What Survivability Means

I have spent the past 8 years or more of my life playing and learning all I could about Video Poker. There is not a whole lot Entropia has in common with Video Poker. But there is one thing of great importance which I've hinted about in my earlier posts. Survivability.

Every statistical action in the world has results that are never predictable with 100% accuracy. In some cases, we know the mathematical probabilities that govern certain outcomes, and can thereby know our odds and if the risk is worth it. In Video Poker, I can tell you that a jacks or better paytable showing 9for1 on full house and 6for1 on flushes will return 99.5% over the long run, IF PLAYED PROPERLY. This is where the professional is able to actually make a profit where the casual players don't care or don't know, and lose a lot more.

If you play video poker properly, you can survive the cold cycles long enough to see it warm back up and start paying good again. If you miss a few proper plays, it can cost you a few hands on the end of your session. Those very few hands can make or break your entire session.

Entropia, there is no way to tell you the long term payback. Only Mindark knows this, and only they know how it is calculated (it's probably better that way LOL)... First lesson is though... Say you put $10 in a nickel machine and play 1000 hands. That's 5,000 nickels you wagered. You only got 4,800 nickels back. So even though you lost 100% of your bankroll, you got a 96% return. See, people fail to realize that those credits you are recycling ARE part of your return.

In Entropia, if you want to know your % return, you are going to have to track everything you spend on Decay, Ammo, etc, and track every pec you get back in loot. You might be doing extremely well but you won't realize it becuase losing a few percent at a time even, will grind a small bankroll into oblivion in no time.

If you have a large pile of peds, you will do much better. It will be much harder to go completely broke, and it will give you less volatility so that you may survive to see a hof that will greatly correct your losses. On a small pile of peds, you have a much greater chance of going bankrupt before you even see a global.

Too many times I am guilty of being a cheapskate, putting in $20, and losing it in a few days, and then i'll put in another $30, and then maybe a couple more deposits after that. What I should have done was just put my $100 in and not worry about it. At least by the time you cycle a full 1000 peds, you should have most of it back in loot by the time you reach the end of the run.

But you have to discipline yourself not to waste, not to lose faith in the law of large numbers. I had about 30 NRF's in a row on TI north recently, and it corrected with an XI. But what happens if you run out of bombs without hitting anything, but had you kept going, the correction would have been a XV, or a XX?

Three times I have had my very last hand in Video Poker result in Straight Flushes for 250 credits or Four of a Kinds worth anywhere from 125 to 800 credits depending on the variations im playing.Yes, it is a long shot to say my last bomb is going to save my run. Yes it is a long shot to say my last hand will be a Royal Flush. But the longer you can play, the better the odds of it being possible.

I hope this helps some of you better understand what a great return really means and why getting a great return can still mean you lose.That is why getting the most markup you can out of your resources is paramount to anything else. This is what bridges the gap between a 96% payback and a 101% return.