Game Review: Poker

[pitcalco]

Pitcalco’s Game Review of Poker for the Commodore VIC 20

I was rather late in discovering the game Poker for the VIC 20, having only discovered it once I purchased the MegaCart a few years ago. I never had the original cartridge back in the day, so for me it is as new as World of Tanks or Civilisation V. As opposed to being a high-paced game that keeps you at the joystick -and on the edge of your seat - Poker is a very relaxing game of chance which waits for you. You can always reach for your glass of cognac or Dr. Pepper at any time and VIC the dealer will wait for you to make the next move.

Personally, I never gamble for real money, but I am interested in and enjoy many casino games qua games, so I appreciate that a good card game was made for the VIC and I appreciate that it found its way onto the MegaCart. Simple and neat in appearance, Poker is a largely a text-based game, save for the cards of course, and the face cards in particular have been very nicely done, given the limitations of the graphics on the VIC 20.

The version of poker featured in the game is two-bit poker, which in spite of its name is a rather clever, not to mention face-paced, variation on poker.

You start the game with 80 coins (call them dollars, pounds or whatever you want) and you can bet up to 9 coins at a time on any given hand. You place the bet and then have VIC deal you five cards. The five cards are all shown face up. You then have the opportunity to keep or discard any or all of the cards by placing a hold on the particular cards you want to keep by pressing keys 1-5 on the keyboard. You then signal VIC to remove the cards that were not held and to deal out the new cards in their place. From these five cards you make your hand.
You do not play against any other player’s or dealer’s hand, rather how much you win will depend on the hand you were able to make. The higher the hand, the more money you win. Each particular hand will pay a multiple of your original bet. There are no jokers or other wild cards. A royal flush pays the most, 500 times your bet, a full house pays 40 times your bet. The lowest hand, one pair, only pays if the pair consists of jacks or better, and even then you only get 1:1, namely, you get your money back. However, with two pairs or better, you come out ahead on that hand. There is also an opportunity to double your win by playing a simple game of high-and-low.

Now, I find Poker for the VIC 20 to be relaxing, which might seem a bit surprising, since relaxation is not typically the feeling you associate with casino games. However, this can be explained by some important differences between Poker for the VIC 20 and a real casino experience.

Firstly, in stark contrast to what you will find in Las Vegas or Monte Carlo, as a game, Poker on the VIC 20 is very hard to lose! Have I ever seen the closing “Game Over” message once my pile of chips runs out? Sure, I have. However, as far as I remember, it has only been after a very unlucky streak right from the beginning of the game – and that occurred only a very few of the hundreds of times I played the game. I have discovered in fact that once I hit a certain “critical mass” – just over 250 coins – it seems impossible to lose the game. This can be explained by what I think is a serious flaw in the game. That flaw is in that it is impossible to bet more than 9 coins in any hand no matter how much money you have to play! That’s right. If you have 9 coins, you can bet 9 coins. If you have 90 coins, you can bet 9 coins. If you have 900 coins, you can bet 9 coins. If you have 9000, you can bet 9 coins. If you have 90000 – well, the odometer at the top of the screen will have spun around – still, you can only bet 9 coins.

Keep in mind that you are not winning real money, so an ever growing pot of gold in the game really loses its excitement value. In a real casino, having 5000 and winning another 2000 is a big deal indeed, but on the VIC, your big-time winnings are all doomed to disappear with the inevitable flick of the off switch on the side of the computer. The only thrill to be had would be the chance of losing it all in a gutsy bet. That will not likely be forthcoming.

And why not? Couldn’t you lose your whole purse nine coins at a time? Yes, you could. It is possible, and this addresses a common fallacy I have encountered among many gamblers in the past. Many gamblers have completely messed-up ideas, dare I say superstitions, when it comes to chance and probability. Blackjack and roulette players often have ideas of cards or numbers that are “due”. That is to say, for instance, that a roulette player will notice that the number 12 has not come up for the past 36 spins, and so on the 37th spin he bets it all on 12 since it is “due”. Some people betting on horses will find that, say, odd-numbered horses have won the past 9 of 12 races so that “evens are due” and bet accordingly. Set aside gambling for a moment, think about the phenomenon of a mother expecting her second child. You will often hear such women saying things like “my first child was a boy, so chances are this one will be a girl”.
Indeed, given a woman will have two children in her future, the chances that they will both be boys is only one in four, but given that one was born a boy the chances that the second one will be a girl is fifty-fifty.

Similarly, given that a roulette player will watch 37 spins of the roulette wheel, the ball should land on 12 once, but after 36 spins the chances that the ball will then land on 12 is still 1 in 37! Each spin, like each birth, is an independent event, whose outcome has no relation at all to whatever has happened before.

So then yes, each play at two-bit poker is an independent event. I could conceivably lose 9000 coins by betting 9 coins and losing 1000 times in a row. However, and notwithstanding the above, this is where we have to turn the logic on this head – or should I say, look at the other side of the coin.

You could start flipping a coin over and over again and get 35 heads in a row. The chances that the thirty-sixth will be tails is still fifty-fifty. However, before you start flipping the coin, given that you are going to flip it 36 times, how many can you expect to be heads and how many can you expect to be tails? The odds say that usually and on average 18 will be heads and 18 will be tails. Subsequently, if you decide you are going to flip it 360 times, then usually and on average 180 will be heads and 180 will be tails.

So back to our Poker game. Say I am down to my last 9 coins and I bet it all and get a full house. I end up with 360 coins. As I play, I always bet 9 coins at a time. So with 360 coins, I can play 40 hands, or more importantly, I can lose 39 times in a row and still be in the game! Who does that in Vegas?

Again, having lost 39 times in a row, I could very well lose hand number 40. However, starting off with 360 coins, what are the chances that I am going to lose the next 40 hands? Worse still (if winning is ever a bad thing), if I win even once, the ratios paid for winning can be so high as to buy me much more breathing room. I will leave it to those of you with more of a taste for meticulous details to do the calculations, but seeing that a hand as low as two pairs pays 2:1, three of a kind pays 5:1, and then higher hands start paying astronomical ratios, 25:1, 40:1, 100:1, even an occasional win will cover many losing 9-coin hands. As I said, there is no real money to be won playing this game, so without any realistic chance of losing after you have reached a certain amount of money, the thrill of the game really begins to wane. I find, however, it remains relaxing and even therapeutic.

Therefore, I feel that the 9-coin betting limit is a real flaw in this game and is perhaps the one thing that keeps me from enjoying Poker for the VIC 20 more than I do.

Now, some of you might think you can see a kind of gambling system to be developed from this. Indeed, real casinos rely on punters getting caught up in the moment of a lucky streak and then placing huge bets in a fit of excitement only to lose it all in one fell swoop. Perhaps you have the discipline enough to bet 9 dollars at a time no matter how much you have and then make a killing in much the same way as you typically do playing Poker on the VIC 20.

I mentioned that I do not play casino games or gamble real money, but I have studied such games closely many years ago when I studied mathematics at university. I visited about 40 casinos in half a dozen countries. Once and only once did I ever see a game of two-bit poker offered where an actual human being was dealing the cards and commanding the game. I imagine the reason why it is so rare is simply that the casinos realise they can lose money to a disciplined punter who only bets a fixed amount of money each time, though I cannot be certain.
Where you will see two-bit poker is in the computerised versions, which are very popular. What about that? Are they fixed? In a sense, yes, but not in the way you might think.
The operation of automatic gaming machines is highly regulated by official government authorities, ostensibly for the sake of players as some kind of consumer protection measure. At the time I studied the matter, albeit it was 15 years ago, automatic gaming machines in Sweden were set to pay out at least 70 percent of what they took in. The same was true in England as well, although I found most often they were set as high as 75 percent (granted that might have been for the sake of show as I always called ahead to casinos and bars with such machines in order to ask if I could pay a visit during off hours to interview the owners with questions for my study. What they did with the machines after I had gone, I don’t know. I give them the benefit of presuming they were obeying the law).

We are used to such ideas as “fifty-fifty”, “even chances” and "level playing fields" as being “fair” and “honest play”. Thus, the uninitiated among us will find out that the government mandates that machines be set to pay out 70 percent and then think that it offers players an advantage over the system, an advantage that a truly random game, i.e., where a man is dealing out cards, cannot offer. Of course, when you think about it carefully, by removing the element of randomness to an extent such that the machine will pay out 70 percent, that means that the machine is actually fixed for you to lose! Even at 99%, you will still lose and here is why. Remember the machine pays out 70 percent of the money that you and other players put into it. It is fixed in such a way that over time, given that you will play for a protracted period, you will consistently get back only 70% of what you bet. At a win rate of 70% you might get the sense that you are actually winning quite often, when in reality, no matter how long you play, you are at best going to walk away with 30% less money than you had.

The only chance to win is if you play for a short period and just happen to be playing at a time when the machine is in the winning part of its cycle, namely, dealing cards in such a way as to allow it to catch up to the 70 percent quota. Perhaps the player before you gave up or ran out of money just before the going was about to get good and you hit it at the right time. If so, don’t press your luck. If you put 100 dollars into the machine and then at some point you have 130, then my advice is to cash out! You have done better than you should have done!

So have I digressed very far from the topic of the Poker game for the VIC 20? Well no, not really when you think of all the many elements that go into making a game of chance more thrilling. Sadly, much of that is missing from the video game, and short of being able to win (and lose) real money, that gap might never be bridged. Still, for what it is worth, I really enjoy Poker for the VIC 20 and I find it a relaxing way to wind down after work. Then again, perhaps a game of chance that offers relaxation more than it offers a thrill has rather missed the point.

What do you think?

[orion70]

Thank you very much Paul for your long digression about the Poker game on the VIC, and gambling in general. It reminds me of many books or articles in which talking about a computer system, a game, or even a single line of code, was the opportunity to dig deeper into the fields of statistics, mathematics, pop culture of the 80s, and so on.

I'm not into mathematics (nor gambling ) to discuss properly about your thoughts, but I was quite impressed about the "9 coins limit" as a possible hint for the real player in a real casino. Does it mean that, given the same randomness of the VIC-20, the cards in a real game will give to the self-controlled player who bets always the same amount of coins a good chance to gain money almost all the time? If so, any VIC nerd here should take a chance at his local casino .

Your review of the game made me think about Sam Fox Strip Poker for the C64 and Speccy (good ol' Samantha ). It was also a very relaxing game, but tougher compared to the VIC. So why? Maybe because the bet limit was higher? What can be said from a mathematical point of view?

[pitcalco]

Thanks Orion, for your kind words.

Remember that I mentioned that only once ever have a seen a two-bit poker game at a casino that was dealt by a human dealer. If you ever find one, you might try it out (and let me know where you saw it!)

As for making a system playing 9 coins at a time, the only way I can think of testing it is to get a pack of cards, a friend and some poker chips and try for yourself. Take it to the truly random level of shuffling physical cards, as opposed to the pseudo-randomness generated by computers.

Oh yes, as for your strip poker game, I suspect it is more difficult for a number of reasons including that the bet limit is higher, and thus you can afford fewer losing hands. However, the fact you need to beat another hand adds another challenge to overcome.