Extra Draw Frenzy

Introduction

 

Extra Draw Frenzy is a video poker variant I first noticed at the Fremont casino in Las Vegas on December 7, 2013. The thrust of the game is that if the player gets dealt a three of a kind, then he gets 3 to 7 extra hands on the draw. The game is based on three-play, five-play, and ten-play video poker. The player must bet one extra credit per hand to enable the Extra Draw feature.

Rules

 

Extra Draw Frenzy plays like conventional multi-play video poker, with the following rule enhancements.

1. The player may optionally bet an extra credit per hand on the draw to enable the Extra Draw feature.
2. With the feature enabled, if the player is dealt a natural three of a kind (this does not include a full house or four of a kind) then he will be given an extra three to seven hands on the draw, not including the hands he paid for with his original wager. All hands on the draw, both initial and Extra Draw, will be displayed at the same time on the screen.
3. As with conventional multi-play video poker, each hand on the draw is dealt from a separate deck, with the original five cards from the deal removed.

 

Note: How the number of extra draw hands is determined, I do not know.

Example

 

I played triple-play video poker and bet six coins per hand, to enable the feature, for a total bet of 18 credits. After a while I was dealt three sixes. The game then quickly went into the following feature screen. You can see a total of six hands. Three are those I paid for and the other three are Extra Draw hands.

I pressed the draw button and unfortunately none of my three of a kinds improved.

The game announced my winnings from the extra hands. Each of the six three of a kinds paid 15 credits, so my "win" was 6 × 15 = 90 credits. My original wager was 18 credits, so my net win was 90-18=72 credits.

The game then showed just the three hands I paid for.

Return

IGT was kind enough to provide me the following table showing the games Extra Draw Frenzy is available on, the pay tables, range of extra hands, average number of extra hands, and return (assuming optimal strategy).

Example

 

Let's look at 9-6 jacks or better triple play.

1. The conventional game has a return of 0.995439.
2. The probability of getting a three of a kind on the deal is 13*combin(12,2)*4³/combin(52,5) = 0.021128.
3. As the table above shows, the average number of extra hands is 6.57.
4. As the table below shows, the expected value of each extra hand is 4.302498.
5. The expected return of each bonus is 0.021128 * 6.57 * 4.302498 = 0.597247.
6. Remember this is triple play, with wins based on five credits per hand, so the total return per wager is 5*(3*0.995439 + 0.597247) = 17.917820.
7. The player is betting 18 total coins (six per hand).
8. The expected return is this 17.917820/18 = 0.995434.

The table from IGT says the return is 99.55%. I would attribute the 0.01% difference to rounding error somewhere, probably on the average multiplier.

Acknowledgment

I would like to thank IGT for providing me with the return table above.

Written by: Michael Shackleford