Author: Bob Dancer

From about 1975 through 1993, I played a lot of backgammon at the Cavendish West Club in the West Hollywood part of Los Angeles. I probably played 60 hours per week in the 70s, went broke, and starting in 1980, had a full-time job — which cut down on my backgammon hours.

In about 1984, I started to teach myself how to count cards in blackjack and would fly to Las Vegas periodically to play that game. I learned about special deals at casinos where if I played so many hours at $5 or higher blackjack, I’d get some food vouchers and a certain amount in bonus chips. Trust me. Blackjack is easier if you get bonuses to play.

At the Cavendish West, good players from Las Vegas and other cities would occasionally come by to play. This is where I first met Richard Munchkin. I also saw a man named “Henry,” who would play the Cavendish’s best players for $100 a point (a sizeable stake) and usually beat them. 

At some point, Henry became Richard Munchkin’s roommate, and I learned that Henry was a highly-rated chess player and an excellent card counter, in addition to being quite good at backgammon.

I played some chess when I was younger, was getting better at blackjack, and was trying very hard to become good at backgammon. He was miles ahead of me at all three games. 

I figured if I became as good as Henry, my gambling future would be secure. I tried to figure out just how he did that.

I concluded Henry was ahead of me in some combination of three different areas. First was raw brain power. The last IQ test I took was more than 50 years ago while in graduate school, and I was rated well into the top 1% in IQ. With a US population of 215 million in the mid-70s, if 1% of the population was smarter than I was, that’s more than two 2 million people. It’s no wonder that I would run into some of them at a place where intelligence was rewarded. (Today, I believe I’m still in the top 10% IQ-wise, but I’m not sure. As I age, brainpower, among other things, is diminishing.)

The second area where Henry might have been superior to me was in the amount that he studied — or the amount he effectively studied. I studied a lot — but perhaps he studied more or did it in ways that I didn’t. Just having Richard Munchkin as a roommate, if he and Henry discussed various aspects of the games, that was more than what I had. Computer programs, primitive though they were, started to become available in the 1980s. I didn’t get them. Perhaps Henry did.

The third area where Henry might have surpassed me is in aptitude for games. It’s not your raw IQ that counts — it’s the type of IQ. Top chefs, architects, and interior decorators, among many others, probably have high IQs, but that doesn’t mean they have an aptitude for games. Some people are much better strategic thinkers than others. Some people can grasp the overall concepts of a game almost instantly, whereas in the games I mentioned, I needed to learn from what other people had figured out and written.

Whatever the combination of brains, study habits, and aptitude — he had more of what I wanted than I did. So, I wanted to be him.

Obviously, I never became him. After I moved to Las Vegas, I got to know Henry and we became friendly. By the time this happened, I had become successful at video poker and would see him playing that game in some of the casinos I frequented.

I once told him I had wanted to be him in the mid-80s, and he was amazed. He didn’t figure his skill at games was worth all that much. It hadn’t helped him much in the real world. I remember thinking that casinos were the real world.

Today, I have no desire to trade lives with Henry — and I suspect he has no desire to trade lives with me. We each made our way through life the best we could and have generally been successful at this. Although there are some overlapping interests, we really are quite a bit different from each other.

I first started playing “big” in 1994 — which at the time meant playing $5 9/6 Jacks or Better with a 0.67% cash slot club, and juicy monthly promotions at Treasure Island and the Mirage. Other casinos had similar situations (Caesars Palace, Desert Inn, MGM Grand and the Golden Nugget, among others), but I didn’t find out about those until later.

I was 47 years old at the time — a fairly typical age for the customers of those casinos. For the most part, people in their 20s and 30s were still trying to buy a house and find a way to send the kids to college, so they generally didn’t have the funds necessary to gamble for sizeable stakes. 

I was engaged to Shirley and married her later that year. A significant number of the participants in these events were married and both spouses played — and the single ones were probably 80% men and 20% women.

I played these games and promotions for the next seven years — getting to know many of the players who played these promotions at most of the casinos and gradually increasing the denominations of the games I played. The monthly promotions were often on weekends, and there were more than four casinos having regular promotions, so we’d often double dip or triple dip the same weekend.

For a period of three or four years, enough casinos were having generous promotions that if you could afford to play $5 single line games and could play 9/6 Jacks or Better competently, you did very well. Shirley and I remained as frugal as when we didn’t have a lot of money, so our gambling bankroll grew significantly. This type of bonanza no longer exists. There are games you can beat, but not a lot of them.

I got to know two players, “Tom” and “Jerry,” —  one of whom died several years ago and the other I haven’t seen for a few years and may or may not still be an active player. They were gambling partners — not in any romantic sense but in a business sense. There were also teams, where one person put up the money and had several players playing progressives with the common bankroll, but this wasn’t the same as that.

Tom and Jerry both had been successful gamblers for years and both had a gambling bankroll. They just shared results, so if one hit a $100,000 royal flush, that windfall was split two ways. Same principle if one had a big loss.

I had several discussions with them, both separately and together, about what makes a good partner. First was absolute trust. Second, each had to bring something to the relationship the other one lacked. In this particular case, Tom was successful at poker and blackjack, in addition to video poker, while Jerry played progressives and flew all over the country to casino openings. 

A third feature was analytical skills. There were (and still are) a lot of positive gambling opportunities. Discussions needed to be had as to which were the best ones to attack — and how. Each promotion is a little bit different than the others, and sometimes there were arguments about which ones to approach and how. For me, this is a major benefit of having a trusted partner. I wouldn’t want a yes man. I would want someone who could challenge my ideas.

There were far fewer casinos nationwide then than there are now, and most of the brand-new ones had problems when they opened — which could be exploited by the knowledgeable player. Jerry liked doing that and was successful at it.

For me, Shirley was a gambling partner, of sorts, when we were married — but I was by far the driving force behind the decisions. She didn’t really like gambling very much, although she liked dancing at the events. When we became successful enough that she could quit, she happily did. That was a major contributing factor to us eventually getting divorced in 2012 — although her desire to move away from Las Vegas and her aversion to cigarette smoke were the dominant reasons for the breakup. I’d spend 60 hours a week on gambling-related activities, and she fended for herself. We just didn’t do enough things together.

After my marriage to Shirley broke up and I hooked up with Bonnie, I knew I had to do marriage differently for it to survive. Bonnie is a partner in life, but not so much a partner in gambling. She will never be a competent video poker player, but I play on both her card and mine, where allowed, and we go to out-of-town casino events together. 

We were in square dancing together for years, but when the pandemic shut things down, Bonnie decided she didn’t want to do that anymore. We might pick that back up if the recent tax bill remains unchanged and I quit gambling in a few months.

At one point along the way, I decided to have a gambling partner of my own. I’ll tell you about it, but not today.

For decades, the Four Queens in downtown Las Vegas has had dollar single-line 10-7 Double Bonus. A few years ago, they cut the slot club in half on those games (leaving players with a 0.16% cash and 0.3125% comps), along with monthly mailers and promotions. Still, with a game that started at 100.17%, it was a decent play for dollars. It was the only single-line dollar game I still played.

A few months ago, they downgraded the last four 10/7 machines to unplayable pay schedules. The highest returning video poker games they have now are single-line quarter and fifty cent 9/6 Jacks or Better — with full slot club benefits meaning 0.3125% cash back and 0.625% comps. They still have mailers. They still have promotions. There are some advantage slots there and sometimes I can find one that is playable.

The thing is, I’ve been playing games for $25 up to $125 a hand for a long time. Switching to a game that requires $1.25 or $2.50 a hand to play really doesn’t float my boat. I’ve heard it said that for gambling to be interesting, it has to hurt when you lose. There is no reasonable loss at fifty cents or lower which will affect my bankroll or well-being at all. 

So, will I still play there? 

Yes, but not for the reason you might think.

At the current time, Bonnie and I together have more than $6,000 comp dollars, which can be used at either Four Queens or Binion’s, located catty-corner across Fremont from the Four Queens. Magnolia’s is a decent-enough coffee shop for when I’m downtown, and Hugo’s Cellar is an excellent old-fashioned steak house where we enjoy taking friends. There are a few other food options and they are building more.

If I quit playing for six months (or possibly it’s for one year), our comp dollars will evaporate. But so long as I continue to ti give them some play, the comp dollars will last until we use them up. So, I will continue to play some.

This summer, for example, you could play 400 points ($3,200 coin-in on video poker; half that on slots), and get $40 in free play. You could do this up to four times at Four Queens each month, and four times at Binion’s, where the best game is $1 8/5 Bonus. This is a 1.25% promotion, which is decent, but it’s for low stakes. I earned some of the bonuses for Bonnie and me in June and July, but not all four at each place. In August, I’ll be out of town for almost half the month, so I’ll probably do similarly.

Although we currently each earn $80 per month in free play, that amount could be reduced or even disappear because I’m not playing as much as I used to when they had dollar 10/7. 

This is the one casino where I can say I’m not playing for the money — I’m playing for the comps. And it’s not so much to earn additional comps (which I will do to a minor degree), but mainly to retain the comps I earned previously.

Even if I give up gambling at the first of the year because of the new tax law, I’ll retain this play until the comps are gone — which could easily take three or more years.