Dream Card Poker

Introduction

Dream Card Poker is the same thing as conventional Draw Poker with Dream Card, with two main differences:

• There are three hands dealt behind the scenes from three separate decks. The expected value will be calculated of each, and the player is given the best one as his hand on the deal. The other ten cards are placed back in the deck.
• The Dream Card probability is less, ranging from about 11% to 17%. This probability is applied to each of the three hands dealt behind the scenes.
• Sometimes the base pay table is bumped up when making a maximum ten-coin bet per line.

If you aren't familiar with regular Draw Poker with Dream Card, it is based on conventional video poker with a Dream Card feature enabled if the player bets ten coins per hand. Any winnings are based on a five-coin bet, so the additional five coins should be seen as a fee to invoke the feature. If the feature is enabled, then the game will randomly decide to at times to give the player four random cards and one Dream Card. The Dream Card acts like a wild card, turning into whatever card would be best for the player on the deal. If the player doesn't like the one chosen, he can manually change it to any of the 48 cards remaining in the deck. The game is supposed to choose the card resulting in the highest expected value. Once the player presses the "deal" button, the Dream Card is fixed at the default or whatever the player changed it to. It can't change to something else after the draw, like a normal wild card.

Super Dream Card is always based on 3-, 5-, or 10-play video poker.

Summary Table

The following tables show the probability for each possible outcome and contribution to the return. The return for each event is the product of the probability, win, and 0.5. The reason for dividing by two is that the win is based on only half the bet, the other half is lost as a fee to invoke the feature.

The following table shows the returns for Deuces Wild games. The pay tables can be differentiated by the wins on a wild royal, straight flush, and five of a kind.

The following table shows the returns for Deuces Wild Bonus games. The pay tables can be mostly differentiated by the wins on a straight flush, flush, and straight. However, the pay tables for the top two returns are the same and differ only by the Dream Card probability changes.

Return Tables

The following tables show the probability for each possible outcome and contribution to the return. The return for each event is the produce of the probability, win, and 0.5. The reason for dividing by two is that the win is based on only half the bet, the other half is lost as a fee to invoke the feature.

In the interests of brevity, only the most liberal pay table for each type of base game is shown.

External Links

Discussion about Super Dream Card in my forum at Wizard of Vegas.