Originally Posted by
Dan Druff
It's fine to not worry about the once-in-a-blue-moon exceptions. You just need to understand that those do knock off tiny percentages of your EV, and you need to adjust your expectations accordingly.
But for the most part, it's better to play faster as long as you can get the "intermediate strategy" correct.
Yes. To put it into a more broad perspective, look at the "regular strategy" returns vs "optimal strategy" returns on WOO strategy calculator. For NSUD, it can be found here:
https://wizardofodds.com/games/video...5-d-200-d-800/
Perfect Strategy (top chart) shows the return as 99.7283%
Basic Strategy (bottom chart, doesn't include exceptions at bottom of page) is 99.7259%
The difference is thus 0.997283 - 0.997259 = 0.000024, or 0.0024%. That difference amounts to a whopping $24 over the course of $1,000,000 coin in.
If you're playing $5 denom ($25/spin) at 1,000 HPH (fast, especially w/ taxables), then that'll be 40 hours worth of play.
By not learning the exceptions, you'd be giving up $24/40 hours or $0.60 per hour in EV (that's 60 cents!). But again, that's playing $25/spin at 1,000 spins per hour. If you play lower denom and/or slower, then obviously that cost is going to be less.
I would say, damn near objectively, it's not worth learning any of the exceptions, at least for NSUD.