Author: 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.

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.

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.

2. 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.

3. 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.

4. 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.

5. 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. 

6. 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.

7. 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.” 

8. 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.
   
9. 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.

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.

2. 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.

3. 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.

4. 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.

5. 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.

Some casinos do not issue coins at the change machines. If your ticket is $16.23, you will get the $16 in bills, and a voucher for the 23¢. Some casinos will give you the “opportunity” to donate that change to charity, and if you agree, the voucher isn’t even printed. Different states have different rules as to what the casinos can do with this un-collected money.

You can redeem these vouchers at the cage. But that takes time, and many people will often conclude that their time is worth more than the time it takes to collect a few pennies. So, they leave these tickets behind. Anyone walking by is welcome to take these tickets and cash them in. And I do pick them up, but I don’t immediately cash them in.

When I was strictly a video poker player, this rarely happened to me. After all, I usually play big enough machines so that there are no pennies in any cashout ticket I receive. This isn’t always the case today because sometimes I play quarter five play Multi-Strike 9/6 Jacks or Better at the South Point. While this is a $25-per-play game, the cashout ticket can print with an ending of 25¢, 50¢, or 75¢. When this happens to me, I generally keep playing. With the slot club paying 0.30% and the game I’m playing returning 99.79%, it is very slightly positive to keep playing and I do until the pennies disappear. On average, one in four of these tickets will end with zero cents, and I’ll quit then. On occasion I have lost more than $100 getting rid of the cents, but I have also won more than that. I’m playing a long game and those swings don’t affect me much.

South Point is one of the many places I play penny slots in addition to video poker. Almost always, when I cash out a ticket from such machines, the ticket includes some non-zero number of pennies at the end.

I will have a “master ticket” for the day, and any of the small tickets I accumulate get added in. When I cash in at the end of the day, I’ll collect some number of dollars and one ticket for change. If I have change in my pocket, I’ll frequently go to the cage and add enough change to my ticket to make it into an even number of dollars.

No ticket is too small for me to pick up. It’s all going to go into the machines. I once picked up a ticket for $3.16. I figured it was left behind intentionally, and kept it. Another time I found a ticket in excess of $700. I turned it in. There was no way somebody left that on purpose. Although tempting to keep it, the person who left it likely needs it more than I do. Plus, if it’s reported and they remember where they left it, the slot shift manager might search for it using surveillance cameras. I’m fairly well known in all casinos I frequent (because I’ve received W-2Gs plus I usually go back to the same casinos over and over again), so if I’m spotted on camera pocketing such a ticket, it’s almost certain I won’t like what happens next.

One year ago, more casinos paid off pennies in vouchers than do today. The vouchers are unpopular with customers, plus it encourages vagrants to hang around looking for and collecting these tickets. 

I end up with one voucher of less than one dollar per casino. When I visit the casino next time, I’ll put the old voucher in at the start as a part of my “ammunition.” Sometimes I do not return to a particular casino before a voucher expires. No big deal. It’s a small amount, and overall, the practice of picking up and holding onto these vouchers pays off.