniquely describes the pay table used (specifically, it is a pay table where the per coin payout for a Royal Straight Flush is 800, for a Straight Flush 50, for a Full House 9, and for a Flush 6. This is what most people call the 9-6 Jacks or Better pay table.) The user can select another game or another pay table by clicking on the GAMES or PAYS buttons below.  This will be discussed below.  See the help on changing games and pay tables.
The three ways to select cards are discussed in another section. Shown here is a simple deck of cards. If the game chosen involves Jokers, Jokers are also displayed. Clicking on a card moves it to the first available free spot in hand to be evaluated.
Cards in the hand can be clicked to remove them any time before the Clear Button is clicked. When the fifth card is added, a perfect play hold hand is displayed by coloring the hold cards green. The hand is cleared when the Clear Button is clicked.
The DECKS button lets you switch between the two ways of selecting cards. The Speaker button toggles sound on or mutes it. A long-click brings up a slider to set the volume relative to the device volume. The CLEAR button clears the hand. The HELP button brings up these help screens. The GAMES button takes you to the game selection screen. There are over 190 games to choose from in the Pro version and 260 in the Pro+ version. The PAYS button takes you to the pay table selection screens for the current game. Finally the MODE button lets you switch to other modes of usage (Practice or Game Play modes).

Practice Mode

The practice mode display looks like the following:
In the practice mode there are several sections. As usual the current game and pay table selected by the user are displayed at the top. The pay table outcomes and values are shown along the left and right sides. Clicking on any item will provide a definition of the outcome. Below the cards, the current score shows the number of hands tested and the number and percentage of correct holds. You can RESET these values to zero by pressing the RESET button. When the DEAL button is pressed, five Cards are randomly generated to test your selection of hold cards. The DEAL button then changes to an EVAL button. After you select your hold cards (by clicking on them), clicking the EVAL button shows what should have been selected, turning incorrect hold cards to red and the correct ones to green. The current score is updated. Below is a screenshot of an intermediate step of this process.
When the EVAL button is clicked the user's input is scored and we get the correct perfect hold shown and the score updated:

Game Playing Mode

The initial Game mode display looks like the following. It has a layout similar to the Practice mode layout.

As usual, the video poker game type and pay table name are displayed at the top. These can be changed by pressing the GAMES and PAYS buttons below.  The pay table outcomes and values are shown along the left and right sides. Clicking on any item will provide a definition of the outcome. When the DEAL button is pressed, five Cards are randomly dealt. Behind the scenes, five additional random cards are dealt to provide the draw cards. Below the hand are two sections: on the left is your current net winnings and on the right the net winnings using perfect holds. This is a dollar machine. The starting values of both totals are zero and can be reset to that by clicking the RESET button. As with a real video poker machine, one presses the Deal button to start play. This will deduct a max bet amount from the ongoing tallies (note, the max bet is usually $5 but for some games, like Quick Quads, it is $6). After Dealing and selecting two hold cards, one sees something like:
Note the Draw button and two unfilled outcome hands. After the user selects hold cards pressing the Draw button will result in any discarded cards of your hold hand to be filled with the cards set aside for the draw. Likewise, the Perfect hold hand will be completed with these cards. For example, in the hand above we show that the user selected the Queen of Hearts and Spades. After pressing the DRAW button, the screen shows the screen shown below. Note, both the user and Perfect hold agreed and they both ended with a Three of a Kind outcome winning $15 each. Note, their totals only increased by $10 since $5 was subtracted for the initial bet.
The next screen shows a case where the player’s hold (the Jack of Diamonds and Ace of Clubs) was different from a Perfect hold (all four Clubs). We see that the Perfect hold resulted in loss while the user's hold netted a win of $5. We see a Perfect hold may not give a better result than a non-perfect hold. The player may just get a lucky draw. However, it will result in a better total Win/Loss over the long run. See how you do.

Selecting Cards using a Deck of Cards

In the first card selection method (this is the initial default), a deck of cards is displayed and you select the cards from the deck by just pressing them.
Just click on a card and it will be removed from the deck and appear in the first free spot of the hand.  Selected cards can be deselected by clicking on them in the hand or by pressing the Clear button.

Selecting Cards using a Suit-Card Combination

To fit an entire deck of cards on small smart phones may yield cards too small for most "Fat Finger" selections.  Thus we include another method of card selection.  In the second way to choose cards, four suits are shown as well as the cards comprising the "current" suit.  Below Clubs is the current suit (it is high-lighted) and all of the Club cards are available and displayed.
To select a card just click the card if it is showing.  If it is of a different suit and not displayed, first click the suit and the available cards in that suit will appear.

Selecting Cards using Keyboard Input

The third input method uses a keyboard to let the user type abbreviated card names, such as 3D for a Three of Diamonds, TC for a Ten of Clubs (J, Q, K for Jack Queen or King), an AH or 1H for an Ace of Hearts, a JR for a Joker and so on. One point to note, if your keyboard doesn't include a number line on the same screen as the letters, this can be changed following instructions that can be found in the FAQs page. Here is an example of keyboard input after we have clicked on the input line and selected the 6 of Diamonds and have typed an A for an Ace:
Once the fifth dealt card is entered, an optimal hold will be displayed. For example:

Selecting a Different Video Poker Game

To change to a different video poker game one just presses the GAMES button. This leads to the Game Selection Screen:
Here we see the top of the list of possible games to choose from (there are well over 190 different types of games currently supported in the Pro version and 260 in the Pro+ version, including bonus games, wild card games, quick quad games, and much more.)  Because there are so many games, we break them into four categories: Popular, Wild, Fun and Other. Games in the Popular list are, arguably, the most commonly seen in casinos. The Wild category includes Deuces Wlld, Joker Poker and other wild card games. (Some specialty wild card games may be found in other sections, such as in the Fun section one finds a Deuces Wild Wheel Poker game.) The Fun category list games like Fast Fours, Hot Roll, Wheel Poker, Good Times Pays, Super Draw, Super Hand, and Super Times Pays. The Other Category contains a large selection of other games. Peruse the lists to acquaint yourself with the many games we support.

Once a category is chosen, one can just scroll through the games using normal finger swiping motions. When a game is selected, the current default pay table set by the user (or a default we set) is shown on the top right. Here we see the current selection is the full pay standard (the 800-50-25-9-6-2). A pay table shows all the payouts for the game and the Expected Value (EV) if played optimally. This is discussed in subsequent help screens. Here we see that the selected Jacks or Better game has an EV of 99.54 percent. This means that, on average, the user will get back 0.9954 of every one unit bet. Surprisingly, some games have greater than 100 percent payout.
The abbreviations used in the pay tables can be clicked for their definitions. Many are obvious, such as RSF for Royal Straight Flush, but some are less so. For example, in some Double Bonus games entries like "4 234 5-K" are not unusual. If one clicks this a pop-up definition of "Four of 2s through 4s with a 5 through King kicker" will be displayed. By the way, a kicker is the card not part of the four of a kind.

Selecting a Pay Table for a Game

If a different pay table is desired, just click on the current pay table name at the top right of the Game Selection screen OR by pressing the PAYS button on other screens when it is present. This will give a list of all the pay tables supported for the selected game. Here is an example for Jacks or Better:
Some games have as many as 40 or more different pay tables that might be encountered in actual casino play. Note the spread of expected values. For example, Jacks or Better games vary from 99.54 percent down to 95 percent! Other games have far wider spreads, so beware.
The current pay table has its selection button colored Green. Scroll through the pay tables to find the one that matches the payouts of interest and click on its Select button, which will turn it Green and label it Current. If you then go back to the Game Selection screen, this will be shown as the pay table. This will be remembered as the "current" pay table for this game type until changed by you.
More information can be shown in the pay tables by selecting Settings to include the probabilities of the various outcomes, and standard deviations of the game. See Settings.

Build Your Own Pay Tables

This feature enables you to build your own pay tables for every type of game except the Super Hand games. The first pay table, called "Your PayTable" can be altered. New statistics are then computed and the table can be selected just as any of the built-in tables. The table is colored in Orange to make it stand-out better, as in:
Just tap anywhere in the table to bring up a change dialog:
After changing all the necessary values, just click the OK button. This will launch the calculation for all the relevant statistics and may take a few seconds. Note, these tables do not have a Progressive Option (see below) since you can just enter the progressive values directly into the table. Finally, since you may change the table, any hands evaluated through-out the app will not show Why? buttons in the History mode since the tables may have changed. We save the current tables, but not previous versions of the table. Any pay tables you create are lost when the app is upgraded, so view these tables as somewhat transient.

Progressive Games

In progressive games, one or more outcomes (e.g., a Royal Straight Flush, Four Aces, etc.) has a payout that increases with play until someone hits that outcome receiving the current “progressive” payout and thus causing the payout to reset to a starting value. These games are usually offered across a number of different linked machines, so when someone hits an outcome on one machine, the payout is reset for all the machines. This means these games are winner takes all, so your expected value decreases as the number of players increases.  Not all games offer a progressive payout.  There are a number of different varieties of progressive machines.  Many offer just one progressive payout as in:
Some offer progressive payouts on a number of outcomes:
Some are offered on a type of result, such as the suit of a Royal Straight Flush:
For multi-line games, there may be different payouts depending on the line or if all lines have the outcome as in the following.  Line B hit a Royal and was paid $1414.49.
Here is another caveat.  A Las Vegas casino had a progressive bank with payouts for a Royal Straight Flush (May, 2015) looking very appealing, especially the five line, 25 cent one with a payout of $27,194.57 for a Royal Straight Flush.  On closer examination we saw:
Note the "All Hands" on the left.  This means all five hands must have a Royal Straight Flush to win the progressive payout - not very likely to happen unless you are dealt a Royal!
To activate a pay table to be progressive in the Play Perfect app, just click the Progressive selector on top of the table.  Below we see the third pay table has been clicked to be a progressive pay table.
Note that the EV symbol has been changed to the following since it is an estimated value.  Recomputing the expected value every time the progressive payouts change is prohibitive.  So we use a sophisticated estimation technique instead.  Note that we do not update the probabilities, the optimal play differences nor Min and Max Standard deviation values as the progressive payouts change.
When a pay table is designated as a Progressive table and it is selected for use, the name of the game will be displayed in red as:
When so designated it can be pressed to bring up a dialog to change the progressive values as in:
Here we see that the current Royal Straight Flush payout is $800 and the payout for four Aces with a kicker of any two, three or four is $400 and so forth.  The slider buttons can be rolled to set different values.  These will become effective if the OK button is clicked.  In the Game Play and Practice modes, the new values will show immediately in the right and left pay columns of the screen layouts.

We recommend changing the values every so often so that the correct, perfect play can be computed.  In cases where there are multiple payouts for an outcome depending on the suit or line, we advise using an average value.

Settings

There are many settings that users can select.  To get to the settings, one uses the normal Android menu and chooses Settings.  Something like the following will be displayed:
Pay Table Payouts.  Another useful setting dictates how payouts are displayed - either on a per coin bet basis (assuming five coins bet) or on a five coin basis. For example, many video poker games pay 4,000 for a Royal Straight Flush when a maximum bet is played (usually five coins). However, most professionals would never play with fewer than the maximum bet (because the payouts are usually lower) and so usually just consider the per coin bet payout, which for a Royal Straight Flush would be 800 (i.e., 4,000 divided by 5). Whenever pay tables are shown in this app, the setting chosen for either "Per Coin" or "For 5 Coins" is used to show the values. The "Per Coin" method is more economical on screen space since the numbers are smaller.  The "For 5 Coins" method is useful when tying to match pay tables with one in casino games.
Center Deal/Draw Button.  Normally the Deal and Draw/Eval buttons in the Game and Practice Modes are on the right side. People used to texting may find the button more convenient in the center. Select this option to accomplish that.
Clear Cards with Pay Table Changes.  This setting controls whether a dealt hand remains or is cleared when a pay table is changed.  One might want to see how a perfect hold changes under different pay tables for the selected game and might thus want to NOT clear the cards with a pay table change.  Regardless of this setting, when a switch is made from or to a game including Jokers to one not including Jokers, the hand will be cleared.
Game Selection: Menus or All.  This dictates whether the Game Selection screen is divided into four categories or all games just listed in one long list alphabetically.
Paytable: Use common nicknames.  If set, common nicknames are used for pay tables. For example, Full Pay Jacks or Better or Ugly Duckling Deuces Wild, are in common use for particular pay tables.
Show Min Volatility in Pay-Tables. For some games, some hands have alternative perfect holds giving different spreads of outcomes. This option is used to show the spread (the volatility) of perfect holds where the minimum spread hands are used. These are always shown on a per coin bet basis.
Show Max Volatility in Pay-Tables.  For some games, some hands have alternative perfect holds giving different spreads of outcomes. This option is used to show the spread (the volatility) of perfect holds where the maximum spread hands are used. These are always shown on a per coin bet basis.
Start bank with.  When the RESET button is clicked, a dialog will show your performance since the last reset and all value can be reset. The reset value can be set to zero, 100 or to any value (max of 5 digits) by entering a value if the Prompt option is chosen.  The dialog looks like:
Minor Errors  A Hold is considered wrong if it deviates from Perfect Play (other than ties) if ANY is selected. If greater than or equal to (ge) 0.01 is set, then any error resulting in a deviation of 0.01 coins in expected value or more per coin bet, is considered a minor error. If 0.05 is chosen then errors resulting in an average loss of 0.05 coins or greater are counted as minor errors. In the event of overlapping possibilities for minor and major errors, major errors take priority.
Major Errors.  A Hold is considered a major error if it deviates from Perfect Play by 0.01 coins in expected value or more if (ge) 0.01 is set. If 0.05(or 0.10) is chosen then expected value errors resulting in an average loss of 0.05(0.10) coins or greater are counted as errors. In the event of overlapping possibilities for minor and major errors, major errors take priority.
Allow Minor Error Corrections.  If set, whenever a minor error in card holding is detected in either the Game or Practice Modes, a dialog will be presented giving the user the chance to either CONTINUE with normal handling or to SKIP this hand and pretend it was never dealt or to TRY AGAIN with holding cards. This option is useful for Fat Finger type mistakes, giving the user another chance before the hand is evaluated and performance statistics captured.
Allow Major Error Corrections.  If set, whenever a major error in card holding is detected in either the Game or Practice Modes, a dialog will be presented giving the user the chance to either CONTINUE with normal handling or to SKIP this hand and pretend it was never dealt or to TRY AGAIN with holding cards. This option is useful for Fat Finger type mistakes, giving the user another chance before the hand is evaluated and performance statistics captured.
Show Probabilities in Pay Tables.  When on, this option will show the probabilities of the various outcomes across all possible hands of play when perfect play is used.  For games that have hands with different optimal spreads (discussed here), two probabilities will be shown, the probabilities when minimum spread is chosen and the probabilities when maximal spread is used (see the Break EV Ties setting below).
Below is an example where the last three settings are on.  Note that the standard deviation for the game as a whole is lower when the Minsd option is used instead of the Maxsd option (5.061 versus 5.062).  We also see different probabilities for the various outcomes (for the game as a whole).
Select by.  This option sets which type of deck will be used for selecting cards.  The Card option results in the display of an entire deck of cards (including Jokers if the current game is a Joker Poker type game).  In the Suit/Card method, one first selects a suit and then a card from that suit.  This allows bigger card sizes that may be easier to use on smaller devices.  See here for more information.
Break EV Ties Using.  As discussed here, some hands in some games have two optimal plays, one with a smaller spread of possible outcomes and one with a larger spread. This option shows which one will be displayed as the recommended perfect hold.  The alternative hold can be shown by clicking on a button that will be displayed for such hands.  For example, the following hand had tied expected values.  The underscored sigma symbol after the TIED signifies that the minimal standard deviation hand was chose according to this setting.
Break Volatility Ties With.  As discussed here, some hands in some games have two optimal plays, both with the same possible spread of outcome but with a different number of held cards.  Selecting the underscored pound sign results in displaying the perfect play hand with the fewer number of cards and the over-scored with the greater number of cards. 
Break Full Ties With.  As discussed here, some hands in some games have two optimal plays, both with the same possible spread of outcome and with the same number of held cards.  Selecting the underscored prone A results in displaying the perfect play hand with the denomination of cards   For example,
Build Your Own Pay Table.   This setting activates the Build Your Own Pay Table feature.  When active, this option allows you to create your own pay tables. Three caveats: First this feature takes around 36 megabytes of RAM, so older phones may not have enough room. Second, when a new pay table is selected, setup may take a few seconds (depending on your phone\'s processor). Third, since we only allow one Build Your Own table per game, meaning you may change the pay table from time to time, any hands saved to history may not have been generated when its pay table was active, so the WHY feature in History Mode is turned off for hands using any of your own pay tables.
Max # Saved Hands.   This setting controls how many seen hands (across all modes) are saved for review. Up to 100 or 1,000 previously seen hands can be reviewed by pressing the HISTORY button that appears after at least one hand has been saved. When pressed, scroll buttons will appear that are similar to most audio or video players and is discussed below Reviewing Past Hands.
Trip Recorder Settings.   These three setting controls the casino selection pool.  If you just plan on visiting USA casinos, for example, you can speed up processing and limit resource utilization by turning off the Online and Non-USA (International) switches.

Information Tips/Popups

Throughout the app, small information buttons appear that look like:
When pressed, a popup will appear and provide information about the nearby item. The information remains displayed until it is dismissed by clicking the DISMISS button or clicking anywhere on the screen.

Idea of a Game

On both the Game Selection and Pay Table Selection screens, an idea button looking like:
may be present.  Clicking this gives an explanation, that is, the idea of the current game.  This may not be available for every game.

Perfect Play Details

Whenever a Perfect hold is shown (in any mode of usage), a little WHY? message is displayed as in the following:
If you click this, details will be computed showing the expected value and standard deviation for all possible ways of holding cards (there are 32) sorted from best to worse. Below is an example. To the right of each possible hold hand are displayed the expected value and standard deviation (in brackets) for this hand. The 32 hands are in a scroll view so just scroll through the list as desired. Just navigate back to the main screen or touch outside the dialog when done.

Quick Switches

When the DECKS button is clicked in the Advice mode a pop-up is displayed that looks like

The first option changes the deck to the standard deck of 52 cards (or more for Joker Poker games). The second option changes the deck to the Suit-Card form that allows for bigger images and might be easier to use on smaller devices.
Clicking the MODE button gives a pop-up that looks something like (actually, only two of the three choices will show, depending on where the mode button is clicked):
Here you can move to another mode of usage by clicking on either Advice, Practice or Play Game

Review Past Hands

Up to 100 or 1,000 (depending on the Max # Saved Hands setting) previously seen hands can be reviewed by pressing the HISTORY button that appears after at least one hand has been saved. This button is usually at the top right of a screen and, with its information button, looks like:
If the folder is pressed, a scroll control panel will appear that looks something like the following image.  From left to right we see the usual rewind, previous, stop, next and go to the end buttons. Each saved item is also time-stamped.  Clicking the next button will display the next saved hand:
Here we see the hand and hold outcomes. Also the game name and title at the top of the display show what was selected at the time of play. Note, you cannot change these by clicking on the name or by clicking the GAMES or PAYS buttons. Clicking the stop button will return you to where you were when you clicked the HISTORY button.

Adding a Trip
To access the Trip Recorder, just click the MODE button in any of the gaming screens and then click the TRIPS button as in:
This leads to the Trip Recorder screen. Initially it looks like:
To add a new trip, just click the multiple add button to the top right of the screen. This will bring up a dialog box to enter a trip title like:

Adding a Casino Visit to a Trip

Trips are composed of one or more visits to casinos. Here, a casino can be real or virtual, such as an online casino. For each casino visited, a casino record is created by clicking on the multiple add button on the relevant trip record. This brings up a dialog to fill-in for the casino. Likewise, if a casino entry has already been made, it can be deleted (by clicking its delete button) or edited by clicking the edit button. Whether freshly added or to be edited, a dialog like the following will be shown:
To modify an entry, just click on the name of current value. For entering a casino name, a dialog like the following appears:
First click on USA or ONLINE or NON-USA. Then pick the State (if USA) and then the casino, both from drop-down boxes. Likewise, if NON-USA, first choose the country then the casino. Finally, ONLINE casinos just have one drop-down box listing all known online casinos. Casinos on cruise ships are listed by the point of origin. Casino names can also be typed into the bottom prompt. Click OK to accept the choice or Dismiss to dismiss it.
The other casino fields can be added in a similar manner. Click on the name or current value to get a dialog box for that field. The From/to fields give the date range for this casino visit on this trip. It may be more than one day. For Rewards or Loyalty programs, the Play/for fields show the wagering requirements to earn the "for\" amount. For example, for every $400 wagered, you receive $1. The Free-Play field shows the amount of free play given you by the casino. If there is a cash-back reward, this can be entered in the Cash Back field. A common online promotion is a sign-up bonus which usually comes with a Play-Through requirement. For example, get $3,000 for signing up but then play through that amount 30 times to keep the bonus. Lastly, the Comps field lists any other comps you may have received at this casino.
Here we see two casino entries for the Biloxi Trip:

Adding a Gambling Session to a Casino

A gambling session is defined as playing a video poker game. To add a session, click the multiple add button on the relevant casino record. The following type of dialog will appear for a new session or to edit an existing session:
For a new session, the top line will show the current game selected in the app. In edit mode this can be changed by clicking the name. This takes you to the usual game selection page of the app. Select a game and then select a pay table. This selection will not change the app's current game. If your selection is for a progressive game, the game name will show in red and a Prog. Value field will show so you can enter the starting progressive jackpot amount. If there are more than one progressive values, use the Comments line for addition ones. Select both the intended coin size and number of lines using the corresponding drop-downs. We realize that you may alter your choice of lines during a session so we include ranges in the drop-down list. The Cash-in field is the amount of money you start with and the Cash-out the amount you end with. All numbers are whole numbers for simplicity. The Time-in and Time-out fields give the time range for your gambling on this selection. Enter all your tips and tokes in the Tips/Tokes field. The Reported field lists any wins that had to be reported to a government agency. The Comments field is for any other things you would like to record.
Here is a screen shot showing a Casino entry (Boomtown) with two sessions (the second is for a progressive Bonus Poker game):

Getting Trip Reports

To get a summary of your trip data and the details, just click the e-mail button on the top left of your screen. This will allow you to send a report to you or someone you choose. This option is not available in the Lite version of the app.

Money Management Details

To access this feature, just click the Money Bags icon above a pay table of interest (in the Pay Table Selector Screens) as in:
This leads to the Classic Ruin Probabilities screen. Using the pay table of interest, it computes initial values to give something like:
Here we see the default Target of 1,000, the Desired Outcome of a RSF, and a single line game using $1 coins (i.e., $5 for a max bet of 5). All of these values can be changed. Some explanation is needed here. The Target is expressed in terms of the number of hands at maximum bet size for the selected Coin Size, all assuming a single line game. Thus a target of 1,000 with a $1 coin size is $5,000 (i.e., 1,000 times the max bet size of 5 times the coin size of $1). Also, you may select outcomes you would like to achieve. Currently, any pay table outcomes having a payout of 200 or more per coin may be selected. For example, in Deuces Wild, typically two outcomes have a payout of 200 or more: a Royal Straight Flush and Four Deuces. So you have three possible outcomes to select from: 1. A Royal Straight Flush; 2. Four Deuces; and 3. Either a Royal Straight Flush OR Four Deuces.

The results are displayed in three columns. Column 1 (Bankroll) shows various values between 0 and your Target. The next two columns show Ruin probabilities. The first shows the probability of achieving your target goal before running out of your starting bankroll (this is called Ruin). For example, in the table above, there is a 29.05% chance of achieving your target of 1,000 before losing a starting bankroll of 400 (i.e., $2,000). The Outcome column shows the probability of hitting at least one of your selected outcomes before losing your starting bankroll. This probability is independent of your target. That is, it is assumed you would keep playing till either you lose your starting bankroll or achieve at least one of your desired outcomes. For example, there is a 31.62% chance of hitting a RSF starting with a bankroll of 400 before losing the 400.

Whenever the Target is changed, you will have to press the Compute button to calculate new values. The reason is that when the Target is changed one often makes other changes such as a new outcome or coin size, so an automatic recalculation could be an irritation.

At the bottom of the values, there is a row with \"View Specific\". Click this to enter a specific bankroll to see its related probabilities. For example, entering 155 gives:
As mentioned above, all probabilities are computed using exact methods. That is, these are not approximations or simulated values. To be honest, we haven't yet worked-out fast enough algorithms to handle all pay tables. So, currently we do not handle pay tables with fractional pay outs (note the missing Money Bag above one of the pay tables above) nor do we handle games with max bets greater than 5 coins. We're working on them.