ig Split Poker is a brand-new game manufactured by International Game Technology, and created by Leading Edge Design. These are the same folks who brought us Multi Strike Poker and Cash King Checkers, two strategy games that were completely different from any casino game you’ve ever seen.
Big Split Poker is technically a video poker game. It uses a deck of cards; has different payouts for hands like three of a kind, straights, and the like; it definitely requires skill; and it’s played on a machine. But that’s where the similarity ends. It is a stud poker game, rather than a draw poker game, and has more in common with pai gow poker than it does regular video poker.
The game is possible to play perfectly without any strategytable memorization, although a little practice will serve you well. The game requires pattern-recognition puzzle-solving of a different nature than you’ve seen before. And like that old potato chip commercial that said, “Betcha can’t eat just one,” once you try Big Split, I think most of you will want to play more.
To start, let’s play an example hand and learn as we go. Assume we bet the maximum, which is usually 10 coins.
This shows a dealt
hand of 7♣ A♦ 2♣
4♣ A♥ on one row and 3♣ K♣
A♠
on another.
Their position at the outset is irrelevant. We are going to place them in two hands—one of five cards and one of
three cards—so as to receive the
greatest reward. Let’s
see how we do this.
Assume we notice
the aces first. To put the
three aces in the top (five-card) hand, we merely touch them. Once we touch the three aces, we see the following:
Notice that the remaining cards are all clubs. Since we must fill up the top hand to a total of five cards, we must select two of the
clubs to go there. Choosing
two of them at random, say
the 2♣
and the K♣, we end up with:
The machine tells us that having three of a kind on the top row is worth 10 and the flush on the bottom is worth is “4X,” which means that whatever we earn on the top row is multiplied four times. So in this case, our score is worth 40, which is 10 times 4. If we now push “Submit,” the hand is over and we’ll receive 40 coins for a 10-coin bet. Not bad. But we can do better.
Assume now that we notice that the 2♣ 3♣ 4♣ makes a straight flush rather than just a regular flush. To make that happen, we need to switch the positions of the 2♣ and the 7♣. How do we do this? We merely touch one of them (doesn’t matter which one) and then the other; the cards will then switch positions. We still have three of a kind on top, worth 10, but now the straight flush on the bottom is a 15X multiplier, so our hand is now worth 150.
Notice that the machine displays the final score for you. We’ve now found two
ways to play the hand: one
worth 40 and the other worth
150. Obviously, the second way is better. If we now press Submit, we’ll score the 150.
At this point you may ask yourself, “What would the score be
if you placed the five-card
flush up top and the three of a kind on the bottom?” When you get good at the paytable, you’ll be able to figure
this one out. But it only
takes a few seconds to switch
the cards. When you do, you’ll see:
This tells us that a flush on top is still worth 10 points, but a three of a kind on the bottom is multiplied by 16. This gives us a score of 160, which is the best we can do with these cards. We press Submit, collect our points, and move on to the next hand.
Before we try another hand, let’s review what we’ve seen. All eight cards are in front of us from the get go. We move them into two hands—one of five cards and the other of three cards—with a touch of the finger. The machine tells us what each combination is worth. If we want to see what another combination will pay, we can easily switch the cards back and forth between the positions and the machine will tell us what that combination is worth. Once we’ve decided on the position we like best, we press Submit and score the points.
In the primary version of the game, to score anything at all, the hand on top must contain two-pair or higher, and one of those pairs must be at least a pair of jacks. On the screen, this is phrased as Jacks and Twos or Better. If you are a live poker player, perhaps the phrase Jacks Up or Better is more meaningful, because Jacks Up means two-pair, the higher of which is a pair of jacks. The designer of the game must have decided that players would more easily understand the former rather than the latter of these two awkward phrasings.
As in every video poker game, pay schedules are very important. Table 1 shows the available pay schedules for this game. The column on the far left represents the “target” return, which can only be approximated if you use whole numbers in the pay schedule. As a personal rule of thumb, I’d look in the Straight Flush column for the three-card hand. If it says 15, which is an easy number to remember, then the game returns 99 percent or higher and the player has a reasonable shot. At a return of 14, the game returns 98 percent and may be attempted by those players desperate to play. At a return of 12, the game returns 97 percent or less and should be avoided by all players with a clue toward bankroll preservation. The strategy will remain the same for the different paytables, but how much you win or lose will be different.
|
Table 1 BIG SPLIT POKER |
||||||||||||||||
| 5-card hand | 3-card hand | |||||||||||||||
|
Pct. |
Return
on |
Max |
Royal |
Straight |
4
of a |
Full |
Flush |
Straight |
3
of a |
Jacks |
3 of
a |
Straight |
Flush |
Straight |
Pair |
Bust |
| 100 | 96.7377% | 99.9533% | 200 | 20 | 10 | 5 | 2 | 2 | 2 | 1 | 16 | 15 | 4 | 4 | 2 | 1 |
| 99 | 95.7751% | 98.9988% | 200 | 16 | 8 | 5 | 2 | 2 | 2 | 1 | 16 | 15 | 4 | 4 | 2 | 1 |
| 98 | 95.0033% | 97.9070% | 200 | 10 | 7 | 5 | 2 | 2 | 2 | 1 | 16 | 14 | 4 | 4 | 2 | 1 |
| 97 | 92.6879% | 96.9692% | 200 | 20 | 16 | 4 | 2 | 2 | 2 | 1 | 14 | 12 | 4 | 4 | 2 | 1 |
| 96 | 91.8705% | 96.1005% | 200 | 18 | 14 | 4 | 2 | 2 | 2 | 1 | 14 | 12 | 4 | 4 | 2 | 1 |
| 94 | 89.8995% | 93.9966% | 200 | 14 | 9 | 4 | 2 | 2 | 2 | 1 | 14 | 12 | 4 | 4 | 2 | 1 |
Let’s look at a few more interesting hands and see how they’re played. You might want to get out a deck of cards and play along. Although on the screen you can move the card images back and forth, you can’t do it in a magazine.
Take a look at the
following example: We have
several choices. We have three queens and two pairs, along with some flushes. The first way I tried to play
it was with a full house on
top and a pair on the bottom.
I put queens over 5s in the top hand, which automatically left a pair of 3s and a 4♥ on the bottom. The full house is worth 25 and the pair creates a 2X multiplier for
a 50-coin win as shown:
Not bad.
But maybe there’s more.
If I had Q-Q-3-3 on the top row and still had enough hearts on the bottom for a flush, maybe that’d score more.
Switching the cards as
shown yields 10 on the top
multiplied by 4X on the bottom. That’s only 40 points.
I tried the three of a kind on the top row (worth 10) and the 3-4-5 straight
flush on the bottom (worth
15X), as shown:
This yielded 150. I figured this was best, so I then pushed Submit.
Most of the hands are fairly simple, and there’s only one way to play them. Sometimes, though, you have several choices. Switching them back and forth until you find the best one isn’t terribly complicated, and it’s actually an enjoyable puzzle, but I found that even after playing for some time, I was making occasional mistakes. While it is not rocket science, it is more difficult than it appears at first and players will get better over time.
So far, I’ve presented the Jacks and Twos version of the game. There are actually four separate versions. The other three are related to Deuces Wild (where a flush is the lowest paying hand), Joker Wild (where a royal flush pays more than five of a kind and Kings and Twos is the lowest qualifying hand), and Joker Joker Wild (where three of a kind is the lowest qualifying hand). The available pay schedules for these versions are listed in Tables 2, 3 and 4.
I didn’t practice any of these versions, so I don’t have firsthand knowledge, but the game designer told me that usually Deuces Wild is the easiest game type because you need a flush or higher to qualify, but when two or three deuces show up in the original hand, it gets very complicated and large errors are common.
