I had a fascinating discussion with our board member John about the long term math of video poker. John basically said he plays according to long term math and I said the long term math doesn't matter because none of us will ever see the long term.

I also said that yes, I would play video poker games with the best pay tables.

I just looked at the Wizard of Vegas forum and there is a thread there asking what is the long term? And the Wizard said, in part:

" It can be said that the more you play the closer to the "long run" you will get, but you will never fully arrive there."

I agree. None of us will ever see the long term, nor will we ever see a full and equal distribution of results in any game and that includes video poker, craps, roulette or blackjack.

My position is that with each repeat of a combination of cards or a number in craps or roulette the chance that you will ever see the long term and an equal distribution of numbers gets harder to reach.

Using a single six sided die is the easiest way to explain this:

With one die the long term equal distribution would be getting one roll each of 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6. But if just one of those digits repeats just once then the long term equal distribution would become:

1, 1, 2, 2, 3, 3, 4, 4, 5, 5, 6, 6

And if you get one number to repeat four times, then the long term equal distribution would be:

1, 1, 1, 1, 2, 2, 2, 2, 3, 3, 3, 3, 4, 4, 4, 4, 5, 5, 5, 5, 6, 6, 6, 6

Now consider a game like video poker with 52 unique cards and let the distribution of that deck of 52 vary with just one card being dealt twice... and then see how many hands the long term becomes!