Author: Bob Dancer

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I Was a BMX Voyeur

This likely will be a one-off column. It’s not about video poker. For me it’s not even about gambling, although I did make a few bucks betting on it. For me it’s about some kid I’ve known about for 20 years, who lives only a few miles from me, competing in the Rio Olympics in an obscure sport I knew nothing about until recently. It was a damn exciting experience for me and I want to tell you about it. If you want to read about video poker, come back next week.

Mike Fields is vice president at videopoker.com, also known as Action Gaming. Before that he was head of video poker for IGT. I met Mike more than 20 years ago. I was just coming up as a video poker expert. Mike was already established working for a gaming manufacturer. We met at a gaming show — enjoyed talking to each other — and have stayed friends. Mostly business friends, but with a good dose of personal relationship as well. There were fewer than 40 people invited to Bonnie’s and my wedding. Mike Fields was one of them.

I heard about his son, Connor, many times through the years. I met Connor once — with his dad — at a mall shortly before Christmas. A charity my wife was helping asked for donations to give gifts for underprivileged kids and Connor decided that since biking was his passion, he’d like to donate a bicycle. And he did.

connorfields

For the past several years, Connor Fields has been competing in BMX racing — with BMX standing for bicycle moto-cross. It’s an event for really crazy people. Up to eight cyclists start at the top of a steep eight-meter (26.25-feet) ramp. When the gate drops, they go speeding downhill and are up to about 40 miles per hour in two and a half seconds. Just to make it a little more exciting and dangerous, it’s legal to throw elbows and punches to the head as you jockey for position. Although the cyclists are pedaling throughout the race, the vast majority of their speed is gained in this initial eight-meter descent.

Once they reach the bottom of the ramp, they still have a long way to go even though it is definitely a sprint race. The BMX course has bunches of hills to navigate. The early ones come back-to-back and the cyclists become airborne as they go up one small hill — fly over the next one — and land going downhill. Although they could be going slower and actually go up and down each hill — that’s not a strategy for winning.

The corners of the track are called berms and they are banked so the bikers can take them at speed. Whether you take them high or low depends on how fast you are going and where you are compared to the other riders. Giving a “friendly elbow” to help a competitor go “over the top” of the berm to an off-course grassy landing is part of the game. Before the finish line, there are several low hills, called the rhythm section, which are far enough apart that you need to go up and down each one and jumping from one to the other isn’t a strategy any of the cyclists used at the Olympics.

Tracks are all similar — and all a bit different. Many are dirt. The one at the Olympics had a synthetic surface much like you see on a running track. I’m sure Connor can tell you how the texture of the BMX track is different from the texture of a running track and why, but I can’t.

The entire race takes 35 seconds or so for the winners. A bit longer if you crashed along the way. When one cyclist goes down, often one or more others get tangled up in the mess. The track isn’t all that wide and all the racers are trying to get to the front. Interestingly, if you go down in a BMX race and you can still walk, you pick up your bike and carry it to the finish line.

In most preliminary races, the top four go on to ride in the next round and the slowest four are eliminated. Whether you’re first or fourth in one round affects your position on the track in the next round, but your score doesn’t carry over. For example, even if the fourth place cyclist was a quarter of a second slower than the winner in the quarter-finals, they start off even in the semi-finals time-wise.

There were LOTS of stories about Connor Fields before the Olympics (Google him if you don’t believe this). He was injured earlier in 2016 and couldn’t compete in the Olympic time trials, but because of his skill, he was given a coaches’ exemption and was selected as a member of the five-person U.S. Olympic team (three men, two women). Since he’s a local boy here in Las Vegas, local TV and newspapers mentioned him all the time.

I didn’t get to see any of the races in real time, but I’d read the results every night. On Wednesday, August 17, I checked the results and saw Connor came in fourth place. I was very disappointed. He was really hoping for a medal, which only go three deep, and to go all that way and come up just short was awful.

As I read further, I realized that yes he was in fourth place, but these were individual time trials used for seeding purposes. The top 32 racers moved on to the quarter-finals the next day — and Connor was doing just fine.

On Thursday, August 18, there was blood on the track. Several of the riders went down hard, including one of the pre-race favorites — Joris Daudet from France. http://www.nbcolympics.com/video/bmxers-took-some-hard-hits-quarterfinals

Fields and the other two Americans, Nic Long and Corben Sharrah, survived and would race again Friday. Sixteen riders were left.

On Friday, August 19, the semi-finals got it down to eight riders, and shortly thereafter the finals ended it all. In the finals, which included two Americans — Connor Fields and Nic Long. Both Americans got off to fast starts and about 20 seconds in were in first and second position with Long holding a slight advantage. Connor passed Long, as did one Dutch rider and one Colombian, who passed him in a photo finish, so the Americans ended up with the Gold and near miss for the bronze. http://www.nbcolympics.com/news/team-usas-connor-fields-led-bmx-finals-start-finish-takes-home-gold

On the woman’s side, American Alise Post took home a silver, so it was an excellent showing for Team USA. I’m sure Alise has her own story and it’s every bit as exciting as Connor’s, but I’ve never met her and didn’t follow the women’s races at all.

We’re going to try to get Connor Fields as a guest on the radio show. It isn’t really about gambling, but his dad is a sponsor of the show, and hey, how many Olympic champions have you met? I want to ask him about the final race.

When he and Nic Young were neck and neck with 10 seconds to go, it’s possible Connor knew he was going to win. You know your teammates pretty well and Fields is a better finisher than Young is. But what if it was neck and neck with 3 seconds to go? You and your teammate are both going for the gold — and you felt that a well-timed elbow would push you by your teammate.

If it was for the Olympic gold, would you elbow your teammate?

(I mentioned earlier that I made some money gambling on this. With a friend, I took Connor Fields against the field at 5-1. I risked $10 (which I would have paid if Connor lost) and collected $50 when he won. It probably wasn’t a good bet, odds-wise, but sports are more exciting when you have a little wager on it, and this was pocket-change money between friends. The $50 win is nice, but I’m REALLY happy for Connor and Mike Fields!)

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Does it Matter?

You’re at your favorite casino. You’ve played a lot all month and are now there for the big drawing. Here’s the way it works:

Ten winners get called — they have a minute and a half to show up and identify themselves. If one or more spots are unclaimed after 90 seconds, more names are called. Eventually there are 10 contestants to “play the game.” Good news! You’re one of the chosen few — but I’m not going to tell you now whether you were first or last.

The way the game works is that 10 unmarked envelopes, in numbered spaces, are on a big board. Prizes total $25,000. The distribution of the prizes in the envelopes is:

First                        $10,000

Second                    $4,000

Third – Fifth                $2,000 each

Sixth – Tenth                 $1,000 each

 

Any of the players may end up with any of the envelopes. The first player drawn has the biggest choice. The last player drawn has no choice at all, but clearly it’s better to have this “no choice” rather than not to have been called at all.

Here are the questions: What’s your EV (expected value) if you get the first choice? What’s your EV if you barely make it in and you end up taking the last envelope? (We’re assuming the envelopes are indistinguishable from one another. I’ve been at drawings where actual cash was in the envelopes and the envelope with 100 C-notes inside was quite a bit fatter than the ones with “only” 10 Benjamins. In that drawing, you definitely wanted to be first to pick because visual inspection of the envelopes contained valuable information.)

The answer, of course, is “it depends.” (I like questions where this is the answer. That gives me something to write about!)

For the first player to select, the EV is clearly $2,500. A total of $25,000 is being given away to 10 players, and $25,000 divided by 10 is $2,500. This is as simple as an EV calculation gets.

For the second player, his actual EV depends on what the first player chose. If the first player selected a $1,000 envelope, then the second player’s EV is $24,000 divided by nine, which is $2,667. If the first player selected the $10,000 envelope, then the second players EV drops to $15,000 divided by nine, which is $1,667.

By the time we get down to the last player, there will be one envelope left and the EV is whatever prize hasn’t been claimed — meaning $10,000; $4,000; $2,000; or $1,000.

How do you take a weighted average of that?

Before I answer that question, let’s change this discussion a little. Assume each of the players selected an envelope but didn’t open them until the very end when they opened them together. In that case, each of the players has an EV of $2,500. There is still $25,000 in the prize pool, so far as they know, and they each have one in 10 chances to get any of the prizes.

Now, change it again. Assume you are the last person in line but you put earphones and blinders on until it’s your turn. Based on the information you have, you now have the same $2,500 EV as you would if everybody opened the envelopes at the same time!

If you are watching what happens and you’re still last, and you do this many times, on average your EV will be $2,500 — with variance!

Mathematically, on average it doesn’t matter whether you pick first or last. It can matter psychologically however. You see the $10,000 and $4,000 envelopes opened by somebody else and it’s a real downer if you’re somebody who sweats your daily scores! But sometimes getting called last will mean you see all of the smaller envelopes being opened and you’re left with the big one! On average it doesn’t matter, but if you want to feel bad about it, knock yourself out.

Since there are five $1,000 envelopes out of 10 total, half the time the last guy will end up with $1,000. (Of course, half the time the first guy — with complete freedom to choose any of the envelopes — also gets $1,000.)

When the first guy picks $10,000 (which will happen 10% of the time), it LOOKS like having the first choice was a big advantage. But it really wasn’t. He just made a lucky pick.

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When Experts Say Opposite Things

When I was in graduate school 45 years ago, plus or minus, I heard about an incident many years prior to that at the University of Chicago. It appears that there was an elevator for a campus building with a “Students Only” sign on it. One professor entered and was challenged, presumably in a friendly way, because he wasn’t a student. The professor answered, “We are all students. I study much more today than when I was your age.”

I’m that way too. I study gambling as much or more today as I ever did. One “advantage” of hosting a radio show about gambling is that I am “forced” to read gambling books that I wouldn’t otherwise pick up. I read the book in order to try to ask interesting questions of our guests. This gives me a much broader grasp of gambling than most players have.

I have many gurus — in the sense that I listen to what they have to say and try to apply it to my own situation. Two (of many) are Ed Miller and Richard Munchkin. Recently I realized that they said virtually the opposite thing about a subject — although ironically they both respect each other and would probably agree with the point of view of the other guy.

Sounds strange, right? Let me continue.

Ed Miller writes a lot about No Limit Hold’Em cash games with an emphasis on low stakes games. His recent book, The Course: Serious Hold’Em Strategy for Smart Players, is an excellent treatise on how to make money in $1-$2 and $2-$5 games. We’ve spoken about the book on the air, but we barely scratched the surface of what the book holds.

Near the end of the book is a section entitled “The Pitfalls of Running Good.” Miller says, “Running good out of the gate is one of the worst things that can happen to players. If they rack up big wins early on, a couple of bad things can happen. First, they develop unrealistic expectations. . . . Second, these early wins reinforce bad habits.”

I’m not going to quote his entire argument, but I found it persuasive. You need to guard against the dangers of running good. And Miller discusses several ways to do that.

Richard Munchkin, of course, is my co-host on the Gambling with an Edge radio show. However much I’ve prepared to listen to what our guest has to say on the air, I’m always eager to hear what Richard has to say as well. Although I often prepare a script beforehand and Richard knows where I’m going to go in the discussion, I never know beforehand what he’s going to say and I find that interesting and educational.

On more than one occasion, Munchkin has opined that a disproportionate number of successful gamblers ran good at the beginning. Why? Because a disproportionate number of the players who ran bad quit gambling! Somebody who always seems to lose has a tendency to give up and conclude that gambling is not for him.

So Ed Miller says running good at the beginning is one of the worst things to happen to you and Richard Munchkin says it happened to most successful gamblers. Not exactly contradicting each other — but close.

After mulling this over for a while, I decided they’re both right!

Running good does create some unreasonable expectations and bad habits, but gamblers who end up successful eventually learn to deal with these things. (If they don’t, they’re not successful gamblers. Nobody runs good forever.)

However bad running good is in terms of learning to play the game the right way, I’ll take it every day! While I understand Miller’s argument, I’d rather be $10,000 ahead than $10,000 behind. And so would you.

As to whether Munchkin was right about today’s successful players running good at the start, I started to examine whether it was true for me in particular. A case could be made that it was — but it also doesn’t matter. Anecdotal evidence about any one player (including me) doesn’t come close to proving or disproving any statement starting with “Most players . . .”

But I found Richard’s argument persuasive as well. The early loser tends to quit. The early winners tend to keep going. He’s looking at tendencies — not something that is correct 100% of the time.

I like it better when my gurus disagree with each other. It forces me to think about the arguments and come to my own conclusions. That’s how I improve my craft. And the fact that these two gurus are addressing games other than video poker means I always have to see if what they said applies to my game as well. Again, that’s how I improve my craft.

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How Much Do You Steal from Casinos?

I sometimes post on the forum at wizardofvegas.com. It’s hosted by Michael Shackleford, the “Wizard of Odds,” who’s a long time friend and former radio show co-host.

Recently someone there started a thread, “Have you ever stolen from your employer?” They included a poll and, early on as I write this, half (3 out of 6) of the responders say they have never stolen from their employers. With a sample size of six, no conclusions can be made. But as the sample size increases, surely the number of people admitting to theft from their employers will increase.

In Dan Ariely’s “The Honest Truth About Dishonesty: How We Lie to Everyone — Especially Ourselves,” he makes the case that most people sometimes steal at least minor amounts of stuff. While not all of us are employed, we all frequent casinos (or you’re wasting your time reading my columns). So I thought I’d change the topic to how often we steal from these places.

Defining what is actually stealing isn’t easy — even if we use Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart’s (used in a significantly different context), “I know it when I see it.” Let’s look at things that may or may not qualify:

  1. Getting a comped room/show/meal and selling it to somebody else. The fact that it is comped means the casino knows it is giving it away and is fine with that. Casinos have policies against selling comps, but that doesn’t make it illegal or immoral. If you give the room/show/meal away to a friend or relative and don’t charge him for it, does that change the “theft or not?” discussion in your mind? What if you were upfront with your host and said your niece was coming and you needed a room for her? To me, this latter situation (which I’ve done recently) is perfectly okay. I’m not sure where the dividing line is, though.
  2. Loading up on toiletries, toilet paper, etc., from your hotel room and taking it home with you. If you’re fine with this, how about extending it to towels? Or bedsheets? Where do you draw the line?
  3. You’re playing blackjack betting two reds (total $10) next to another player betting two greens (total $50) on a stupid 6-5 game. Officially it’s a $25 minimum table but you were grandfathered in because previously it was a $10 table and you can play the lower stakes until you leave. You both get blackjacks and the dealer pays you both $60. Do you immediately speak up and say, “No. You should have only paid me $12?” I wouldn’t speak up (not that I play blackjack anymore — and certainly not on a 6-5 game), but some players would.
  4. You cash in chips at the cage for $175, but somehow the cashier miscounts your chips and gives you $200 instead. Do you return the excess $25? I would, but some players wouldn’t.
  5. Morally, it’s tough to distinguish between the two previous cases. The rule I use (as do many other players) is that if a casino worker will personally be responsible for making up the shortfall, I give the money back. Taking money from somebody who is working for wages is just plain wrong in my opinion. If it will just go into the pot as a casino loss, as in the overpayment on the blackjack table, I’ll keep quiet. I am in the casino to make money after all. But just because I have a rule of thumb to guide my actions doesn’t mean that it’s any the less theft.
  6. I’m married to Bonnie, but used to be married to a woman named Shirley. Let’s say I still have some of Shirley’s old slot club cards and I still use the same mailing address as when I was with her. If Shirley got a “come on back and we’ll give you $200 in free play” offer in the mail and I came in and played off that money, how wrong would that be? For me personally, it isn’t going to happen. I am too well known. Even casinos that allow me to play have some reservations about it, so I’m not going to do anything that could backfire on me. What’s right or wrong shouldn’t depend on the consequences if you’re caught. But it’s probably a factor to most people. Decades ago if this happened, I probably would have gone in and picked up the free play without any qualms whatsoever.
  7. Playing on a spouse’s slot club card is allowed at some places and not at others. Where it’s allowed, I take advantage of it and play on Bonnie’s card. There are players with players’ cards in 50-100 different names. To me this is clearly wrong, but I can see the argument that it’s just a matter of degree.
  8. Is that morally different from entering free football contests (where you need to pick who is going to win) in LOTS of different names and coordinating the picks to eliminate duplicate entries?
  9. I know a guy who found a wallet in the casino. He turned it in to security almost immediately. But since he REALLY had to go to the bathroom at just that moment, he took the wallet with him inside a stall. What he did with the wallet inside that stall, we’ll never know for sure. Makes you wonder, though.
  10. Dealers are sometimes sloppy and expose their hole cards. There are players who specialize in seeking out such dealers and using that information to beat the house. Legally, thanks to the Einbinder case, these players are on solid ground (in Nevada anyway — maybe not so much at Indian casinos). Does the fact that it’s legal have any bearing on whether it’s moral? If players discovered that performing a particular action (perhaps tipping) made the dealers even more readable, is that unspoken collusion a type of stealing?
  11. You’re playing blackjack at casinos that will award you airfare if you lose enough money. You have perfected rat holing, meaning hiding chips on your person surreptitiously so the chips in front of you are a lot less than what you actually have. The pit boss writes down that you lost $6,000 when you actually came out ahead. You do this at six casinos during the trip and turn in printed receipts for the same flight all six times. You even went further. You ordered the tickets at full price — printed off multiple copies of the tickets — and then cancelled those tickets and booked the same flight at half the amount. You got the larger amount reimbursed six times for imaginary losses. Was the line between being clever and immoral ever crossed here? At what point? There will be some who say that’s just business as usual — and others will say the line was not only crossed, it was obliterated.

I could go on, but that’s enough for today. Most of us, myself included, consider ourselves to be moral, law-abiding people. And we all do things from time to time that are difficult or impossible to explain to somebody who takes an opposing point of view. And if somebody disagrees with you, they often take a “holier-than-thou” attitude about it.

I do the best I can and suggest you do the same.

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D T B

Bonnie’s family accepts that I’m a successful gambler. They also believe that the methods and discipline I use to succeed involve far more study than they want to invest — especially since it will never be more than an occasional hobby for any of them. Continue reading D T B

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Lessons from Chip Reese

I was reading Mike Sexton’s new book, Life’s a Gamble, in preparation for interviewing Sexton on the radio. The Sexton interview will be taped before you read this and will be posted here (that link is to the filtered podcast archives) on Thursday, July 28. The book is autobiographical, with lots of anecdotes about Sexton himself and various other players. I already knew many of the stories (I read a LOT about gambling and have interviewed many players over the years), but many more were new to me. All in all, it’s a good read and of interest to any gambler, not just poker players. Continue reading Lessons from Chip Reese

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You Have to Work it Out Yourself

I get dozens of video poker emails a month from people I’ve never met. Often the emails are similar to the following:

“I play Double Double Bonus. From a hand like KK773, I hold the kings and a friend tells me to hold two pair. Which is right?”

I typically answer that it’s correct to hold two pair — and the answer would be easy to obtain using video poker software or by consulting a strategy card or Winner’s Guide. If they wish to get better at video poker, they need to be able to check these things out themselves. Continue reading You Have to Work it Out Yourself

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Is it Guaranteed?

I recently published an article on quitting when you’re ahead which may be found here. The article referred to a particular $100,000 royal flush I hit at Dotty’s and why circumstances at that establishment led me to quit gambling there for a few months after the jackpot. Some of the follow-up comments about the article were, to me, very strange and irrelevant. I wouldn’t call them stupid questions. I would call the questioners uninformed. Continue reading Is it Guaranteed?

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Identifying a Pattern

I planned on playing for six hours at the Palms from shortly after midnight until about 6:00 a.m. on the early morning of Wednesday, April 27. It was a double point day— I also earned points for gift cards, a small amount of value for the weekly drawing, plus my play kept the mailers and other benefits coming. There were only two machines that I wanted to play, both containing $1 Ten Play Deuces Wild Ultimate X, and I expected other players to want the same machines on that day. So I went at hours when other players preferred to sleep. And this time, at least, one machine was available. Continue reading Identifying a Pattern

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Too Good to be True?

Casinos are in the business to make money. They don’t intentionally make mistakes. Still, sometimes mistakes happen that smart players can exploit. You don’t need to be a pro. You just have to be alert and savvy — and find one of these mistakes. It also helps if you have the requisite knowledge and bankroll — but that’s not necessary. If someone brought the following to me and nobody else knew about it, I might well have paid a $1,000 finder’s fee. Continue reading Too Good to be True?