Book Review of
Review of Winning Strategies for Video Poker
- Title:
- Winning Strategies for Video Poker
- Author:
- Lenny Frome
- Publisher:
- Compu-Flyers
- Date:
- 1997
- ISBN:
- 0-9623766-9-3
- Pages:
- 127
- Price:
- $15.95
February 11, 2002
Lenny Frome passed away in 1998, but not before leaving behind an enduring
legacy as a gambling writer. Frome was the author of several books and
countless articles on video poker. He was one of the most well-respected
experts on this game, as well as others. This is a review of one of
his most popular books, Winning Strategies for Video Poker.
Winning Strategies for Video Poker is a simple book. It
opens with a list of pay tables for various games, what the game pays
by following the proper strategy, and the page in this book on which
the proper strategy for the game in question can be found.
This chart is very useful when
one encounters a given pay table for the first time on a video poker
machine. It would
be nice if the list also included common names for games
with that pay table, being able to easily identify which pay schedules
are commonly called "Bonus Poker" would be handy, but because that would
have taken up a lot of extra room, omitting this information is a
stylistic choice I can live
with. The common names for most pay schedules are listed with the
strategy for that game, and that's good enough. The book also contains
an explanation of the terminology used and a glossary, both of which
are useful.
The bulk of the book is devoted to describing the proper strategy
for various video poker games. All the well-known games are listed
here, Jacks or Better, Double Bonus, Deuces Wild, etc.. Strategies
for full pay and short pay schedules are included. Strategies
for more obscure games are also listed, such as All American Poker,
Tens or Better, Double Joker Wild, and many others. Well over
50 strategies for different games are listed in this book.
Of course, some of these games aren't very popular any more, and
new games have shown up since the publication of the book whose
strategies aren't listed. A reader who primarily plays in Las
Vegas won't need a strategy table for 6-5 Jacks (I would hope!),
and an Atlantic City visitor doesn't have any use for full pay
Deuces Wild information. I don't see a lot of Tens or Better
games around any more. However, the book was designed to be
complete, and having pay tables that aren't needed doesn't hurt.
The biggest downside to this book is that it is largely replaced
by Tom Ski's Video Poker Strategy Master software,
which will calculate a very strong strategy given a game's pay
table. However, the book is still useful, especially for those
who prefer paper to silicon. Winning Strategies for
Video Poker probably isn't the first VP book the advantage
player wants to buy, that's almost certainly Dan Paymar's Video
Poker - Optimum Play, but it's a good choice as the second
book.
Capsule:
Lenny Frome's Winning Strategies for Video Poker is
little more than a listing of solid strategies for over 50 different
video poker games. Some of these games aren't very common any more,
and every one of them won't be found in every gambling jurisdiction,
but there are enough strategies listed to make the book generally
useful just about everywhere. I wouldn't recommend it as a first
book on video poker, but it is a useful book.
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