Trade Up Poker

Last Update: Feb 08, 2007

Trade Up Poker is a video poker variant I noticed at the Red Rock on February 5, 2007. It plays like conventional video poker, except with a dealt three of a kind, and sometimes a full house, with max coins bet, the player may trade it for two hands. In multi-play mode the player would get two times the number of original hands played. If the player takes the trade he must keep the three of a kind and will be dealt two new cards. I do not know if the two draw cards are dealt from the remaining 47-card deck, or from a 49-card deck, with only the three of a kind cards removed. The analysis in this section is based on a 49-card deck for Trade Up hands. The price for turning one hand into two is that a three of a kind in Trade Up mode pays nothing. At the Red Rock a separate pay table was indicated for all possible Trade Up hands on the draw, but except for the three of a kind, the pays were the same as the base game. The following three games were available at the Red Rock.

The base game has a return of 97.19%. In Double Bonus the player may Trade Up with any three of a kind or a full house including three aces. The following table shows the return if the Trade Up feature is always taken, which it should be. The second to last row shows that on average Trade Up hands are worth 6.76 units, and occur 2.12% of the time. The lower right cell shows a return of 98.41%.