Author: Bob Dancer

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I Was a Little Uneasy — Part II of II

Bob Dancer

Last week I set the stage where I was playing slots and ran out of cash on hand. It was a game I evaluated at $2,200 and I didn’t have a line of credit at this casino. After being unsuccessful at getting a gambling buddy to come and help, I called my wife Bonnie who agreed to take Lyft and bring me some money. 

Eventually Bonnie shows up — safe, and with an inconspicuous bag of cash. It had taken more than an hour since I first started calling. I was relieved that she made it safely. Once we got set up with $500 inserted into the machine and on the correct game, I asked her if she’d prefer to play or to supervise. She wanted to play!

So, we reviewed the necessary instructions. We do this every time. She might not remember from last time. The key part was to keep hitting the button until one of the bonuses went off. After it’s completed, I’ll re-evaluate whether we should keep playing or quit. Probably a bigger key part was to make sure we were on the right game! The buttons to change denomination are very easy to hit accidentally, or maybe activated when you lay a bottle of water down. It is not that hard to stay on the right game — but it is very easy to inadvertently switch and instead of playing a 125% game you’re playing an 84% game. Bonnie sometimes forgets to concentrate on this. Not often recently, but it has happened and so we review it every time.

The two lower bonuses eventually both go off. The lower of the two going off twice. The net from when Bonnie got there was $1,500 — meaning I lost about $500 on the play. A slightly disappointing result — but the variance on these games is pretty large and that’s part of the game. I had estimated it to be worth $2,200. The fact that it was lower than that doesn’t mean my estimate was bad. Ask any sports bettor about the actual best guess of a score before the game is played — and the final result when it is over.

Bonnie wasn’t ready to go home yet so we walked around until we found another playable game. This time we lost again. Then we found another positive game. And lost again.

The net score was about even from when Bonnie got there — meaning my score would have been the same had I simply abandoned the game and gone home. But I believed the position was worth $2,200 and I was going to try to find a way to turn that into cash if at all possible.

While I was at the casino, I never considered using the ATM machine there. The rates charged in casinos to get your own money are outrageously high and I have always avoided them. In actual fact, I put in $500 when Bonnie got there, and we never added more money. Had I known that would have been the result, it would have been an acceptable option to use the ATM machine.

I don’t know how much these machines charge these days — it probably varies from casino to casino — but $25 would have been cheap enough. The Lyft was $20, and I also had to get Bonnie involved for a couple of hours. But I didn’t know it would be $25. I could have gone through another $2,000 or $3,000 before the bonuses paid off. Even if Bonnie weren’t answering her phone (not intentionally, but sometimes her phone is in a different room than she is) I would have walked away from this “$2,200 opportunity” rather than use the ATM.

But the next day, I submitted a line of credit application at two downtown casinos. I play enough downtown that I need the ability for some “fast cash” on occasion. Not very often, but sometimes. I have been using casino credit for 30 years and have a sterling record of repaying by debts. There is a Central Credit Agency in Las Vegas where all credit information is stored, so getting more credit isn’t a problem. 

And when the lines come through, I will use them a few times even when I don’t need to. When I’m going to be making a big play at one of the casinos, I’ll withdraw $5,000 in cash — no matter what my cash-on-hand status is. And then at the end of the play, I’ll pay the cash back. This establishes a record the casinos want to see.

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I Was a Little Uneasy — Part I of II

Bob Dancer

I’ve written recently about running out of bankroll. Today’s blog is about running out of cash on hand, which is a different thing.

I was playing on Fremont Street. Primarily slots, but there are some video poker games there as well. Four Queens has $1 10/7 Double Bonus, and the three ONE casinos (Circa, D, Golden Gate) have linked progressives for games in denominations between 25¢ and $5 in several different games. 8/6 Bonus Poker Deluxe (98.5% at a 4,000-coin royal) is the highest-returning game in the mix and sometimes one or more of the denominations are positive. I’d prefer it if there were juicy $5 and $10 games regularly available there, but the situation is what it is.

If I knew going in that I’d be playing a $5 video poker game (say I knew the Circa progressive was at $38,000 last night and if it hasn’t been hit yet, that’s the game I’ll want to play), I pretty much know how much cash to bring with me. I’ve been playing video poker for 30 years and I have experience with such things.

But if I’m going to be playing slots, it’s hard to know how much to bring. Sometimes I’ll find a game for 75¢ a spin that I calculate is returning 120%. That’s not going to take a lot of money. Win or lose, the net result will be a few hundred dollars or less. But sometimes I find a game for $30 or $50 a spin. Even if I calculate that I have a significant advantage, I don’t know whether or not I will win this time — and I might be behind $10k or more before the bonus round pops.

Having too much cash on hand exposes me to risks I’d rather not face. While I’m in fairly good shape (current orthopedic ailments notwithstanding), I’m 77 years old and could be considered a target.

The game I ran into was an $8 per hand game that was positive. Although I had run into a $1,500 buzzsaw earlier in the day, I still had about two grand on me — which was going to be enough maybe 80% of the time. It’s impossible for me to know exactly. The game had four meters on it, and both of the bottom two were in positive territory. I’m figuring to play until I hit both of them. If either or both of the higher meters go off, I’ll be in hog heaven and will definitely have enough to go until I take down the lower two.

Luck wasn’t with me today. I went through my cash on hand. So, what to do?

I called over the slot supervisor and told him the situation. I’d lost $2,000 over the past hour and have no more cash on me. I have plenty of cash about 12 miles away. Will he lock up the machine for me for an hour and allow me to get more “ammunition?”

The slot supervisor was somewhat sympathetic, but he told me it was July 3 and the bosses said no machines could be locked up for the entire holiday weekend. It was 10 p.m. and there was no way he would call them at home over a matter such as this.

So, I started calling some gambling buddies. I have some friends who might be willing to help me out for either a percentage, a flat fee, or whatever they wanted. I’d tell them that I had plenty of cash elsewhere and they’d have their money back the next day at the latest. Plus, I’d owe them a favor down the road. A largely unrestricted favor is pretty valuable.

If we agreed to split the jackpot, that could be a bit tricky. Currently, I estimate my “position” has a value of about $2,200 going forward. The fact that I’ve already put in $2,000 is not relevant going forward. Whoever helps me out would be starting now.

It’s also possible that I could lose starting from right now. I could put in another $2,000 and the bonuses only add up to $1,500. An unexpectedly bad result possible. Whoever takes a piece of this needs to know that winning isn’t guaranteed, and they’ll need to be willing to take a piece of the potential loss as well. If they can’t stand the idea of losing, then their help is only worth 5% or 10% of the bonus rounds. The people I call will understand these things.

Before I started making calls, I put the screen to the $1.20 version of the same game. The meters were low, and no professional would play it. But there are always pros lurking around and I didn’t want to leave the screen showing the juicy game at $8. I’d be sure to get tons of “do you mind if I play that?” questions I didn’t want.

The usual first person I’d call was out of town, so calling him wasn’t going to be useful.

The actual first person I called was Richard Munchkin. He doesn’t play slots, but has a son that does and both know me well enough to trust me both for the money and the ability to calculate that it was a good game. Munchkin’s phone went to voicemail. He turns it off when he goes to bed. I didn’t have the phone number for his son.

The next person I called was planning to leave on an 8-hour road trip at five in the morning. Short of a life-or-death situation, which this wasn’t, he didn’t want to leave his house. I told him to go back to bed.

The third person I called was Bonnie, my 81-year-old wife. While I 100% trust Bonnie with money, she’s a little forgetful. Well, maybe a little bit more than a little bit forgetful. She could easily not remember at which casino I was waiting. My phone had about 5% power and could run out, so I had to be sure she got the complete message the first time. I made sure she had all the information written down and could read it back to me. 

She no longer drives but has taken Lyft enough that she’s reasonably comfortable with that. My biggest fear is that Bonnie is very friendly and talks to everybody. I could imagine her telling the Lyft driver that her husband has run out of money and she was bringing him $5,000. Depending on the Lyft driver, Bonnie’s safety might be at risk. The $5,000 would be the least of our worries. (I’m not bad-mouthing Lyft. I assume that Bonnie would be completely safe with 99%+ of all Lyft or Uber drivers. But you never know for sure that she wouldn’t get one of the rare bad apples.)

While I was waiting, basically nobody bothered me. I was sitting in front of one of several hundred slot machines in the place, and the screen that was showing wasn’t anything special. Which was good. I didn’t want to call attention to myself. When this was finally over, Bonnie and I would be two senior citizens with multiple thousands of dollars on us. Downtown after midnight can be a bit sketchy.

I’ll finish this story next week.

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Have I Lost My Touch?

Bob Dancer

As of July 1, I’m down about $150,000 for the year in video poker, mainly on $5 and $10 single-line games. (I’m ahead a modest amount on slots. Nowhere near the size of my video poker deficit.) Some casinos, where I would happily play with just their normal promotions, have offered me “show up money” so I will come in and hopefully, for them, continue my losing streak.

Casino employees have seen me use a walker both before and after my hip surgery at the end of last year, and the next time they see me, I’ll be in a sling. I look like a 77-year-old man with significant health issues — which is what I am. Recovering from the orthopedic ailments means the quality of my sleep isn’t what it used to be — so my normal level of alertness is there far fewer hours in the day than it was previously. This is probably obvious to anybody who closely observes me. I don’t look like any sort of a video poker guru that casinos should fear.

So, what’s going on? Is this a normal losing streak or have I lost a significant portion of my gambling mojo?

Possibly I’m not the best one to ask, but I’m betting that it’s more the former than the latter. And by ‘betting,’ I mean I’m continuing to play the same games and doing the best I can.

Whenever I go through a losing streak, and there have been several in career, I carefully review the game I’m playing, its strategy at the 100%-accurate level, and the parameters of the slot club and various promotions that make me believe this is a game I should be playing. 

I look at my bankroll and verify I have enough to consider playing. At my age, I’m extremely conservative in my bankroll estimates. The option of landing a good-paying job is not available to me. I’m not going to inherit anything. I don’t have a Rembrandt hidden away that I can sell.  I do have some relatively small revenue streams coming in, which helps ride out the storm. What I have is what I have and if it goes, it’s gone. 

In terms of video poker competence and playing within my bankroll, I’m I confident I’m still all right. In last week’s blog, I referred to the Kelly Criterion that says, approximately, that if your bankroll decreases, you should bet less. I’m still fine betting the stakes I am. In fact, I could still afford $25 games were they available with the same promotions. But they’re not, so I don’t even need to worry about $10 games.

I do have some advantages over other players — namely I’ve been through losing streaks before and they’ve ALWAYS ended and eventually I’ve made up all the lost ground and set a new personal high. I believe wholeheartedly that if I continue to play games where I have the edge, good things will happen. I believe it’s mathematically inevitable.

This confidence cuts both ways, of course. There could easily come a time when I’m no longer mentally competent and what I calculate to be a 99.54% game actually becomes a 98.82% game when I’m hitting the buttons. If (when?) this happens, I could be in a situation where I’m playing a negative game, and no amount of confidence will enable me to ride it out. While I’ve taken several readings and find myself still a competent player, this could happen.

I’ve experienced this kind of situation at a fairly close and personal level. My father, who wasn’t a gambler but had several varied business investments, became less cautious and less competent when he got into his 90s. His children could see this, and we tried to warn him about it, but he was convinced we were all wrong and he was as sharp as he ever was. He blew away 90% of his wealth in the last decade of his life. “Fortunately,” he died at age 96 before he lost it all, but it could have happened. We would have had to get a court order to prevent this, against his kicking and screaming, and that wouldn’t have been fun no matter what the end result was financially.

This isn’t a blogpost asking for your sympathy. I’m fine, have an enviable bankroll, and will recover. It’s meant to be a message saying these types of things happen to all players — even the pros. Most or all of you have experienced something similar. Perhaps lower dollar amounts because you play for lower stakes, but you’ve endured long losing streaks that weren’t fun at all.

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Going Broke

Bob Dancer

One of the risks of gambling is losing more money than you can afford. That happened to me in 1979, when I lost a lot at backgammon. After I bailed myself out of debt, I vowed to never let that happen to me again. So far, I’ve been able to keep that promise to myself. But nobody knows precisely what the future holds.

Video poker is one of the easier games to successfully avoid bankruptcy. I didn’t say it was easy. I said it was easier. The reason it’s easier is because you can learn to precisely measure how much a particular game returns and how much the slot club pays. Those are key elements in avoiding going broke. And games are nicely denominated. You can play for quarters, dollars, etc., and after a bit of playing, you know how bad the bad days can be at that denomination.

In games like live poker, it’s hard to precisely know how good you are compared to your competition. And even if you can accurately quantify this, the nature of “no limit” and “pot limit” games is that you can lose everything you bring to the table every time you sit down.

An excellent starting place in avoiding going broke is to never play games where the casino has the edge over you. If you insist on playing games that don’t meet this criterion, play games that are small in denomination compared to your gambling bankroll. 

Easier said than done for some players. Most of the “fun” of gambling is playing for stakes where it hurts when you lose. If you’re a millionaire and always play for single-line quarters, no matter the pay schedule, you’ll never go broke. And you probably won’t have any fun either.

The Kelly Criterion, named after John Kelly, a theoretician at Bell Labs in the 1950s, is a method of sizing bets so that you will never go broke and, indeed, will grow your bankroll at an optimal rate. It’s defined as maximizing the logarithm of your wealth. For most of my readers, that definition is way too technical to be useful. 

What it means in very simple terms is that if you lose a significant percentage of your bankroll, you cut back on your bets. If you’ve been very successful at a particular bet size, the Kelly Criterion tells you to increase your bet size.

Unfortunately, exact bet sizes in video poker are rather limited. While you can play $1.25 per hand, $2.50, $5.00, and $25 on single-line games, you can’t play $17.34 on one hand. Also, at a given casino, the return on quarter games may be very different than the return on $5 games. At one casino I frequent, on their multi-denomination machines, you can get 8/5 Jacks or Better if you bet dollars, 9/5 Jacks or Better if you bet $2 denominations, and 9/6 Jacks or Better if you bet at the $5 level. They have a similar breakdown for all games on the machine, including Bonus Poker, Deuces Wild, Double Bonus Poker, Double Double Bonus Poker, and several others.

At this casino, you sometimes have the advantage if you bet the $5 game (i.e., $25 per hand), depending on various promotions, but you basically never have the advantage if you bet smaller than that. Playing $25 per hand is beyond the means for most players.

Video Poker for Winners has a bankroll calculator, but the program hasn’t been updated for several years and will not work on newer computers. Dunbar’s Risk Analyzer for Video Poker, available at Huntington Press, among other places, is probably the most useful tool out there for figuring out how much bankroll you need to play most games. It’s inexpensive and very useful.

When I was starting out playing $5 9/6 Jacks or Better (with 0.67% cashback and juicy promotions — those were the days!), it seemed to me that having a bankroll of 3-5 times the royal flush was a sufficient bankroll, assuming you were playing games similar to what I was. I published that “3-5 royal flushes” rule — and since then I’ve apologized several times for doing so.

The actual bankroll depends on how big the variance of the game is and how much of an edge you have. For the same return, a Double Double Bonus player needs considerably more bankroll than a Jacks or Better player does.

Today, the slot clubs are considerably tighter than they were 30 years ago, so you need considerably more bankroll to play the same games as you used to.

How much bankroll you need also depends on your age and your other responsibilities. I’m 77 years old now. If I go broke, there are very limited employment opportunities available to me. When I went broke in 1979, I was 42 years old. I was able to find a fairly lucrative job and was able to rebuild my bankroll. That option isn’t available to me today.

Your income stream, from whatever source, also affects how much bankroll you need. Possibly you have a job, or Social Security, or a pension, or an inheritance, or royalties of some sort, alimony, or whatever. Some players have none of these things. Everyone has a different income stream, which is why there is no “one size fits all” answer to “how much bankroll do I need.”

Avoiding going broke should be a strong priority to all successful gamblers. If you don’t pay attention to this, you may well end up in a position you don’t want to be in.

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Joints Don’t Last Forever

Bob Dancer

Six months ago, I underwent a total hip replacement. Recovery took some time, but I’m about 90% back. My physical therapy (PT) appointments ended some months ago, but I get plenty of exercise going up and down stairways in parking garages as I go to various casinos.

When I travel to out-of-town casinos, I’ll usually take a walker, both for use in the casino and also for “working” in the airport. If it’s a short trip, my only ‘luggage’ is a backpack. Vegas has a pretty sizeable airport, and for someone like me it takes two hours to check all the slot machines in all of the terminals. Having a walker to carry the backpack is very handy. 

If the out-of-town casino is fairly large, using the walker to carry beverages, snacks, and other things is useful. I don’t ‘need’ the walker, but it has advantages I appreciate. I don’t walk up and down staircases when I have it, but I usually walk more than if I didn’t have the walker so that makes up for it somewhat.

Now that the hip is fixed, it’s time to take care of my left shoulder. I had arthroscopic surgery on my rotator cuff on June 18th. I also had pain in the bicep area on the same side. My orthopedist said he’d evaluate that when he had me opened up and would fix it if it needed repair it. Recovery would be longer and more painful if he had to sew up a bicep tear.

Turns out it was ‘only’ a bone spur irritating the bicep, so he fixed that while he was in there. I got lucky.

I’m writing the first draft of this blog about 24 hours after I was released. So far, so good. I need to take hydrocodone-acetaminophen for pain if needed for several weeks and also an antibiotic every six hours for three days. I took the first three doses of the narcotic and skipped the fourth because the pain was manageable, and these drugs have side effects. I still took the amount of Tylenol that was mixed with the narcotic because that’s supposed to help reduce swelling.

They gave me an interscalene nerve block which is supposed to help post-surgical pain. The average length of relief for someone my age/weight/severity of surgery is 12 hours or so, but each patient reacts differently. It might be that the nerve block was still working 20 hours after surgery when I skipped the hydrocodone. If the pain kicks back in, I’ll take a pill. It’ll take 30-60 minutes for the relief to begin. It won’t be a lot of fun, but using the minimum amount of narcotics is a goal that makes tolerating a bit of pain along the way acceptable.

Bonnie was a registered nurse for 40 years and is willing and able to help me with icing the shoulder and whatever else is needed. I won’t shower until 48 hours after the operation, and she’ll need to help me with that and getting dressed afterwards.

My first PT session is 12 hours after that shower, and I’ll be going 3x weekly for some time. Friends who’ve been through this tell me that the diligence required for shoulder PT is more important than for hip PT. I’m planning to do that, but I also realize that I don’t have a perfect track record on keeping with the plan.

I might do a follow-up blog about my shoulder if I feel there’s something interesting to say. Part of this will depend on what responses I get – if any.

Even after I heal as well as I’m going to, I won’t be done. I have arthritis in both thumbs and will see a different orthopedist in early August. I might get out of there with a steroid shot in each hand. It might be more serious. We’ll see.

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Getting Greedy

Bob Dancer

Often, I’ve heard players tell a video poker story of a time when their score was positive on a given day, but then they “got greedy” and ended up with a negative result. The phrase is usually accompanied by some self-loathing. Perhaps, “Why did I let myself do that again. I know better!”

I almost never say that, although I’ve certainly had my share of experiences where my score went south after I was ahead for a while. Today I want to look at that term.

I’m not going Gordon Gekko on you and proclaiming, “Greed is good!” As I’m using it today, greed is a negative trait.

Let’s also accept in general that winning is good and losing is bad. Then losing intentionally would be a bad thing. One more premise we must accept is that gambling scores go up and down. We can all recount what happened over the last half hour. None of us can accurately predict what swings will happen in the next half hour.

To my mind then, so long as I am playing a game that exceeds 100% in theoretical return, and playing to the best of my ability, when I lose, it’s just a circumstance I cannot control. I know it’s going to happen sometimes. Frequently, even. I just don’t know if it is going to happen today or not. 

If I hated myself after each loss, then I’d be in a psychologically unhealthy profession. Losing is just part of the game.

Most players, of course, aren’t playing games where they have the advantage. They either can’t find good games, don’t know how to play them well, or possibly are in the mood to play and don’t really care whether or not they have the advantage. For players like this, if they’re just thinking about the royal flush without accurately considering the cost to get it, then yes, perhaps that could be said to be “greedy.” But that’s not the way most players use the term.

As best as I can tell, some players who use the term simply mean they lost and aren’t happy about it. Perhaps they’re telling what poker players refer to as a bad beat story. If that’s the case, no big deal.

Others, perhaps, are justifying their loss by admitting to a “personality defect” (i.e., greed) which has the effect of saying that this is not really their fault. They are still good people who have occasional lapses.

But the fact is that they are going to be losing again and again and again — interspersed by wins sometimes. Every gambler goes through this. Even winning ones. It isn’t that you’re greedy. It’s that you’re playing a game with ups and downs.

Perhaps they use the term because they are poor losers. While nobody likes to lose, getting really, really upset about it probably suggests you should consider not gambling. Knowing you’re going to get upset over and over again because that’s the nature of the game isn’t the healthiest way to lead your life.

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Waking Up

Bob Dancer

I’ve read several authorities who claim that having regular sleep hours is the healthiest way to lead your life. Whether these experts are correct or not, I haven’t lived my life that way. For the past 30 years, my life has revolved around when and where the best video poker plays are.

If the point multiplier starts at midnight, I’ll be there. At 3 a.m.? That’d be okay. I’ll make it. An appointment at 8 a.m.? No problem. Another appointment at 1 p.m.? That’s okay. Meeting for dinner at 7 p.m.? Sounds good.

Obviously, I need to sleep some of the time. So, I sleep when I can, set the alarm as needed, and get to wherever I need to be. Friends and colleagues learn not to call me at such ungodly times as 10 a.m. or maybe 3 p.m. because I might be sleeping. It’s better to text me something like, “Call me when you’re awake.” Some days I take three different naps. And, because I’m a male senior citizen, sometimes I wake up more than once just to go to the bathroom.

I take a medication that makes me slightly drowsy. I’ve asked my doctor for a non-drowsy version, but he thinks the one he gives me is the perfect one for my health condition. So, I take it at night — just before I go to bed — but if I’m only sleeping three hours this particular night because of a promotion, the drug is still in my system — at least a little.

The net effect is that when my alarm goes off, my body doesn’t immediately become wide awake.. If I’m going to gamble intelligently (or do anything else intelligently, for that matter), I need to make sure I’m awake before I proceed.

My three methods of waking up are showers, physical exercise, and mental exercise — in any order, often in combination. Showers are self-explanatory. My go-to physical exercise for years was jumping jacks. When my hip joint deteriorated and eventually was replaced six months ago, that was out. Plus, now I’m going to need arthroscopic surgery on my left shoulder, so even though I can now jump up and down, sort of, swinging my arms over my head is painful and will possibly aggravate the tear in my rotator cuff that’s already there. Depending on the time of day, I often I suggest walking around a block or three with Bonnie — which is good for a number of reasons.

For mental exercise, I do a variety of things. If I’m going to be playing a video poker game for which I don’t believe my accuracy is at least 99.9%, I’m studying that game — both by looking at the strategy and practicing on the computer. I wish Video Poker for Winners still worked on my computer, but I make do with WinPoker. I select hard hands so as to review the hands that are the most difficult. Or, I start from particular cards so that I know all the exceptions. 

If I’m going to be making a slot run, I’ll review all of my strike numbers. I have numbers for more than 60 games. The ones I see every day I know by heart. But there are some games I only see occasionally — so I forget the numbers if I don’t review them.

If I’m playing a video poker game I know well, I might amuse myself on the website www.extremesudoku.info. It provides harder-than-average puzzles, and after I’ve done one or two, I’m awake.

I do drink coffee in the morning and take a slew of vitamins that I think are working, but there are those who say that vitamins are just a way to have expensive urine. I’m not sure.

If I’m driving to where I am going to play, I’ll often sing along to the songs I play. I don’t need my voice warmed up in order to play video poker well, but there’s something about waking up my voice that also wakes up my whole body.

And then I go to the casino — do my best — and take what I get.

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Getting Lucky

Bob Dancer

Most video poker players have some stories they like to tell about a few times they really got lucky. Perhaps it was three royals in one week in 2017. Maybe it was being dealt aces with a kicker twice on Ten Play at such and such casino in 2022. Or winning that car in a drawing with only three tickets in the drum while some players had thousands of tickets. My own Million Dollar Video Poker autobiography tells of a number of those situations that happened to me.

Some players are proud of a large jackpot — never mind how bad of a game they were playing. Untold dozens of students have come up to me in my classes showing me a picture of a royal flush on their cell phone. Frequently they would say something like, “It’s a game you would say I never should have been playing, but . . .”

If they said that, I would back off. They already know that I’m a stickler for only playing when you have the advantage. I don’t need to tell them again. They’re proud of their $4,000 jackpot and I tell them congratulations and change the subject.

Although the proper strategy varies a little between good pay schedules and bad pay schedules, being dealt a premium hand is just as easy on all pay schedules (assuming a 52-card deck and a standard format game.) Ending up with a score for the day of +$3,500 (as might be the case if you hit a $4,000 jackpot while playing with a good pay schedule) doesn’t feel noticeably different than ending the day with a score of +$3,200 (as might be the case playing with a poor pay schedule.)

Similarly, when the losing days come (which they will — guaranteed), losing $2,300 in a day doesn’t feel that much worse than “only” losing $1,900. At the end of the year, though, the player playing the good games might be ahead $20,000 or so while the player playing the same amount, with the same skill on lesser games might be down that much or more. It definitely adds up.

I start from the presumption that lucky hits are, well, lucky. And random. If our goal is to get lucky while playing good games, let’s look at ways to increase the odds of that happening.

  1. Limit yourself to only playing good games. If the game, plus benefits from the slot club, mailers, promotions, etc., doesn’t exceed 100% in total return, don’t play. PERIOD. NO EXCEPTIONS.

You might find there are no such games in the casino closest to you. Okay. Don’t play there. 

Some of you will find this rule too restrictive. So be it. You’re doomed to being a long-term losing player, albeit with some lucky jackpots along the way. That might be acceptable to you — given the pleasure you receive from gambling. Or maybe you greatly value the casino freebies you receive. In any case, let’s continue our discussion for those of you who are still interested.

  1. Become knowledgeable about several games and learn as much as you can about the slot club at every casino you frequent. At the five different casinos I play the most hours, I play five separate games. And these are not exactly the same games and casinos that I played a couple of years ago. Casinos add and subtract games and change the slot club and promotions. If you’re a stickler for playing only one variety of video poker, you’re limiting your options.  It’s difficult to become profitable if you’re committed to only playing one particular game at one particular casino.
  1. Play a lot. Obviously, a player who only plays 10 hours a year won’t hit as many juicy jackpots as a player to plays 100 hours a year — or 1,000. And since you’re limiting yourself to games where you have the advantage, for the most part, the more you play the more money you make. There will definitely be swings up and down, but if you can survive them, you’ll do fine.
  1. Network with other competent players. The more players who know and like you, the more likely someone will share something that will benefit you. This is a two-way street, of course. You have to be willing to share something you discover with someone who has helped you. 

Three of my current “best plays” were brought to me by someone else. One wanted a percentage (which I agreed to, after negotiation), one did it for free because I gave him a tip a few years ago, and the third is a host — whom I take care of.

  1. Scout. You never know when your current plays will dry up. Everything ends after a while. If you’re winning, that might speed up the rate at which the games are removed. That’s just the way it works. If you find a play in another gambling community, check out the other casinos in that community every time. 
  1. Consider more games than just video poker. There are many games in a casino that are beatable. (You might want to listen to the archives of Gambling with an Edge. We ran that podcast for more than 10 years. There were a lot of different games discussed.) While doing the podcast, I thought about sports betting — but decided advantage slots was a game I’d be better at — so I’ve spent hundreds of hours learning about that – and am continuing to learn more. I may change games after a while.
  1. Build your bankroll. Gambling is one of those activities where it takes money to make money. Do this any way you legally can. One of the biggest ways to do this is to be very frugal and save whatever you can. If your goal is eventually to win big in the casino, you need to delay current gratification. Keep your car a few years longer than you otherwise might. Don’t be getting the latest and greatest anything. It’ll be cheaper in a few years. Treat your possessions with care and resell them on Craig’s list when you’re through with them. 

If you have a spouse or other full-time partner, it helps if you’re on the same page about this. After I became single in 2012 and eventually began considering who else to connect with, fiscal responsibility was high on my list of “requirements.” 

  1. Don’t be shy. Sometimes you’ll find a game that is slightly beyond your bankroll. (Important caveat: We’re limiting this discussion to games where you have the advantage.) It might make sense to commit 10% of your bankroll, or so, to taking a pot shot on this game. If it works, you’re set. If it doesn’t, you still have 90% of your bankroll to keep going.
  2. Know you’re going to lose sometimes. That’s part of the gambling game. Losing streaks end eventually. If you lose too much of your bankroll, it will make sense to play for lower stakes. If every losing session rips at your soul, you’re in the wrong profession. Losing on good games is NOT a reason to switch to bad games.
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One Casino

Bob Dancer

Online, I read one person (I’ll assume a male) who said he lives across the street from a casino, and he plays to win. That’s all I know about him. He may live in Las Vegas where there are 20 or more additional casinos within a relatively few miles. He may live in a place where the next closest casino is 60 or more miles away. I’m going to address the latter situation, whether it applies to this particular player or not.

For a period of time when I had a “real job,” I used to walk to work — which I found beneficial for a number of reasons. I’d get exercise and have more useful time to spend than did others in the office who drove an hour or more each way to work. Some of those benefits apply to a casino being right across the street. But there are major differences.

Texas Hold’Em and other poker players sometimes refer to “outs,” which can refer to the number of unseen cards in the deck that can lead to that player winning. Sometimes it’s one card only (such as it must be the K♠); sometimes it can be many cards (e.g., any heart, any four or any nine). The more outs you have, the better your chances are of winning.

Similarly, sports bettors know that if you can only bet at one sportsbook, your chances for winning are very slim. If you can bet at any of 10 sportsbooks, and carefully pick and choose among them on the best price for a given game, your chances of coming out ahead are much better. Plus, if you win too much at one, you can stay away from it for some period of time. Many sportsbooks restrict winning players.

For video poker players, casinos themselves can be considered “outs.” The more outs you have, the better your chances are for winning.

Many casinos, of course, are basically unbeatable at video poker. Period. The best games there return less than 98% and the slot club and promotions don’t return nearly enough to make up for that. Possibly there are progressives that are sometimes positive. Sometimes there are variations of Ultimate X which can yield a return of more than 100% if the previous player left it in that condition. But those are short plays that don’t happen with dependable regularity.

A few other casinos, think South Point, for example, but there are others, have slightly positive games 24/7 which become even more positive during certain promotions. But these casinos usually restrict players who consistently win and/or only play during the juiciest promotions.

The “best” circumstance for players is to know of several such casinos and play among them according to which one has the best deals currently. If one casino has 10x points on Mondays and has beatable games, play there on Mondays. If another one has good drawings on Saturday nights, plan your life around playing enough to earn drawing entries and showing up there most Saturday nights. Until you win a few times. Then take a few months off. If one casino gives you a big bonus for the first $20,000 coin-in you play in a month, and nothing additional thereafter, it makes little sense to camp out there every day.

It also helps if you have more games than just video poker that you know how to beat. In keeping with the theme of this blog, each additional game you can beat can be thought of as an out. Although casinos can be quick to kick out successful blackjack players, winning at many other games in a casino is tolerated. For me, my fallback game is slots. Other players are good at poker. Still others have table games they know how to beat. Most games in a casino can be beaten under the right conditions — but knowing those conditions and finding them isn’t trivial. And there might be many other knowledgeable players who are also scouting for those conditions, meaning they don’t last long when they arise.

For me, while I still play a lot in Las Vegas, I also know of good games out of town. Some are “fragile,” meaning if I tell my readers under which conditions I go to play my out-of-town secret games, the casinos would adjust and change either the games or the conditions that make them positive. But I do share the information with a few people who in the past have shared valuable information with me. Sometimes I have paid “finders fees” to players who let me know of good opportunities.

When one lists the secrets to success at video poker, such things as outs and being networked to players who help you are not usually listed. But to me, they are important.

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When Do I Change Machines?

Bob Dancer

Although I’ve discussed this subject many times over the years, I think I’ve got some additional things to say about it that I haven’t written before. In this discussion, I want to include quitting for the day, and the difference in changing machines between video poker and slot machines.

I’ll cover video poker machines first.

  1. The primary reason to quit a machine is I’ve reached my objective. As I write this, South Point gives a free spin for $1,500 coin-in several days a week. That is, once you reach $1,500 coin-in, you go to a promotional kiosk and hit a button to claim your prize, averaging about $25. If I decide to be playing there that day, I’m not going to quit before I reach that goal — although there may be a reason to change a machine, which I’ll discuss later. 

When I play at Caesars properties around the country, they give you 10,000 Tier Credits (TCs) as a bonus when you accumulate 5,000 TCs or more in a day. (This is $50,000 coin-in for most video poker. At some casinos it requires more than $10 coin-into get a TC on their loosest games.) TCs are worth a little, but not much. Still, getting the bonus is worth something and I rarely stop before I reach that level.

Sometimes casinos will have a point multiplier of some sort with a limit. If the game is worth playing, it’s usually worth playing for the maximum. Here I’m speaking for myself only. If the multiplier tops out at $25,000 coin-in and you’re a single-line quarter player, you’re not going to be able to get to the max.

Sometimes casinos have the multiplier only between certain hours. If the multiplier ends at midnight, for example, I’m usually not playing after that. These multipliers can be valuable, and I’m usually playing games that are negative without the multipliers — so playing without multipliers or other promotion isn’t something I do.

Every casino has some sort of system where if you play a certain amount of coin-in you get a level of benefits. These programs are not always explicit, but with experience and talking to other players who play games similar to what I play, I can usually get an idea. I learn, for example, that if I play xxx amount per day or per trip, I’ll get better mailers in the future than if I play less than that.

Sometimes I’m playing a progressive where the royal is quite a bit above 4,000 coins. If somebody hits the royal (sometimes me — but it’s usually another player), I’m off of the machine.

Sometimes there’s an external ending point. For example, I might have a dinner date with Bonnie, or maybe I have some other appointment. That provides another stopping point.

You’ve probably noticed a common theme here. I’m in the casino for a reason. I’m not there to lose and I’m not there just to kill time.

  1. Sometimes I’ll want to change machines but still keep playing for the day. This could be because the machine has a sticky button or some other glitch, perhaps the chair is too high or too low, maybe a smoker or Chatty Cathy just sat down next to me. In these situations, if another machine is available without these difficulties, I’ll move.

Note that my score is not on this list. Whether I’m up or down two royals is not a reason to change machines. I’m looking forwards, not backwards.

  1. Sometimes I’ll just need to take a break. Perhaps I’m tired or maybe I’ve made a misplay. My reputation is that I play like a machine and never make a mistake. The reality is much different than that. At age 77, I make far more mistakes than I did 25 years ago. That’s the sad truth of aging. 

On a long play, if I don’t get up and stretch periodically, I’ll really feel it the next day. So, I take breaks periodically.

  1. There are video poker games with very short plays. I don’t usually vulture Ultimate X machines, but sometimes a positive one is visible as I walk by. Depending on which version of Ultimate X we’re talking about, this could be a one-hand play. I make it and then move on. If it’s just one hand, I usually don’t even insert my player card. In general, Ultimate X vultures are not profitable to the casino and some casinos use that as a reason to kick you out.
  1. Changing slot machines is very different than changing video poker machines. Slot machines are a smart play only a small percentage of the time — and usually the hitting of a certain bonus round signals the end of positivity. It could be that the machine, like the hypothetical Red Bob machine I discussed a month or so ago, has a Mini, and Minor, and a Major meter. If I’m playing until the Minor meter goes off (because the meter is higher than the minimum acceptable for a play,) and if the Mini or the Major hit before the Minor goes off, that’s just great, but I keep playing. Now if I need a break, perhaps to visit the restroom, I pay a floor person to watch the machine because if I don’t, another advantage slot player will move in and play, and I won’t get the machine back.

Sometimes two meters are slightly too low to be a play by themselves, but the combination is high enough. Then I’ll play until either one of them go off. If the other one hasn’t become high enough to be an independent play, I’ll leave.

Unlike video poker, in slots, whether there is a point multiplier today or not usually doesn’t affect when I quit. The multiplier may add another half-percent or so, which is nice, but I’m playing a game when it returns 105% or more and at that point the slot club is irrelevant. I may very slightly lower my strike numbers during a multiplier day, but usually not.