Strategy cost: the price of a mistake
How we put an exact dollar figure on every hold.
The EV of a hold
For any dealt hand there are 32 ways to hold (each of the five cards is kept or discarded). The expected value of a hold is the average payout over every possible draw from it — and since a deck has 47 remaining cards, "every possible draw" is a finite, countable set. This site evaluates all 32 holds exactly, for every hand you play.
Your strategy cost on a hand is simply: best hold's EV minus your hold's EV. Zero means you found the best play. Everything above zero has an exact price, in credits, no hand-waving.
A worked example
You're dealt Q♠ Q♥ J♠ 10♠ 9♠ at 9/6 Jacks or Better. The obvious hold is the pair of queens — a made hand, money back guaranteed on average. The best hold is the four spades: two cards (8♠, K♠) complete a straight flush, any other spade makes a flush, and any 8 or K makes a straight.
The best hold: four spades (the queen of hearts goes). Two straight-flush outs, nine flush outs, six straight outs.
Misplaying this hand costs 2.102 credits per coin — 10.51 credits at max bet, every single time it comes up.
Notice that the queens aren't a disaster — 1.537 credits per coin is a respectable hold. It's just worth less than half of the correct play. Most expensive mistakes in video poker look exactly like this: reasonable, safe, and quietly wrong.
The severity scale
Every decision you make at the table is graded on this five-step scale, by exact EV lost per coin. Color is never the only signal — each level has its own icon and label.
| Severity | EV lost (per coin) | How to read it |
|---|---|---|
| Optimal | 0 cr | The best possible hold (or an exact tie). |
| Near-optimal | < 0.01 cr | Less than a hundredth of a credit — noise, not a leak. |
| Minor error | 0.01–0.05 cr | Small, repeatable leaks. Fix after the big ones. |
| Meaningful error | 0.05–0.25 cr | Real money over a session. This is where practice pays. |
| Major error | ≥ 0.25 cr | The expensive holds. Fix these first. |
Where the money goes
At the end of a session your net result is split into four exact parts, so you can see whether a result came from skill, the deals, or the draws. Strategy cost is the only part you control — the rest is weather.
Try it at the table
Mistake drill: 9/6 Jacks or Better with 'Warn before I draw' feedback — the table flags a suboptimal hold before you commit to it.