Brad and I just finished working on our 2007 gambling figures.  One surprise for us is that, as usual since 2000, we lost money playing video poker, in spite of winning a $100,000 jackpot in November.  It wasn’t a very big loss, only about $2800 and by far our smallest one since we started playing at higher denominations, but it continues to bear out the fact that there is almost no way a video poker player can make money gambling these days just on the machine return alone.  The truth of the matter is that we rarely play a positive VP machine anymore, so we EXPECT to lose over the long term.  The math tells us that and our experience down through the years has borne this out.

But, Jean, you tell us that you “win” almost every year and we can too!  Yes, we do win and most years we win big.  (Sorry, the exact amount is between the IRS and us.)  How do we do it?  Remember this word – EXTRAS!    That means slot club cashback and bounce-back, tournament and drawing wins, coupons, casino promotions, anything we can do to pump up a negative game to make it a positive play.   I have to admit that I am a nut on chasing extras, but that is the cornerstone of our astounding financial gambling success.  A typical year for an extra-value chaser who plays  $25 to $100 a hand like we do might be losing $40,000 on the VP machines, but $80,000 in extras will turn a $40,000 loss into a $40,000 profit.  If you are a winning quarter player, your numbers will be smaller, but around the same proportions.

A note here, because I know I will get loads of questions on this:  For our profit figure, we count only cash and cash equivalents, which could be free play, gift cards for things we would buy anyway, i.e. gas, and casino gifts we really need and/or will use, i.e., a TV.   We don't count comps (food, hotel rooms for our friends and family, shows, fancy gifts we can’t use, etc.) although they certainly have some extra value for us.  At some later time I will talk about why you can get into trouble counting comps as “profit.”

Today I was looking through Gaming Today, a magazine that often contains a lot of bad advice on all sorts of gambling.  But on occasion I send Brad out to scour our condo dumpsters if the Palms mails out a good coupon book to Occupant, so I scan GT for the same reason.  Today I found a little jewel, in an article by’Oklahoma’ Johnny Hale:  “Winning poker is not playing poker.  It is working poker.”  He was talking about live poker, but it is true for any gambling endeavor when you want to make a long-term profit, including video poker. 

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